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Two years after being arrested in connection with the fatal overdoses of vulnerable, gay Black men at his West Hollywood apartment, wealthy donor and liberal, political activist Ed Buck has been convicted on nine federal charges.
Buck, who’s been accused of enticing gay men, mostly Black, into sex for the purpose of drugging and raping them, was convicted near the end of July on multiple counts of distribution of methamphetamine resulting in death.
A jury also convicted him on four counts of distribution of methamphetamine, a single count of maintaining a drug-involved premises and two counts of enticement to travel in interstate commerce for prostitution.
For years, family members of Buck’s victims sought criminal charges against the wealthy donor, but the politically connected predator wasn’t arrested until 2019.
Mother of victim relieved after Ed Buck’s conviction
At age 65, Buck was arrested in 2019 in connection with the death of 26-year-old Gemmel Moore, who died from an overdose in Buck’s home back in 2017.
“Four years ago, I got the worst news that I ever could’ve imagined. But today, four years later, I got the best news that I ever could’ve imagined,” Moore’s mother, LaTisha Nixon, told KTLA5 following the guilty verdict.
“This is what we wanted from the beginning. He can’t hurt anybody else. That’s all we wanted,” Nixon added.
While prosecutors used the deaths of Gemmel Moore, 26, Timothy Dean, 55, and a third victim to finally indict Ed Buck, investigators say he abused as many as 10 or more victims in his effort to fulfill his fetish for injecting gay men with methamphetamine, who then become unconscious or unable to move while Buck sexually tortures them.
Authorities’ late response draws parallels to serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer
One victim detailed an account of being drugged on Buck’s couch, waking up with anal bleeding, and finding out at a hospital that he’d been injected with a “tar-like substance,” according to a 2019 report from the Guardian.
Another victim explained how Buck shot him with a tranquilizer and chased him with a power saw when he tried to escape.
Billionaire Buck’s depravity draws parallels to infamous serial killer and cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer. Unlike Buck, Dahmer wasn’t affluent. Yet, he also targeted predominantly low-income gay Black men by enticing them with sex before attacking, killing and later eating parts of his victims. Similar to Buck, police and prosecutors didn’t take accusations against Dahmer seriously when one victim escaped and alerted an officer. That officer refused to look into the situation, citing a “lover’s quarrel.” Yet, Dahmer was eventually convicted for killing 15 people.
For their part, Black LGBT activists in California have been pushing for years for Ed Buck to face charges, but then-LA District Attorney Jackie Lacey refused to investigate the wealthy and well-connected predator until a third victim surfaced.
“He has been allowed to do all of these things all of this time,” said Moore family civil rights lawyer Nana Gyamfi in 2019.
I am glad you put rape in your headline, it still mystifies me that he wasn’t charged with rape when there were over 1000 videos of him doing exactly that to men who were clearly unable to consent. Buck was a sexual sadist serial killer who enjoyed torturing men in his apartment, which he called the “gates of hell”, two of whom he tortured to death and in their altered states I imagine that that is exactly where they believed they were. I cannot even imagine what these men went through in their last moments of life, and again what nightmares the survivors are forced to relive over and over again. For many of the survivors the memories will come in pieces throughout the remainder of their lives. There are thousands more like Buck out there, just most of them don’t torture their victims to death. The most vile homophobic gay man is one who would drug rape another gay man, he is filled with as much self-loathing as he is filled with loathing for his victims. When you are drug raping a man until he is near death, where exactly do they draw the line? How is this this different from raping a dead man?