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EXCLUSIVE: ‘I was tucked behind a dumpster.’ Night on Dirty Sixth ends in coma. Was he targeted by the ‘Rainey Street Ripper’?

‘I was on life support for, like, I think, 3 or 4 days.’

Photo of Ford Sanders

Ford Sanders

3 panel image: on the left is a person sitting in a car, in the middle is a park scene, on the right is a missing person sign.
(Licensed)

It was supposed to be an evening of celebration. Instead it ended with a missing persons case and a near-death experience at the hands of someone Connor Deserly thinks may have been trying to kill him. He wonders if that person could be the killer dubbed the Rainey Street Ripper, who is rumored to stalk a popular entertainment district in Austin, Texas.

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Police insist there is no serial killer and that it’s just a tragic coincidence that 16 bodies have been pulled from a nearby lake over the last two years.

People like Deserly and the families of some of the victims are not convinced. To them, as well as thousands across the web and bellying up at the bars along Rainey Street in Austin, the spectre of the prospective killer looms large.

Last February, Deserly and some friends moved to Austin for six-week stints working in sales for a local pest control company. Two days later, they celebrated the move with a night out on the city’s famed 6th street district, a short walk from Rainey Street.

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They wound up at Rooftop on 6th. Deserly told me that being there is about all he remembers from that night—that and some people they met.

“One thing I did remember from that night is we met, like, a group of people, like, it was me and Jayden, and then we were at this one bar, and then there was like this group of people, and they were, they had, like, a weird vibe,” said Deserly. “That’s what was weird, because I only drank like one drink, like one or two drinks, and I felt crazy, like, f***ed up, you know? And then I remember we talked to this one group, and they were weird.”

Deserly says his last bit of consciousness was telling his friends he needed to go to the restroom. An unknown amount of time later, a friend spotted him in another bar.

“He said that he remembered seeing me in like a different bar, like a bar that was a way different vibe. And he said it was like it looked crazy from the outside. And he said that I got in there, but he couldn’t for some reason,” he recalled. “And then that was like when he lost me, I guess. But I don’t have any recollection of that.”

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The next thing Deserly, then 23, remembers is waking up alone in a local hospital. Nobody knew where he was or if he was dead or alive.

By then, Deserly’s friends were searching for him in earnest. They’d started looking for him not long after he vanished in the throngs of revelers. By the next morning, they were already putting missing person fliers up around town.

In Body Image
Courtesy Connor Deserly

At the same time they were desperately searching for their friend, another body turned up in Lady Bird Lake. As the Daily Dot previously reported, as of September, there had been 14 bodies recovered from the lake. Since then, two more have been found, bringing the total to 16 in just two-and-a-half years.

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Nearly a year after he woke up in that hospital bed with no recollection of what had happened or how he got there, Deserly is still recovering from injuries he sustained that night. He has precious few memories of the night out that ended with him on death’s door.

“I don’t know exactly which alleyway it was, but there’s an alleyway, and I was tucked behind a dumpster, and my legs were just sticking out, and somebody that was passing by saw feet from the side of it and called. And then by the time they got there, I was completely unresponsive,” said Deserly.

Even as he wonders what happened to him that night, Deserly is grateful he didn’t end up making the grand total 17 corpses found in Lady Bird Lake in the last 36 months.

What do locals think is happening on Rainey Street?

As the bodies piled up, tales of a serial killer stalking the area spread from the streets to the internet. Last May, a man told the Daily Mail that he had survived the ripper’s attempt to murder him by drugging him and pushing him off a bridge into Lady Bird Lake. There are dozens of TikToks about the Rainey Street Ripper. Posts about the ripper routinely go viral, with views ranging from hundreds of thousands to several million.

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@dailydot EXCLUSIVE: In the last two years, over a dozen dead bodies have been pulled from a lake in Austin, Texas. The string of deaths has locals convinced there’s a serial killer, AKA the “Rainey Street Ripper,” stalking the streets. Police insist that there is no serial killer on the loose in the city, but more and more people aren’t buying it. So, we investigated. (Full story in bio 🔗) @Ford Sanders • #texas #serialkiller #raineystreet #exclusive ♬ original sound – The Daily Dot

There are many theories about the person, or people, rumored to be behind the deaths. That many of the dead are men of roughly the same age—in their 30s or 40s—and some have been found with drugs in their systems only fuels such rumors. The mother of one of those men previously told the Daily Dot that, despite officials’ insistence her son died of natural, if tragic, causes, she believes that he was murdered.

“I feel someone either drugged him in the drink or someone threw him in the water,” said Elsie John, mother of Jason John. Jason’s body was found in Lady Bird Lake in February 2023. Just like Deserly, he’d vanished during a night celebrating with friends. Also like Deserly, he was found with drugs in his system, specifically gamma hydroxybutyrate, or GHB, more commonly known as a date rape drug. The medical examiner said that the amount was consistent with that naturally produced by the body during decomposition. Deserly said he had a cocktail of fentanyl, methamphetamines, and ketamine in his system and that he has no idea how he ingested the drugs.

The purported druggings feed into one of the most popular theories that the Rainey Street Ripper is a bartender, bouncer, or someone else who works in the area. Again, police insist that there is no killer.

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“I was on life support for, like, I think, three or four days, like, all the, you know, the tubes in the mouth, and it was pumping my lungs for me and all this other stuff,” Connor Deserly recalled.

Whether there’s a killer or not, some establishments aren’t taking any chances.

Jeff Partridge is a bartender at the Lucille Patio Lounge on Rainey Street. He told me that his bar has gone out of its way to avoid any potential druggings by offering drug testing strips to patrons. Dozens of bars across the city are doing the same.

“We’ve got it labeled on the front doors, in the windows and in the bathrooms as well. We’ve had several people that come up just to check it out,” Partridge said. “Maybe they weren’t, didn’t think that they got, you know, that something happened to their drink, but they were just interested, interested to see how it worked, and we were, you know, happy to show everybody, just to spread more knowledge about it.”

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Partridge feels there is a very remote possibility that a killer is stalking Rainey Street, but acknowledges that it is possible. Still, he’s not convinced that this person would be a bartender.

“That would be one of the wilder things that I’ve heard working in a bar before. Again, not to say that it’s—anything is possible—I just, the likelihood of that is even smaller than somebody targeting Rainey Street specifically.”

Salvador Juarez works the door at Lucille Patio Lounge. He says it’s actually not that outlandish to believe someone is murdering people partying on Rainey Street. In his mind, the partiers who frequent the area make for soft targets.

“I feel like it’s not far-fetched to think that there would be one. I haven’t seen any like direct clues or signs myself, but it’s not far-fetched, just based on how intoxicated people get,” said Juarez.

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“Sometimes you’ll see people just like, they’re so intoxicated they’re completely out of it, and so they’re just wandering around. And they’ll pretty much go with anybody anywhere,” he added.

In Body Image
Ford Sanders

Juarez says that Lucille Patio Lounge takes over-intoxication seriously and makes it clear that neither excessive drunkenness or inappropriate behavior is allowed. Staff are instructed to cut off anyone who appears inebriated and to avoid over-serving in the first place, he said.

Juarez theorized that, if the drownings aren’t accidental as the police claim, it’s possible organized crime has some involvement with all the bodies turning up in the lake.

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“I don’t think it would be just based on, like a lot of the other facts of how the bodies are found. I think it would be someone, […] maybe it’s not a bartender or someone that works on the street, but it could be like someone that’s working with someone that works on the street, like multiple people working together to do this, not just one person,” said Juarez.

One might expect fears of a serial killer to thin the crowds flocking to Rainey Street. Juarez says it’s had the opposite effect. He thinks the rumor of a Rainey Street Ripper almost attracts more patrons.

“Everyone comes up, [like], ‘Oh, what do you know about this?’ […] I think the ripper thing draws more people in, just out of curiosity,” said Juarez.

Gillian Cooper and Alex Parker live in Austin. The two often frequent Rainey Street and a trail that runs along Lady Bird Lake. Cooper was well aware of the rumors of a serial killer stalking the area.

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“I don’t feel like there’s anyone in Austin that doesn’t really know about it. I think it’s hard when you’re consistently seeing news articles about people dying, like, that’s something that people usually talk about,” said Cooper.

“People just kind of like run with it, and we’re also, it’s funny I have this conversation [with] my mom, like, we’re so used to being lied to by all anyone in power with authority, that I think anything you’re like, I feel like that’s probably not the whole story.”

Parker is among those who aren’t convinced that so many of the deaths are accidental drownings with no foul play, as authorities claim.

“Austin is a community that thrives in the water, like most. It’s just, it’s really unbelievable to me that someone would choose to live down here on Rainey Street and, like, not have some, you know, consciousness of like, how to be in the water and water safety,” said Parker.

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Skeptics wonder how police so quickly determine that a fresh body was just the result of a tragic accident, as has often happened. Although some blame poor lighting and insufficient barriers on a trail adjacent to the water for at least some of the deaths, others doubt that explanation.

Cooper is one of them.

“Back to things like, not making sense necessarily, like you have to stumble a pretty long way over a fence and through a lot of trees and stuff, to then fall into the water, either you would have had to have been drugged, I feel like, for it to be accidental, or be, like, very intoxicated,” she said.

More and more locals wonder why so many corpses are winding up in Lady Bird Lake.

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Influencer Newman Parker is a born and raised Austinite. As a male in his twenties and someone who spends a lot of time near Rainey Street and the trail at Lady Bird Lake, Parker arguably has extra cause for concern.

“I wish the local police would take it a little bit more seriously. Continually saying that it’s an accidental drowning is not an effective measure to create change. And like, they’ve put in lights on the trail, they’ve put a gate, and they’ve done like, little things, but that’s not going to stop [it],” Parker opined.

Fears of a killer have had a ripple effect into other aspects of his life, he added, like dating.

“I still date, don’t get me wrong, but I think the way I go about dating has changed.” Parker said, “I used to meet people at bars and have conversations, and if we clicked, we clicked, and, you know, continue to be in each other’s lives from there, but that has is not really a thing anymore, because I kind of have this like basis, this base level of distrust for people I meet at bars now, because of that looming fear.”

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Two deaths within weeks

In the first three weeks of December, two bodies were found in the lake. The first was that of 73-year-old Thi Lang Nguyen. Police say that she was part of the city’s unhoused population and was trying to stay warm. Somehow, they say, she wound up dead in Lady Bird Lake. No foul play is suspected.

Authorities have released far less information about the second corpse, found on Dec. 20. All police have told the public is that the decedent was male. Once again, they say that there’s no reason to suspect foul play.

@fordsanders BREAKING NEWS: Police in Austin, TX are responding to a body found near Lady Bird Lake. They say no foul play is suspected here. This is the 16th body found at this lake in 2.5 years… #crime #criminal #criminalsminds #ladybirdlakeaustin #ladybird #ladybirdlake #lake #austin #austintx #austintexas #atx #breakingnews #news #newsanchor #newsreporter ♬ original sound – Ford Sanders
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Other than gender, they still have not released any further details about who they found dead in the lake.

Connor Deserly is acutely aware that he could’ve been another statistic that February night last year when he went missing and woke up in the hospital.

The day after he disappeared, yet another body turned up in Lady Bird Lake. At the time, I was a reporter for KVUE News, Austin’s ABC News affiliate. I was getting ready for a live shot about the story for the 5pm and 6pm newscasts when Deserly’s friends approached me. By then he’d been missing for the better part of a day and they were understandably frantic with worry.

They asked for help and whether I had any information about Deserly’s whereabouts. Then they asked what was going on at the lake. I carefully let them know that a body was being pulled from the water, but the victim hadn’t been identified yet. I urged them to not lose hope or automatically think this was their friend.

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It would be days before they learned Deserly’s fate.

Meanwhile, he was laying in a local hospital bed fighting for his life.

“I didn’t know where I was, and the lady, she just kept saying, ‘You overdose, you overdose, you overdose.’ And I was like, ‘What the hell?’ And then I was on life support for, like, I think, three or four days, like, all the, you know, the tubes in the mouth, and it was pumping my lungs for me and all this other stuff,” said Deserly.

Being told he overdosed made no sense to him, he said. He is adamant that he did not and does not use drugs. He says the nurses claimed he had ketamine, fentanyl and meth in his system. Deserly believes that this caused the hospital to treat him like an addict, rather than pay attention to what he was saying and other clues that he was drugged.

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His iPhone was stolen as well as the money out of his wallet. He said he later started getting notifications that his iPhone was in China. It’s common for robbers to sell stolen phones to criminals in China for resale.

The fact that his friends spent days not knowing what happened to him still disturbs Deserly to this day.

“No one could find me, and I was just kind of laying there for days. And it was weird. The hospital, they didn’t identify me. I had my I had my f***ing—my wallet, my pocket with my ID and everything. They didn’t even think to like identify me or reach out to anybody. They just like didn’t do anything,” he said.

Now back home in Ogden, Utah, Deserly is still recovering from nerve damage sustained that night. He says the way he was found still confuses him, but overall he’s grateful to be alive.

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Asked if he thinks there could be a serial killer in Austin, he said he feels it is a very high possibility after what happened to him.

Nevertheless, Deserly says neither the Austin Police Department or the hospital ever contacted him to follow up on his case. APD did not respond to a request for comment.

“They never even spoke to me or anything. Never even contacted, because obviously I didn’t have time to call the police, you know, but I don’t know if my friends reached out to them,” he said. “I don’t know how they helped my friends, but APD, yeah, they never reached out, nothing, tried to open an investigation, nothing like that.”


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