PATTERN OF 'O.D. WHILE ROBBED'
Designer murdered with fentanyl
An up-and-coming fashion designer who dressed Lady Gaga and other celebrities was murdered in her Manhattan apartment with a lethal cocktail of fentanyl and other drugs last year during an apparent robbery, cops and reports said Friday.
The mysterious death of Kathryn “Katie” Gallagher, 35, was classified as a homicide Friday after the medical examiner determined that she died from acute intoxication from the combined effects of fentanyl, ethanol and the designer opioid p-fluorofentanyl.
The budding fashionista was the victim of grand larceny in a crime detectives believe could be connected to a pattern of at least 26 recent “drug-facilitated” robberies in areas including the East Village, the Lower East Side and The Bronx, police sources said.
Cops are also probing whether Gallagher’s death is connected to Kenwood Allen, 33, who was arrested in December and charged with murder in the overdose robbery deaths of two club-goers on the Lower East Side, police sources said.
Allen — who has not been charged in connection with Gallagher’s death — is allegedly a member of a vicious gang that has repeatedly drugged inebriated revelers and robbed them.
Police are also looking into whether two of his co-defendants are connected with Gallagher’s death.
“They target their victims leaving bars, offering drugs in some cases, then either through force or when the victim passes out, they remove jewelry, money, high-end watches and phones from their victims,” NYPD Chief of Detectives James Essig said at the time of Allen’s arrest.
Gallagher was “a painter and internationally recognized fashion designer” who opened her eponymous label in New York City in 2010, according to an obituary published by the Rhode Island School of Design, Gallagher’s alma mater.
Over the last decade, her work was featured in magazines such as Vogue, Glamour and W, and her collections were worn by celebrities such as Lady Gaga, Kourtney Kardashian, Rita Ora and Laverne Cox.
Before her clothing line took off, she worked as a bartender at Flats Fix Taqueria & Tequila Bar at East 16th Street and Broadway in 2016, a worker there told The Post.
It wasn’t clear how the drugs got into her system or whether anything
was stolen from her apartment. A neighbor spotted Gallagher’s keys dangling from the door of her apartment on Eldridge Street on the Lower East Side and entered to check on her — then discovered her lifeless body face up on her bed, according to PIX11.
A memorial service for Gallagher was held in her home state of Pennsylvania in August, and a celebration of life is scheduled for this May.
Gallagher’s family launched a GoFundMe page to raise money so the promising artist’s final collection can be completed. They hope to present her work in the Big Apple this fall.
“Katie was unique, beautiful, smart, unabashed and always wanting. She was relentless in pursuit of her art and ideas, eschewing stability and reaching for something beautiful, dark and true,” the fundraising appeal said. “Katie loved stories and chose to tell them through fashion.”
Gallagher is survived by her parents, grandmother and three sisters who were “so proud of who she was and all she achieved in her brief but full and beautiful life,” according to her obituary.
“Fiercely independent and sure of her vision, Gallagher followed her own path in life and in fashion,” a Vogue tribute to her read.