LOS ANGELES — Ed Buck was a fixture of West Hollywood's political scene, champion of causes such as fur bans and AIDS awareness, donor to Democratic officeholders.
But behind the walls of Buck's Laurel Avenue apartment was a nightmare. For nearly a decade, the wealthy, white Buck lured young Black men at the lowest points in their lives — homeless, addicted, resorting to subsistence-level sex work — into what he called "party and play" sessions.
Inside a home whose squalor belied his reputation as a man who had achieved great wealth at a young age, Buck plied the men with drugs and sexually assaulted them while they were unconscious or immobile. In two cases, he injected his victims with so much methamphetamine that he killed them.
