Ed Buck Convicted for Overdose Deaths at His Home

FILE PHOTO: Ed Buck, 56, arrives for a campaign rally in Hollywood
Ed Buck has been convicted on multiple charges, including administering meth to two men who experienced a fatal overdose at his West Hollywood Apartment.
REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson/File Photo

A disgraced Democratic donor was convicted on July 27 of nine federal counts following the fatal overdoses of two Black gay men in his West Hollywood apartment.

Ed Buck, a 66-year-old political fundraiser who once served in a leadership role in his local Stonewall Democratic Club, was found guilty of multiple charges, including two counts of distribution of methamphetamine resulting in death, four counts of distribution of methamphetamine, one count of maintaining a drug-involved home, and two counts of enticement to travel in interstate commerce for sex work, California prosecutors said in a press release on July 27.

This conviction comes after Gemmel Moore, a 26-year-old Black man, died from an overdose in July 2017 while in Buck’s home. Timothy Dean, 55, faced a similar fatality in 2019 after being injected at Buck’s apartment. Like many of Buck’s victims, Moore was flown out from Texas to Los Angeles, California, to join his sex and drug den, which prosecutors describe in reports as a “party and play.”

Gemmel Moore died in July 2017 after suffering a fatal overdose in Ed Buck’s home. JusticeforGemmel

Much of Buck’s predatory behavior is explored even further in Moore’s journal entries that came to light after his death.

“I’ve become addicted to drugs and the worst one at that,” Moore wrote in one entry. “Ed Buck is the one to thank, he gave me my first injection.”

Moore added, “I pray that I can just get my life together and make sense. I help so many people but can’t seem to help myself. I honestly don’t know what to do… I just hope the end result isn’t death.”

During Buck’s “party and play” operation that started in 2011 and continued until 2019, he used everything from social media to dating sites and referrals with a fee to lure in his victims. Buck provided the men with methamphetamine, forcibly injected them with the drugs, and required them to perform sex acts. If a victim did not comply with these requests, Buck “would lose interest” or “would no longer hire” those individuals.

“Buck exerted power and control over his victims, typically targeting individuals who were destitute, homeless, or struggling with drug addiction,” prosecutors wrote in a press release. “He exploited the wealth and power balance between them by offering his victims money to use drugs and to let Buck inject them with narcotics.”

The tipping point for the investigation came in September 2019 when Buck was arrested after another man was injected with meth and overdosed in his home. The man had been in the house for weeks and vacated the area once he noticed that Buck had “personally and deliberately” drugged him until he overdosed, prosecutors said. When the victim fled the scene, he called 911 and was taken to a hospital.

Jasmyne Cannick, an activist and journalist, worked tirelessly to bring Buck to justice and hold him accountable for his crimes.

“I hope that Black gay men everywhere know that it doesn’t matter if they’re sex workers, escorts, gay, HIV-positive, poor, unhoused, or even addicted to meth — their life matters,” Cannick wrote in a tweet after Buck was convicted. “Your life matters. We’re on each other’s teams. And you know.”

Buck is now being held in federal custody. He faces anywhere from 20 years to life in federal prison, prosecutors said.

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