Prominent Democratic Party donor Ed Buck, who has been subject to protests and calls for prosecution in the overdose deaths of two male sex workers at his West Hollywood apartment, was arrested Tuesday in connection with a third overdose.
Prosecutors are asking that Buck’s bail be set at $4 million.
At an August 29 panel discussion regarding sex work held in West Hollywood, one panelist, a black man, reported he has been a client of Buck’s and has done drugs with him. Another said he considers Buck a serial killer who could kill again.
Last week, a Los Angeles federal judge has refused to toss out the wrongful death lawsuit against Buck and Los Angeles County District Attorney Jackie Lacey over the methamphetamine overdose death of a 26-year-old man.
The complaint for wrongful death was filed in Los Angeles federal court by the mother of Gemmel Moore, who died at Buck’s West Hollywood home in 2017. She alleges that the political fundraiser and mega-donor lured her son from Houston to Los Angeles for the purpose of engaging in “commercial” sex acts.
The civil suit also accuses Buck of human trafficking and engaging in “revenge porn” by making and sharing a video of his alleged “meth-fueled sexual encounters” with Moore.
The suit names Lacey for failing to prosecute the case.
Criminal charges
A bail motion from the Los Angeles district attorney’s office states that Buck is “a violent, dangerous sexual predator. He mainly preys on men made vulnerable by addition and homelessness.” According to the documents, Buck personally administered “dangerously large doses of narcotics to his victims” and is “a predator with no regard for human life.”
Activists have been calling for Buck’s arrest, believing him responsible responsible for the deaths of Gemmel Moore, 26, and Timothy Dean, 55. Both black gay men were found in Buck’s West Hollywood’s apartment less than two years apart. The coroner ruled that both deaths were caused by methamphetamine overdoses.
District Attorney Jackie Lacey’s office said Tuesday that Buck, 65, has now been charged with operating a drug house and providing meth to a 37-year-old man who overdosed last week.
The political donor was charged with one felony count each of battery causing serious injury, administering methamphetamine and maintaining a drug house.
Authorities say Buck injected the victim with meth on Sept. 11 at Buck’s home in the 1200 block of Laurel Avenue in West Hollywood. The man suffered an overdose but survived.
Uncle Buck
Gimmel Moore had flown from Houston to Los Angeles the day he died, according to coroner’s investigators. His mother has told The L.A. Times that Buck purchased the airplane ticket.
No criminal charges were filed at the time and, as Jasmyne Cannick writes, Moore’s death was at first “explained away and classified as an accidental meth overdose by the Los Angeles County Coroner. It was only when excerpts from Moore’s personal journal were published as well as various accounts from additional victims did the [West Hollywood] sheriff’s department decide–albeit weeks too late and most likely after any and all evidence is Buck’s apartment has been removed–to reexamine his death.”
A number of black male sex workers have stepped forward with apparent photographic evidence that Buck was one of their clients. Each one separately told the same story: Not only did Buck have a fetish for black men, but he was known in West Hollywood’s gay community as someone paying top dollar for the company of 20-something black escorts.
But only after injecting them with drugs.
U.S. District Judge Cormac J. Carney’s refusal on Wednesday to dismiss the case is a “huge victory” for Moore’s mother, LaTisha Nixon, plaintiff’s attorney Hussain Turk said.
“The court generously ruled that Ms. Nixon may rewrite portions of her claims against the county so that they more clearly describe the constitutional civil rights laws that the county violated when it failed to properly investigate Gemmel Moore’s death because of his race,” Turk alleged.
If convicted on all criminal charges, Buck faces a possible maximum sentence of five years and eight months in state prison.
