Prominent Democratic Party donor Ed Buck appears in court on September 19, 2019, on state charges of running a drug den in his West Hollywood apartment. | Source: Al Seib / Getty
A new documentary that premiered this week takes a deeper look into the case of a wealthy political donor who was convicted of trading drugs for sex in instances that left at least two Black men dead in his home within 18 months of each other in recent years.
Titled “GEMMEL & TIM” for the two men who died at the California home of Ed Buck, the award-winning documentary features the family and friends of Gemmel Moore and Timothy Dean addressing their experiences while also exploring the crimes committed that led to a guilty verdict last year.
What happened?
Both Moore and Dean were found dead in the West Hollywood home of Buck, who was accused of supplying both men with drugs in exchange for sex on separate occasions. Buck was arrested in September 2019 after a third man overdosed in his home but survived. He was charged with one felony count each of battery causing serious injury, administering methamphetamine and maintaining a drug house. The Los Angeles district attorney’s office called Buck “a violent, dangerous sexual predator” who “mainly preys on men made vulnerable by addiction and homelessness.”
According to the documents, Buck administered “dangerously large doses of narcotics to his victims” and is “a predator with no regard for human life.”
After initially only facing a possible maximum sentence of five years and eight months in state prison, Buck later had charges of running a drug den and paying people to travel for sex tacked on to the existing charges for a total of nine felony counts.
According to The Advocate, Buck has a “fetish for shooting drugs into black men he picks up off the street or on hookup site.”
There are reportedly at least 10 other victims.
Gemmel and Tim
Moore, 26, wrote in a journal a few months before he died in 2017 that he was using drugs and “Ed Buck is the one to thank. He gave me my first injection of chrystal [sic] meth.”
Twenty-three days before Moore died, an escort reported Buck to authorities for drugging Black men. However, nothing was immediately done.
After Moore died, Buck’s apartment was searched. Law enforcement allegedly “found the following items in Buck’s two-bedroom apartment: 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.’”
Dean, 55, died 18 months later of a drug overdose in Buck’s home on Jan. 7, 2019.
The Daily Beast reported at the time that Dean warned other people to say away from Buck. He reportedly once said, “Don’t go in that house because you might never come back.” When Moore was found dead, Dean reportedly said Buck was the “devil” and that “This might be it for Ed Buck.”
Why now?
The new documentary was made in an effort to help keep what happened to Dean and Moore from ever taking place again, director Michiel Thomas said.
“I’m a member of the LA gay basketball league (LAMBDA), where Tim Dean used to play, so Tim’s death has affected my close social circle deeply. I hear their outcry for justice, and I want to play my part in ensuring Gemmel and Tim’s deaths weren’t in vain,” Thomas said in a press release. “I wanted to provide Gemmel and Tim’s extended family a platform to grieve, to show who their friend was, and to offer solutions to prevent these tragic events from happening in the future.”
“Gemmel and Tim” was released Tuesday and can be viewed on iTunes, Apple TV and Amazon.
Watch the trailer below.
SEE ALSO:
DA Jackie Lacey Blames Everyone Else For Why It Took So Long To Charge Ed Buck
Elizabeth Warren Campaign Denounces ‘Mistake’ Endorsement From Ed Buck
