July 30, 2021 | Sex & Society

Ed Buck guilty in 'fetish murder' trial

Meth addiction is a scourge within the gay community. From Jack Mackenroth to disgraced porn star Billy Santoro, the cost on people's lives is huge.

The case of Ed Buck (pictured) illustrates how PnP (party and play) can be taken to deadly extremes.  

Known in political circles for his donations to the Democrats, the 66-year-old had a secret life behind closed doors. He got off on injecting men with meth during his sexual encounters with them. Often these men were Black sex workers. And with each encounter, the victims would become increasingly addicted to the drug.

Two men -- Gemmel Moore, 26, and Timothy Dean, 55 -- died during the encounters. Moore was killed in 2017; Dean, two years later.

Moore kept a disturbing journal about his time with Buck. He wrote:

“I honestly don’t know what to do. I’ve become addicted to drugs and the worst one at that. Ed Buck is the one to thank. He gave me my first injection of crystal meth it was very painful, but after all the troubles, I became addicted to the pain and fetish/fantasy.”

“My life is at an alltime [sic] high right now & I mean that from all ways. I ended up back at Buck [sic] house again and got munipulated [sic] into slamming again. I even went to the point where I was forced to doing 4 within a 2day [sic] period. This man is crazy and its [sic] sad. Will I ever get help?”

“Buck’s preference was to personally inject victims, and he pressured or incentivized victims to let him do so, sometimes offering large cash bonuses to coerce a victim to agree to an injection or additional injections,” prosecutors revealed. “Other times, Buck simply injected victims while they were unconscious.”

Buck's lawyer countered that his client was not responsible for the deaths.

“This is a subculture, a lifestyle that may be shocking to some of us,” Ludlow Creary II said during his summation. “Everyone involved was there voluntarily.”

Even after the two deaths, Buck continued his reckless behavior.

It took the jury four hours to find Buck guilty on two counts of distribution of meth resulting in death, four counts of distribution of the drug, one count of maintaining a drug-involved premise, and two counts of enticement to travel in interstate commerce for prostitution. He now faces the possibility of life in prison.