Democratic donor Ed Buck was indicted by a federal jury this past Wednesday for distributing meth to two men resulting in their deaths.
According to CNN, Ed Buck has been given a five-count indictment including two counts of distributing methamphetamine resulting in death. Buck could be facing up to life without parole or a minimum of 20 years in prison for each individual charge.
We’ve been reporting on the Ed Buck case for over a year now. The death of 26-year-old Gemmel Moore led to calls from the black and LGBTQ communities of L.A. and Texas for Buck’s arrest. Buck had solicited Moore to consume drugs provided by Buck and perform sexual acts at Buck’s home. Police later found Moore’s journal which spoke of Buck’s sexual fetish.
“I honestly don’t know what to do. I’ve become addicted to drugs and the worst one at that. Ed Buck is the one to thank. He gave me my first injection of crystal meth it was very painful, but after all the troubles, I became addicted to the pain and fetish/fantasy.”
“My life is at an alltime [sic] high right now & I mean that from all ways. I ended up back at Buck [sic] house again and got munipulated [sic] into slamming again. I even went to the point where I was forced to doing 4 within a 2day [sic] period. This man is crazy and its [sic] sad. Will I ever get help?”
His last entry, in Dec. 3, 2016, goes: “If it didn’t hurt so bad, I’d kill myself but I’ll let Ed Buck do it for now.”
But despite Moore’s mother protesting against Buck, the trail ran cold. That is until a second black man died in Buck’s home of an overdose. Former adult performer Timothy Dean was identified as this second victim. A neighbor of Buck’s then came forward to say that she saw Dean before entering the building and “he was fine.”
“He was fine, he did not seem inebriated. He wasn’t stumbling, he was buzzing the building, he was on his phone,” she told KTLA at the time.
Since Dean’s death, several names of alleged victims have come forward.
Now that Ed Buck has been indicted, Department of Justice then released the following news release:
“The indictment alleges that Buck ‘engaged in a pattern of soliciting men to consume drugs that Buck provided and perform sexual acts at Buck’s apartment,’ which is a practice described as ‘party and play.’ Buck allegedly solicited victims on social media platforms, including a gay dating website, and used a recruiter to scout and proposition men. Once the men were at his apartment, Buck allegedly prepared syringes containing methamphetamine, sometimes personally injecting the victims with or without their consent, according to the indictment. Buck also allegedly injected victims with more narcotics than they expected and sometimes injected victims while they were unconscious. ‘Buck exerted power over his victims, often targeting vulnerable individuals who were destitute, homeless, and/or struggled with drug addiction, in order to exploit the relative wealth and power imbalance between them,’ the indictment alleges.”
