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https://www.advocate.com/crime/2021/7/19/disturbing-evidence-shown-trial-ed-buck-jeffrey-dahmer-20
CRIME
Disturbing Evidence Shown at Trial of Ed Buck; 'Jeffrey Dahmer 2.0'
Buck
Family members of Buck's alleged victims were exposed to horrifying videos, pictures, and text messages.
BY NEAL BROVERMAN
JULY 20 2021 12:42 AM EDT UPDATED JULY 20 2021 12:40 PM EDT
The first week of Ed Buck's federal trial in Los Angeles closed Friday with disturbing evidence that left the jury shaken, according to journalist and Advocate contributor Jasmyne Cannick, who has been pushing for Buck's arrest since August 2017.
Buck, a once-prominent businessman and Democratic donor, faces nine federal-level felony counts, two of which are distribution of controlled substances resulting in death. Gemmel Moore, 26, died in Buck’s home in July 2017, and Timothy Dean, 55, died there in January 2019. Prosecutors say Buck had a fetish for drugging Black men with whom he had sexual encounters, and that Moore and Dean were among many with whom he engaged.
The first days of the trial had prosecutors laying out Buck's obsession with "party and play," or having sex under the influence of drugs, often meth. Buck allegedly paid vulnerable Black men — often homeless and looking for a place to escape the streets — to come to his home and coerced them to inject meth until they were near death. Buck would occasionally have sexual encounters with the men, but evidence appeared to show Buck sexually assaulting some of them while they were unconscious or nearly so.
Buck recorded nearly all of his encounters, and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department recovered over 2,400 videos on Buck’s computers, cell phones, and iCloud account, according to Cannick. Of the 2,400, over 1,500 contained instances of drug use.
Speaking to The Advocate, Cannick described a wrenching day on Friday, where jurors and those attending the proceedings were shown some of Buck's videos. Some of the clips displayed Buck and/or his victims smoking meth from a pipe with rubber tubing while wearing a black leather hood mask or Blackface masks; other videos showed Buck directing the men on how he wanted them to smoke meth.