Text messages, witness accounts and a new video showing a prominent Los Angeles area Democratic donor under investigation for homicide was still engaged in soliciting young Black gay men with the allure of money for allowing him to shoot them with crystal meth. 

 

Gemmel Moore and Ed Buck (file photo)

26-year-old Gemmel Moore was found dead of a crystal meth overdose in Ed Buck’s West Hollywood apartment on July 27, 2017. His death was immediately classified as an “accidental methamphetamine overdose” by the coroner, but the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department’s homicide bureau was forced to open a homicide investigation after Moore’s personal journal was published and other young men stepped forward recounting similar stories about a man who they say has a Tuskegee Experiment like fetish which includes shooting drugs into young Black men that he picks up off the street or via dating hookup websites just to see how they react to it while he makes them dress up and pose in white underwear. 

Just prior to Moore’s body being removed from Buck’s apartment, images show another young man headed up to Buck’s apartment who had to be stopped by sheriff’s deputies.

A coroner’s report confirmed that at the time of Moore’s death, Buck’s apartment was littered with drug paraphernalia including 24 syringes with brown residue, five glass pipes with white residue and burn marks, a plastic straw with possible white residue, clear plastic bags with white powdery residue and a clear plastic bag with a “piece of crystal-like substance.” 

In a new video, Buck can be seen moving mirrors around–mirrors that all of the young men say he positions around his apartment so that he can watch them at all times. 

Also visible is the infamous red Craftsman toolbox that numerous young men have described as one of the locations where he keeps his drugs and drug paraphernalia including cocaine, meth, heroin, pipes, and needles. 

At one point in the video, you can see Buck holding a large vibrator in his hands. 

The young man who took the video says that Buck–similar to Moore–bought him a ticket from L.A. back to Dallas in exchange for allowing Buck to shoot him with crystal meth.  Meth from a bag that the young man says was only being used on him while Buck used meth from a different bag that looked different. 

Including this new video, over the past year numerous young men came forward including some who were engaged by Buck during the alleged homicide investigation–showing that even while under investigation, Buck continued to enjoy his lifestyle of preying on young Black men luring them with money and drugs as he did before Gemmel Moore’s death. 

Buck’s attorney Seymour Amster maintains that even though Buck never sent a card, offered to help with funeral expenses or made one single phone call to Moore’s mother, that Moore was a “good friend” of Buck’s and that he opened “his home to an individual who was troubled.” 

However, Amster has never explained how his client, a fairly well-off White man living in West Hollywood, seems to know all of these troubled vulnerable young Black gay men. Buck is not known for his involvement in helping youth or young adults but rather for contributing to political campaigns—including District Attorney Jackie Lacey, Mayor Eric Garcetti and U.S. Senate candidate Kevin de Leon–banning the sale of fur and rescuing dogs he finds on the street–dogs that by all accounts he seems to treat better than the Black men he picks up off the street. 

At the close of business Thursday, July 26, the L.A. District Attorney’s Office had rejected all criminal charges against Buck in the death of Moore citing insufficient admissible evidence.