Speaker 1: In this podcast, we're going to talk frankly but sensitively
Speaker 1: about issues some people might find disturbing, including rape and suicide.
Speaker 1: If you or someone you know is suicidal in the
Speaker 1: US down nine to eighty eight, check out this podcast
Speaker 1: notes page for information on LGBT plus mental health resources
Speaker 1: in your community.
Speaker 2: Something that I've heard nearly everyone admit about this story
Speaker 2: and the case of ed Buck.
Speaker 3: It's hard. The facts themselves hard.
Speaker 2: Two gay black men were found dead, two men dead
Speaker 2: eighteen months apart in ed Buck's West Hollywood apartment. Ed
Speaker 2: Buck was accused of torturing black men, getting them high
Speaker 2: and addicted to meth. He's accused of shooting them up
Speaker 2: with meth. And he would watch these black men wearing
Speaker 2: the white underwear that he gave.
Speaker 3: Them, writhe in pain.
Speaker 2: And even after Jamel Moore died of an overdose in
Speaker 2: at Buck's apartment, the local power structure let ed Buck
Speaker 2: keep endangering men.
Speaker 3: He kept torturing.
Speaker 2: Them and killing them. Eighteen months after Jamel Moore died,
Speaker 2: Timothy Dean was also found dead same circumstances. It's hard
Speaker 2: to wrap your head around that than it can make
Speaker 2: your heart sick. Now I've learned in journalism that even
Speaker 2: if you are not a victim, you can be traumatized.
Speaker 2: Later in this episode, we're going to take a deeper
Speaker 2: dive into trauma and mental health. We'll examine some of
Speaker 2: the psychological hurdles ed Buck's.
Speaker 3: Victims may have been navigating.
Speaker 2: For that matter, we'll take a look at social emotional
Speaker 2: challenges that are happening all around us. The challenge is
Speaker 2: so many of us are facing every single day. But first,
Speaker 2: we're going to try to make sense of the senseless,
Speaker 2: to try to explain why it took so long for
Speaker 2: ed Buck to be held accountable for his crimes. This
Speaker 2: is shattering the system. Today, we get a framework for
Speaker 2: understanding not only his victims, but also the perpetrators in
Speaker 2: this case.
Speaker 3: More after this break nine emergency.
Speaker 2: On January seventh, twenty nineteen, responding to a nine to
Speaker 2: one to one call from Aducks apartment, paramedics found a
Speaker 2: fifty five year old black man lying on responsive on
Speaker 2: a mattress on the floor. He was naked except for
Speaker 2: white briefs. His mouth was obscured by a dark purge
Speaker 2: of blood. This was the second time in eighteen months
Speaker 2: that police had responded to a call and found the
Speaker 2: man dead in ed Buck's apartment. Ed Buck once again
Speaker 2: told sheriff's deputies the dead man was his friend. Toxicology
Speaker 2: reports showed an overdose of methamphetamine mixed with alcohol that
Speaker 2: killed Timothy Dean. Here's La County District Attorney Jackie Lacy
Speaker 2: talking about why she wasn't able to arrest at Buck
Speaker 2: at the time.
Speaker 4: We can't file a criminal case based on who has
Speaker 4: the loudest voice.
Speaker 5: Did we go out there and arrest him?
Speaker 4: Now the clock starts ticking, and it wouldn't be ethical
Speaker 4: right now to arrest him until we really had the evidence.
Speaker 2: Eight months after Timothy Dean was found dead in ed
Speaker 2: Buck's apartment, yet another man implicated ed Buck in a
Speaker 2: serious crime. He said Buck offered him cash and marijuana
Speaker 2: exchange for sex, and according to prosecutors, Buck gave the
Speaker 2: young man a drink, saying it was vodka. The young
Speaker 2: man lost consciousness, awaking to ed Buck injecting him with
Speaker 2: a syringe while he had metal clamps placed on his
Speaker 2: body making it hard for him to move. Now, this
Speaker 2: victim lived to tell the story. He escaped or fled
Speaker 2: bus apartment and ran to a nearby gas station for help.
Speaker 2: Hank Scott covered West Hollywood over the years and the
Speaker 2: ed Buck case. He said ed Buck lrd men's his
Speaker 2: apartment in a variety of ways, using sites such as
Speaker 2: grinder or Adam for Adam. He enticed the men with
Speaker 2: offers of drugs and money, and he used words like
Speaker 2: generous in his profile.
Speaker 5: Generous means I'll pay you for sex, and ed Buck
Speaker 5: would do something like that. I'm sure because that's how
Speaker 5: he lured these people over through this sixty three year
Speaker 5: old white a man's apartment and put on the tidy
Speaker 5: white eats, the white underwear, and that was just one
Speaker 5: of his weird passions. He then would share a little
Speaker 5: drugs and there were some cases where apparently and with
Speaker 5: the testimony, he shared not of danger strugs with young
Speaker 5: men to get them in a state where.
Speaker 6: He could put out there being aware of it, slowly
Speaker 6: into their arms. Now, this was not meth comes in
Speaker 6: many forms. This was not a good that they sported
Speaker 6: drug until ed Buck liked to shoot them up.
Speaker 5: It's called slamming, and that was something that ed Buck
Speaker 5: had a strange passion for.
Speaker 7: I don't feel normal. I honestly think he has to
Speaker 7: do with the drugs. It makes me feel horrible. Ed
Speaker 7: Buck is the one to think he gave me my
Speaker 7: first injection of crystal myth. It was painful.
Speaker 8: I wasn't politically aligned with ed Buck. I didn't see
Speaker 8: I didn't share his worldview, and my experience was that
Speaker 8: anybody who was on the other side of him, he
Speaker 8: made an enemy.
Speaker 2: Lindsay Horvat served on West Hollywood City Council for many years.
Speaker 2: She's now on the La County Board of Supervisors Historic.
Speaker 2: The relationship between the sheriff and we hose gay community
Speaker 2: is problematic, says Horvath. The sheriff's office is in the
Speaker 2: heart of the gay nightlife district.
Speaker 8: But if you're at the LGBT nightlife destinations that most
Speaker 8: people associate with the city, you can probably see this
Speaker 8: sheriff station.
Speaker 2: It sort of goes without saying that you weren't pleased
Speaker 2: with how the sheriff's deputies handled ed Buck, which is
Speaker 2: why we're here absolutely so keeping them that train of
Speaker 2: thought of not being trained and not always being culturally competent.
Speaker 2: Help me understand what would frustrate you about, say the
Speaker 2: sheriff's deputies and dealing with the death of Jamel Moore.
Speaker 8: Well, it was more than frustration. It was absolutely devastating
Speaker 8: to hear about the death of Jamel Moore. The Sheriff's
Speaker 8: deputies who were involved in the investigation had indicated at
Speaker 8: some point thereafter that it it wasn't the first time
Speaker 8: that they had been called to that particular residence, and
Speaker 8: so not only in that specific investigation, but just knowing
Speaker 8: that there were ongoing issues with that residence and to
Speaker 8: know that ultimately it resulted in the death of now
Speaker 8: we know multiple people at that residence was just absolutely
Speaker 8: heartbreaking to know that it was something that was known
Speaker 8: to law enforcement and yet it still happened.
Speaker 9: Nixon said she was flabbergasted when she saw the surveillance
Speaker 9: images Fox eleven obtained exclusively from Bunk's apartment building the
Speaker 9: night her son was found dead. They allegedly show another
Speaker 9: young man trying to get up to Bunk's apartment while
Speaker 9: deputies were still on scene before.
Speaker 3: He shoot away.
Speaker 2: While Buck was showing up to bars and jo and
Speaker 2: the turnstile of black men into his apartment found no
Speaker 2: lack of men willing to enter his place. Something in
Speaker 2: the political landscape, though kind of shifted at bucks crimes
Speaker 2: began to attract the attention of the federal.
Speaker 10: Government, so I was very concerned. My first concern was
Speaker 10: making sure that he didn't do this to another victim.
Speaker 3: That's Chelsea NoREL.
Speaker 2: She's with the US Attorney's Office in the Central District
Speaker 2: of California. Even after the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office,
Speaker 2: these are the local prosecutors failed to indict ed Buck,
Speaker 2: Norell says her office. The federal prosecutors could not turn
Speaker 2: the blind eye to the fact that two men had
Speaker 2: ended up dead in bucks apartment, and they began to
Speaker 2: watch his.
Speaker 10: Place, making sure that we had units on the house
Speaker 10: where we could observe him, where we could monitor the
Speaker 10: ingress and egress of people coming in and out of
Speaker 10: his apartment that go on for We came in in
Speaker 10: the summer of twenty nineteen and we immediately started taking
Speaker 10: measures to the extent we could with the resources that
Speaker 10: we had. We tried to monitor him as much as
Speaker 10: we could, but then not hit a fever pitch when
Speaker 10: he had another victim in September of twenty nineteen.
Speaker 2: That victim identified as John Doe, that victim is the
Speaker 2: one who escaped Bucks apartment after he was injected with
Speaker 2: a dangerous dose of myth. John Doe very well may
Speaker 2: have saved his own life when he fled Bucks apartment
Speaker 2: and called nine to one one. John Doe is alive.
Speaker 2: His reports of what happened to him were just too
Speaker 2: hard to ignore. I'm Snari Glinton, and this is shattering
Speaker 2: the system more after a break, the li District Attorney
Speaker 2: Jackie Lacey was getting a lot of heat and one
Speaker 2: of the chief complaints against her office was well she
Speaker 2: didn't indict or prosecute at Buck. Now we need to
Speaker 2: talk about Jackie Lacy because she is a pioneer. Born
Speaker 2: and raised in Crenshaw and Los Angeles, she joined the
Speaker 2: lada's office in nineteen eighty six and spent twenty five
Speaker 2: years on a steady climb. Lacey was elected as the
Speaker 2: District Attorney for Los Angeles in twenty twelve, making history.
Speaker 2: She was the first woman and the first African American
Speaker 2: to hold that office. Jackie Lacey was actually an anomaly
Speaker 2: among the newer big city prosecutors. She had a reputation
Speaker 2: for being tough on crime. And while it's true that
Speaker 2: LA County has become a Democratic stronghold. It's kind of
Speaker 2: important to remember that while the city of La is
Speaker 2: deep blue and the city of West Hollywood, where ed
Speaker 2: Buck lived, is blue or still, there are eighty six
Speaker 2: other cities in La County, and the farther you get
Speaker 2: from the center of Los Angeles, the rehdder and redder
Speaker 2: of those cities get. Jackie Lacy, the district attorney, was
Speaker 2: a longtime Democratic operative inside the city, so she had
Speaker 2: to portray herself as a progressive there and outside the city.
Speaker 2: She wanted to portray an image that was tough on crime.
Speaker 4: The Sheriff's department, they saw that mister Moore was dead,
Speaker 4: but they investigated it sort of like an overdose, and
Speaker 4: we know they found some things, but we contend that
Speaker 4: it's illegal.
Speaker 3: How they searched for it.
Speaker 4: They needed a warrant and stake court could never come in.
Speaker 2: After the death of Jamel Moore, La County DA, the
Speaker 2: local prosecutor, Jackie Lacy, said there wasn't enough evidence to
Speaker 2: charge at Buck. There was still no charges after a
Speaker 2: second man, Timothy Dean, was found dead in Buck's apartment.
Speaker 2: Criticism of Jackie Lacy got intense activists and regular.
Speaker 3: People wanted buck prosecuted.
Speaker 2: Meanwhile, there were an array of changes to the way
Speaker 2: the government did business. Remember this is the Trump era
Speaker 2: when it came to drug policy. This shift in drug
Speaker 2: policy was a response to the opioid epidemic, and with
Speaker 2: a ballooning number of deaths, there was a shift to
Speaker 2: stop treating those overdoses as casualties of addiction and to
Speaker 2: start treating them as crime.
Speaker 11: And historically overdoses were treated more like an accident.
Speaker 2: In my judgment, Nick Hanna is the former US Attorney
Speaker 2: for the Central District of California, a Trump administration appointee.
Speaker 11: You know, police would be called and it would be
Speaker 11: you know, somebody overdosed and that's tragic, but it wasn't
Speaker 11: treated sort of as a criminal offense.
Speaker 3: And what can be.
Speaker 11: Done On the federal side, there's a very powerful federal
Speaker 11: statute that makes it a crime to supply drugs that
Speaker 11: result in aid death. And that's a unique federal statute
Speaker 11: with a very heavy penalty, a twenty year mandatory minimum.
Speaker 2: It would be the response to the opioid crisis that
Speaker 2: would make that statue look attractive. All the officials we
Speaker 2: talked to from the US Attorney's office talk about cooperation
Speaker 2: almost as if it were Sesame Street. No one will
Speaker 2: breathe a word about politics, but there is always a
Speaker 2: bit of politics or one upsmanship between the various law
Speaker 2: enforcement agencies. So while Jackie Lacy, a local Democrat, was
Speaker 2: looking vulnerable in front of voters, the federal prosecutor, a
Speaker 2: Trump appointee, was going to handle her biggest headache again
Speaker 2: neck Hannah.
Speaker 11: We decided to set up this task force to try
Speaker 11: to see whether we could make an impact and stop
Speaker 11: people who were just making money and not caring whether
Speaker 11: they killed somebody or not. And in that context, I
Speaker 11: believe it was one of the task force officers who
Speaker 11: was assigned to that task force, one of the local
Speaker 11: sheriff's deputies, who brought the ed Buck investigation to the
Speaker 11: attention of our office and said, look, essentially, there's this
Speaker 11: case that I'm aware of. It's not a fentanyl case,
Speaker 11: but it's similar in the sense of somebody providing drugs
Speaker 11: that results in death. And you know, maybe you guys
Speaker 11: could take a look at it. And so I assigned
Speaker 11: prosecutors in my office to take a look at it,
Speaker 11: to work with the Sheriff's department and also with DEA
Speaker 11: to take a look at the case and see what
Speaker 11: we thought and see what the evidence was, what had
Speaker 11: already been gathered, what additional investigative steps could be taken,
Speaker 11: and whether or not we thought this was something that
Speaker 11: merited a federal prosecution.
Speaker 2: What's indisputable is that two black men had died of overdoses,
Speaker 2: and while federal prosecutors were investigating whether they could pursue charges,
Speaker 2: La County DA Jackie Lacy, the local prosecutor, was arguing
Speaker 2: that he didn't have a case against that Buck. Now
Speaker 2: the tension was building for a case against Buck, but
Speaker 2: the death of Timothy d the homicide Bureau in the
Speaker 2: Sheriff's department had launched a new investigation. Remember we just
Speaker 2: heard Nick Hannah, who was working at the US Attorney's office.
Speaker 2: Hannah is a Justice Department lawyer, and he says someone
Speaker 2: from the local sheriff's office is the one who flagged
Speaker 2: the case to the facts. Sound like politics, anyway, Let's
Speaker 2: take a listen to my interview with Lindsay Horrovab, who
Speaker 2: served twice as wes Hollywood's mayor.
Speaker 8: She chose not to bring the case.
Speaker 3: Say more.
Speaker 8: I think well, for whatever reason, she chose not to
Speaker 8: pursue the case. I called her office after Jamel Moore's
Speaker 8: death several days in a row, asking her office to
Speaker 8: help create safety for people who wanted to come forward
Speaker 8: and testify and share information about what they knew about
Speaker 8: the circumstances surrounding Jammel's death, but what they also knew
Speaker 8: in terms of the circumstances of what happened at that residence.
Speaker 8: And it took many people coming forward, including my phone calls,
Speaker 8: not only including my phone calls, for her to even
Speaker 8: be willing to grant immunity for people to come forward
Speaker 8: and share valuable information.
Speaker 2: We have to remember the local politics at play here.
Speaker 2: Jackie Lacy, the local district attorney, was being hit on
Speaker 2: all sides politically. Now, to be criticized constantly on the
Speaker 2: West side of Los Angeles, that's dangerous for Democrats, not
Speaker 2: just in LA but national democrats. A significant portion of
Speaker 2: the money that Democrats from all across the country rays
Speaker 2: comes from homes that are just a turn off of
Speaker 2: Sunset Boulevard for miles and miles. And another thing often
Speaker 2: das can be the fall guys during politically dicey times.
Speaker 2: I mean, if you've seen an episode of Law and Order,
Speaker 2: you can get what I'm saying. District attorneys are very
Speaker 2: loath to bring cases that they aren't one hundred percent
Speaker 2: sure that they can win. Any loss will be the
Speaker 2: basis for an opponent's political ad and Lacey had an
Speaker 2: upcoming election. In many ways, she was stuck between a
Speaker 2: sheriff's office that had a tradition of cutting corners, a
Speaker 2: Trump appointed federal prosecutor, her own tough on crime image,
Speaker 2: and all those dead black bodies.
Speaker 8: I think, well, clearly, the United States government was able
Speaker 8: to bring a case in federal court based on the
Speaker 8: exact same evidence that she was able to review, and
Speaker 8: she elected, despite reviewing the same evidence, she elected not
Speaker 8: to pursue the case.
Speaker 2: The district attorney framed this as a problem of he said,
Speaker 2: he said, as if her hands were tied. Lindsay Horvath,
Speaker 2: the former mayor of West Hollywood, says, that's just not
Speaker 2: the case.
Speaker 8: I mean, the idea that there were people out there
Speaker 8: who were willing to tell their stories despite surviving traumatic experiences,
Speaker 8: and she wasn't going to create a safe place for
Speaker 8: them to come forward and testify was absolutely absurd to me.
Speaker 8: I'm glad that the US government did take up.
Speaker 12: The case.
Speaker 3: Again.
Speaker 2: Nick Hanna, the former US Attorney for the Central District
Speaker 2: of California.
Speaker 11: So we started, in conjunction with the DEA a Opioid
Speaker 11: Overdose Task Force in the fall of twenty eighteen, and
Speaker 11: we brought in some state and local officers to that
Speaker 11: task force, with the goal being to investigate overdose deaths
Speaker 11: like the crime scene they really are right, and to
Speaker 11: determine whether or not someone should be held accountable for
Speaker 11: providing drugs that killed somebody.
Speaker 2: The FEDS were building the scaffolding to prosecute people in
Speaker 2: drug cases that end in overdose deaths. They were creating
Speaker 2: a pathway to charging at Buck.
Speaker 10: So in the summer of twenty nineteen, the Sheriff's office
Speaker 10: approached the US Attorney's Office regarding the overdose deaths of
Speaker 10: Jimmelmore and Timothy Dean, who died in twenty seventeen and
Speaker 10: twenty nineteen, respectively.
Speaker 3: Chelsea Norrel is a federal prosecutor.
Speaker 10: The DA's office at that point had declined the Jammel
Speaker 10: Moore investigation, but it was my understanding that they had
Speaker 10: reopened the investigation of both deaths. At the same time,
Speaker 10: the sheriffs brought the investigation to the US Attorney's office,
Speaker 10: so we were working in parallel together at the outset
Speaker 10: of the investigation, starting in the summer of twenty nineteen.
Speaker 2: The chief of International Money Laundering and International Narcotics recruited
Speaker 2: NoREL to look into Buck.
Speaker 10: I initially reviewed all of the reports from witnesses from
Speaker 10: the scene at Box apartment after the deaths and immediately
Speaker 10: saw that we had a disturbing pattern of what I
Speaker 10: later learned to be party in play, which was Buck
Speaker 10: luring his victims to his apartment to inject them with
Speaker 10: methamphetamine and then on some occasions sexually assault his victims.
Speaker 10: So as soon as I saw that, I knew that
Speaker 10: there were aspects of the case where we didn't have jurisdiction,
Speaker 10: but that if we could show he distributed the drugs
Speaker 10: that ultimately killed his victims, that we had drug distribution
Speaker 10: resulting in death charges that could carry severe penalties.
Speaker 2: Seven hundred and eighty two days after Jammel Moore died,
Speaker 2: but only six days after the surviving victim called the
Speaker 2: police ed Buck was finally arrested September seventeenth, twenty nineteen.
Speaker 2: He was charged with maintaining a drug house, battery causing
Speaker 2: serious injury, and administering me.
Speaker 3: Then fetamine, all felonies. The judge set his bail for
Speaker 3: four million dollars, and.
Speaker 2: While ed Buck was held up in jail all that time,
Speaker 2: he went free would have serious consequences for Jackie Lacy.
Speaker 2: She would be one of several officials whose eventual election
Speaker 2: loss could be directly related at least in part to
Speaker 2: ed Buck. Now Jackie Lacy became the face of what
Speaker 2: was broken in the system. One of the leading voices
Speaker 2: in this story is Jasminchanic. Kanick was an early and
Speaker 2: very visible leader in the campaign to put public pressure
Speaker 2: on officials after Jamel Moore died, and Jasminchanic has been
Speaker 2: doing her work as a journalist and an activist for
Speaker 2: nearly two decades in Los Angeles, and there are a
Speaker 2: few voices that have been more consistent in the fight
Speaker 2: to bring ed Buck to justice. Jasminkanic was instrumental in
Speaker 2: bringing about national attention. Among other things, she pointed out
Speaker 2: at Buck's political donations. We reached out to jaz Mechanic
Speaker 2: for an interview or for any person anticipation. She declined
Speaker 2: our requests. We also reached out to Letitia Nixon. She
Speaker 2: was also a very strong advocate demanding justice for the
Speaker 2: death of her son Jamelle Moore. We did not receive
Speaker 2: a response from Nixon after multiple requests for an interview. Now,
Speaker 2: while Lacey was handling or not handling the deaths and
Speaker 2: at Buck's apartment, she'd been fighting for her political life.
Speaker 2: She was challenged on the left by a progressive. He
Speaker 2: was one of many progressors who were part of a
Speaker 2: trend nationwide at the time. Then, on election day, as
Speaker 2: voters were waiting to cast their ballots, and I have
Speaker 2: to say that this is one of the most bizarre
Speaker 2: things I've seen in local politics, or most people have
Speaker 2: seen in local politics, the district attorney's husband pulled a
Speaker 2: gun on Black Lives Matter protesters on primary election day.
Speaker 2: She would lose her reelection by nearly a quarter million votes.
Speaker 2: In twenty twenty, Jackie Lacy declined to be interviewed for
Speaker 2: this podcast. Her husband, David Lacey, died in September of
Speaker 2: twenty twenty two, and she said she didn't think that
Speaker 2: this would be a good time to do interviews, but
Speaker 2: she did send a statement which I will read in full.
Speaker 2: I've given my remarks on the Ed Buck case in
Speaker 2: the past. I stand by my statements. Unfortunately, there are
Speaker 2: a number of people who cling to the misguided belief
Speaker 2: that Buck had influence on the lada's office.
Speaker 3: He did not.
Speaker 2: Prior to the death of Jamel Moore, I had never
Speaker 2: heard of him. When I found out Buck had donated
Speaker 2: one hundred dollars to my campaign in twenty twelve, I
Speaker 2: returned it. I am grateful that the United States Attorney
Speaker 2: used their resources and laws to convict Buck of his
Speaker 2: despicable conduct. I am glad the families of the victims
Speaker 2: got justice at the state level. We simply did not
Speaker 2: have the evidence and laws to prosecute him. Sadly, this
Speaker 2: type of conduct sextra drugs continues. Most of the time,
Speaker 2: these deaths are written off by the coroner as overdoses.
Speaker 2: Proposed changes to the law to make furnishing drugs to
Speaker 2: others are often rejected as an attempt to bring back
Speaker 2: and she has in quotations the war on drugs. We
Speaker 2: as a society want this behavior to stop, but we
Speaker 2: are not courageous enough to enact laws to stop it.
Speaker 2: That statement from Jackie Lacy, the first black woman to
Speaker 2: be La County's district attorney, This is shattering the system.
Speaker 2: After a break, we'll explore the psychological underpinnings of what
Speaker 2: happened in this case. There are so many dark twists
Speaker 2: and turns to the story that I have to say
Speaker 2: that reporting this out has been hard, not as hard
Speaker 2: as the lived experience of the victims, but to the
Speaker 2: facts has an effect on me and the team of
Speaker 2: people working on this story. It may even have an
Speaker 2: effect on you. And it made me think about Jamel Moore,
Speaker 2: Timothy Dean and John Doe and all the other unfortunate
Speaker 2: souls who went into ed Buck's apartment and engaged in
Speaker 2: his fetishist What sort of mental space were they in?
Speaker 2: What made them who they are? Timothy Dean knew that
Speaker 2: Jamel Moore had died in ed Buck's apartment. What made
Speaker 2: him even speak to ed Buck, let alone go into
Speaker 2: his apartment? Ed Buck claimed he had been abused as
Speaker 2: a child. Is that even a plausible explanation for his criminality?
Speaker 2: And I have to say I've never seen anything quite
Speaker 2: as bonkers in politics as the late David Lacy, the
Speaker 2: district attorney Jackie Lacy's husband, pulling a gun on Black
Speaker 2: Lives Matter protesters on election Day. And I'm from Chicago.
Speaker 2: What sort of space was David Lacy in? And more generally,
Speaker 2: I feel like we need to explore the psychological health
Speaker 2: of people who have limited acts to the support they
Speaker 2: desperately need, my people, black, queer and trans folks.
Speaker 3: So I wanted to check in with a therapist.
Speaker 12: Hi, my name is b Arthur. I am a licensedmenttal
Speaker 12: health counselor, and I am an advocate for mental health
Speaker 12: for you formally incarcerated people, women and my boos in
Speaker 12: the queer community.
Speaker 2: B is also founder of The Difference, a same day
Speaker 2: therapy service. I talked to me a couple of times
Speaker 2: in relation to this show, and it's easy for me
Speaker 2: to forget that she's a therapist trained at Columbia University.
Speaker 3: That's partly because she's so relatable.
Speaker 2: She's also a part time comedian and she's named after
Speaker 2: B Arthur.
Speaker 12: Yes, I'm the other one, so yes, it's true. If
Speaker 12: you google be Arthur, there is another lady there and
Speaker 12: she do not look like me. But I'm very glad
Speaker 12: to be raised up under her tutelage, so it was
Speaker 12: just a happy accident. But yeah, I love the Golden
Speaker 12: Girls and Gone is the Gold Coast and gave people
Speaker 12: really fuck with b Arthur's So I've been very blessed
Speaker 12: by the name. I feel always say I'm the second
Speaker 12: coming of the Arthur. So shout out to OGV.
Speaker 2: Right up there at the top of the systems that
Speaker 2: fail black and queer folk, the health care system and
Speaker 2: especially mental health. Every principle in this story showed signs
Speaker 2: of needing mental health care, but for the black community
Speaker 2: and black men, the need is acute. According to the
Speaker 2: Columbia University Department of Psychiatry, African Americans are twenty percent
Speaker 2: more likely to have serious mental health problems, but they
Speaker 2: seek out therapy at nearly half the ratest whites. B
Speaker 2: Arthur says, though, the problem is especially tough, not just
Speaker 2: for black men, but.
Speaker 12: Men in general. Yeah, so men in general, I think
Speaker 12: the numbers are about seventy percent of the people who
Speaker 12: utilize mental health services or women, right, So it's I
Speaker 12: think because men are raised in dominance, you know, and
Speaker 12: in this perceived you know, individualist, especially in America, which
Speaker 12: has a very strong culture of avoidance, a very strong
Speaker 12: do it your self mentality. It's just not in practice,
Speaker 12: it's just not a thing. It's getting better with this
Speaker 12: new generation. But yeah, I think because men are raised
Speaker 12: in a culture of dominance, they're not used to sharing
Speaker 12: vulnerabilities with anyone else, especially in other men. So there
Speaker 12: has actually been studies that there's what they're calling a
Speaker 12: friendship recession, and even men over thirty, like one in
Speaker 12: four don't feel they have someone to talk to on
Speaker 12: a bad day.
Speaker 2: As a therapist, I wonder, what is it that I
Speaker 2: need to know when I approach these story In the
Speaker 2: story about one of the people did sex work, the
Speaker 2: other was you know, porn starch, both of them sex work, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: So what do I need to know about them?
Speaker 4: That they are?
Speaker 12: They are human beings, They are not their job. You know,
Speaker 12: they deserve the dignity of life, you know, in their
Speaker 12: full descriptions. Yeah, because I do think that. You know,
Speaker 12: it's again one of those things when people are like,
Speaker 12: well how do they die?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 12: Like and if you go, oh, well, you know she
Speaker 12: was working or he was a working girl, then people
Speaker 12: go Okay, well that wouldn't happen to me right, and
Speaker 12: it's just a selfish stinks, So it is not about
Speaker 12: those people. I think sex workers know a lot more
Speaker 12: about people in the human condition, and I think could
Speaker 12: actually be like a solution to a lot of the
Speaker 12: society's problems. Like I genuinely believe that because I think
Speaker 12: a lot of sex workers, men and women in non
Speaker 12: binary see people at their most animal right, and because
Speaker 12: everybody's walking up right and pretending like we are not
Speaker 12: bad boons like everybody else. We are not just ape
Speaker 12: animals with just basic needs and violence and a lot
Speaker 12: of like you know, non functioning brain parts. So there's
Speaker 12: a lot of wisdom to be learned from sex workers,
Speaker 12: particularly become Most wisdom comes from wounds, so we've seen
Speaker 12: a lot of broken people go in and out of that.
Speaker 12: So I think it's helpful to tell maybe how they
Speaker 12: ended up doing that work. Not everybody who does sex
Speaker 12: work does it because they don't have options. When people
Speaker 12: are sex positive or enjoyed or recent ways that they
Speaker 12: don't have shame about it, I think it's important to
Speaker 12: tell their story before their death, you know, so I
Speaker 12: think the full range of their human life. You know,
Speaker 12: As a therapist, I'm always challenged my clients to address
Speaker 12: the full range of human emotion. You can't just talk
Speaker 12: about happy and gratitude. You have to pay attention to
Speaker 12: anger and sadness. So I think everybody's life deserves the
Speaker 12: full range of who they were. I think her work
Speaker 12: should just be descriptive and not definitive. So similarly, in
Speaker 12: your story, yeah, make sure the victims get to be known.
Speaker 2: I want to take these people as whole beings, right
Speaker 2: and see them as people who they are. And ed
Speaker 2: Buck is it's easy for me to see the victim
Speaker 2: as being whole. Maybe it's a little harder for me
Speaker 2: to see him as not being the booky man.
Speaker 12: So I think with predators, I think it's important, like, sure,
Speaker 12: they're whole people. But since we're talking about true crime,
Speaker 12: you know, I think it's complicated to try and fit
Speaker 12: all of the lenses and again all the intersectionalities and
Speaker 12: all the perspectives that are happening in these violent stories,
Speaker 12: especially when people are just there for the violence. Let's
Speaker 12: be honest, right, be.
Speaker 2: Says, we talk about crime and victims in the most
Speaker 2: digestible ways, good guy guy, hero villain. She says she
Speaker 2: thinks human behavior is a lot more messy and a
Speaker 2: lot more complicated.
Speaker 12: A lot of times sometimes it's just personality disorders and
Speaker 12: sometimes it's just people having, you know, being at the
Speaker 12: end of their rope, because a lot of times with men,
Speaker 12: eighty percent of suicides are done by men and eighty
Speaker 12: percent of homicides are done by men. So when we
Speaker 12: think about putting hurt on other people, you were usually
Speaker 12: hurting inside. So unfortunately, even though patriarchy mostly benefits men,
Speaker 12: a lot of men are really emotionally struggling in this
Speaker 12: system and it's making them want to have power over someone,
Speaker 12: which is where they told their value was. So yeah,
Speaker 12: a lot of distorted masculinity. I wish we could see
Speaker 12: more divine masculinity.
Speaker 2: I just want to re ask that question about if
Speaker 2: you have advice for how I should approach mentally, like
Speaker 2: listening to the rest of this series and the listener.
Speaker 12: Really identify who you want to be in this story.
Speaker 12: Are you the witness you know? Are you you know
Speaker 12: giving the perspective of the victims or the predator or society?
Speaker 12: You know? First of all, understand and be consistent with
Speaker 12: who you want to be while you tell this story.
Speaker 12: The framework of what the hook is and how you
Speaker 12: want people to feel. Always work backwards right, reverse engineized
Speaker 12: for what you want people to be left with, and
Speaker 12: then you know what your duty is.
Speaker 9: Right.
Speaker 12: Okay, I need to be distanced, I need to be
Speaker 12: data data centered, right, But at the heart of it
Speaker 12: is the reason you can tell the story better than
Speaker 12: anybody else is because you do have some of the
Speaker 12: lived experience, you know, and some of the understood fear,
Speaker 12: which is important, you know, which we need more acknowledgment
Speaker 12: of our fear. So I would love to see more empathy, understanding,
Speaker 12: and advocacy for the pain and the fear that black
Speaker 12: gay men go through. So we have a very big,
Speaker 12: you know, responsibility with that, you know, but don't let
Speaker 12: the weight of that, you know, sit on your spirit
Speaker 12: because your spirit is strong. This just piece obviously called
Speaker 12: to you, so you know, just do right by it,
Speaker 12: whatever that looks like for you. As far as like
Speaker 12: how you spiritually protect yourself and emotionally protect yourself. Be
Speaker 12: grateful for your life. Be grateful for, like you said,
Speaker 12: this couldn't be you, the perspective and the foundation and
Speaker 12: the tribal support, familiar support that allowed you to be
Speaker 12: able to even have enough distance and enough power and
Speaker 12: privilege to be able to tell this story from a
Speaker 12: reporter and not from the victims' families, you know, So
Speaker 12: I just encourage you to do right by that. Feel
Speaker 12: encouraged and empowered for all the people who don't get
Speaker 12: a voice in this story, because it's a really beautiful thing.
Speaker 12: You know. In Spanish they say dolora compartita as do
Speaker 12: lord vida, which means forgive my Spanish accent, but it
Speaker 12: means pain shared is pain halft, you know. And Black
Speaker 12: people don't need to feel the weight and the pressure
Speaker 12: and the pain of the struggle all the time. You know,
Speaker 12: we do need respect, rights and protection. And I think
Speaker 12: you could do a really great job with that story
Speaker 12: from that lens.
Speaker 2: That was the therapist, coach and sometimes comedian the West
Speaker 2: African b Arthur. Talking to her has really helped me
Speaker 2: with this podcast, and you can find her at barthurtherapy
Speaker 2: dot com.
Speaker 3: That's the show.
Speaker 2: In the next episode, with ed Buck finally arrested and
Speaker 2: going to trial, we turn to that trial. Getting their
Speaker 2: day in court will be an uphill battle for the
Speaker 2: families of Jamel Moore and Timothy Dean. One of the
Speaker 2: problems in getting a conviction would be finding the people
Speaker 2: to testify. This is Shattering the System. Your host Sinnar England.
Speaker 2: Shattering the System is a production of Macro Studios and
Speaker 2: iHeart Podcasts. I'm your host Sinnar England. Follow me at
Speaker 2: so naar I one on Instagram. Our series executive producers
Speaker 2: are Charles King, Asha Corpus, Win Royal Reccio, Jonathan Hunger,
Speaker 2: Lindsay Hoffman and Scenario Glinton.
Speaker 3: That's Me.
Speaker 2: Our show is co written and produced by Ralph Cooper
Speaker 2: the Third. Erica Rodriguez is our associate producer. Dana Conway
Speaker 2: is our archival producer. Chris Mann is our audio engineer.
Speaker 2: Sound design and music provided by Chris Mann with pod
Speaker 2: Shaper special thanks to Karen Grigsby, Bates Portia, Amigas Robertson
Speaker 2: and Lisa Pollock. Clips provided by Michelle Thomas of the
Speaker 2: Jamel and Tim documentary. We'll be back next week, See
Speaker 2: you next time, can
Speaker 3: Con Can Can