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 eighty eight, check out this podcast notes
Speaker 1: page for information on LGBT plus mental health resources in
Speaker 1: your community.
Speaker 2: I'm sitting on the stoop of an apartment that has
Speaker 2: become kind of infamous in West Hollywood. There's some words
Speaker 2: that will just always stay with you. This is one
Speaker 2: sentence that has stuck with everyone who's worked on this podcast.
Speaker 3: If it didn't I hurt so bad, I kill myself,
Speaker 3: but I'll let ed Buck do it for now.
Speaker 2: That's an actor reading Jamelle Morre's diary. We're going to
Speaker 2: use an actor to bring voice to his words, and
Speaker 2: I kind of feel like a bears repeating in my
Speaker 2: own voice. If it didn't hurt so bad, I kill myself,
Speaker 2: but I'll let Buck do it for now. Jamel Moore
Speaker 2: wrote those words well, he could have been any twenty
Speaker 2: six year old who found himself exploring the fun and
Speaker 2: not so fun parts of West Hollywood. The thing is
Speaker 2: he wasn't just any twenty six year old. And if
Speaker 2: he had been I wouldn't be standing on the street
Speaker 2: talking about him. Jammel Moore was, among other things, a diarist,
Speaker 2: and like Queen Victoria and Frank and Andy Warhol, he
Speaker 2: poured his emotions into a journal.
Speaker 3: I honestly don't know what to do. Become addicted to drugs,
Speaker 3: the worst one at that.
Speaker 2: Jammel's diary tells the world that it was ed Buck
Speaker 2: who got him addicted to crystal meth amphetamine. Meth can
Speaker 2: be taken in many forms, pill forms, snorting. The most
Speaker 2: common practice is smoking, but like many drugs, injecting it
Speaker 2: makes the high more immediate as well as doing more damage.
Speaker 3: Ed Buck one to think he gave me my first
Speaker 3: injection of crystal myth. It was painful, but after all
Speaker 3: the troubles, I became addicted to the pain and the fetish.
Speaker 2: In this episode, we're going to talk about the crimes
Speaker 2: of ed Buck. The thing is, I don't believe he's alone.
Speaker 2: Actually I know he's not alone.
Speaker 4: After Jamuel was gone, I didn't all think that it
Speaker 4: was going to be swept under the rug like that.
Speaker 2: Samuel Lloyd was a very good friend of Jamel. These
Speaker 2: clips that we're going to hear are from a documentary
Speaker 2: Jammel in tim It.
Speaker 4: Was a surreal realization of how invaluable my life is.
Speaker 4: A black gay man was.
Speaker 2: The rawness and the anger of Jamel's friends. It's right
Speaker 2: there on the surface. You know, for every beautiful young
Speaker 2: man that shows up in West Hollywood to have fun,
Speaker 2: make a life, or let's be honest, escape most parts
Speaker 2: of the United States, it feels like there's just a
Speaker 2: team of vultures sitting on the fence waiting for him
Speaker 2: to fuck up. A hard truth is that it is
Speaker 2: financially hard for queer people. There is a myth that
Speaker 2: gay men, for instance, are financially better off. I'm an
Speaker 2: economics reporter and a gay man, and in my expert opinion,
Speaker 2: that notion is the purest form of bullshit. The series,
Speaker 2: the show is about power and how it's used. You
Speaker 2: have men like Jamel Moore or his friend Samuel Lloyd struggling,
Speaker 2: and then you have ed Buck and he is not
Speaker 2: alone sitting on the fence waiting.
Speaker 4: You like to be in new places and be where
Speaker 4: nobody knew him, and you know, be the boy.
Speaker 2: That was mysterious.
Speaker 4: He didn't talk very much and you know, and just
Speaker 4: kind of give a little bit, give a little bit
Speaker 4: here and a little bit there, and maybe do a
Speaker 4: little bit something crazy and then just doesn't hear you
Speaker 4: love doing that.
Speaker 2: The difference between Jamel Moore and other victims is that
Speaker 2: Jamel wrote his problems down.
Speaker 3: Man, something is seriously wrong with me and my body.
Speaker 3: I don't feel normal. I honestly think he has to
Speaker 3: do with the judge. It makes me feel horrible, like
Speaker 3: I'm so tired of living this life.
Speaker 2: As sad as those words are, Jammel's diary allowed him
Speaker 2: something and death that he'd never received in life. His
Speaker 2: diary is how Jammel Moore was heard. It was his
Speaker 2: diary that allowed his mother to understand what happened. It
Speaker 2: was his diary that resonated with so many queer people,
Speaker 2: and it was his diary that helped the local journalists
Speaker 2: start a movement that would strike at the core of
Speaker 2: political life in Los Angeles.
Speaker 5: I I've been to jail, I I've been ragged and
Speaker 5: being many time. I've lont my job, I've lost my apartment.
Speaker 2: This is shattering the systems. The true crime podcast that's
Speaker 2: about more than Crome. The life of Jamel Moore after
Speaker 2: this break In two thousand and nine, Jamel Moore arrived
Speaker 2: in Los Angeles, and like so many gay black men
Speaker 2: before him, he almost immediately got involved with ballroom or
Speaker 2: ball culture. Jamel joined the House of Combe, the Garsans,
Speaker 2: headed by the transactivist Gia Banks. Now, ballroom is kind
Speaker 2: of hard to describe, but I need to take more
Speaker 2: than a moment, especially given the climate of anti gay,
Speaker 2: anti trans, and anti drag laws in the US right now.
Speaker 2: Ballroom is a kind of competition where different houses compete
Speaker 2: against each other. Essentially and what I would all the
Speaker 2: Olympics of drag. They have to think of drag in
Speaker 2: this context as broadly as possible. It's about whether or
Speaker 2: not you can pull off the look or serve realness.
Speaker 2: There are all kinds of categories schoolboy, traditional, drag, military.
Speaker 6: If I was to see look at you and guess
Speaker 6: your category, I would say it would be which queen
Speaker 6: realness bring it in a sports effect.
Speaker 2: I needed some help explaining bal culture in its place
Speaker 2: in black gay life.
Speaker 6: My name is Sean Torrenton. I am one of the
Speaker 6: founders of Slave TV, the premier destination for LGBTQ entertainment.
Speaker 2: Shawn is currently a member of the House of Basquiat,
Speaker 2: but he and Jamel were once a member of the
Speaker 2: same house, though they never knowingly cross pass. But we
Speaker 2: wanted to talk to Sean in part because, well, my
Speaker 2: producers and I have become really fascinated with bald culture
Speaker 2: and how it kind of forms a safety debt for black,
Speaker 2: gay and trans folks.
Speaker 6: Just growing up like a ball would be considered a
Speaker 6: safe space for black and like latinx LGBTQ folks, particularly
Speaker 6: who are like often facing like multiple layers of discrimination
Speaker 6: and marginal marginalists, marginalism, marginalization.
Speaker 2: I always fuck that word up.
Speaker 6: Excuse me another word just discrimination and just being outcasted
Speaker 6: from society and the communities made up of houses which
Speaker 6: are like essentially chosen families that provide a sense of
Speaker 6: like belonging and acceptance and families for everyone within the house.
Speaker 2: Importantly for this story, Sean Torrenton has been a part
Speaker 2: of ball culture in New York and LA.
Speaker 6: So I would say LA ballroom is keeping it all
Speaker 6: school because it's the smallest scene. LA is about like
Speaker 6: everybody's just enjoying eachself is family. When when you go
Speaker 6: to the ball everybody's love and everybody just know each
Speaker 6: other and everybody's connected somehow, So I do of that
Speaker 6: aspect of the la ballroom scene.
Speaker 2: The latest iteration of ball culture got its start alongside
Speaker 2: the age crisis in New York during the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 2: and movies like Paris Is Burning brought ball culture above ground.
Speaker 2: In the nineties, when baal culture reached kind of a
Speaker 2: cultural peak, I snuck off to more than my fair
Speaker 2: share in New York from college. That was an important
Speaker 2: part of my coming out. Sean says, it's important to
Speaker 2: understand why black and LATINX queer folk are so drawn
Speaker 2: to this world.
Speaker 6: The draw to this world is, you know, well as
Speaker 6: far as like and I'm just gonna say me, when
Speaker 6: you are a young kid and you are you know,
Speaker 6: you didn't come from a privileged background, and the only
Speaker 6: way out of your situation is through imagination. But then
Speaker 6: you come to a place where everybody is living in
Speaker 6: this fantasy and you getting all these cheers and all
Speaker 6: these accolades because you are being your full authentic self.
Speaker 6: That draws people in, and you are considered a celebrity
Speaker 6: in that community, that would draw anybody in. It's fame
Speaker 6: is what we all want. But even though you people
Speaker 6: say they don't want it, everybody wants a little bit
Speaker 6: of it.
Speaker 2: While doing research for this show, I found the writings
Speaker 2: of Channing Gerard Joseph. He's a queer author in a
Speaker 2: Storian He traced the roots of drag and his child
Speaker 2: ballroom or ball culture back to Washington, d c. Of
Speaker 2: the eighteen eighties, and according to Joseph, essentially drag was
Speaker 2: founded in protest against homophobia and racism when a former
Speaker 2: slave named William Dorsey Swan became the first queer activist.
Speaker 2: He was arrested for protesting new laws that were being
Speaker 2: enacted at the time that made dressing as the opposite
Speaker 2: sex illegal. This was the same time that voting rights
Speaker 2: were being taken away from former slaves. Sound familiar, Well,
Speaker 2: the former slave William Swan became the first documented person
Speaker 2: to proclaim himself a queen of Drag or simply the
Speaker 2: Queen Sean Torrington says, you can see a direct line
Speaker 2: between the protests and community that William Swan created in
Speaker 2: the ball community that he, Jamel and I were a
Speaker 2: part of.
Speaker 6: A lot of times people don't even have a place
Speaker 6: to sleep, you know, they walk these balls for the
Speaker 6: cash categories so they can pay their rent. This is
Speaker 6: their way to make money. Some girls, in order to survive,
Speaker 6: they have to escorre, you know, sex works.
Speaker 2: Many of the houses now have relationships with brands and
Speaker 2: social service organizations. The house that Sean Torrington is a
Speaker 2: part of now is able to provide some housing, about
Speaker 2: ten to fifteen units, but that is a drop in
Speaker 2: the bucket when you consider that the homeless population of
Speaker 2: Los Angeles County it's about seventy six thousand on any
Speaker 2: given night. Jamel Moore found the same escape in being
Speaker 2: himself as the former slave William Swan did in the
Speaker 2: eighteen eighties, that I did in the nineteen nineties, or
Speaker 2: that O'shee Sibley, the dancer who was murdered at twenty
Speaker 2: eight in Brooklyn did this summer. He was murdered for
Speaker 2: dancing voguing. That's a dance that goes all the way
Speaker 2: back to a dance called the cakewalk, a dance that
Speaker 2: slaves did. The rent in Los Angeles is now and
Speaker 2: was too damn high. When Jamel got to LA it
Speaker 2: was hard for him to have steady, reliable housing. He
Speaker 2: bounced around between friends, couches, and sometimes sleep on the streets. Now,
Speaker 2: while bal culture is a real thing and the relations
Speaker 2: chips are real, it's not like joining the house comes
Speaker 2: with a job. Samuel Lloyd says so eloquently, if you're
Speaker 2: not making two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in Los Angeles,
Speaker 2: you're certainly not living in the American dream. Now, with
Speaker 2: not a lot of job prospects, it's not hard to
Speaker 2: see how a handsome young man would turn to sex work,
Speaker 2: especially in a town with a lot of rich gay men,
Speaker 2: many of them closeted offering hundreds of dollars for sex.
Speaker 7: It is the person who has everything and offers you
Speaker 7: everything with this particular type of risk, i e.
Speaker 2: The math and the sex.
Speaker 7: Those type of offers are A young, poor black queer
Speaker 7: person has to balance out. Do I eat today, do
Speaker 7: I have shelter today? And do I engage in this
Speaker 7: activity that may be dangerous, But at least I ate,
Speaker 7: At least I have money in my pocket. At least
Speaker 7: I'm gonna be okay for a days.
Speaker 2: It's around this time that Jamel told a friend that
Speaker 2: he was seeing a white john in West Hollywood who
Speaker 2: had messaged him on.
Speaker 5: Adam for Adam so Jamel Moore new Buck for a
Speaker 5: long time. They kind of had not, I guess a
Speaker 5: very long time, but they had a long standing relationship
Speaker 5: that was predicated on party and play.
Speaker 2: Lindsay Bailey is one of the federal prosecutors who would
Speaker 2: eventually try at Buck.
Speaker 5: So essentially, party in play is what would happen. Is
Speaker 5: Jammel would go over to mister Buck's house. Buck would
Speaker 5: provide him with methamphetamine, and in exchange, they would engage
Speaker 5: in some sort of sexual play. So sometimes just touching,
Speaker 5: a lot of times it would be you know, sexual photographs,
Speaker 5: different types of photographs.
Speaker 2: We're going to get back to Lindsay Bailey, the prosecutor,
Speaker 2: but I need to explain party and play for those
Speaker 2: who don't know. In the gay world, party has taken
Speaker 2: on a completeletely different meaning. Alex Garner is an author
Speaker 2: and activist. He's also a former sex worker.
Speaker 8: Party in play is simply a reference to using drugs
Speaker 8: while having sex. Usually that means the use of crystal
Speaker 8: meth while having sex. It usually means for an extended
Speaker 8: period of time.
Speaker 2: Because the high from crystal can hit quickly, but mats
Speaker 2: almost as quick and also if you use. Often people
Speaker 2: get into a cycle of binge and crash, and that
Speaker 2: can lead to going on the run, which means giving
Speaker 2: up food and sleep while continuing to take meth every
Speaker 2: few hours and have sex for several days.
Speaker 8: And then, in terms of when it became sort of
Speaker 8: part of the vernacular of the culture partying play within
Speaker 8: the per contexts that usually almost referred to almost always
Speaker 8: referred to crystal meth or some meth was almost always
Speaker 8: involved in some way. Even though drug use could range
Speaker 8: from marijuana to ecstasy, to to kintamine to cocaine, chrystal
Speaker 8: meth became the sort of lightning rod when we talked
Speaker 8: about party and play in the US context.
Speaker 5: And sometimes Jamal would be paid for those sessions in cash.
Speaker 5: Sometimes it would just be in drugs and they would
Speaker 5: both smoke methamphetamine. But what Buck really liked to do
Speaker 5: was slam, so that's injecting methamphetamine directly into your veins.
Speaker 5: And they had that relationship for a long time.
Speaker 3: I pray that I can just get my life together
Speaker 3: and make it make sense. I hope so many people,
Speaker 3: but I can't seem to help myself. I honestly don't
Speaker 3: know what to do become addicted to drugs, and the
Speaker 3: worst one at that. Ed Buck is the one to think.
Speaker 3: He gave me my first injection of crystal myth. It
Speaker 3: was painful, but after all the troubles, I became addicted
Speaker 3: to the pain and the fantasy.
Speaker 2: You can hear the pain and anguish. Jamel did the
Speaker 2: best he possibly could to break his addiction. You know,
Speaker 2: I got to say, it's not just the fact that
Speaker 2: ed Buck introduced Jamel to slamming that's so appalling, or
Speaker 2: the way he treated his victims, it was the illusion
Speaker 2: that he cared about them. There are so many gay
Speaker 2: white men who I've run into who say shit like
Speaker 2: I'm not racist, I love black men, or I only
Speaker 2: date black men, but then every single part of how
Speaker 2: they act dehumanizes black men. I'm one hundred percent no,
Speaker 2: I'm actually a one thousand percent sure that ed Buck
Speaker 2: said that he loved black men. But here's the thing.
Speaker 2: Ed Buck paid black men to do crystal meth so
Speaker 2: that he could take pictures of them in underwear, and
Speaker 2: he wasn't really interested in sex necessarily, but he paid
Speaker 2: to humiliate and torture black men. For instance, he paid
Speaker 2: them to let him call them nigger.
Speaker 9: Seeking out men in that category and providing them food, shelter,
Speaker 9: and drugs, You know, are the signs of somebody with
Speaker 9: a scheme in mind.
Speaker 2: When a white man is paying you to call you
Speaker 2: a nigger, he ain't your friend. This was something that
Speaker 2: Jamel Moore understood. He was horrified and troubled by what
Speaker 2: ed Buck was making him do, and in the fall
Speaker 2: of twenty sixteen, Jamel called his mother in tears, screaming
Speaker 2: into the phone, saying, this man shot me up with
Speaker 2: some stuff. I don't even know what it is. And
Speaker 2: by the way, he did everything he could to quote
Speaker 2: handle his life well, which meant getting the fuck away
Speaker 2: from ed Buck now. With help from friends, he did
Speaker 2: just that, moving back to his family in Texas in
Speaker 2: the spring of twenty seventeen. So many of the things
Speaker 2: that he needed to get his life together, they just
Speaker 2: weren't available to Jamel. For instance, he was beyond the
Speaker 2: age of being able to be on his parents' health insurance,
Speaker 2: was in withdrawal. He needed more than willpower, He probably
Speaker 2: needed consistent medical care, trauma therapy, rehab a detox is.
Speaker 2: Withdrawal symptoms were mistaken for pneumonia, Lindsey Bailey picks up
Speaker 2: the timeline.
Speaker 5: In July of twenty seventeen. I think Jamel was an
Speaker 5: addict and needed another fix, essentially, and so he reached
Speaker 5: out to the person that he knew would reliably get
Speaker 5: it to him. He sent Buck a text message that
Speaker 5: said I've been missing La, along with a video of
Speaker 5: somebody being slammed with methamphetamine and a question mark. Buck
Speaker 5: responded with I believe the text was along the lines
Speaker 5: of be here now, and he bought Jamel a one
Speaker 5: way ticket from Texas to Los Angeles. Jamel took a
Speaker 5: backpack and basically everything he owned, got on that plane
Speaker 5: and flew from Texas to Los Angeles. Buck sent someone
Speaker 5: to pick him up from the airport. The driver picked
Speaker 5: him up at I believe it was about one PM,
Speaker 5: and he got to Buck's apartment at about one forty
Speaker 5: five PM, went inside and never came out.
Speaker 2: No one knows exactly what happened after Jammel walked into
Speaker 2: that apartment.
Speaker 5: There weren't photos or videos from that day, but we
Speaker 5: can imagine that it was much like other times in
Speaker 5: which Buck slammed Jammel, probably to the point where he
Speaker 5: lost consciousness. And died. Buck went to a neighbor to
Speaker 5: ask what to do. The neighbor started to perform CPR
Speaker 5: while Buck called nine to one to one, and when
Speaker 5: the paramedics got there, Jammel was already gone.
Speaker 2: For Los Angeles County Sheriff's deputies responded to a nine
Speaker 2: to one one call from North Laurel Avenue in West Hollywood.
Speaker 2: A young black man was lying unresponsive on a mattress
Speaker 2: on the floor, naked except for white sox. Tennant's name
Speaker 2: was ed Buck. He described the dead man as his friend.
Speaker 2: Buck said his friend had ejected meth. A little after that,
Speaker 2: he said his friend became very warm to the touch.
Speaker 2: It took ed Buck almost two hours just to pick
Speaker 2: up a phone and call police. This is shattering the system.
Speaker 2: More after this, this is shattering the system. I'm Sonari Glennon.
Speaker 2: When we left off, Jamel Moore lay dead in Edbuck's apartment, cold,
Speaker 2: naked and alone. The last thing Jamel Moore saw would
Speaker 2: have been pretty frightening. Buck's home was genuinely a frightening place.
Speaker 2: He had photos of all kinds of politicians in prominent places,
Speaker 2: but also there was a ray of gear devil mass
Speaker 2: gas masks, all kinds of paraphernalia. Henry Scott, the former
Speaker 2: editor of Ujoville, said they called Buck's apartment the gates
Speaker 2: of Hell for a.
Speaker 10: Reason, and ed Buck's apartment and insanely he allowed photographs
Speaker 10: to be taken by some of the text workers. The
Speaker 10: living room, there's a big matt press on the floor,
Speaker 10: there's a sofa. There are bins of a drug paraphernalia
Speaker 10: in store.
Speaker 2: Ed Buck Long had a reputation for being obsessed with
Speaker 2: black men. Henry Scott, the journalist, talked a lot about
Speaker 2: his obsession with black men.
Speaker 10: He had several little plastic bins in his living room
Speaker 10: of white underwear, and he insisted that the young gay
Speaker 10: black men put on whiteies. That was one of the passions.
Speaker 10: He claimed that he actually was friends for these young
Speaker 10: men he used. He told me at one point that
Speaker 10: Jamel Moore was a young friend of his who he
Speaker 10: had helped through life. That's what he claimed.
Speaker 2: An investigator arrived from the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner's office.
Speaker 2: On the floor next to Jamel, he noted ziploc bags
Speaker 2: swelled with water. A rolling toolbox was parked against the wall.
Speaker 2: Inside were several syringes with brown residue, a scale, lighters,
Speaker 2: a straw, a glass pipe with burn marks, and a
Speaker 2: clear plastic bag containing a crystal like substance. The examiner
Speaker 2: was able to unlock his phone using his password nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety one, Jammel's birth year. According to news reports, there
Speaker 2: was a text from American Airlines that said that Jammel
Speaker 2: had flown that morning from Houston to lax. The examiner
Speaker 2: performed an autopsy. There were no signs of visible trauma.
Speaker 2: There was, however, puncture wounds visible on his left in
Speaker 2: our forearm. Jamel tested positive from methan fetamine and the
Speaker 2: examiner found quote a notebook located in the decedent's property
Speaker 2: that indicated using intravenous drugs with ed Buck in the past. Again,
Speaker 2: reports say that the examiner ruled the death and accidental
Speaker 2: methan fetamine overdose. In less than five days after his death,
Speaker 2: the case was closed. Jamel Moore died on July twenty seventh,
Speaker 2: twenty seventeen. Meanwhile, ed Buck was a man about town.
Speaker 2: By the Thursday after Jamel's death, he showed up at
Speaker 2: a Wiho City meeting of the Stonewall Steering Committee of
Speaker 2: the Democratic Party. Now that's a gay arm of the
Speaker 2: local party. There was Buck Chilling, pretending that nothing was wrong.
Speaker 11: Than that shouldn't have happened. It just shouldn't have happened.
Speaker 2: By August first, Jamel's mother, Letitia Nixon, began contacting all
Speaker 2: kinds of media outlets to try to draw attention to
Speaker 2: the plight of her son.
Speaker 11: My son filed police reports. He's be cried out to
Speaker 11: so many people, and we all failed them. I just
Speaker 11: hope that the Sheriff's department does not fail my son.
Speaker 11: I'm asking for justice. It's crazy how the whole entire
Speaker 11: situation was handled. My son's dead and five days later
Speaker 11: the case is closed. I just want justice. That's it.
Speaker 11: My whole life has been turned upside down when you
Speaker 11: fight for the ones you love, and I will not
Speaker 11: stop until I get justice ed. Buck needs to be
Speaker 11: held to accountability for all the things that he's done.
Speaker 2: Letitia Nixon would soon get the attention of a small
Speaker 2: local website called we Ho Times. The story contained most
Speaker 2: of what Nixon claimed. The story would also contain this
Speaker 2: titbed that would bring the case to national attention, if
Speaker 2: not an arrest. It called ed Buck quote one of
Speaker 2: California's most prolific and substantial political donors, a detail that
Speaker 2: many readers in Los Angeles were completely astonished to hear. Now,
Speaker 2: while the local media began to take notice, the Sheriff's
Speaker 2: office failed to mail more this time around. Lindsay Horvath
Speaker 2: was on the city council when Jamel Moore died. She
Speaker 2: served two terms as mayor, long before the death of
Speaker 2: ed Buck's apartment. They were on the opposite sides. How
Speaker 2: do you choose not align?
Speaker 12: There were any number of issues. I was a big
Speaker 12: affordable housing advocate. He opposed many projects. He lived in
Speaker 12: rent controlled housing, but he was wanting to close the
Speaker 12: door on a lot of people from being a part
Speaker 12: of the West Hollywood community in a lot of different ways.
Speaker 2: What are those? I mean a lot of different ways.
Speaker 2: It seems like there was an eternity in that phrase.
Speaker 12: Well, I think that there's a lot that he did
Speaker 12: that was not about creating an inclusive community, which I
Speaker 12: think a lot of people come to West Hollywood.
Speaker 2: For help me understand where what would frustrate you about, say,
Speaker 2: the sheriff's deputies and dealing with the death of Jamel Moore.
Speaker 12: Oh wow, it was more than frustration.
Speaker 2: Lindsay Horbath was a council person at the time, her
Speaker 2: frustration with police and especially the sheriff reached a boiling point.
Speaker 12: It was absolutely devastating to hear about the death of
Speaker 12: Jammel Moore. The sheriff's deputies who were involved in the
Speaker 12: investigation had indicated at some point thereafter that it wasn't
Speaker 12: the first time that they had been called to that
Speaker 12: particular residence, and so not only in that specific investigation,
Speaker 12: but just knowing that there are there were ongoing issues
Speaker 12: with that residence and to know that ultimately it resulted
Speaker 12: in the death of now we know multiple people at
Speaker 12: that residence was just absolutely heartbreaking. To know that it
Speaker 12: was something that was known to law enforcement and yet
Speaker 12: and yet it still happened.
Speaker 2: Horvath was among a handful of politicians who spoke out earlier,
Speaker 2: like Mike Bonnam, let.
Speaker 13: Them know that there is someone in office with some
Speaker 13: influence who is going to be calling the sheriff, and
Speaker 13: is going to be calling the district attorney, and is
Speaker 13: going to be asking for a thorough and complete investigation
Speaker 13: into this death and the circumstances around it.
Speaker 2: One of the biggest mysteries of this story is why
Speaker 2: the then La County District Attorney, Jackie Lacy, chose not
Speaker 2: to pursue a case against ed Buck after the death
Speaker 2: of Jamel Moore.
Speaker 12: She chose not to bring the case, say more, I
Speaker 12: think I think it was a choice, and there was
Speaker 12: speculation as to why she made that choice, whether it
Speaker 12: was his political contributions or political influence, whether she didn't
Speaker 12: want to take on what she perceived to be of
Speaker 12: flaws in the sheriff's investigation and expose those publicly, But
Speaker 12: for whatever reason, she chose not to pursue the case.
Speaker 12: I called her office after Jammel Moore's death several days
Speaker 12: in a row, asking her office to help create safety
Speaker 12: for people who wanted to come forward and testify and
Speaker 12: share information about what they knew about the circumstances surrounding
Speaker 12: Jammel's death, but what they also knew in terms of
Speaker 12: the circumstances of what happened at that residence. And it
Speaker 12: took many people coming forward, including my phone calls, not
Speaker 12: only including my phone calls, for her to even be
Speaker 12: willing to grant immunity for people to come forward and
Speaker 12: share valuable information.
Speaker 2: All of this is entirely structural Alex Garner, the former
Speaker 2: sex worker and present day author and activists, and.
Speaker 8: Those structures create the vulnerabilities that allow someone to be mistreated.
Speaker 8: Because someone like Ed Buck can I recognize those vulnerabilities
Speaker 8: that the system has created and realized they can take
Speaker 8: advantag of it. Because if you're young, gay and black
Speaker 8: and doing sex work, you have no expectation that the
Speaker 8: police are going to take you seriously or do anything
Speaker 8: to protect you. There's still profound stigma associated with being
Speaker 8: sex work, with being a sex worker, or just having
Speaker 8: gay sex. So having to talk to a healthcare professional
Speaker 8: or a legal representative about your sex life is inherently
Speaker 8: difficult because of the in trensed homophobia in our culture
Speaker 8: and society, not to mention obviously in trenched racism in
Speaker 8: terms of our relationship to the criminal justice system. So
Speaker 8: those vulnerabilities are created by a system, a system that
Speaker 8: is incredibly strong. But people who want to take advantage
Speaker 8: of others can identify that and say, oh, I know
Speaker 8: that they're less likely to call the police on me
Speaker 8: for this reason. I know I can push them a
Speaker 8: little bit more with a few extra dollars for this reason.
Speaker 8: I know I can get them to be silent about
Speaker 8: this for this reason. So it really is all of
Speaker 8: these structural issues around jobs, housing, mental health and health
Speaker 8: and physical health, and then homophobia, racism, classism, all of
Speaker 8: these sorts of things are immigration policies. All of these
Speaker 8: things construct a world in which someone has to function
Speaker 8: and is largely vulnerable because of these structures.
Speaker 2: And even while articles were being written, ed Buck was
Speaker 2: still luring men to his apartment with the promise of
Speaker 2: money and drugs.
Speaker 10: He was a troublesome kid.
Speaker 2: On the next Shattering the System, Sympathy for the Devil,
Speaker 2: a Rise and Fall of ed Buck.
Speaker 10: His mother, interviewed over the years, said she knew when
Speaker 10: the phone would ring it would be the school reporting
Speaker 10: another problem. But her son, she picked up the phone saying,
Speaker 10: now what's he doing? So he was a little bit difficult.
Speaker 10: He was a very handsome young man. He became a model.
Speaker 2: I'm Scenari Glinton and this is Shattering a Sisco. Shattering
Speaker 2: the System is a production of Macro Studios and iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 2: I'm your host, Scenario Glinton. You can follow me on
Speaker 2: Instagram at snari plus. The Number one. Our executive producers
Speaker 2: are Charles D. King, Asha Corpus, Win Royo Reccio, Jonathan Unger,
Speaker 2: Lindsay Hoffman, and Sonari Lenton. That's Me. Our podcast is
Speaker 2: co written and produced by Ralph Cooper the Third and
Speaker 2: Ben Cory Jones. Erica Rodriguez is our associate producer. Dana
Speaker 2: Conway is our archival producer, Chris Mann is the audio engineer,
Speaker 2: and Lisa Pollock is our consulting editor. Sound design and
Speaker 2: music provided by Chris Mann with pod Shaper clips were
Speaker 2: provided by the TYT Network. The Young Turks Special thanks
Speaker 2: to Portia Robertson Maigas and Karen Grigsby Bates, and to
Speaker 2: Michael Thomas of the Jamel and Tim documentary and filmmaker
Speaker 2: Jace Bryan of the Beyond at Buck documentary. Stay tuned
Speaker 2: for sympathy for who That's Next on Shattering the System
Speaker 2: Wow