In this podcast, we're going to talk frankly but sensitively about issues some people might find disturbing, including rape and suicide. If you or someone you know is suicidal in the US down nine to eighty eight, check out this podcast notes page for information on LGBT plus mental health resources in your community.
Something that I've heard nearly everyone admit about this story and the case of ed Buck.
It's hard. The facts themselves hard.
Two gay black men were found dead, two men dead eighteen months apart in ed Buck's West Hollywood apartment. Ed Buck was accused of torturing black men, getting them high and addicted to meth. He's accused of shooting them up with meth. And he would watch these black men wearing the white underwear that he gave.
Them, writhe in pain.
And even after Jamel Moore died of an overdose in at Buck's apartment, the local power structure let ed Buck keep endangering men.
He kept torturing.
Them and killing them. Eighteen months after Jamel Moore died, Timothy Dean was also found dead same circumstances. It's hard to wrap your head around that than it can make your heart sick. Now I've learned in journalism that even if you are not a victim, you can be traumatized. Later in this episode, we're going to take a deeper dive into trauma and mental health. We'll examine some of the psychological hurdles ed Buck's.
Victims may have been navigating.
For that matter, we'll take a look at social emotional challenges that are happening all around us. The challenge is so many of us are facing every single day. But first, we're going to try to make sense of the senseless, to try to explain why it took so long for ed Buck to be held accountable for his crimes. This is shattering the system. Today, we get a framework for understanding not only his victims, but also the perpetrators in this case.
More after this break nine emergency.
On January seventh, twenty nineteen, responding to a nine to one to one call from Aducks apartment, paramedics found a fifty five year old black man lying on responsive on a mattress on the floor. He was naked except for white briefs. His mouth was obscured by a dark purge of blood. This was the second time in eighteen months that police had responded to a call and found the man dead in ed Buck's apartment. Ed Buck once again
told sheriff's deputies the dead man was his friend. Toxicology reports showed an overdose of methamphetamine mixed with alcohol that killed Timothy Dean. Here's La County District Attorney Jackie Lacy talking about why she wasn't able to arrest at Buck at the time.
We can't file a criminal case based on who has the loudest voice.
Did we go out there and arrest him?
Now the clock starts ticking, and it wouldn't be ethical right now to arrest him until we really had the evidence.
Eight months after Timothy Dean was found dead in ed Buck's apartment, yet another man implicated ed Buck in a serious crime. He said Buck offered him cash and marijuana exchange for sex, and according to prosecutors, Buck gave the young man a drink, saying it was vodka. The young man lost consciousness, awaking to ed Buck injecting him with a syringe while he had metal clamps placed on his body making it hard for him to move. Now, this
victim lived to tell the story. He escaped or fled bus apartment and ran to a nearby gas station for help. Hank Scott covered West Hollywood over the years and the ed Buck case. He said ed Buck lrd men's his apartment in a variety of ways, using sites such as grinder or Adam for Adam. He enticed the men with offers of drugs and money, and he used words like generous in his profile.
Generous means I'll pay you for sex, and ed Buck would do something like that. I'm sure because that's how he lured these people over through this sixty three year old white a man's apartment and put on the tidy white eats, the white underwear, and that was just one of his weird passions. He then would share a little drugs and there were some cases where apparently and with the testimony, he shared not of danger strugs with young men to get them in a state where.
He could put out there being aware of it, slowly into their arms. Now, this was not meth comes in many forms. This was not a good that they sported drug until ed Buck liked to shoot them up.
It's called slamming, and that was something that ed Buck had a strange passion for.
I don't feel normal. I honestly think he has to do with the drugs. It makes me feel horrible. Ed Buck is the one to think he gave me my first injection of crystal myth. It was painful.
I wasn't politically aligned with ed Buck. I didn't see I didn't share his worldview, and my experience was that anybody who was on the other side of him, he made an enemy.
Lindsay Horvat served on West Hollywood City Council for many years. She's now on the La County Board of Supervisors Historic. The relationship between the sheriff and we hose gay community is problematic, says Horvath. The sheriff's office is in the heart of the gay nightlife district.
But if you're at the LGBT nightlife destinations that most people associate with the city, you can probably see this sheriff station.
It sort of goes without saying that you weren't pleased with how the sheriff's deputies handled ed Buck, which is why we're here absolutely so keeping them that train of thought of not being trained and not always being culturally competent. Help me understand what would frustrate you about, say the sheriff's deputies and dealing with the death of Jamel Moore.
Well, it was more than frustration. It was absolutely devastating
to hear about the death of Jamel Moore. The Sheriff's deputies who were involved in the investigation had indicated at some point thereafter that it it wasn't the first time that they had been called to that particular residence, and so not only in that specific investigation, but just knowing that there were ongoing issues with that residence and to know that ultimately it resulted in the death of now we know multiple people at that residence was just absolutely
heartbreaking to know that it was something that was known to law enforcement and yet it still happened.
Nixon said she was flabbergasted when she saw the surveillance images Fox eleven obtained exclusively from Bunk's apartment building the night her son was found dead. They allegedly show another young man trying to get up to Bunk's apartment while deputies were still on scene before.
He shoot away.
While Buck was showing up to bars and jo and the turnstile of black men into his apartment found no lack of men willing to enter his place. Something in the political landscape, though kind of shifted at bucks crimes began to attract the attention of the federal.
Government, so I was very concerned. My first concern was making sure that he didn't do this to another victim.
That's Chelsea NoREL.
She's with the US Attorney's Office in the Central District of California. Even after the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office, these are the local prosecutors failed to indict ed Buck, Norell says her office. The federal prosecutors could not turn the blind eye to the fact that two men had ended up dead in bucks apartment, and they began to watch his.
Place, making sure that we had units on the house where we could observe him, where we could monitor the ingress and egress of people coming in and out of his apartment that go on for We came in in the summer of twenty nineteen and we immediately started taking measures to the extent we could with the resources that we had. We tried to monitor him as much as we could, but then not hit a fever pitch when he had another victim in September of twenty nineteen.
That victim identified as John Doe, that victim is the one who escaped Bucks apartment after he was injected with a dangerous dose of myth. John Doe very well may have saved his own life when he fled Bucks apartment and called nine to one one. John Doe is alive. His reports of what happened to him were just too
hard to ignore. I'm Snari Glinton, and this is shattering the system more after a break, the li District Attorney Jackie Lacey was getting a lot of heat and one of the chief complaints against her office was well she didn't indict or prosecute at Buck. Now we need to talk about Jackie Lacy because she is a pioneer. Born and raised in Crenshaw and Los Angeles, she joined the lada's office in nineteen eighty six and spent twenty five
years on a steady climb. Lacey was elected as the District Attorney for Los Angeles in twenty twelve, making history. She was the first woman and the first African American to hold that office. Jackie Lacey was actually an anomaly among the newer big city prosecutors. She had a reputation for being tough on crime. And while it's true that
LA County has become a Democratic stronghold. It's kind of important to remember that while the city of La is deep blue and the city of West Hollywood, where ed Buck lived, is blue or still, there are eighty six other cities in La County, and the farther you get from the center of Los Angeles, the rehdder and redder
of those cities get. Jackie Lacy, the district attorney, was a longtime Democratic operative inside the city, so she had to portray herself as a progressive there and outside the city. She wanted to portray an image that was tough on crime.
The Sheriff's department, they saw that mister Moore was dead, but they investigated it sort of like an overdose, and we know they found some things, but we contend that it's illegal.
How they searched for it.
They needed a warrant and stake court could never come in.
After the death of Jamel Moore, La County DA, the local prosecutor, Jackie Lacy, said there wasn't enough evidence to charge at Buck. There was still no charges after a second man, Timothy Dean, was found dead in Buck's apartment. Criticism of Jackie Lacy got intense activists and regular.
People wanted buck prosecuted.
Meanwhile, there were an array of changes to the way the government did business. Remember this is the Trump era when it came to drug policy. This shift in drug policy was a response to the opioid epidemic, and with a ballooning number of deaths, there was a shift to stop treating those overdoses as casualties of addiction and to start treating them as crime.
And historically overdoses were treated more like an accident.
In my judgment, Nick Hanna is the former US Attorney for the Central District of California, a Trump administration appointee.
You know, police would be called and it would be you know, somebody overdosed and that's tragic, but it wasn't treated sort of as a criminal offense.
And what can be.
Done On the federal side, there's a very powerful federal statute that makes it a crime to supply drugs that result in aid death. And that's a unique federal statute with a very heavy penalty, a twenty year mandatory minimum.
It would be the response to the opioid crisis that would make that statue look attractive. All the officials we talked to from the US Attorney's office talk about cooperation almost as if it were Sesame Street. No one will breathe a word about politics, but there is always a bit of politics or one upsmanship between the various law
enforcement agencies. So while Jackie Lacy, a local Democrat, was looking vulnerable in front of voters, the federal prosecutor, a Trump appointee, was going to handle her biggest headache again neck Hannah.
We decided to set up this task force to try to see whether we could make an impact and stop people who were just making money and not caring whether they killed somebody or not. And in that context, I believe it was one of the task force officers who was assigned to that task force, one of the local sheriff's deputies, who brought the ed Buck investigation to the attention of our office and said, look, essentially, there's this
case that I'm aware of. It's not a fentanyl case, but it's similar in the sense of somebody providing drugs that results in death. And you know, maybe you guys
could take a look at it. And so I assigned prosecutors in my office to take a look at it, to work with the Sheriff's department and also with DEA to take a look at the case and see what we thought and see what the evidence was, what had already been gathered, what additional investigative steps could be taken, and whether or not we thought this was something that merited a federal prosecution.
What's indisputable is that two black men had died of overdoses, and while federal prosecutors were investigating whether they could pursue charges, La County DA Jackie Lacy, the local prosecutor, was arguing that he didn't have a case against that Buck. Now the tension was building for a case against Buck, but the death of Timothy d the homicide Bureau in the Sheriff's department had launched a new investigation. Remember we just heard Nick Hannah, who was working at the US Attorney's office.
Hannah is a Justice Department lawyer, and he says someone from the local sheriff's office is the one who flagged the case to the facts. Sound like politics, anyway, Let's take a listen to my interview with Lindsay Horrovab, who served twice as wes Hollywood's mayor.
She chose not to bring the case.
Say more.
I think well, for whatever reason, she chose not to pursue the case. I called her office after Jamel Moore's death several days in a row, asking her office to help create safety for people who wanted to come forward and testify and share information about what they knew about the circumstances surrounding Jammel's death, but what they also knew in terms of the circumstances of what happened at that residence.
And it took many people coming forward, including my phone calls, not only including my phone calls, for her to even be willing to grant immunity for people to come forward and share valuable information.
We have to remember the local politics at play here. Jackie Lacy, the local district attorney, was being hit on all sides politically. Now, to be criticized constantly on the West side of Los Angeles, that's dangerous for Democrats, not just in LA but national democrats. A significant portion of the money that Democrats from all across the country rays comes from homes that are just a turn off of
Sunset Boulevard for miles and miles. And another thing often das can be the fall guys during politically dicey times. I mean, if you've seen an episode of Law and Order, you can get what I'm saying. District attorneys are very loath to bring cases that they aren't one hundred percent sure that they can win. Any loss will be the basis for an opponent's political ad and Lacey had an
upcoming election. In many ways, she was stuck between a sheriff's office that had a tradition of cutting corners, a Trump appointed federal prosecutor, her own tough on crime image, and all those dead black bodies.
I think, well, clearly, the United States government was able to bring a case in federal court based on the exact same evidence that she was able to review, and she elected, despite reviewing the same evidence, she elected not to pursue the case.
The district attorney framed this as a problem of he said, he said, as if her hands were tied. Lindsay Horvath, the former mayor of West Hollywood, says, that's just not the case.
I mean, the idea that there were people out there who were willing to tell their stories despite surviving traumatic experiences, and she wasn't going to create a safe place for them to come forward and testify was absolutely absurd to me. I'm glad that the US government did take up.
The case.
Again.
Nick Hanna, the former US Attorney for the Central District of California.
So we started, in conjunction with the DEA a Opioid Overdose Task Force in the fall of twenty eighteen, and we brought in some state and local officers to that task force, with the goal being to investigate overdose deaths like the crime scene they really are right, and to determine whether or not someone should be held accountable for providing drugs that killed somebody.
The FEDS were building the scaffolding to prosecute people in drug cases that end in overdose deaths. They were creating a pathway to charging at Buck.
So in the summer of twenty nineteen, the Sheriff's office approached the US Attorney's Office regarding the overdose deaths of Jimmelmore and Timothy Dean, who died in twenty seventeen and twenty nineteen, respectively.
Chelsea Norrel is a federal prosecutor.
The DA's office at that point had declined the Jammel Moore investigation, but it was my understanding that they had reopened the investigation of both deaths. At the same time, the sheriffs brought the investigation to the US Attorney's office, so we were working in parallel together at the outset of the investigation, starting in the summer of twenty nineteen.
The chief of International Money Laundering and International Narcotics recruited NoREL to look into Buck.
I initially reviewed all of the reports from witnesses from the scene at Box apartment after the deaths and immediately saw that we had a disturbing pattern of what I later learned to be party in play, which was Buck luring his victims to his apartment to inject them with methamphetamine and then on some occasions sexually assault his victims.
So as soon as I saw that, I knew that there were aspects of the case where we didn't have jurisdiction, but that if we could show he distributed the drugs that ultimately killed his victims, that we had drug distribution resulting in death charges that could carry severe penalties.
Seven hundred and eighty two days after Jammel Moore died, but only six days after the surviving victim called the police ed Buck was finally arrested September seventeenth, twenty nineteen. He was charged with maintaining a drug house, battery causing serious injury, and administering me.
Then fetamine, all felonies. The judge set his bail for four million dollars, and.
While ed Buck was held up in jail all that time, he went free would have serious consequences for Jackie Lacy. She would be one of several officials whose eventual election loss could be directly related at least in part to ed Buck. Now Jackie Lacy became the face of what was broken in the system. One of the leading voices
in this story is Jasminchanic. Kanick was an early and very visible leader in the campaign to put public pressure on officials after Jamel Moore died, and Jasminchanic has been doing her work as a journalist and an activist for nearly two decades in Los Angeles, and there are a few voices that have been more consistent in the fight to bring ed Buck to justice. Jasminkanic was instrumental in bringing about national attention. Among other things, she pointed out
at Buck's political donations. We reached out to jaz Mechanic for an interview or for any person anticipation. She declined our requests. We also reached out to Letitia Nixon. She was also a very strong advocate demanding justice for the death of her son Jamelle Moore. We did not receive a response from Nixon after multiple requests for an interview. Now, while Lacey was handling or not handling the deaths and at Buck's apartment, she'd been fighting for her political life.
She was challenged on the left by a progressive. He was one of many progressors who were part of a trend nationwide at the time. Then, on election day, as voters were waiting to cast their ballots, and I have to say that this is one of the most bizarre things I've seen in local politics, or most people have seen in local politics, the district attorney's husband pulled a gun on Black Lives Matter protesters on primary election day. She would lose her reelection by nearly a quarter million votes.
In twenty twenty, Jackie Lacy declined to be interviewed for this podcast. Her husband, David Lacey, died in September of twenty twenty two, and she said she didn't think that this would be a good time to do interviews, but she did send a statement which I will read in full. I've given my remarks on the Ed Buck case in the past. I stand by my statements. Unfortunately, there are a number of people who cling to the misguided belief that Buck had influence on the lada's office.
He did not.
Prior to the death of Jamel Moore, I had never heard of him. When I found out Buck had donated one hundred dollars to my campaign in twenty twelve, I returned it. I am grateful that the United States Attorney used their resources and laws to convict Buck of his despicable conduct. I am glad the families of the victims got justice at the state level. We simply did not have the evidence and laws to prosecute him. Sadly, this
type of conduct sextra drugs continues. Most of the time, these deaths are written off by the coroner as overdoses. Proposed changes to the law to make furnishing drugs to others are often rejected as an attempt to bring back and she has in quotations the war on drugs. We as a society want this behavior to stop, but we are not courageous enough to enact laws to stop it. That statement from Jackie Lacy, the first black woman to be La County's district attorney, This is shattering the system.
After a break, we'll explore the psychological underpinnings of what happened in this case. There are so many dark twists and turns to the story that I have to say that reporting this out has been hard, not as hard as the lived experience of the victims, but to the facts has an effect on me and the team of people working on this story. It may even have an
effect on you. And it made me think about Jamel Moore, Timothy Dean and John Doe and all the other unfortunate souls who went into ed Buck's apartment and engaged in his fetishist What sort of mental space were they in? What made them who they are? Timothy Dean knew that Jamel Moore had died in ed Buck's apartment. What made him even speak to ed Buck, let alone go into his apartment? Ed Buck claimed he had been abused as a child. Is that even a plausible explanation for his criminality?
And I have to say I've never seen anything quite as bonkers in politics as the late David Lacy, the district attorney Jackie Lacy's husband, pulling a gun on Black Lives Matter protesters on election Day. And I'm from Chicago. What sort of space was David Lacy in? And more generally, I feel like we need to explore the psychological health of people who have limited acts to the support they desperately need, my people, black, queer and trans folks.
So I wanted to check in with a therapist.
Hi, my name is b Arthur. I am a licensedmenttal health counselor, and I am an advocate for mental health for you formally incarcerated people, women and my boos in the queer community.
B is also founder of The Difference, a same day therapy service. I talked to me a couple of times in relation to this show, and it's easy for me to forget that she's a therapist trained at Columbia University.
That's partly because she's so relatable.
She's also a part time comedian and she's named after B Arthur.
Yes, I'm the other one, so yes, it's true. If you google be Arthur, there is another lady there and she do not look like me. But I'm very glad to be raised up under her tutelage, so it was just a happy accident. But yeah, I love the Golden Girls and Gone is the Gold Coast and gave people really fuck with b Arthur's So I've been very blessed by the name. I feel always say I'm the second coming of the Arthur. So shout out to OGV.
Right up there at the top of the systems that fail black and queer folk, the health care system and especially mental health. Every principle in this story showed signs of needing mental health care, but for the black community and black men, the need is acute. According to the Columbia University Department of Psychiatry, African Americans are twenty percent more likely to have serious mental health problems, but they
seek out therapy at nearly half the ratest whites. B Arthur says, though, the problem is especially tough, not just for black men, but.
Men in general. Yeah, so men in general, I think the numbers are about seventy percent of the people who utilize mental health services or women, right, So it's I think because men are raised in dominance, you know, and in this perceived you know, individualist, especially in America, which has a very strong culture of avoidance, a very strong do it your self mentality. It's just not in practice, it's just not a thing. It's getting better with this
new generation. But yeah, I think because men are raised in a culture of dominance, they're not used to sharing vulnerabilities with anyone else, especially in other men. So there has actually been studies that there's what they're calling a friendship recession, and even men over thirty, like one in four don't feel they have someone to talk to on a bad day.
As a therapist, I wonder, what is it that I need to know when I approach these story In the story about one of the people did sex work, the other was you know, porn starch, both of them sex work, right, Yeah, So what do I need to know about them?
That they are?
They are human beings, They are not their job. You know, they deserve the dignity of life, you know, in their full descriptions. Yeah, because I do think that. You know, it's again one of those things when people are like, well how do they die?
Right?
Like and if you go, oh, well, you know she was working or he was a working girl, then people go Okay, well that wouldn't happen to me right, and it's just a selfish stinks, So it is not about those people. I think sex workers know a lot more about people in the human condition, and I think could actually be like a solution to a lot of the
society's problems. Like I genuinely believe that because I think a lot of sex workers, men and women in non binary see people at their most animal right, and because everybody's walking up right and pretending like we are not bad boons like everybody else. We are not just ape animals with just basic needs and violence and a lot
of like you know, non functioning brain parts. So there's a lot of wisdom to be learned from sex workers, particularly become Most wisdom comes from wounds, so we've seen a lot of broken people go in and out of that. So I think it's helpful to tell maybe how they ended up doing that work. Not everybody who does sex
work does it because they don't have options. When people are sex positive or enjoyed or recent ways that they don't have shame about it, I think it's important to tell their story before their death, you know, so I think the full range of their human life. You know, As a therapist, I'm always challenged my clients to address the full range of human emotion. You can't just talk about happy and gratitude. You have to pay attention to anger and sadness. So I think everybody's life deserves the
full range of who they were. I think her work should just be descriptive and not definitive. So similarly, in your story, yeah, make sure the victims get to be known.
I want to take these people as whole beings, right and see them as people who they are. And ed Buck is it's easy for me to see the victim as being whole. Maybe it's a little harder for me to see him as not being the booky man.
So I think with predators, I think it's important, like, sure, they're whole people. But since we're talking about true crime, you know, I think it's complicated to try and fit all of the lenses and again all the intersectionalities and all the perspectives that are happening in these violent stories, especially when people are just there for the violence. Let's be honest, right, be.
Says, we talk about crime and victims in the most digestible ways, good guy guy, hero villain. She says she thinks human behavior is a lot more messy and a lot more complicated.
A lot of times sometimes it's just personality disorders and sometimes it's just people having, you know, being at the end of their rope, because a lot of times with men, eighty percent of suicides are done by men and eighty percent of homicides are done by men. So when we think about putting hurt on other people, you were usually
hurting inside. So unfortunately, even though patriarchy mostly benefits men, a lot of men are really emotionally struggling in this system and it's making them want to have power over someone, which is where they told their value was. So yeah, a lot of distorted masculinity. I wish we could see more divine masculinity.
I just want to re ask that question about if you have advice for how I should approach mentally, like listening to the rest of this series and the listener.
Really identify who you want to be in this story. Are you the witness you know? Are you you know giving the perspective of the victims or the predator or society? You know? First of all, understand and be consistent with who you want to be while you tell this story. The framework of what the hook is and how you want people to feel. Always work backwards right, reverse engineized for what you want people to be left with, and then you know what your duty is.
Right.
Okay, I need to be distanced, I need to be data data centered, right, But at the heart of it is the reason you can tell the story better than anybody else is because you do have some of the lived experience, you know, and some of the understood fear, which is important, you know, which we need more acknowledgment of our fear. So I would love to see more empathy, understanding, and advocacy for the pain and the fear that black
gay men go through. So we have a very big, you know, responsibility with that, you know, but don't let the weight of that, you know, sit on your spirit because your spirit is strong. This just piece obviously called to you, so you know, just do right by it, whatever that looks like for you. As far as like how you spiritually protect yourself and emotionally protect yourself. Be
grateful for your life. Be grateful for, like you said, this couldn't be you, the perspective and the foundation and the tribal support, familiar support that allowed you to be able to even have enough distance and enough power and privilege to be able to tell this story from a reporter and not from the victims' families, you know, So
I just encourage you to do right by that. Feel encouraged and empowered for all the people who don't get a voice in this story, because it's a really beautiful thing. You know. In Spanish they say dolora compartita as do lord vida, which means forgive my Spanish accent, but it means pain shared is pain halft, you know. And Black people don't need to feel the weight and the pressure and the pain of the struggle all the time. You know,
we do need respect, rights and protection. And I think you could do a really great job with that story from that lens.
That was the therapist, coach and sometimes comedian the West African b Arthur. Talking to her has really helped me with this podcast, and you can find her at barthurtherapy dot com.
That's the show.
In the next episode, with ed Buck finally arrested and going to trial, we turn to that trial. Getting their day in court will be an uphill battle for the families of Jamel Moore and Timothy Dean. One of the problems in getting a conviction would be finding the people to testify. This is Shattering the System. Your host Sinnar England. Shattering the System is a production of Macro Studios and iHeart Podcasts. I'm your host Sinnar England. Follow me at
so naar I one on Instagram. Our series executive producers are Charles King, Asha Corpus, Win Royal Reccio, Jonathan Hunger, Lindsay Hoffman and Scenario Glinton.
That's Me.
Our show is co written and produced by Ralph Cooper the Third. Erica Rodriguez is our associate producer. Dana Conway is our archival producer. Chris Mann is our audio engineer. Sound design and music provided by Chris Mann with pod Shaper special thanks to Karen Grigsby, Bates Portia, Amigas Robertson and Lisa Pollock. Clips provided by Michelle Thomas of the Jamel and Tim documentary. We'll be back next week, See you next time, can
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