LOS ANGELES (AP) — Ed Buck told his neighbors that the steady stream of young black men leaving his West Hollywood apartment were social work clients. What actually happened behind closed doors, which he referred to as “the gates of hell,” was much more sinister.
Those men didn’t need Buck’s help, they needed someone to save them from him, federal prosecutors in Los Angeles said. Some barely escaped with their lives. Two men didn’t make it.
Buck, 67, a wealthy white gay man who donated to Democratic Party, LGBTQ and animal rights causes, was sentenced Thursday in federal court to 30 years in prison for injecting two men. lethal doses of methamphetamine as part of a fetish that proved fatal.
Prosecutors were trying to get him sentenced to life in prison. In presenting his arguments, they said that Buck had such contempt for human life that even after two people died in his apartment he did not stop paying men to come to his house and inject them with heavy doses. of methamphetamine. One individual overdosed twice in one week.
“This defendant stalked vulnerable victims — drug-dependent and often homeless men — to fuel an obsession that led to death and misery,” said US Attorney Tracy L. Wilkison. “Mr. Buck remains a clear danger to society.”
Buck was convicted in July of distribution of methamphetamine resulting in the deaths of Gemmel Moore in 2017 and Timothy Dean in 2019. He was also convicted of four counts of distribution of methamphetamine, two of enticing men to cross state lines for the purpose of prostitution. and one charge of having a place to consume drugs.
Buck avoided arrest for more than two years after Moore’s death, with Moore’s family and community members led by political strategist Jamsyne Cannick complaining that he had not been prosecuted because of his wealth, political connections and his race. Since 2000 he has donated more than $500,000, mostly to Democratic causes.
Moore’s mother, LaTisha Nixon, joined Cannick and several other friends and family members of the victims in petitioning the judge for the maximum sentence. Nixon, a nursing assistant who says she has prayed with countless dying patients and comforted them, burst into tears at the thought of how her firstborn died.
“All I can think about right now is how my son died naked on a mattress with no love around him,” Nixon said. “No one to hold his hand or say nice things to him.”
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