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 eighty eight, check out this podcast notes page for information on LGBT plus mental health resources in your community.
This is Shattering the System. I'm Sinarian Glinton. By now you're likely familiar with the name at Buck. Ed Buck was indicted on two counts of distribution of methan fetamine resulting in death. He was accused of four counts of distribution of methen fetamine, one count of maintaining a drug involved premises, and two counts of enticement to travel in inter state commerce for prostitution. The two counts of distribution resulting in death were for the deaths of Jammel Moore and Timothy Dean.
We believed these victims, We believe that what they said happened to them actually happened to them, and we wanted to keep Buck from doing this to anybody else.
Lindsey Bailey is an assistant US attorney. She was the lead attorney in the case against that Buck. She lays out each of the charges first, there were the distribution charges that didn't result in death. Those were for the four victims who testified and survived.
We had four victims here who because they lived and survived, their cases were just charged as distribution cases. There's no mandatory minimum. The statutory maximum is I think in that case twenty years.
And this is a distribute for like. Yes, then there were two counts of enticing someone to travel across state borders for prostitution. That was because of the evidence that Buck had offered to and paid for Jamel to travel from Texas to California for sex. And then there was one count of maintaining a drug involved premises. Well, that seems straightforward. Buck was accused of using his home as a drug house. Bailey says none of those charges had mandatory maximums.
Though it always drives me crazy when they say, well, they're looking at a maximum sentence of this. Usually when you're charged with that crime, it's very rare that anyone is sentenced anywhere near the maximum. So for those cases, you're looking at, you know, a year, five years, maybe if you're lucky, ten years for that type of distribution. For the death resulting cases, now, this is.
The important part. The real charges against ed Buck, the ones that the government thought would be a deterrent, where the distribution resulting in death that ed Buck gave Jamal and Timothy the drugs that killed them.
I distributed drugs to you and you died, or I distributed them to someone and someone died, whether it's methamphetamine in Buck's case, or you know. More often we're seeing this with fentanyl cases. It's an automatic twenty year mandatory minimum, and then the guidelines range is much higher, so you're looking at a minimum of twenty years, but it could
go up anywhere to life imprisonment. He is in class all in his own and I think the reason that our office brought charges against mister Buck is we saw an individual who was essentially praying on vulnerable communities with impunity. He seemed to have no remorse for what he was doing. He was putting people's lives in danger on a regular basis,
and not just people, but specifically vulnerable communities. Really what he was doing was pretty horrific, and so there was a strong desire to bring charges specifically, I think against mister Buck because of the number of victims he had, because he was doing this with impunity because multiple people had died as a result of his actions, and so for mister Buck, I think that was the main reason that we were looking to bring charges against him as
opposed to know your average drug dealer on the street.
After nine days of hearing testimony that even a judge found disturbing, the.
Trial recessed for the jury to figure out a verdict.
Jonathan Unger is one of the producers of this podcast. Jonathan and I were there for the reading of the verdict in the case of the United States versus ed Buck.
That happened at nine point thirty in the morning of They were back with their verdict by one fifty pm that same afternoon, and I think that shocked everyone.
Because it.
Hinted that it was a unanimous decision. But the fact that happened that quickly, that kind of also gave over one hope as we as we entered the viewing room before the verdict.
This was the moment ed Buck was charged with nine federal counts. In the rooms set aside for visitors, the room quieted as people strained to hear the judge over the closed circuit television. I remember thinking how many queer people there were assembled in this very non gay setting. This was a first for me. We were all in our version of courtroom drag, trying to serve respectability, realness, and I remember seeing multiple people bolt make the sign of the Cross. When the moment came.
Guilty guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty on all nine counts. Buck gave no indication that he even heard the verdict. I don't remember hearing teers or shouts. It was as if the entire courtroom exhaled guilty on the two counts. With mandatory minimums, ed Buck would have to serve jail time for his role in the deaths of Jamel Moore and Timothy Dean. Jamel Moore's mother, Letitia Nixon, would get a guilty verdict exactly four years after Jammel's tragic death.
A big weight has been lifted off of a need. I know that we were going to get justice.
This is shattering the system. I'm scenario Glinton. We hear from the family of Jamel Moore and Timothy Dean, and the government learns that ed Buck wasn't alone in exploiting the gay community.
He exclusively targeted gay men who he met on the dating app Grinder, and when he met them, he used gay dating culture in a way that allowed him to really violently exploit these men.
The aftermath and the lessons learned from ed Buck, that's after this quick break. This is shattering the system. I'm sinarian Glinton. Jurors found ed Buck guilty on all nine charges. Remember the important ones were the two with mandatory minimums. When the judge read the verdict, there was silence, and as the courthouse emptied, it seemed as if an emotional valve had opened. Tears flowed from the spectators, with family, victims and lawyers embracing as they walked out of the
courthouse into the blazing California sun. The viewers of the trial were a genuinely diverse group of people that was in star contrast to the other lack of diversity in the LA press that gathered to cover the trial. The divide between the family and friends the victims, and the largely white straight press corps was clear as the families stepped up to the microphones on the steps of the Federal courthouse.
My name is.
Nixon, Joanelmore's mom. I'm so happy and pleased that we could put this part behind us. We want to send a message to all the other at Bucks, y'all better stop what y'all doing. We're gonna get y'all.
If Jamel Moore's mother was happy with a guilty verdict, that would mean that the work to get justice was done, she would continue with the civil suit that would seek to get ed Buck to be financially responsible for the damage he'd done.
I saw want to put a play out to all of the politicians, all the ed Bucks' friends, so retire that dirty money, return it back to us so that we can help these other victims, and we can go forward in our civil suit. All the ed Bucks friends, these dirty politicians. Y'all know who y'all are. It's all I have to say.
There a lot of pressure to get law enforcement to pack to the cases. Yes, are you an open out doubtful change and help me?
Almost definitely. This really increased my faith.
Yes, the verdict in twenty twenty one is what many of the friends and family would call a victory in the West. One of the disappointments, though, would come with the sentencing in twenty twenty two. The judge didn't give Buck a life sentence. She stopped at what she called
an effective life sentence. Buck was sentenced to three hundred and sixty months, that's thirty years in federal prison for providing fatal doses of methamphetamine to two men who died at his apartment after he injected them with the drug. Buck was sixty seven at the time of sentencing. If he gets out, he'll be ninety seven.
You know what, It's fine, he's sixty seven, he'll be ninety seven. I'm happy with that. Yeah, this has been almost five years since twenty seventeen when we couldn't get Jackie Lacey to filing me charges and no one wanted to touch this. This has been a long time coming. So very happy and I'm just I'm ready to just put this behind me and go, you know, ahead with healing because I haven't been able to heal me, nor my other kids, my mother, rest of my family. I'm just
I need to focus on healing. I came and did what I had to do.
Letician Nixon was able to give an impact statement, and she said Jammel was the love of her life and how his death had upended her own life. The detail that stands out was she explained how she'd been there for patients as they were dying, and ed Buck had let her son die naked and alone without anyone to comfort him. Meanwhile, ed Buck would ask the court to consider his activism in West Hollywood, including his fight for
animal rights. We're going to listen to the press conference after the sentence single, so let's start with Letitia Nixon.
A big weight has been lifted off of me. I knew that we were going to get just this. I knew that he was going to get some time because he's guilty. He had, you know, they got his own factorah evidence that he kept hisself, so he basically convicted hisself.
So I'm happy, but you're still crushing they keep it foll hear.
I'm a little frustrated, but I'm happy with the results.
I'm Joanne Campbell.
I'm not completely satisfied with it. Thirty years. I was hoping for more time for this man that killed my brother. But I can live with the thirty years knowing that it's going to be a very long time before he gets out, So I can live with that. But I'm just so proud of the prosecutors that prosecuted this case and the great job that they did to bring this justice to this man. So no amount of time can
bring my brother back. But I feel some kind of solace and some kind of renege for my family that he will be in prison for a very long time.
What did you think about what it was said about an accident.
That's not love when you kill someone. And I don't believe. He was a friend to my brother and he loved my brother, so that was just something he was saying, hopefully to get some sympathy from the judge. But I don't believe and buy any of it. If law enforcement had acted in the beginning when Jamel Moore was killed, it wouldn't have been a Timothy Jean's death because this man would have been put away. So I do believe that they should have acted a lot quickly and we
would be here and thank you everything. Hi. I'm Joyce Jackson, Timothy Jan's sister. Today is a good day, So not the best day, but it is good and I can go home today feeling a whole lot better and try to get my life back together. And when I say that, I have not been able to visit my brother's grave site, so I can go home now and go to his grave site and have a conversation with him. There is victory in the West. I did want to see more time for him. However, I'm good with these thirty years.
Where's brother Ferry.
He's in Tampa, Florida at a beautiful grave site. So I'm glad that I'll be able to leave here and finally go to his grave site. I just wish that this date would have never occurred. However, we're here. We've got to deal with it, and I'm ready to start healing because I have not been able to heal, and that's been one of the most hardest things for me.
Hi.
Everyone, my name is Dane, last name Brown. I'm the final victim of bed bunts. My response to since seeing it's like they said one and a half times what he's old, and I don't feel that it's fair for all the victims because he only got a little bit of what he deserves. It's something better than nothing. But you know, I wish the courts would have done more. It should have been a lesson. It should have been swift, should have been hard, it should have been more, you know,
regardless of his age. He's done a lot of wrong things to a lot of people. He's destroyed families, and he's destroyed lives, so he needed to be It needed to be a lesson to other people out there who are trying to do the same things, are not knowing that they're doing the same things. They needed to They needed to see that the government doesn't play around when it comes to lives. And we got some but not all. I'm grateful that he won't get out for a very
long time, but I wish it was more done. And that's pretty much all I have to say. It should have be in life, should have been a live.
Tell us about your experience.
Going through this trial. I try my best not to think about it. I'm trying to take each day as it comes and knowing that you know, each date gets better and better. But coming back to the trial, it takes me back to a different time in my life, and I'm glad that I'm past that point.
Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Tracy Wilkinson. I'm the United States Attorney for the Central District of California.
Tracy Bolcason would succeed Nick Hanna as US attorney briefly with me or.
The ausas that prosecuted this case, ed Buck committed horrible, unimaginable crimes. The United States Attorney's Office took it very seriously, the jury took it seriously, and today the judge took it seriously and sends him to third years in prisoned. It was not the life term that we had advocated so persuasively for, but it is still a significant sentence
that recognizes his serious, serious crimes. And I know that no sentence, frankly, even a life sentence, would not have been enough to bring back your family members to undo the harm that's been done to you. But I hope that you will now be able to begin the healing process because you know that this man is going to be in prison for a very long time. Hotey, you agree.
I'm immensely grateful for the continuing support of the victims and families who have entrusted us with the memory and justice for their loved ones.
It has been immeasurable in terms of.
Not only building the case, but giving us the passion to keep pursuing it even when we sought when we faced adversity in this case. And I also just want to say that I think in my opinion, one of the things that was the most persuasive today were the statements of the victims who came in.
And gravely spoke.
Again.
They some of them testified a trial, some of them weren't able to and were able to give make their voices heard today. But I think of all of the things that happened today, that was one of the most powerful and.
One of the most persuasive things.
And you know, I am grateful to the US Attorney's office, and particularly grateful to Chelsea, who is a wonderful partner to work with on this case. And I'm just grateful that I was able to have any sort of an impact on the line of these people who had met and who were hurt so badly by ed Buck, and that we were able to receive some sort of justice today.
So thank you.
The prosecutor, Lindsay Bailey points out what a chore it was for victims to testify. Ed Buck picked victims who wouldn't be believed, and we heard from those who testified that the police weren't kind. They would show up early in the morning to do interviews, and many of those who testified were still dealing with the horror of dredging up some of the worst moments of their lives.
He took a tremendous amount of courage to do what they did. They did not want fifteen minutes of fame, as the defense counsel accused them of. They were viciously attacked on cross examination, and they held up remarkably, and I am so proud of how valiantly they testified and kept their heads hel high.
It would be a victory to get nine guilties. Here's Corey McClain, one of Jamel Moore's friends over the years. He was there for most of the moments along the road to get ed Buck convicted.
So this is Jamel's ashes, and I take him with me. I've spread them in Hawaii, in Miami, and in the Hollywood Hills, and on days like this, I like to wake them up to channel his energy and to answer your question about the sentencing. He feels like this a slap in the face, like thirty years is stupid.
Like it is.
However, we fought long and hard and it's been so draining. So we have to just accept this and move on. So hopefully we all find healing in peace. And I pray that everyone that's affected by this gets some type of counseling. If it's not by the government or someone that they can provide it to these victims that had to relive these situations over But from this moment on, I don't want to think of Jamail Moore and ed
Buck in the same sentence. I want to separate the two and just find healing in peace from this moving forward, and thank you all for being a part of this journeys. Yeah, I travel the world, so everywhere I go, I take him with me, just so we can keep creating memories. Because I believe in energy. His energy is still here with us.
The Fed's got their man. Ed Buck is likely to spend most of his life in the federal prison system when he gets out of jail. If he does, he will be ninety seven years old, nine and guilties. How does that feel?
It's indescribable.
Chelsea Norell was one of the lawyers tried ed Buck.
It was the ultimate relief to be able to secure that for the people that had stood by this case from the beginning, for the victims, for the family of their loved ones who perished. It was it was surreal. I had in my mind and vision tearing those words, and it was out of body to actually hear them. Come back on the four year anniversary of Jimmelmore's death and have that be a new memory for his mom, who said that that was the worst day of her life.
And now it's also the anniversary of the day she got justice for her son. And that's just a gift that I will always be so grateful for that. The jury returned on that day.
At Buck's landlord filed to victim two months after he was arrested. It would only be a couple of months before the verdict in this case, before ed Buck's things were finally removed from one two three four North Laurel Avenue. Both families would pursue civil cases against Buck, but the case of the US versus ed Buck would end with ed Buck being found guilty. Here's Lindsey Bailey, the prosecutor.
You know, sentencing is not necessarily just about the individual. It's about the message that it sends to the community as a whole. And so we were arguing specifically for a quote life sentence because we wanted to send the message to the community that like, it's not okay for you to pray on vulnerable people. It's not okay for you to assert power over people who have less power than you and really send that home to anybody else who who may be in that sort of a position.
But look, at the end of the day, it was a thirty year sentence, which for someone like Buck, who is you know, a lifelong Matthews or in his sixties, is essentially going to be a life sentence. He's not just going to be walking around free after thirty years,
if he's even still alive then. So I think we were disappointed in the sense of the message that a life sentence would have sent both to the community as a whole and to the families of the victims and the victims themselves that this is a case that was going to be taken seriously. But I think as a practical matter, you know, and I think my speculation is that this is what the judge was kind of going for, is that this is effectively a life sentence for him, even if it is not quote a life sentence.
The defense would file a motion during the trial to ask the court to quit ed Buck before the jury could deliberate, because all the evidence hinged on quote the testimony of a parade of financially motivated, houseless individuals and drug addicts and should not have been believed. The judge denied the motion, and each of those guilty verdicts showed a jury did believe those black men. This is shattering the system more after this quick break, this is shattering
the system. I'm Sinari Glinton. Ed Buck's crimes weren't in isolation. Jamel Moore died months before the Me Too movement began. In earnest, Bill Cosby would go on trial for allegedly drugging women in his home, and that was between the deaths of Jamal and Timothy. The porn actor Ron Jeremy was accused of drugging women not very far from ed Buck's apartment. Now, while Buck was awaiting trial, I got a call from a friend. He's a performer, let's call
him Ricky. Ricky had been robbed at knife point by a date on a hookup app. The man stole thousands of dollars worth of equipment and even used my friend's self phone to steal money out of his bank account. It turns out that incident wasn't a one off. A man named Derek Patterson had been specifically robbing gay men on a dating app called Grinder. This time, the government's response would be very different than the way officials reacted to the deaths of Timothy Dean and Jamel Moore.
My name's Jeremiah Levine, and I'm an assistant United States attorney. That's a federal prosecutor here in Los Angeles, which is the largest district of federal prosecution in the United States.
Let's pick up with my interview with Levine as I was telling him the story of my friend who has robbed and assaulted. Help me understand what Patterson was accused of doing.
Sure, Patterson is accused of a string of about twenty one robberies over the course of about three years. And during that string of robberies, he he exclusively targeted gay men who he met on the dating app Grinder, and when he met them, he used a gay dating culture in a way that allowed him to really violently exploit these men for robbery.
Help me understand that, unpack that for people who may not understand that, Like, you know, you've gone Grinder and like, help me understand the like what happened if he showed up at your house, the allegation. Sure, so his EMO.
What he did in most of the robberies is that he would use a profile on the dating app Grinder that looked alluring. He is a tall and handsome man, and he would use a pretty lurid handle, something like ten inches or eleven inches, which was intended to be a reference to the side of his penis, meant to be attractive, and he would use that profile to lure
his intended victims into meeting with him. And on Grinder, it is fairly common that you will match with somebody, chat pretty briefly sometimes you know, a few minutes, and then be alone in private with that person with whom you've just matched in a matter of hours. And that's something that Patterson did. Typically with some of his victims. He would match with them on Grinder, put in very little time and effort, and then very quickly be alone with them. And that's one of the aspects of gay
dating culture that he used to exploit. I think it's more common to be very rapidly alone with someone in Grinder culture than in other dating cultures. So once Patterson was in the residence, he would typically say, hey, can I use your phone to look at porn so we can get ready to have sex. That's another thing that I think would be would maybe send up more of an alarm bell in another dating culture, but in grinder dating culture that didn't seem to be particularly off putting
to anybody. So he would right away get inside and get the person's phone. Once he had the person's phone, ostensibly to look at porn to get ready for the sexual encounter, he would start transferring the victim's money to himself. Sometimes he would go straight from hey, can I have my phone back please, to beating the person or pepper spraying the person. Other times he would say that he had a gun and that he was going to murder
the person. Sometimes he would go get a kitchen knife and chase the victim around, slashing at them, sometimes actually stabbing them with the knife, and eventually shortly thereafter he would make off with the phone, and then after he had left the presence of the victim, continue to use the phone to transfer himself money from their zell, from their Venmo, from their cash app, and also to use the purchasing power on their phone, whether through Apple Pay
or some other mobile payment device, to purchase goods and services.
So, I mean some of these allegations are this has so many threads in so many gay stories, right, you could think of it as six degrees you know, it's six degrees of separation. It's connected to you know, it's connected to that buck. There was like so many you know, using But the extraordinaryness of some of the things, like the one that stands out to me is the opening up a line of credit.
So the next kind of level of complexity up is he would make purchases. He would some of these. Some of his vic had Apple pay, so he would go and purchase electronics, for example, I think he purchased air pods. He then he the kind of the next level of complexity up is he would sometimes purchase services. He would purchase, on several occasions, nights at hotel rooms in Los Angeles. And then he would also because he had all the details of his victims and access to their accounts, he
would even open up lines of credit. So I believe with Goldman. I believe that Apple has a partnership with Goldman Sachs. One of Patterson's victims already had an Apple iTunes account, and Patterson parlayed that Apple account into a new line of credit with Goldman. So pretty sophisticated means.
Part of what makes this frightening is the number of like for Grinder to work or these things to work, the number of times that a gay man invites another man that he does not know after you know, a group of conversations that are like sup looking I mean like one, I mean emojis sometimes yeah, and that and that. I mean, I mean the number of times I've thought, did you just give me the code to your apartment building? Which I will I just will remember because this is
a historic building. And but like, literally that is that's happened me. It's so unbelievably frightening.
It's possible that this happens a lot more than we realize, and that victims don't feel like they can they can risk exposing themselves by talking to law enforcement, or maybe they don't feel ashamed, but they don't feel like they're likely to get their due from law enforcement. Patterson could have evaded detection for much longer, and in fact, he
did evade detection for years. It's a fairly you can have a fake Grinder profile, and these days you can wear a mask as You're walking into a building without arousing a whole lot of suspicion and remain anonymous relative to the security cameras in there, and perpetrayed a crime pretty anonymously. So I think this may happen more than we realize.
You know, the resolution of the case is pretty swift, relatively speaking, and strong. So help me understand one hundred and eleven months in federal prison for targeting and robbing gay men in Los Angeles, eighty four thousand dollars in restitution. But the key seems to be the hate crime part. I mean, how often I remember many years ago the thought of a gay man being charged with a hate crime was an anomaly. How far have we come in
the fifteen years. Tell me the facts of what the judge did and what does this mean.
The law that applies here with regard to hate crime enhancement is that if a criminal targets a victim because of the victims perceived sexual orientation, and if the government can prove that beyond a reasonable doubt, then the defendant is subject to a higher sense. There's a couple key things in there. One is the targeting has to be because of the perceived sexual orientation. That's all. If anybody targets a gay person because they are gay, they're subject
to a hate crime enhancement. So what's really important there is that I didn't say hate. Patterson need not hate his victims. A person can be a member of the group that they are targeting and still be subject to the hate crime enhancement. So in that way, hate is a little bit that hate crime enhancement is a little
bit of a misnomer. Anytime criminal targets gay people or members of certain other groups because of their perceived membership in those groups, they can be subject to the hate crime enhancement.
Can you help draw the parallels and the distinctions between at Buck and say Derek Patterson.
I can tell you that in both instances, the defendants preyed on vulnerable victims. Criminals prey on vulnerable victims. Sometimes those people are economically disadvantaged, sometimes they are immigrants, and sometimes they are members of the sexual preference minority. That the vulnerability of the victims is what I think draws those cases together. I think it's really important not to accidentally do any blame shifting or even sound like we're
doing any blame shifting. It is a great thing that we have reached a place where gay people can be proud and can be meeting easily and online and not in secret. That is fantastic. That is not the problem. The problem is that there are bad people out there exploiting it. There is a case in Texas where criminals used grinder to kidnap victims, and some of the kidnappers self identified as bisexual. So Patterson is not the only person who who's using this hack.
In our next episode, with ed Buck in prison, we wanted to gaze the impact his crimes had on the black queer community in Los Angeles and why black victims are so often ignored. That's next on Shattering the System. Thank you for listening. Shattering the System is a production of Macro Studios and iHeart Podcasts. I'm Your Host, Snari Glinton, Follow me at so O naar I one on Instagram.
Our series executive producers are Charles King, Asha Corpus, Win Royo 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.
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