Slammed: Ed Buck (Ep.47)

Ed Buck was a millionaire, a political donor and activist, and he was darn nice to golden retrievers. He also had a fetish that involved murdering the underprivileged. Just because they're good to dogs doesn't mean they're good to people. 

Music is from Pixaby.

Transcript

West Hollywood, CA Sept 11, 2019, 5:20 AM

There was a Shell station at the corner of Santa Monica and North Laurel. A black man in jeans and a button-down shirt staggered into the cashier’s booth, his face twisted and sweaty. He appeared to be in a great deal of pain and distress.

“I think I’m having a heart attack,” the man gasped, touching his chest. The cashier immediately called 911. 

He sat on a retaining wall outside while he waited for the paramedics, his face set in a grimace of agony.

He’d been staying at a friend’s apartment for a few weeks. They had an arrangement. He did the laundry and grocery shopping for his room and board, in addition to some other less wholesome things.

At the ER, they learned that the patient’s official self-diagnosis of a heart attack was actually an overdose of methamphetamine, popularly known as crystal meth or just meth. 

The law got involved. He explained to them that his host liked to inject him with meth, the slang term for that being slamming. His friend liked him to sometimes smoke it, but most often, the host liked to slam meth into his guest/housekeeper in huge amounts, progressively increasing them, an act from which his host seemed to take a lot of sexual gratification; it seemed like a fetish. 

This last time, however, his host had gone too far and injected him with a dose that was much too high. Realizing something was terribly wrong, the quickly becoming incapacitated man begged his host to call 911.

His host refused to. 

Somehow, the man managed to get to his feet, stumble out of the apartment, and stagger down the street for help.

He survived. He was one of the lucky ones.

You’re listening to Wicked Gay, a true-crime podcast about gay people doing awful things.

Hello! I’m your host J. Harvey. Before I start yapping, I have an exciting announcement. New Patreon subscribers! Sure, some people, the big-name podcasters, might have to devote 10 minutes to reading off the names of all of their subscribers. I don’t have to, but I’m grateful for even one! Huge, big gargantuan thanks to Jesse and Spanky! Welcome! And please enjoy the exclusive content! For those of you who are not in the know, there are a good number of exclusive Wicked Gay episodes on there that will continue to grow in number until it’s a veritable LIBRARY of dark-sided gay shit. And I dont mean brunch. . If you want to check it out, go to Patreon.com/WickedGay!

Recently, well, maybe not so recently, as I was lapsing into pod fade for a second there, 

Anyway, recently, I think I mentioned that I was a DARE kid. You know, when cops would come to your school when you were a little kid and tell you drugs are bad. Because I was an impressionable youth and easily influenced by authority figures, I absorbed the propaganda, hence avoiding drugs as a kid because I assumed they’d get me hooked or kill me with the first microdot of acid on my tongue, snowlike line of cocaine up my nose, or whatever it is you do that burns the edge of a glass pipe. I was, and remain, a nervous type when it comes to chemical enhancements..

Hence, my drug intake has been limited to the occasional dalliance with marijuana (which included a relatively recent mishap with edibles), I also smoked hash at a Dave Matthews concert, and yes,I swear I’m gay, I swear. And I’ve done a couple of lines here and there, which had little to no effect on me except to make it so I couldn’t pass out from everything I’d been drinking, and my hangover the next morning was legendary. That’s my entire drug history. I’m told there are some illegals out there that can really help with my depression, but knowing me, I’d fuck it up and end up in a coma.

The drug propaganda I was subjected to in my youth also left me with the firmly entrenched reflex impression that drugs are kinda sleazy. I fight against this. Some perfectly wonderful, upstanding people who do good for others and their community also enjoy the solace or inspiration they get from illegal chemicals. I realize “sleazy” is defined by how, where, what, and with whom you are doing said drugs. 

Except meth. When it comes to crystal methamphetamine, popularly known as meth and snickeringly sometimes referred to as tina in the gay community, I find it to be an inherently sleazy drug. It’s one of those drugs where, if you have the brain chemistry and psychological underpinnings, you can get hooked on after using it just once. 

For some gay guys, meth is part of a sexual activity popularly known as PnP or party and play. Also called chemsex. Meaning let’s get high on meth and fuck for a reportedly really long, reportedly really gratifying time, whether at a big chemsex party or smaller groups or one on one. Yes, sometimes gays are just as slutty and mercenary about sex as the religious right would have you believe. But it’s not like we have the market on it.

So, meth is said to enhance sexual encounters and lower inhibitions. You also end up with a really clean apartment, and you’re the best in your spin class cuz’ you’ve got A LOT of energy. 

It can be crazy addictive. You can spot the guys who’ve been snagged by it at the bar or party because they’ve got a hungry stare, and they look a little hollow, partially because they’ve clearly lost weight, but it’s also just a vibe about them. Guys whisper, or the mean ones roll their eyes and snicker when they walk by cuz they often look very fidgety and sporting Karen Carpenter's end of life. Everything’s fine; I’m not in the horrifying thrall of Satan grins. 

In my estmation, they also tend to be the more classically attractive type of gay guy who has lots of sex,, so it’s often like watching something beautiful slowly decay.

A friend of mine fell victim to it, and pretty much lost everything. I don’t even know where he lives nowadays or if he’s ok or what. It’s quite terrible.

Drugs can be great in moderation and used with forethought. I’d just avoid that one.

But the allure of it stands for many. It’s also an escape. As we know, people with less privilege and fewer opportunities or dire circumstances can be lured in by the easy fix drugs can provide. To take them away from their current situations for a moment or two. Which I’m sure can be comforting (it’s probably why I drink more than I should). But that comfort can end up turning you into a zombie desperate for more, and it’s like your job in life now to get more and maintain that high. 

And some people will actually prey on that. P-R-E-Y. And sometimes, the result is death. The followng story is pretty gruesome, trigger warning for lots of drug talk, lots of punching down on underprivileged people, general seediness and there’s a chainsaw. Apologies in advance. 

This is episode 49, Slammed: Ed BuckMy sources for this episode include the New York Times, the WeHo Tmes, WeHo Online Community News, Wikipedia, and the Los Angeles Times.

This story is about a lot of things. A lot of sensitive things. I’m sure I’ll handle it with my usual subtlety and deep insight. That was sarcasm, but I’ll try. Inevitably I’m going to say the wrong thing and offend someone, but that’s how we learn.

The victims in this case were gay black men, gay black men men who struggled with drug addiction and were, for all intents and purposes, homeless…which I think we use the term houseless nowadays. Had housing insecurity. There we go.

And we’ve covered this before - gay, black men who are houseless and addicts…these are the sorts of men whom the public has minimal regard for. These are ongoing system injustices regarding race and class. So, their deaths are oftentimes not regarded at all or paid attention to by very few.

Consider a perpetrator who’s a wealthy, white political donor and activist. The type of person with a little clout, the kind of person whom people will give the benefit of the doubt, a guy for whom people might look the other way if they’ve been doing wrong. It appears as though some in law enforcement and political circles did. The guy, in this case, is Ed Buck.

Edward Bernard Peter Buckmelter, he later shortened it to Buck, was born on August 24, 1954, in Steubenville, OH, When he was six he moved with his parents, a brother and two sisters to Phoenix, Ariz. “My childhood was uneventful as hell,” he said in an interview with the Arizona Republic in June 1987. That might not be entirely the truth, as his dad was a practicing alcoholic. My dad was, too; he was a lovely, funny, kind man but a raging alcoholic, and we certainly didn’t find it uneventful. 

Buck came out to his parents at 16. A classically handsome sort of guy, he spent three months in Yugoslavia during an internship in college and returned to Europe after graduation, landing a spot as an extra in a TV commercial, which he parlayed into fashion modeling and film work in Paris, Amsterdam, and Japan, at one point modeling for Wrangler in Japan. After 5 years, he left the biz and returned to Arizona in 1980. He started working for a friend as a bike messenger. And that seems like a bit of a downgrade circumstance-wise, but having to be pretty all the time can be stressful. Believe me, I know.

His friend ran his tiny business out of a one-bedroom apartment.  But Buck was a bright guy, and he helped the guy grow it. A year and a half later, Buck bought it out of bankruptcy for $250,000. Five years later, he sold it for what he said in another interview was “more than a million dollars.” Which, comparatively, and according to the internet cuz’ I can’t add, was a little over 3 million nowadays. Buck was a millionaire at the very young age of 32.

He bought a 280,000 house in a bougie Arizona neighborhood and was reportedly in a relationship with a Chippendale thong jockey. But it was easy come, easy go for Ed. Investing in a restaurant and the pay telephone business, I don’t know what that means, those didn’t pan out and he lost some money. Then, he got into political activism, with liberal politicking becoming a huge part of his life. 

In 1987, Republican Evan Mecham became the 17th governor of the state of Arizona. And he was a bigoted pinhead, ending MLK Day as a holiday for state employees, claiming that women holding jobs was the reason for high divorce rates, referring to black children by a word I’m not going to use but you can imagine, and threatening to ask for a list of all the openly gay state employees so he could fire them. In addition to being the racist, bigoted sort of pinhead, he was also the dumb kind because he didn’t hide his misuse of state funds and failed to disclose a $300,000 campaign loan. Which Ed Buck jumped on. 

Ed Buck became Evan Mecham’s nemesis, determined to see him out of office. A local paper referred to Ed as “ a millionaire, self-acknowledged homosexual and registered Republican” who was “destined to go down in history as one of Arizona’s most unlikely political figures,” Ed began a campaign to see Mecham impeached. And it was successful. It might have been the Mecham for Ex-Governor bumper stickers he created. This campaign brought him a lot of fame in Arizona.

It wasn’t easy. His opponents made a big deal about Ed being into guys and brought out that he had been arrested for public sexual indecency in a bookstore in 1983. I’m assuming it was one of the old-school ones with the booths in the back and the really sticky floors. Say it with me now - men are pigs. He pleaded guilty and paid a fine, and said it was a misunderstanding and an overly enthusiastic cop saw him grab the crotch of a friend. That’s a close friend. 

Ed had also once been clocked for trying to fulfill a fake prescription for Percocet at a local drugstore. He claimed it was to treat the pain of a root canal, and he had foolishly just copied an older prescription. Unfortunately, I know of a whole SLEW of people who either had or have Percocet addictions, and I’m going to go out on a limb and say he was lying. 

Buck ended up indicted by a grand jury on a charge of “attempting to obtain a narcotic through fraud or deceit.” A judge dismissed charges against him if he would be tested weekly for drug use for one year. Lucky for him. Hopefully, he didn’t try to fake it. Remind me to tell you sometime about my brother, who is now 7 years sober and my hero, when his bag of purchased piss exploded in the Cumberland Farms’ microwave. Dare should tell the kids THAT story as a deterrent.

Despite the George Michael-ing and the drug shopping, Ed Buck became sort of a hero of the gay community for going after Arizona’s shithead governor. He was even made the Grand Marshal of the International Gay Rodeo in Arizona in 1989. I’ve never been to a gay rodeo. I want to go to a gay rodeo. But I’m assuming it’s not dudes in cowboy hats getting hogtied, right? Shame. Also - the rodeo clown must be fabulous. I need to see this.

Buck also campaigned for his gay brethren. In 1988, at a Republican Party conference in Oklahoma City, he called for changes in the party’s “intolerant” stand on LGBT rights in Oklahoma, which included opposition to state-mandated sex education programs in schools. Cuz’ the Religious Right has always liked pregnant teens with AIDS for some reason. 

Ed’s pleas fell on deaf ears, and he woke up and realized being a gay Republican is kind of like being an abortion doctor who’s also a nun. He went Democrat, explaining. “I didn’t leave the Republican Party, and it left me. I remember Barry Goldwater saying ‘out of the boardroom and out of the bedroom’ when referring to the role of government. That’s the GOP I was a proud member of … My principals have not changed, but to keep true to them, my political party had to change.”

And it doesn’t excuse ANYTHING he did later, but Ed did the work. Hosting a fundraiser for the Gay and Lesbian Political Campaign Fund ’90 in 1989 at his big house, with special guest openly gay U.S. Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.). He also helped raise money for HIV/AIDS services in Arizona and successfully went after the Circle K franchise, which was based in Phoenix, for a policy of denying medical coverage to those with AIDS or substance abuse problems. 

Ed, 37, made off to West Hollywood in 1991,  West Hollywood is popularly known as WeHo.with a population 37,000 and its real gay.  The population rises to 100,000 on weekends because of the nightclubs. Incorporated in 1984, it was the “first gay city” in America, as the papers called it, not just because it was tolerant but because the City Council was majority openly gay, which was ipretty much a first. It was a nice, vibrant place for an out gay man to settle in 1991.

Ed Buck claimed he was retiring from politics, but he wasn’t. When he wasn’t trying to ban the sale of fur products in WeHo and rescuing endangered animals (see, the dichotomy here is irritating, who can do good shit like that, and then do horrifying shit like he did later on, maybe it was all a cover). When he wasn’t helping underprivileged golden retrievers, he was serving on the steering committee of the Stonewall Democratic Club and unsuccessfully ran for a seat on the City Council in 2007. He also went slightly viral in 2010 at a town hall meeting where he interrupted California GOP Gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman to scream at her about something shitty she or the GOP were doing. He ended up getting chewed out and mic-dropped on by then-New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who was the big guy who did that annoying thing with the bridges. The clip ended up on CNN and the interwebs...

Ed stepped out of the spotlight after the 2011 City Council election but continued to contribute to election campaigns, like writing Hillary a check for $2,750 in 2016. Fuck the money, just convince not call the other side “deplorables”. 

Buck donated over $500,000 to Democratic candidates and political action committees in his lifetime. I can imagine later these people were like, “I mean, we could use the funding, but he’s a serial killer. How do we spin this? What did Rosalynn Carter do after they found out she was posing with John Wayne Gacy?” I’m sure they mostly just focused on the fact that at least he wasn’t wearing his clown suit in the photo.

But Ed Buck reportedly changed around 2013, He stopped speaking at City Council meetings. He would call vice president of Stonewall Democratic Club, to ask her when the monthly meeting was, though the meeting was on the same day every month. In the 2013 and 2015 election cycles, he gave $238,000 to Democratic candidates when before he’d gone only as high as $43,000, and often lower. He often was seen with his arms bandaged. He snapped at you for nothing.

According to John Duran, a four-time mayor of West Hollywood and a sometime target of Buck’s political attacks, Duran saw him frequently during this period. And had a theory as to what was up with Buck.

 “He became a drug addict, Ed’s story is one I’ve seen happen to many individuals in West Hollywood, gay men who end up making the attachment of sex to meth, and then meth takes over and consumes their lives. When you saw Ed after 2013, he was agitated, losing weight, being angry and amplified at council meetings. Missing appointments or not showing up. These are all the symptoms of somebody under the influence of meth.”

it was in July of 2017 when things got dark with Eddie Buck.

Just before sunset on July 27, four Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies responded to a 911 call from North Laurel Avenue in West Hollywood. They arrived to the two-story apartment building, where an older white man in an undershirt was standing on the concrete stairs out front, beckoning them urgently. They followed him into his apartment’s living room, where the most prominent feature besides a TV showing gay porn was a young Black man lying unresponsive on a mattress on the floor, naked except for white socks. The paramedics arrived 3 minutes later, but it was too late; he was already already dead.

The cops questioned the undershirt man, who ID’ed himself as Edward Buck, 62 years of age. Ed said the young dead man was a “friend” who had shot himself up with meth about two hours earlier. A little after that, he said his friend became “very warm” to the touch. Buck had placed bags of ice on him and gone two doors down to grab his neighbor, a man with medical knowledge who wanted him to perform CPR. Then Buck called 911. The police looked around Buck’s apartment. Buck and the neighbor stayed outside on the walkway. A deputy later noted that Buck leaned his head on his crying neighbor’s back, suggesting he was exhausted. 

Things grew increasingly suspicious. It was almost sunset when another young man walked through the complex’s front gate into the courtyard. He was young, slim, and Black, wearing a cap and carrying a white bag. The police had learned that it wasn’t unusual for Buck to receive a lot of visitors, the majority of them young, black men. Fellow tenants at 1234 North Laurel had been calling the county sheriff to complain that some of these young men — many of whom looked disheveled and possibly unhoused — were ringing their buzzers at all hours, trying to get in to see Buck. Complaints included occurrences like a man who had just left Buck’s masturbating on the sidewalk while yelling about syringes. One of the deputies told this new guy that the “store’s closed,” and he quickly dipped out.

Meanwhile, back in Ed’s place, a deputy found a rolling locker that contained drug paraphernalia, including several syringes with brown residue, a scale, lighters, a straw, and a glass pipe with burn marks. There were also a couple of drawers full of sex toys, which at least were a lot more wholesome than a scorched glass pipe. 

After the coroner took the body out, the cops went through the dead man’s backpack, which contained an ID for Gemmel Moore, age 26. An iPhone was locked with a password, but the investigator took a guess: Moore’s birth year was 1991. The iPhone opened. A text from American Airlines said that he had flown that morning from Houston to LAX. 

His autopsy showed no signs of physical trauma. There was, however, a syringe puncture visible on the young man’s left inner forearm. Blood and urine samples came back positive for meth. 

The report mentioned a sort of journal found in his backpack, which said he regularly used intravenous drugs with Edward Buck. Gemmel Moore’s death was ruled an accidental methamphetamine overdose. So, it looked like your typical sex worker's accidental OD. Case closed? Not quite.

Gemmel Moore grew up in San Bernardino and spent his teenage years in Victorville, two hours outside Los Angeles. Just before he turned 18, he left for the big city. Gemmel was said to be a handsome guy, and people were very into him. He was a part of the ballroom scene in Los Angeles. Listen to the Death by Drag Queen episode for a full explanation of that rad subculture. He competes in the schoolboy realness category and dresses and walks like a Polo-wearing high-school heartthrob.

Moore and his fellow performers changed his name to Juelz Garcon, and he joined the House of Comme des Garçons. Houses were basically gay street gangs who fought with dance, posing, and haughtiness as opposed to knives and guns. He was pretty broke, usually without employment, and would often stay with friends when possible or sometimes even sleep rough on the street. 

When he did work, he utilized his body. He was a sex worker. The truth is a young Black gay man without a degree can make more money in an hour doing sex work than in a day in a crap, dead-end job. Remember my one go-round as a sex worker -  the duct tape story, I made way more money doing that than in my campus bookstore job. I cant tell the story again, my mom still listens to this podcast and she migth have forgotten it by now. But anyway - yeah, it’s all about surviving.

Gemmel was open to PnP, as I explained in the beginning - party and play, mess around while on meth. As the New York Times pointed out, One study estimated that men who have sex with men are 20 times more likely to use meth than the general population. Yikes.

And it’s super easy to get hooked. In late 2015, he told a friend that he had a regular white guy, John, who liked the Chemex. A friend and sometimes roommate told the Times that “I don’t think he used meth until then, Gemmel and I would sleep in the same bed together, and I never saw him twitch or be in withdrawal until the winter of 2016 when he was hanging out with Buck.”

Excerpts from his journal would later be publicized. They were tragic passages about his drug use and his despair. And they referenced his ongoing relationship with Ed Buck.

He wrote:

“My mind and action change. I am not the same person I was born to be,” “I felt as if I sold my soul to the devil — I want to be back in the hands of God. I want to be healed from drugs, poverty, and troubles. I want independence. I want my own. There’s so much madness going on in my life. It’s got to be illegal and wrong. The way I was raised to be, you would never expect this.

“I just hope the end result isn’t death. Someone needs to save me soon. The only person in my corner is the person who turned me this way, the way I feel right now. Honestly, I don’t care to live anymore. I do wanna die. I feel like I’ve done way too much that this lifetime allows. If it didn’t hurt so bad, I’d kill myself, but I’ll let Ed Buck do it for now. I miss my grandma.” “Something is seriously wrong with me and my body. I don’t feel normal. I honestly think it has to do with the injection of drugs. It makes me feel horrible, like I’m so tired of living this life.”

That winter, Moore allegedly told a friend that he was concerned about Ed Buck’s fetishizing of him and of meth, and the friend urged Moore to keep a diary about it. Friends got a frightened, despondent Gemmell to escape to Texas in the spring of 2017 and live with family members while getting clean, And He did for a few months. Everyone thought his withdrawal symptoms were pneumonia. 

But On July 20, 2017, Moore texted Ed.

“Hey, Mr Buck,” he texted. He sent a picture of his waist. “Gemmel, your master-slave.”

“Or slave master,” Buck wrote.

“I’m starting to miss LA.” He texted, along with a picture of a tied-off arm with a syringe in it.Ugh, I'm so glad that’s not an emoji. 

Be here now,” Buck wrote.

Gemmell typed “I’m still in Texas, it be wonderful if you can send for me please ill behave.”

Buck emailed him a plane ticket. 

And then he flew into LAX and died the same day. 

A fellow sex worker of Gemmell’s told the New York Times he’d had his own encounerer with Ed Buck.. The paper referred to this person with the letter S. 

S. met Buck met one night in 2015 when Buck was out cruising on Santa Monica Boulevard. “This was one of his areas to pick up transitioning Black guys,” S said. This means transitioning between housing 

“You like to party, right?” Buck allegedly asked. We know what that means.

“What’s in it for me?” S. responded. Well, cash, it turns out. Between 2015 and 2017, S recalled that he was up in Ed Buck’s apartment seven times.

What would go on? Not what you think and then what you’d think. 

“We never had sex. Not once.” Instead, Ed wanted to slam S with meth: he wanted to put the needle in his arm, aspirate the vein and inject. 

“He was very focused on administering to me,” S noted. Buck paid him around $700 an hour for his time. Shit. I got 90 for my duct tape escape, and it was like at least two hours to wrap him up. The dude was big.

Here’s where it gets sick. Every time Ed shot a dose in S, he’d offer him $200 to shoot another right behind it. “Do more.” he would say.

S. wasn't naive. He didn’t trust Buck to measure safe doses. So he always showed up with his own drugs and would prep lower-than-usual doses for Buck to slam him with. 

Ed would get insistent. When Buck would pressure him to take more or to drink a glass of liquid that S  suspected had something in it, S would basically be fuck that and fuck you, Ed.

. “I’m not a pushover,” he told Buck. He said, “I would see him get upset, but not too upset because he didn’t want to make me angry.” 

I don’t know. I think was the lucky guy here. Ed Buck sounds like he was a very dangerous guy, at least when it came to illicit intravenous drugs.

So, in addition to fetishizing black guys, Ed Buck’s kink was injecting huge amounts of meth into said black guys and apparently WANTING them to OD, which is gonna skirt death at the least. That’s a fucked up kink, Ed. Here I thought my thing for Olympic guys in those speed skater suits was bizarre; Im fucking wholesome in comparison.

So what was the deal with Ed Buck and a gentleman of color?  Well, it reads like it went beyond he just found himself very attracted to black men. They were his fetish. Sort of like me with speed skaters but please note those demographics can be any and all ethnicities, thank you, yes, I am a saint.

A close friend of Buck’s from back in Arizona said, “Buck always had a penchant for Black guys; he liked Black guys sexually. There was one guy he spent a lot of time with, but back then, it was, as Buck said, mostly ‘meaningful relationships by the hour.’”

This same friend had a story that illustrated Ed Buck’s approach to race. In the 1980s,, remember idiot Arizon Gov. Evan Mecham? Well, in a radio interview, he noted that he always thought the word “pickaninny” was a term of endearment for Black children. Sweet Jesus. Um, it was a different time? By the way, this was right after he decided MLK Day wasn’t a holiday anymore. So Bick began his campaign to get Mecham out of the governor’s mansion via a recall election.

So, on his way to the statehouse to deliver the petitions that would trigger the recall, Buck was asked by the chief of the Arizona Capitol Police, who was Black, to use another entrance. Ed Buck reportedly said, “Get out of my way, you [expletive] baboon,” Did I say sweet Jesus yet? Insert a sweet Jesus if I didn't. So this lovely rejoinder made it into the papers, and when a reporter told him it was super racist, he replied, “That’s [expletive] ridiculous. I’ve been to bed with more Black men than you’ve ever shaken hands with.” Some of his best dicks are black.

Buck seems to have brought this sort of attitude to WeHo. Ryan, the writer’s ex-husband, who was black, had some stories. He had found Ed to be “outspoken, charming, attractive” but also a drug user with an objectifying streak. “The first time I ever met Buck, we walked into his apartment together, and Buck said to Ryan, ‘That’s a nice-looking Black man you’ve got on your arm.’” Thanks?

Buck would often offend Gieratch’s husband, but then he’d smooth things over with cash. Hey, if anyone who has transgressed against me wants to pay me cash to make up for it, I'm down. Ed would give this guy“walking-around money” on occasions when he visited the apartment, sometimes several thousand dollars at once. 

Ryan’s husband also knew that Buck would go cruising on Santa Monica Boulevard to find Black men to take home, but this wasn’t in itself a red flag. They were all consenting adults. “When Gemmel died, I genuinely thought it was an accident,” this guy said.

But when Dean died, the ex felt something was wrong and started remembering other incidents, stuff that Ed Buck would do or say that made him feel Buck’s preference for Black men had an ugly, dehumanizing quality to it. 

And it’s very easy to get into some drama with Ms. Tina. These are probably somewhat addicted drug addicts, and the dosage of this stuff is probably usually not an exact science. It would be very easy for Ed to administer a much higher dose than the recipients knew they were getting.

For those not in the know, happy to say Im not, Meth comes as crystalline shards that intravenous users crush into a powder, then mix into water, which forms a clear solution for injecting. There is no visual difference between a heavy dose and a light one. The guy slamming the meth into your arm kinda has his life in your hands. 

S and Gemmel Moore were friends.

He said, “He never handled his own stuff. He never had it with him or even knew how to obtain it. So, I’m sure that’s how that scenario played itself out. It would have played itself out with me, too.”

Five days after Gemmel Moore died, the publisher of the online WeHo Daily received an email from a woman named LaTisha Nixon. “To whom this may concern,” it read. “I’m the mother of a young man who was found dead last week in the West Hollywood home of powerful political activist Ed Buck.” Latisha attached a PDF with photos she had found on Buck’s Facebook page of him with Hillary Clinton, former California governor Jerry Brown, and Representatives Ted Lieu and Adam Schiff.  LaTisha went on to write, “My son wasn’t working and had no money when he left Texas,” she wrote. “He didn’t have the money to pay for his flight or buy the meth the coroner says killed him.”

The story was picked up by a 60-year-old retired writer who lived 30 miles south of WeHo in San Pedro. He called LaTisha at her place of business, a FedEx facility in Texas. This writer, whose name was Ryan, explained who he was to Gemmell's mom and noted that he was not only former neighbors with Ed Buck, but they were also close friends.

It turned out that LaTisha was already familiar with Ed Buck in connection to her son. She told Ryan that In the fall of 2016, her son called her crying and screaming into the phone, saying, “This man shot me up with some stuff; I don’t even know what it is.” She remembered Gemmell saying the name Ed Buck. She remembered him saying he tried to file a police report. But the man her son described didn’t match what she found online. “As I’m researching this guy, I’m like, Oh, my God, he just seems like a really nice person,” she noted. Privilege. Drug. Sociopath. Fetish. Wolf. Sheep. Clothing. Ryan agreed that Ed seemed that way, noting he was an animal lover, too, but told LaTisha that he apparently had another side to him.

After her son’s death, Latisha called one of his friends and was like, ‘Who the hell is Edward Buck?'”  “And the son’s friend was like, ‘oh my God, that’s that white guy, that wealthy white politician guy… “ She also found out that Buck was not only paying her son to let him slam meth into his son’s arm, but he was also sending Gemmell out on recruitment drives.

“When he calmed down, he told me that Ed Buck was one of my son’s clients and that Ed Buck was one of his clients as well,” Nixon said. “[Buck] would have my son to go out to… Santa Monica Boulevard looking for young gay black guys so he could inject them with drugs, see their reaction and how [they] would react and take pictures of them.” Ugh.

Gemmell’s sex co-worker also told his mom that Buck would supply heroin, meth, and other drugs to Gemmell to smoke or use with a needle,” “Buck would pleasure himself at the sight of my son using drugs…” LaTisha told Ryan. Double ugh.

She said that Gemmel’s friends also  told her, “the bigger the cloud of smoke,” the bigger the reward from Buck, who “would excitedly encourage [Gemmel] to increase his dosage by saying, ‘more, more, and I’ll give you $500 more.’”

His mom was given to believe that Gemmell had come back to Texas to escape Buck and was scared. She claimed that there was an incident a year earlier which Gemmell told her about.

“My son filed a police report,” She told the WeHo Times. “…He filed a police report because he said that Buck had held him in his apartment or whatever and had shot him up with a needle with something he didn’t know what it was. He called me crying. Three minutes on the phone hollering, I’m like, ‘What the hell is going on?’ He said ‘this man, he shot me up with something I don’t even know what it is,’ and I’m like, my son is having a breakdown or episode. But he sent me pictures of his arm; his arm was red.”

The WeHo Times tried to find the report Latisha spoke of but was unable to.

On Aug 7, Ryan came out of retirement and wrote a story about Gemmell’s death and his mom’s investigation called Sex, Politics, Meth, and Death in West Hollywood, a catchy title; it ran in the WeHo Times. In it, he described Ed Buck as “one of California’s most prolific and substantial political donors,” which was a detail that everyone would latch onto for the salaciousness, but it would turn out that it wasn't like e was giving SCADS of money to the Dems, he wasn't that rich anymore, But if course, Fox News and the like would have a field day with the white major Democratic donor killing black sex workers with illegal drugs. Picture the Chiron under the photo of Buck with Hillary - and them being like, Who a deplorable, Hillary? We’ll get into this a little more in a second.

In the story, Latisha was quoted as saying ““To shoot young guys up with who knows what is evil,” 

In addition to his mom’s claims, it also included an interview with Cameron, a sex worker that Latisha had hooked Ryan up with. Cameron claimed that Buck had given him money to slam meth, too. And that Buck seemed to “get off on getting you higher and higher,” 

The La Weekly wrote its own piece and also hooked LaTisha up with Jasmyne Cannick, a well-known political strategist in the Black community. When Cannick and Nixon got on the phone, they discussed the notebook that the investigators found in Gemmel’s backpack. His mom got Jasmyne the notebook or a copy of it. 

In August 2017, she posted on her website,“#BREAKING: Journal Documents How Wealthy Democratic Donor Hooked Young Black Gay Man on Meth Before His Death.” She included an excerpt from Moore’s journal, which read:

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 Chrystal meth; it was very painful, but after all the troubles, I became addicted to the pain and fetish/fantasy”

That's really sad. And Ed Buck sucks. Nevertheless, one of his lawyers dismissed it as “unverified writing.” Jasymn became the go-to person for information on Ed Buck’s alleged victims, and eventually a spokesperson for both Gemmell Moore and his next victim’s families

A link to the post about the diary made rounds on social media, and other young Black men messaged Cannick, saying that Buck had slammed them with meth, too. Cannick posted their accounts on her website. “I can give you a shot. I can inject you,” one man claimed Buck had told him. Cannick connected these men — whom she called the “witnesses” — with two civil rights lawyers, who brought them in for interviews with the law. But the D.A.’s office said they were unable to verify the men’s accounts, and no charges resulted. 

It was mainly thanks to Cannick that anyone knew Gemmel Moore’s name. She followed Ryan’s lead: Her first post on Buck included a link to his original article, and she also described Buck as a Democratic donor. And, like I said,  the Fox News/Maga people got interested. Jasmyn wasn’t thrilled with this particular supporter of her cause, but she was trying to pressure LA County DA Jackie Lacy to charge Buck with murder. So she held her nose and began appearing on Fox News. Fox News personalities included a turderers row of right wing famesters including Steve Doocy, Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Dana Perino and Laura Ingraham and all of these twits exaggerated Cannick’s story, which didn’t need exaggerating, it was messed up enough.  Nevertheless, Ed Buck was now a “megadonor,” drug-addled murder pervert being shielded by LA”s liberal elites. That charming Laura Ingraham referred to him as “protected,” Maybe, maybe not.

But like I had said. as far as being a Megadonor famous Democrat, It wasn’t really the case. He wasn’t some rich dude showering Democratic coffers with money wafting out of his private jet as it flew by on the way to St Bart’s. Buck lived pretty cheaply in fact.. By the time of his arrest, his rent-stabilized apartment on North Laurel Avenue cost a little over a grand a month. The now infamous Apartment 17 was “the grayest, drabbest place you’d ever seen,” as a friend described it, with a table, couch, tool kit with drugs and sex toys, and large mirrors on the wall. Bucj drove a 16-year-old Acura.

He wasn’t a megadonor. Nowhere in the ballpark. And he wasn’t that famous outside of his Arizona exploits of long ago. His pics with Dem names like Hillary, which became omnipresent on TV when Foz News was pouring over his story,  were the kind you get by waiting in line to meet the person. These were not his friends or colleagues. It was more like Ed wanted to seem like a big shot. As Jesse Barron of the New York Times put it “Thousands of Americans whose names you wouldn’t recognize were bigger political donors than Ed Buck — though Buck, from his gray, rent-stabilized apartment on North Laurel Avenue, took pains to make it look otherwise.”

Buck took his second victim 18 months later. Responding to a 911 call from Buck’s apartment, paramedics found a 55-year-old Black man lying unresponsive on a mattress on the floor, only wearing white briefs, his mouth obscured by a “dark purge” of blood. Buck again told sheriff’s deputies that the dead man was his “friend.” Toxicology showed an overdose of methamphetamine mixed with alcohol. The coroner checked “accident” on his report. Name: Timothy Dean. Date of death: Jan. 7, 2019.

One accidental overdose wasn’t that newsworthy. Two, however. The press started digging up info on Dean. While not a “male prostitute,” as the tabloids labeled Gemmel Moore, Dean was identified as a porn actor. “Dean was actually known in the gay-porn industry as a dominant top named Hole Hunter,” one website informed readers. I mean, that name. That’s hole spelled “hole”. 

A West Hollywood news website called WeHoVille printed some of Dean’s titles: The latest, “Interracial Public Pickups 3,” was released in 2016. One of Buck’s lawyers told The Los Angeles Times that Dean was an “old friend” who “came over intoxicated.” Uh-huh. 

Let’s tackle Ed’s attitudes towards men of color. A close friend of Buck’s from back in Arizona said, “Buck always had a penchant for Black guys; he liked Black guys sexually. There was one guy he spent a lot of time with, but back then, it was, as Buck said, mostly ‘meaningful relationships by the hour.’”

This same friend had a story that illustrated Ed Buck’s approach to race.

Meanwhile, frustrated by the lack of response from law enforcement to her son’s death,  the family of Gemmel Moore filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against Buck, the county and the district attorney. Their lawyers tallied several hundred thousand dollars in political contributions that Buck had made to Democratic candidates at all levels of office, from city to federal. They said that Buck was being shielded thanks to his political donations and status. They said that the county does not investigate crimes against Black gay men. Sounds like a shitload of truth to me.

Spurred on by campaigning from Gemmell’s family- LA’ County's first black DA (and a member of the Dems) Jackie Lacey and her team launched an investigation. The day before the one-year anniversary of his death, they announced that charges would not be filed. That went over well. Protesters gathered outside Ed Buck’s place at 1234 North Laurel. Nothing happened. Their signs read Jackie Lacey Prosecute Ed Buck. Moore’s family and black and gay activists gathered again a year later. Same signs. Nothing happened. 

Then it was Sept 11, 2019. Already, a day that would live in infamy would come to be one in the Ed Buck case, too. It was that morning when the man stumbled into the Shell station down the block from Ed Buck’s house, dying of a meth overdose that had been given to him at 1234 North Laurel. He had been slammed with meth by Ed Buck.

Someone finally got over the fact that he was an older white gentleman and a political donor and realized something was really fucked up with Ed Buck. Two were dead, and now what sounded like attempted murder. He was arrested on Sept. 17 by LA county deputies, photographed as he was driven downtown, his head leaning against the cop car’s window. 

Ed now faced two counts of  “distribution of controlled substances resulting in death,” which carries a mandatory minimum of 20 years in prison. He was 65 and poised to perhaps spend the rest of his life in prison.  It wouldn’t be easy for the DA, though, as they had to prove that Buck provided both Moore and Dean with the specific drugs on which they fatally overdosed. It was revealed that Jackie Lacy’s office tried that in 2018. And failed. Finding that the admissible evidence was insufficient,” or so her office explained. Insufficient to prove that Ed Buck furnished drugs to Moore or even that he possessed drugs in the first place. 

Admittedly, while I am a legal layperson, I must ask, wasn’t there that locker in his place that was like the deluxe kit for tweakers? The pipes and the syringes and everything but the actual drugs, which he obviously put into these victims, seeing as they died of massive drug overdoses. But I guess not. Those two counts against Ed Buck were federal charges, and I guess they allowed the LA County DA’s office to finally charge Ed Buck in tandem with operating a drug house. Who knows how this shit works. I think it works better for white men with money than it does for people of color who are without. Also, a friend of Ed’s would later reveal that Ed told him he’d thrown drugs and paraphernalia out of his apartment window the night of Tomonty Dean's death.

The US Attorney’s indictment against Ed Buck read: 

Beginning on a date unknown,” defendant Edward Buck engaged in a pattern of soliciting men to consume drugs that Buck provided. ... In these party and play sessions, Buck distributed drugs, including methamphetamine, to his victims and, in some instances, injected them with drugs intravenously in a practice known as “slamming.” 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.

Ed Buck pleaded not guilty to all of the charges, and for his legal counsel, he retained somewhat of a minor celebrity - Christopher Darden, who was the young man who served on OJ”s legal team. OJ recently kicked off, and enough said about that freak, the better. In fact, I think Darden was the one who put the glove on OJ’s hand. put a legendary bloody wetsuit on OJ’s body in court but it was a long time ago. Darden provided the NYT with a letter that Ed Buck wrote in jail which read in part ““Someone told me that if somebody proclaims he is not a racist, he probably is. But when I hear the charge directed at me, it is too ludicrous to ignore.” Oh, I'm sure Ed loved black people. He loved black guys. He loved black guys to die of massive drug overdoses. 

They charged Buck with the distribution of controlled substances, resulting in death, for Moore and Dean and the distribution of a controlled substance for three anonymous victims, including the man who called 911 from the gas station. (They added four additional counts later as other witnesses surfaced.)

As for the victims, as the Times points out, the focus became Ed Buck's political megadonor gone wrong, which is a lot different from why did Gemmell, Timothy Dean, S, and others need to offer up their bodies as meth pincushions for him. 

The press was very quick to harp on the victims being homeless and drug addicted, neglecting the full story of their lives. Gemmell was beloved in the ballroom scene.  Timothy Dean had been working retail at Saks Off Fifth and played basketball in an international gay men’s league, but all the news accounts about him HAD to mention his Hole Hunter days. 

Ed Buck’s lawyer, OJ glove wrangler Christopher Darden, shared excerpts of a letter Ed Buck wrote while awaiting trial. He didn't get into the two dead guys. He mentioned all his varied causes and his deal with saving golden retrievers.

It went on to say, “If anybody would look at my life,” “they would see I live my life out loud.”I grew up in the ’70s: activism, protesting, demonstrating against war and for civil rights.” 

On July 27, 2021, Ed Buck was convicted of nine federal charges, including the deaths of Gemmel Moore and Timothy Dean, maintaining a drug den, distributing methamphetamines, and soliciting prostitutes.

As the LA Times noted in their coverage of the trial - it was revealed that Gemmel Moore, Timothy Dean, and sex workers Cameron and S. were only a few of the young black men lured into his meth hell pit while he was outwardly displaying a veneer of liberal respectability. 

He had met the majority of these young men on the hookup site/app Adam4Adam, looking for party and play sessions. What was referred to by the LA Times as a “parade” of young men testified that Buck would offer them extra money if they “slammed,” In what prosecutors called a “carrot-and-stick approach,” Buck would sometimes withhold payment if they didn’t smoke enough methamphetamine or let him inject them? Again, we’re allowed to kink shame you on this Ed; your kink is messed up, 

And the testimony revealed just how gruesome things got on North Laurel Avenue during these pNp dates.

Ed drugged them to the limit of their bodies’ tolerance, and once they were unconscious or immobile, he would sometimes sexually assault them, choke them, and slap them. One man, injected with something that left him unable to move, managed to regain control of his body only when Buck revved a chainsaw in front of him, sending adrenaline coursing through him. THE FUCK. 

A witness named Carlos was a prime example of Buck’s twisted methods. He learned from a friend that a man would pay him $200 to smoke methamphetamine and “prance around in underwear.” Carlos lived under an overpass at the time, testifying, “I had to fight to survive,” he testified. “I had to fight to do what I could to eat, to take care of myself, to still be a father.” And this is why Ed Buck is a monster. 

Carlos went to Buck’s place about 20 times over a six-month period. He’d use meth and the party drug GHB; Buck would also spray an ethyl chloride cleaning solvent on a rag, hold it over Carlos’ mouth and watch him inhale.

Buck was a real sick twist. He “liked to see me where I was barely able to stand, barely conscious,” Carlos testified. “He wanted me to be falling around all over the place,” a state in which Buck “would be able to do whatever he liked as far as touching and everything of that sort.”

In addition to learning that Buck used the N-word to describe the sex workers he exploited and put in mortal danger, it has also revealed that  Buck filmed many of his exploits. In one video played at trial, he gave stage directions to a masked man who was smoking methamphetamine, directing him to “Stare directly into the camera, flare your nostrils, and blow it out slowly. Now, if you add wide-open eyes to that, it would be a perfect shot.” 

“To the outside world, Ed Buck was a champion of causes such as fur bans and AIDS awareness and a donor to Democratic officeholders. For nearly a decade, the wealthy, white Buck lured young Black men at the lowest points in their lives — homeless, addicted, resorting to subsistence-level sex work — into what he called “party and play” sessions.

Amid squalor hidden behind his reputation as a man who had achieved great wealth at a young age, Buck plied the men with drugs and then sexually assaulted them while they were unconscious or immobile. In two cases, he injected his victims with fatal amounts of methamphetamine.

On April 14, 2022, 67-year-old Ed Buck was sentenced to 30 years in prison. This was despite his lawyers and Buck himself pleading for a sentence in which he could one day hope to return to society at a reasonable age. Nope.

Addressing the judge, Buck spoke in a low, raspy voice, offering his “condolences” to the families of his victims. Mentioning his police work, he said he had tried to live a good life, a life dedicated to making the world a better place., and asked the judge to “take a look at my life in total” and not “the horrible caricature the government painted me as — a meth-fueled ax killer.”

He went on to apologize for what he called “my part” in the deaths of Moore and Dean and described them as “men I cared for, men I loved,” but he denied killing them.

“I wish I could turn back time and change things,” he said, “and if I could, I would. Well, Ya can’t. 

During the trial Ed’s lawyer alleged that Starting when the defendant was 11, his father would sexually abuse him when his mother was out of the house, “Buck, who was raised Catholic and served as an altar boy, was also reportedly molested by several priests and a monsignor, according to his lawyer.

Didn’t work. As the prosecutor pointed out, that's awful; abuse 50 years ago doesn't allow you to abuse and kill people in the present. 

U.S. District Judge Christina A. Snyder sentenced Buck to prison for what will almost surely be the rest of his life. She said his case was “one of the most difficult and tragic” she had ever presided over. and noted, “What has happened here is reprehensible,” 

Amen. If Ed behaves himself, he might get a shot at getting out of jail, but he’ll be in his 90s, so chances are, yeah, he’s going to spend the rest of his life in there.  

That’s the Ed Buck story. In conclusion - don’t do meth. Smoke a little weed if you need ot get high. If you need to get energized to clean your place, go to the gym. And If you need to last longer, they sell a spray. Which - weird. Or so I’ve heard, I don’t know. Er right.

Thank you for joining me for this episode of Wicked Gay. Thank you to my new Patreon subscribers, Tyler and Jesse. If you’d like to listen to exclusive episodes of Wicked Gay, just go to Patreon.com/WickedGay. Follow WickedGay…pretty much on TikTok and Instagram…I’ve got a Facebook page and Twitter. I’m not calling it X. Elon can shut up and go make ugly trucks …it’s all under wickedgaypod.

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Music by Pixaby, cover art by Paul Chapman, and audio engineering by the other Mr. Harvey. Again, I urge you to put in your earbuds if you’re going to listen to a video in public. Tell a friend, your child, a neighbor, the person teaching you calligraphy or guitar, or just everyone. Have a lovely evening.