On Tuesday, after a third man survived a methamphetamine overdose in the apartment, Buck was finally arrested and hauled away in the back of a police car.
The sordid tale — and Buck’s seeming double life — could have been ripped from the pages of a crime novel. The West Hollywood apartment building where Buck lived, with its simple white facade, dirty with stains from dripping air conditioners, would be easy to miss on another day, the kind of spot that Raymond Chandler once described as a good place to have bad habits.
Prosecutors charged Buck with operating a drug house, administering methamphetamines and battery, and accused him of being a “violent, dangerous sexual predator” who targeted vulnerable men. “Buck is clearly a predator with no regard for human life,” court documents said.
More repercussions may come as these charges relate only to the latest victim. Local supporters and the families of the men who died said they were thankful after Buck was charged.
“That’s what we have been pushing for, for the last two years and fifty something days,” said Hussain Turk, a civil rights lawyer who represents a family member of one of the victims. “We don’t want another death. We don’t want another overdose.”
The first victim, Gemmel Moore, 26, died in July 2017 and Timothy Dean, 55, died in January. The identity of the third has not been released; he was referred to as “Joe Doe” in court documents.
Buck faces up to 5 years and 8 months in prison.
Court documents describe how Buck would lure men to his apartment and administer large doses of narcotics to manipulate his victims to participate in sex acts.
Moore was found dead in Buck’s apartment surrounded by sex toys and 24 hypodermic needles, according to court records. In a wrongful-death lawsuit filed in February, LaTisha Nixon, the mother of Moore, claimed that Buck bought a plane ticket for her son to travel from Houston. After Moore arrived in Los Angeles, Buck injected him with crystal methamphetamine, according to the lawsuit. It was a drug Nixon said her son had never used.
Families of the two men who died in his apartment have accused Buck, who is white, of preying upon black gay men. Nixon said in the lawsuit that Buck had a “well-documented history of isolating black men for predatory sexual encounters.” Crowds of protesters, too, have gathered outside Buck’s home this year to demand justice for the men.
“We know that, with the arrest of Ed Buck, that the life expectancy of black gay men in LA County has substantially increased,” Jasmyne Cannick, an activist and spokeswoman for the families of the victims, said Wednesday.
A lawyer for Buck, Seymour Amster, could not be reached, but he has previously denied that Buck had any role in the two deaths.
In the most recent case, “Joe Doe” visited Buck’s apartment at least two times. On Sept. 4, he sought medical attention after he was injected with methamphetamine. A week later he returned to the apartment where, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office said, Buck again injected the 37-year-old man with methamphetamine. He then fled and called 911.
In West Hollywood, Buck was a recognizable figure, a former model who became a fixture in LA Democratic political circles and who focused on animal rights. In 2007, he made an unsuccessful bid for West Hollywood City Council.
Before he arrived in California, Buck rose to prominence in Arizona in the 1980s, when he was a Republican and led the Mecham Recall Committee, an effort to remove the Republican governor, Evan Mecham, from office. Mecham was eventually impeached, accused of fraud and perjury. Buck later became a Democrat.
After five years of modeling in Europe, Buck returned to Arizona, broke and bored, according to a 1987 column in The Arizona Republic. He bought a business from a friend that gave driver’s license information to insurance companies and told the newspaper that he changed his last name from Buckmelter to Buck. Buck bought his friend out of the business for $250,000 and then sold it in 1986 for a significant profit, he told the newspaper.
After his move to California, he drew attention in West Hollywood as part of a group that successfully campaigned against a plan to build affordable housing units in a city-owned building.
Questions over Buck’s source of wealth remain. In asking a court to set Buck’s bond at $4 million, prosecutors wrote that he was not employed and argued that if Buck does post bail, the court should order him to show that he did not secure any of the bond money illegally.
“He has no known source of income,” court documents said. “Yet he is able to fund his lifestyle of preying on vulnerable men. He is engaged in frequent narcotics activity, and he may be funding his lifestyle with narcotics trafficking.”
Buck was not a major Democratic donor but he handed out tens of thousands of dollars to California Democrats, including Reps. Ted Lieu, Adam Schiff, Pete Aguilar, Jerry McNerney and Jimmy Gomez. One recipient of larger gifts was Kyrsten Sinema, a congresswoman at the time who is now an Arizona senator. Buck also made contributions to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 2016, and to both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
Politicians eventually began to distance themselves from Buck. The campaign committee told Fox News in January that it had donated Buck’s contributions to the NALEO Educational Fund, a national bipartisan Latino group. Lieu said he would donate $18,000 in contributions from Buck to civil rights organizations. Sinema gave away his donations, too.
Douglas Wingate, a lawyer, said he met Buck in Paris when both men were in their 20s and Buck was working as a model. Buck owned golden retriever rescue dogs, Wingate said, and had pushed the West Hollywood City Council to ban the sale of fur clothes in 2011.
“He lives a very unextravagant lifestyle,” Wingate said. “He doesn’t like to dine out at fancy places, he doesn’t like to travel. He likes to play with his dogs.” He believed that Buck was not rich. “I read stories about money he gave away that I didn’t think he ever came close to having,” Wingate said.
Still, Buck was often seen at political events for the Stonewall Democratic Club of Los Angeles, where he was a member. When he ran for City Council, he drew donations from actors, models, attorneys, writers and at least one television executive, according to disclosure forms filed with the city of West Hollywood in 2007 and 2008.
Lester Aponte, president of the club, said he was surprised to hear that Buck was a generous political donor. “His car was a wreck,” he said. “It was constantly in the shop and leaving him stranded. I didn’t understand how he could give thousands of dollars to candidates for Congress and not have a car that worked.”
Steve Martin, a lawyer and former West Hollywood mayor, said he was struck by Buck’s aggressive and often abrasive approach. He recalled that when they were campaigning, Buck once interrogated every dog walker about the dogs’ diets and leashes and would criticize the owners for not caring adequately for their pets.
“I told him, ‘We’re trying to work for a cause, we’re not trying to fight with people about their dog care,’” Martin said.
On Wednesday, Buck’s usually quiet block in West Hollywood, a storied gay enclave in LA, was crowded with too-familiar sirens and camera crews. The city — within the LA sprawl but with its own municipal government — is better known for its vibrant night life. Here, a medley of strip-mall businesses tether the community together: Mocafe, a popular local breakfast place; dry cleaners; acupuncture practices; a candle store; and a few popular restaurants.
Startled neighbors on Wednesday zigzagged around reporters as they walked their dogs or got in their cars to head to work.
Martin, the former mayor who described himself as gay and part Latino, said the deaths have shined a light on an uglier side of West Hollywood.
“These are things that the gay community doesn’t talk about,” he said, “and certainly that West Hollywood doesn’t talk about.”
This article originally appeared in
.