Law&Crime Sidebar - New York Exec Turned Apartment into Torture Chamber: Prosecutors

Episode Date: April 28, 2025

Manhattan attorney and financial advisor Ryan Hemphill faces a 116-count indictment, over accusations that he lured women to his apartment and then engaged in sadistic abuse. Law&Crime’s Jesse Weber has gruesome details from the charging documents and gets insight into what’s next in this legal saga with former Florida state’s attorney Dave Aronberg.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW:If you’re ever injured in an accident, you can check out Morgan & Morgan. You can submit a claim in 8 clicks or less without having to leave your couch. To start your claim, visit: https://forthepeople.com/LCSidebarHOST:Jesse Weber: https://twitter.com/jessecordweberLAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokeVideo Editing - Michael Deininger, Christina O'Shea & Jay CruzScript Writing & Producing - Savannah Williamson & Juliana BattagliaGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this Law and Crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondry Plus in the Wondery app Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Agent Nate Russo returns in Oracle 3, Murder at the Grandview, the latest installment of the gripping Audible Original series. When a reunion at an abandoned island hotel turns deadly, Russo must untangle accident from murder. But beware, something sinister lurks in the grand. views shadows. Joshua Jackson delivers a bone-chilling performance in this supernatural thriller

that will keep you on the edge of your seat. Don't let your fears take hold of you as you dive into this addictive series. Love thrillers with a paranormal twist? The entire Oracle trilogy is available on Audible. Listen now on Audible. Each of these six women was subjected to hours of physical and sexual violence. The defendant, we allege, beat them, drug them, and restrain them. He impressed upon them that going to the authorities would be futile and that he would never be held accountable. He told them that no one would ever believe them. Clearly, he was wrong. Manhattan attorney and executive Ryan Hemphill now faces a staggering 116 count indictment, accused of drugging, raping, and psychologically tormenting women that he apparently lured

through Sugar Daddy websites. Prosecutors call it a five-month campaign of sadistic abuse, and they say the six known victims may only be the beginning. I'm going to break down the charges and key evidence in this horrifying case with former Palm Beach County State Attorney Abe Arrenberg. Welcome to Sidebar, presented by Law and Crime. I'm Jesse Weber. Beginning in October of 2024,

prosecutors say a well-dressed Manhattan attorney and private equity executive named Ryan Hemp Hill, began prowling websites and sugar daddy platforms luring women to his upscale midtown apartment with promises of money and companionship. But what they really walked into, prosecutors allege, was a house of horrors, a meticulously planned torture chamber where Hemphill subjected them to hours of sexual violence, psychological terror, and sadistic cruelty. There's really no other way to explain it.

Over the next five months, six women, many of whom he's alleged, have met on sites like Seeking.com, that's formerly known as Seeking Arrangement, Sugar Daddy Meat, Fet Life, Craigslist, they would endure allegedly unspeakable abuse at his hands. New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg described those purported horrors in detail during a press conference that he held on April 24th. Ryan Hempel was arraigned earlier today and remanded on a 116 count indictment, charging him with predatory sexual assault of six women over a five-month period.

Each of these six women was subjected to hours of physical and sexual violence. The defendant, we allege, beat them, drug them, and restrained them. He threatened them with firearms. He used a shock collar and a cattle prod intended for livestock. You'll see to my left items,

recovered from his midtown apartment. In addition to numerous weapons that were recovered, investigators also found surveillance cameras and memory cards from which we extracted videos of dozens, if not hundreds, of different women. Drugging, raping, torturing, recording them under unbelievably humiliating and traumatizing circumstances only to wield his power over them, force them into silence, this is what prosecutors are alleging.

And during that April 24th press conference, D.A. Bragg announced Hemphill was indicted on an enormous 116 count indictment, facing charges that include predatory sexual assault, rape in the first and third degree, facilitating a sex offense with a controlled substance, assault in the second degree. And there's even more.

He's also facing charges of bribing a witness, criminal possession of a controlled substance in the second degree, and unlawful possession of ammunition and of certain ammunition feeding devices. All right, before we go any further into this, though, I want to bring on a special guest back here on sidebar. He's with me here on set. Dave Arrenberg, former state attorney from Florida's Palm Beach County.

Good to see you, Dave. And also tell everybody real quick all the podcast and shows you're doing, too. Yeah, Jesse, good to be back with you. I do podcasts for Legal AF, which is part of the Midas Touch Network on YouTube. And I call myself the Florida lawman, which I'm, proud to say it's now been trademark. I love trademark law. Really? Yeah. Well, because there's so many Florida lawmen, not Florida man. Right, right, right. So every time you say that phrase, you owe me a nickel. Okay, good. So I will not be saying it at any time. That's your fault now.

Okay, it's all seriousness. Yeah. 116 count indictment. That is massive. As a prosecutor, how do you even structure a case like that? That feels like an enormous task about, you know, the amount of evidences in this case, how you even presented to a jury. What do you do? Yeah, there's no death penalty in New York, but this wouldn't qualify anyways because there's no accusation of any deaths here. But there's serious accusations here of sexual violence against women and these recording them without their consent and threatening people and drug use. And to me, of all the things, he tries to talk a big game, allegedly, that he's some big lawyer, well-connected. But for some of these women, he was paying them with fake cash. He would stiff...

Counterfeit money. Count for money. Like, you know, dude, like either you're a big baller or you're not. This guy seems to be asking for a life sentence in prison because there are so many counts against him. As a prosecutor, what you do is you present all the goods to the defenslers and you are hoping perhaps for a life sentence or something really certain decades in prison where they accept a plea deal in advance. So they seem to have him dead to rights. I mean, he's going to be hoisted by his own partard, to use a Shakespearean phrase. He's going to, see that the videos that he took, because he had outfitted his whole apartment with all these surveillance cameras, that's the stuff that's going to be used against him. Just horrendous, horrendous allegations. And, you know, this is a big story here in New York. A lot of people are talking about it. But this is definitely one we thought was important to spread awareness about all over.

And for that, I have to thank our incredible sponsor and partner, Morgan and Morgan, because their support helps us to bring these stories to you. Now, this is America's largest injury law firm. They're no joke. In the past few months, Morgan and Morgan, security. at a $9.3 million verdict for a car crash victim in Florida, a $5.6 million verdict for another car accident victim in Atlanta, and not to mention $1.8 million in Kentucky after insurance offered them, a mere $5,000 in that case. And even if you think your case isn't worth millions of dollars,

why not just start a claim and fight for what you deserve? Morgan and Morgan makes it so simple. You can start a claim from your phone in just eight clicks, everything from signing contracts, uploading documents, talking to your legal team, it's all through the phone. So if you're injured, you can easily start a claim at for the people.com slash LC sidebar. How much does the case rely on the testimony of the alleged victims? Because I have to imagine prosecutors don't really want this to go to trial. They would rather him take a guilty plea and not have to subject these individuals to have to testify. But how much of the cases relying on their testimony?

Well, it helps because the jury want to see real victims instead of just, you know, he won't even give their names. It will just be anonymous victims, just statistics. You want to see people on the stand if you can get them on the stand. But because they have to relive the trauma, that may be very difficult. So the best evidence against them are the videos that he took himself and the communications that he recorded himself. So they got a lot of stuff to him. And as a prosecutor, what you want to do is to try to avoid having to retramatize these victims again. So you hope perhaps you can get a plea deal where this guy is spending decades in prison.

So you show him, look at all the stuff I have. And you could be sent to prison the rest of your life if you go to trial. Is it shocking to you that we're dealing with allegations inside of a Midtown Manhattan apartment? Right? It's not like a rural area. There's no one around. In your experience, and I know you practiced law in Florida, but do you see these kinds of horrendous crimes in areas where you'd imagine someone else might see it or hear something? A lot of these crimes are hiding in plain sight.

Human trafficking, modern day slavery. occurring all around us, but people overlook it because they don't know the tell-tale signs. So what you're seeing here is a guy who living in an apartment building around lots of others, and after all, if you're going to live in Manhattan, it's not like you're going to be living on a farm. You're going to be doing it in front of all these other people who may not realize that the parade of different women going in and out, it's not based on consensual conduct. It's based on lies, threats, drug use, deceit, and only afterwards of people finally say, oh, man, you know, I thought there was something to skew, but I didn't say anything.

People still are afraid to get involved. We need to tell them that if you see something, say something. And also in a metropolitan city like this, surveillance footage, going into the apartment, leaving the apartment, going into, there's got to be a lot more that we, that prosecutors have, I imagine. Yeah, and I'm sure the way he is towards the women is not the same way he is towards his neighbors. I'm sure towards his neighbors, he was pleasant. People may not have thought anything differently, but now when they go back into their memory bank

and realize, yeah, it was unusual to see this parade, the different women going in and out, and to see him being very secretive when he walks them out because I'm sure he didn't want to introduce anyone to neighbors. So I think now, in retrospect, that they probably wish they had said something. They may be witnesses at trial themselves. So I'll be the first to say these allegations are truly some of the most disturbing we've ever seen in these kinds of contexts. I mean, spanning from October 24 up until March of 2025.

And now that he's been indicted, I'm going to take you back in time when prosecutors say this whole pattern. of alleged predatory behavior began. And it all stems back to October 3rd, 2024, because according to court documents, Hemphill began inviting six women to his apartment under the guise of a paid arrangement. And once inside, he allegedly forced these women to ingest drugs that left them disoriented, and then, I'm sorry for how horrifying this is, rape them repeatedly in essentially every way you can imagine, while they drifted in and out of consciousness. And this, prosecutors say, became his sickening routine.

Dave, how do they prove that? Do they have to have toxicology reports to talk about the drugs that were possibly ingested? Is it difficult to prove lack of consent in these cases? We talk about the plethora of evidence, but if you think about it from a defense perspective, I imagine these are areas they might hit upon. Yeah, the toxicology reports would be powerful evidence, but you have to assume that for a lot of these women, they didn't report it right away, and the drugs may have left their system.

And so you have to look at other things as well. You look to see the drugs that you find there on the premises. Why do you have all these drugs there? You're not a pharmacist. You have to also see what's on the video. You see him actually injecting drugs into these women. And so you have to put pieces together like a puzzle. And even if you don't have the best evidence,

which is a toxicology report from the victim on site, just right after it happened, you can still piece it together. Also, that's why their testimony can be so important to talk about how it wasn't consensual because his defense is going to be consent. His defense is going to be to tarnish the victims by saying, look, they're on these sleazy websites and they consented. They took money for this, and now they're trying to get more money through civil lawsuits.

I'll bet you that's going to have. We've seen this in a way with Diddy, not to say that Diddy did any of those things. That's to be decided in court. But that's what prosecutors have to prepare for. So their case is going to involve showing a lack of consent, showing that he raped these women against their will, that he put drugs in their body, that he made false promise and deceit and threats. And then there is the other crimes like witness intimidation and so forth. Well, do you think, I mean, a lot of this is going to be attacking their credibility. Why were you on these websites?

What were you expecting to gain? How do we know you're telling the truth? That can be a tricky dance for a defense attorney to attack these alleged victims. saw it in the Harvey Weinstein case. It has to be done. It's their job to question their credibility. But when you think about what they're accusing him of and what they allegedly went through, how do defense attorneys go about that? Yeah, well, defense attorneys have to be careful. That's why you see a lot of women doing the cross-examination of other women. You don't want some overbearing dude getting up there as a lawyer

and looking like a jerk blaming the victim. Instead, they try to treat him with kid gloves to try to say, well, you did join these websites voluntarily. You did take money. And you didn't The delayed reporting is another big issue with these cases. But as we've seen in the Harvey Weinstein case, the late reporting doesn't mean it didn't occur. Lack of consent is a crime. It doesn't matter if you wait a little bit or a while if it's lack of consent. And then they come back to you at it, yeah, it's still a crime,

even if they have a relationship with you afterwards. That's something he may show. He may say, look, I'm still friends with these women afterwards. Here are text messages between us. We've seen that in the Harvey Weinstein case. But now we have a better understanding in the year 2025. in the year 2025, about delayed reporting and about the fact that people who are victimized by rape can still communicate with their perpetrators.

We know that that actually might play a factor in the Sean Didy Combs case as well. There's an expert testimony about that. Okay, so going back to this, though, over the next several months, Hemphill allegedly just escalated his brutality. Prosecutors say he used a cattle prod. This is a device meant for livestock to electrocute some of these victims. Others were allegedly forced to wear shock collars around their necks while he assaulted them. He's accused of binding women with handcuffs and duct tapes, slapping, punching them.

One case, leaving a victim shackled to his bed for hours as she begged for release. A prosecutor say Hemphill even took some kind of sick pleasure and psychologically torturing them too, convincing some women to confide in him about past traumas only to reenact those very abuses himself in front of them. and even more horrifying and humiliating, he's accused of peeing on these alleged victims and threatening them with guns and knives. I mean, Dave, if you're a defense attorney, how are you going to find a jury

isn't going to be swayed by these claims? I mean, and what do I mean by that? I mean, like, that they're not going to make a decision based on a motion. I'm getting disgusted and even reading these allegations. Yeah, there's a rule of evidence. It says if the evidence is more prejudicial than probative, it doesn't come in.

And the defense lawyers are going to use that. They're going to say a lot of this stuff, is just unnecessarily prejudicial, inflammatory for the jury, and it doesn't go to the charges. But even the urination stuff still goes to the charges. It's still relevant evidence because it shows lack of consent. It shows what he was doing all along. It's a pattern of conduct to break these women down and humiliate them and threaten them and do things against their will. So they've got a problem. And this case is a solid case, at least in my mind, for prosecutors. The question is, can you avoid a trial? Can you talk some sense into the defense

side who think that, well, we'll just tarnish the victims and get away with it and make them accept decades in prison. Because if this guy doesn't get decades in prison, then it's a loss for prosecutors. I mean, if they have surveillance footage of all this, I mean, purportedly, that is going to be a very difficult case to argue against. And listen to he says it was all consensual. But here's the thing. The other allegation is that when these women tried to resist or report him, Hemphill allegedly turned to intimidation. He apparently boasted of his legal. background, claiming he had ties to law enforcement and organized crime. In fact, in chilling text messages, dating back to December 22, 2024, this was obtained by investigators, he appears

to exert those ties over one woman in particular, writing, did you notice all the police business cards on my bleeping coffee table? I know half the precinct. In a different text, this one from November 30th, 2024, he allegedly unleashed a similar threat, writing, I'm leaving here in five minutes. If you're not here, I'm going to bleeping unleash federal hell on you. You're going to wish you were bleeping dead. In another case, he allegedly drafted a fake contract offering a victim $2,000 to drop her police complaint she made with the Manhattan Special Victims Unit. And he even reportedly forced some women to record videos falsely stating they had consented to the abuse and then used those recordings to blackmail them into silence. That's another allegation.

And Dave, we talk about these alleged crimes and whom has the ability. the opportunity to commit them. It's the idea of somebody in his position who knows the law, who maybe has connections, who has the wealth, the resources. This maybe couldn't have been committed by John Smith, right?

There's something about his status that I think adds to this as well. And again, these are all allegations he's innocent who proven guilty. But I think that's something to be thinking about. Oh, yeah, but it's going to come back to haunt him. Juries hate guys like this.

Juries hate people who brag about themselves and use the power of their position. for evil purposes. Also, in reality, you know how this works. I was a state attorney for 12 years. The people come in and say that they're well-connected, usually are the least well-connected.

The one who says that, hey, I'm in the mafia. That's a tell-tale sign. They're not in the mafia, right? Right, right. Yeah. So when he's there, look at all the business cards on my desk, I'll bet you those cops probably barely even know this guy. They probably think he's annoying.

I know that from being a prosecutor for 12 years. You get these hanger-on who want to use their affiliation with you to do things that are bad. But generally, when I say things that are bad, it means speed and act like a jerk. This guy takes it to a new level. It's all going to come back to haunt him. His day of reckoning is here. Here's something interesting as well.

We talked about the collection of evidence on March 1st, 2025. NYPD detectives and Manhattan prosecutors, they executed a search warrant at Hemp Hill's apartment. You know what they found? Everything we talked about. Apparently, they found the cattle prod, shock collar, hundreds of rounds of ammunition and high-capacity magazines, heroin, cocaine, fentanyl, other drugs, surveillance. lens cameras and hard drives containing footage of dozens and dozens of women. And Hempel was arrested.

He was charged with this 116 count indictment. Dave, by the way, what is the process of going through all that evidence? Like, how do you go through it? How does your team go through it? Especially the digital evidence. You have to have a team. There's so much evidence. One person can't do it.

So you have the whole team to do it. Not easy to go through that stuff. It's not. And 116 counts, that is a complaint that takes a long time. That's an indictment that takes a long time to go through. I mean, can you imagine also at jury verdict, at the time of verdict, we've sat through verdicts where you have 116 counts or more, and it takes like an hour. And one time it was a not guilty verdict for a patient brokering, a much lesser charge than

here. And it was just as bad to lose the case as to have to sit there for an hour to hear a jury one after the next say, not guilty, not 16 times. So this is the kind of thing, though, that if he's not careful, he'll go to trial. And that's a huge mistake because that's how he gets like. life in prison. The only way he'll ever see the light of day again outside of a prison cell is if he cuts a deal. But, you know, prosecutors aren't going to get him like a slap on the wrist What would a deal look like for him?

40 years? I mean, remember, there were no deaths here. And so he could get away without serving the rest of his life in prison, even though if you accumulate all the sentencing here, all the potential jail time, it comes out to well over our lifetime. Right. So it turns out, by the way, I forgot to mention this part. This wasn't his first brush with the law. No, in 2015, he stood trial for allegedly choking his then girlfriend and holding a knife to her throat during a violent encounter. Here's the shocking part. He was acquitted. Yeah, according to the New York Post, the jury deliberated for a little over a day before clearing him of allegations stemming from two heated arguments with his ex-girlfriend Christina Leos in 2013. So Leos, who was a preschool teacher, testified that Hemphill

had violently attacked her when she went to his apartment to end the relationship. There was a lot of parallels to the current allegations that he's facing. But similar to this case, Leo's told the jury that Hemphill threatened her and choked her. According to her testimony, Hemphill grabbed a bowie knife and, quote, he put it up to my neck and said, I'm going to bleeping, slit your throat, get the bleep out. So Leo's claim she ended up staying with him until another explosive fight erupted only a month later. And this time, she claimed he covered her mouth. and nose with one hand while choked her with the other.

But Hempel also took the stand during that trial. He offered a very different version of events, admitting that he did become physical with Leo's, but that it was only after she threw a pint glass at him. The Post reports that cops executed a search warrant on his home. They found weapons, homemade BDSM porn tapes. Some of those were with Leo's. But Hempel's lawyer at the time, Jason Steinberger, called out inconsistencies in Leo's testimony, telling jurors in the closing argument that Leo's told police initially that Hemphill threw her to the ground and strangled her in the kitchen,

but on the stand, she claimed the choking happened near the front door. And the jury seemingly believed him, concluding that whatever happened between these two didn't constitute a crime. Following his acquittal, Hemphill told reporters in 2015, this was an overcharged case to begin with, and the district attorney's office had little to know evidence. Now, very different case. Makes me wonder if he's going to take the stand, but also if you have more evidence here and possibly, tapes. I also don't know if he's going to take the stand. But I mean, it's just shocking to say the least. Based on the allegations, it appears this guy's a sociopath. I mean, I have to be

careful what I say because everyone's innocent until proven guilty. But based on these horrific allegations and his previous case, it looks like he thinks he can get away with anything. He can talk his way out of anything. And those are the people who melt down on the stand under a withering cross-examination. In fact, prosecutors live to cross-examine a person like this. So will he take the stand? I don't think it goes to trial. I think that he is fearful of life and prison and he'll settle for anything less based on the mountain of evidence. Plus, how'd it like to be Ms. Leos, who first was essentially told by the jury that we don't believe you, but now she's been validated and vindicated because these charges now,

it's not going to be as easy for him to escape because it's not just one person. It's a multitude of victims. Are they all lying? I don't think so. It's interesting you say multiple victims because we're going to have to wait and see what happens, you know, this time around at his arraignment on April 24th. He wore a cross necklace, pleaded not guilty. Take that for what you will. Now, Judge Ann Scherzer ordered him held without bail. NBC News reports that his lawyer requested he be moved to a rehab facility to handle substance abuse problems.

Six women so far have come forward, but the Manhattan District Attorney, Alvin Bragg, warned that the six known victims, they may be only the beginning. We have reason to believe that there may be more survivors. The defendant is an attorney with a background in private equity and acts. to significant funds. The power imbalance in his predatory acts could not be more clear. He wielded his law degree and money as both sword and shield, coercing and silencing survivors. The defendant told them that because they had accepted offers of money in many cases for sexual acts, it was them who would be arrested if they came forward. if they came forward. He told them that he had resources

that made him untouchable, including purported deep connections in law enforcement and an organized crime. He impressed upon them that going to the authorities would be futile and that he would never be held accountable. He told them that no one would ever believe them. Clearly, he was wrong. Through the bravery, through the bravery of the survivors who came forward and shared their horrific, traumatic experiences with authorities, the defendant now stands indicted on 116 counts.

NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch praised the investigators who crack this case. The details in this case are beyond disturbing, a sustained, calculated campaign of violence and cruelty that targeted women. This kind of predatory abuse has no place in our city and will be met with the full force of the law. According to arrest records, Hemphill sits in Rikers Island in a unit called the North Infirmary Command. It's a unit designated for people who have these acute medical conditions as he awaits trial. And his next court date is listed as June 10th. So authorities, they're urging anybody who has more information, any potential additional victims to come forward. Dave will give you the final word.

What's his acute medical condition other than being an alleged pervert? I mean, I don't know, he's in a special unit. So it continues that he gets, in his mind, special treatment that he thinks he can con the system. That's the interpretation I get. That's the view I get of all this. Here's a guy who's gotten away with it before, allegedly, and his back again thinks he's smarter than everyone else. But as I said, his day of reckoning is here. Dave Arrenberg, thank you so much, sir.

Good seeing you. Thank you, Jesse. And that's all we have for you right now here on Sidebar, everybody. Thank you so much for joining us. And as always, please subscribe on YouTube, Apple Podcast, Spotify, wherever you should get your podcasts. Jesse Weber. I'll speak to you next time. You can binge all episodes of this long crime series.

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