Clinton Donor Convicted on All Counts in Connection to the Deaths of Two Black Men

Ed Buck, a longtime fixture of West Hollywood politics, was convicted Tuesday of charges that he supplied the methamphetamine that killed two men during “party and play” encounters at his apartment.

In a gruesome case of an older white man using his power and money to exploit the poverty and drug addiction of younger Black men, the jury found Buck guilty of every charge in a nine-count indictment. Among them were maintaining a drug den, distribution of methamphetamine and enticement to cross state lines to engage in prostitution.

Buck, 66, could spend the rest of his life in prison. His two convictions for supplying the meth that resulted in death each carry a minimum sentence of 20 years.

The verdict concluded a two-week trial that featured harrowing testimony by men hired by Buck to show off their bodies in underwear and get high on crystal meth and the party drug GHB. Excerpts from Buck’s hundreds of graphic videos and photos of the drugs-and-sex sessions left spectators wincing at the trial.

Buck’s obsessive pursuit of his dangerous fetish led to the overdose deaths of two Black men in his apartment: Gemmel Moore, 26, in July 2017, and Timothy Dean, 55, in January 2019.

It was only in September 2019, after a third Black man nearly died of an overdose, that Buck was arrested — a delay that fueled angry protests by activists who accused law enforcement officials of failing to aggressively investigate a politically influential white man. Buck, a onetime candidate for West Hollywood’s City Council, made more than $500,000 in campaign donations over the last couple of decades, nearly all of it to Democrats.

“Ed Buck will never harm anyone else, and I thank God for that,” said Joyce Jackson, who with her sister Joann Campbell flew to L.A. from Tampa, Fla., to join their brother Timothy Dean’s tight circle of friends at the trial.

Dean was an avid basketball player — one friend described his style as “poetic” — who worked as a fashion consultant at Saks Fifth Avenue.

The trial wound up giving voice to the men Buck victimized. Some of them were homeless and doing escort work to survive when Buck first invited them over; one lived in a tent under a 105 Freeway overpass. Buck paid the men extra when they let him inject them with meth, they testified. They said he enjoyed seeing them get so high that they lost control.

Videos played at the trial showed Buck touching some of the men sexually when they were asleep or unconscious.

A federal jury convicted Buck of two counts of meth distribution resulting in death as well as three other charges following deliberations that lasted for more than four hours following a two-week trial. The 66-year-old will face a mandatory minimum of 20 years in prison at his sentencing, which has not yet been scheduled.

The verdict was handed down four years to the day after 26-year-old Gemmel Moore was found dead of a drug overdose in Buck’s West Hollywood apartment. An investigation revealed that Buck had purchased a plane ticket for Moore, who was black, to fly from Texas to Los Angeles to “party and play” with the older white man.

“The party is the drugs, the play is the sex,” Assistant US Attorney Chelsea Norell told jurors in her opening statement. “If they didn’t party, he wasn’t interested.”

Moore’s family and activists had pushed for Buck’s arrest, charging that his wealth, political connections and his race precluded him from facing consequences. Despite the clamor, Buck was left free to pursue his fetish for another two years after Moore’s death.

“Today is bittersweet,” LaTisha Nixon, Moore’s mother, said after the verdict. “We got victory today.”

In January 2019, 55-year-old Timothy Dean died from a meth overdose, again in Buck’s apartment. Before Buck was arrested that September, a third companion of his ODed twice in one week in the apartment and only survived thanks to timely medical intervention.

That man, Dane Brown, told investigators he had been living in a hotel on Skid Row when he met Buck on Adam4Adam, a gay dating and escort site, and moved in with him for part of summer 2019.