LOS ANGELES _ Just weeks after he was arrested on state drug charges, Ed Buck was indicted Wednesday on federal charges in connection with a second overdose death at his West Hollywood home, according to court records.
Buck, a wealthy Democratic donor who was charged in September with providing the methamphetamine that led to the 2017 overdose death of Gemmel Moore in his home, was indicted Wednesday in connection with the January 2019 death of Timothy Dean, court records show. He also faces three additional counts of distributing methamphetamine.
Buck "engaged in a pattern of soliciting men to consume drugs that Buck provided and perform sexual acts at Buck's apartment," the U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles said in a statement.
If convicted in either Moore's or Dean's deaths, Buck faces a minimum of 20 years in federal prison. Los Angeles prosecutors had previously declined to charge Buck in Moore's death, but the 65-year-old was arrested last month and charged with operating a drug den. Federal prosecutors charged him in Moore's death two days later.
Court documents made public last month revealed Buck had engaged in dangerous sexual fetishes for years. Prosecutors accused him of manipulating homeless men and sex workers to do drugs for his pleasure, often at risk to their own safety. Several claimed Buck injected them while they were sleeping, and two described incidents that amounted to allegations of sexual misconduct, according to court records.
Local activists from the black and LGBTQ communities have spent years demanding Buck be held accountable for Moore's and Dean's deaths, and argued that local prosecutors and law enforcement leaders were uninterested in investigating the cases because of the backgrounds of Buck's alleged victims, many of whom were sex workers.
