Democratic Donor Ed Buck Sentenced to 30 Years for Drugging, Assaulting Vulnerable Black Men

For nearly a decade, Buck preyed on vulnerable young Black men, some of them homeless, by overloading them with drugs and then sexually assaulting them while they were either immobile or unconscious. In two cases, the men he assaulted died due to fatal amounts of methamphetamine.

Ed Buck, 67, was once known as a wealthy Democratic political donor on the West Hollywood scene and viewed as an activist who played a role in issues such as fur bans and AIDS awareness; however, Buck’s reputation will now take a major dive into disrepute. On Thursday, Buck was sentenced to 30 years in prison for drug, sex crimes, and the deaths of two vulnerable men.

The former political donor had a compulsive pattern of luring vulnerable Black men who were homeless and/or addicted to substances, to join him in his Laurel Avenue apartment, which one acquaintance described as “the grayest, drabbest place you’d ever seen.” It’s only decor: a table, a couch, a tool kit filled with crystal methamphetamine paraphernalia, sex toys, and large mirrors on the wall.

His “party and play” sessions, which refer to using methamphetamine during sex, were advertised on the gay hookup site Adam4Adam. A throng of men testified that Buck would offer them extra money if they allowed him to inject them himself. He forced the vulnerable men by threatening to withhold payment if they did not smoke enough or allow him to “slam,” or inject crystal methamphetamine, into them.

Chelsea Norell, an assistant US attorney, wrote in a sentencing memo that Buck treated his male victims like “lab rats in his twisted experiment.” Buck would lead his victims to overdose, and once they were either unconscious or immobile, he would continue to assault them either sexually and/or with more drugs.

During their search of Buck’s apartment, cops found hundreds of graphic photos and videos that he took of men he had paid to inject meth while naked.

One victim said he has visited Buck’s apartment at least 20 times over the course of six months. The victim used methamphetamine and GHB, and then sometimes, Buck would spray an ethyl chloride cleaning solvent on a rag and then hold it over the victim’s mouth while he inhaled.

“[Buck] liked to see me where I was barely able to stand, barely conscious,” the victim recalled. “He wanted me to be falling around all over the place,” and then Buck “would be able to do whatever he liked as far as touching and everything of that sort.”

One victim says he awoke from unconsciousness after Buck revved a chainsaw in front of him. The victim had been injected with a tranquilizer by Buck, and was unable to move until Buck became frustrated that the victim wasn’t leaving his house and subsequently decided to power up a chainsaw and wave it in front of him.

Witnesses say that the former Democrat-donor would at times refer to Black men by using a racial slur.

“Buck always had a penchant for Black guys,” said Charlie Harrison, an entrepreneur who was Buck’s close friend between the 1970s and the 1980s. “He liked Black guys sexually. There was one guy he spent a lot of time with, but back then it was, as Buck said, mostly ‘meaningful relationships by the hour.’”

Two men died at Buck’s apartment. One victim was named Gemmel Moore, who Buck had flown into Los Angeles from Texas. Moore was only 26 when he died in July of 2017. The death was first ruled an accident, but an outcry made by Moore’s mother reopened the investigation into whether or not the lethal dose of meth was self-administered.

“I’m the mother of a young man who was found dead last week in the West Hollywood home of powerful political activist Ed Buck,” Moore’s mother wrote to the publisher of WeHo Daily. “My son wasn’t working and had no money when he left Texas. He didn’t have the money to pay for his flight or buy the meth the coroner says killed him.”

In 2017, following Gemmel Moore’s death, civil rights attorney Nana Gyamfi accused the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department of “dragging their feet” in their investigation of Moore’s death.

“It’s very clear they are dragging their feet,” Gyamfi said, who added that she had introduced detectives to several young men who said they had had drug encounters with Ed Buck. “We have no idea what they’re waiting for. We ask them to treat Gemmel Moore like he’s a rich white heterosexual woman,” Gyamfi said. “They know how to do that. We know that [they] will get justice.”

What may have seemed like an accident at first soon looked more like a pattern when 18 months later, on January 7, 2019, a 55 year-old Black man named Timothy Dean was found dead at Buck’s apartment. A toxicology report showed that the man had overdosed from a mix of methamphetamine with alcohol. Buck had wiped up Dean’s vomit, blood and tossed syringes and pipes out of his window before bothering to call 911, according to Norell.

It was only when Buck allegedly caused the near-death of another man that authorities finally arrested him. In September of 2019, he had injected another male victim with three doses of methamphetamine. He survived and returned to Buck’s apartment where he was again, about to overdose. Buck refused to call for help, and so the victim “sat on the couch, resigned to the same fate as Moore and Dean,” wrote Norell. He then escaped and stumbled to a gas station that was close by and called 911. Buck was arrested a week later.

“He has killed two people and nearly a third,” Norell wrote, “torn apart families, created and amplified debilitating addictions among the most vulnerable populations, and has done it all without an ounce of remorse.”

“Buck used his money and privilege to exploit the wealth and power imbalances between himself and his victims, who were unhoused, destitute, and/or struggling with addiction,” wrote Norell. “He spent thousands of dollars on drugs and party and play sessions that destroyed lives and bred insidious addictions.”

Buck’s lawyer, Mark Wekrsman, asked US District Judge Christina A. Snyder to see his client’s “self-destructive behavior” through the eyes of an individual who himself has suffered abuse. When Buck was only 11 years-old, his father would sexually abuse him while his mother was out of the house. He was also molested by several Catholic priests during his childhood.

Buck became a millionaire at the age of 32 after flipping a struggling business, Rapid Info Franchise, and reselling it for $1 million. But by his 40s, he was starting to abuse amphetamines, which had been prescribed to him to treat narcolepsy. He then began abusing methamphetamine and was using it on a daily basis, from sometime in the 1990s until he was arrested in September 2019.

Buck’s lawyers asked that he receive a sentence of ten years, but prosecutors argued that were he to be released back into society someday, he would continue to feed his compulsion and inject victims until the day he died.

“This man killed my son, Judge Snyder, please give this man the longest sentence allowed by law,” said Moore’s mother. “I warned him to stay away from Buck, now all I have is memories and his ashes.”

Buck's Thursday sentencing saw him go to prison on two counts of distributing methamphetamine that resulted in the death of Moore and Dean, four counts of distributing methamphetamine, two counts of enticement to travel in interstate commerce for prostitution and one count of maintaining a drug involved premises.