L.A. political donor sentenced to 30 years for fetish deaths
LOS ANGELES >> Ed Buck told his neighbors that the steady stream of young Black men leaving his West Hollywood apartment were social work clients. What really happened behind closed doors, which he referred to as the “gates of hell,” was far more sinister.
The men did not need Buck's help — they needed to be saved from him, said federal prosecutors in Los Angeles said. Some barely escaped with their lives. Two men didn't.
Buck, 67, a wealthy gay white donor to Democratic, LGBTQ and animal rights causes, was sentenced Thursday in U.S. District Court to 30 years in federal prison for injecting two men with lethal doses of methamphetamine as part of a fetish that turned fatal.
Prosecutors, who sought a life term, said Buck had such disregard for life that even after the two deaths in his apartment, he did not stop paying men to come to his home and injecting them with walloping doses of methamphetamine. One man overdosed twice in the course of a week.
“This defendant preyed upon vulnerable victims — men who were drug-dependent and often without homes — to feed an obsession that led to death and misery,” United States Attorney Tracy L. Wilkison said. “Mr. Buck continues to pose 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 meth distribution, two counts of enticing men to travel across state lines for prostitution and a count of maintaining a drug den.
Buck managed to avoid arrest for more than two years after Moore's death and family and community members led by political strategist Jasmyne Cannick complained that he escaped prosecution because of wealth, political ties and race. He donated more than $500,000 since 2000 to mainly Democratic causes.
Moore's mother, LaTisha Nixon, joined Cannick and several other friends and family members of the deceased to ask the judge for the maximum sentence. Nixon, a certified nursing assistant who said she had prayed with and comforted countless dying people, broke down as she thought of the way her oldest child died.
“All I can think about is how my son died naked on a mattress with no love around him,” Nixon said.