Court Grants Landlord’s Petition to Evict Ed Buck from His Laurel Avenue Apartment

Ed Buck is out. 

An L.A. County District Court judge has granted a petition by the lawyer for David Shane Enterprises that will let it proceed with the eviction of Buck from his apartment at 1234 N. Laurel Ave.

Shane Enterprises filed a lawsuit 0n Oct. 3 seeking to evict Buck, citing a variety of issues including nuisance behavior, drug-related activity in Buck’s apartment, and the drug-related deaths there of two gay African-American men. Those deaths, and allegations that Buck paid other young African-American sex workers to do drugs with him at his apartment, were reported by news organizations around the world that called out his status as an affluent gay white man who was a frequent donor to Democratic Party candidates.  

Buck currently is housed in the federal Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown Los Angeles awaiting trial in August 2020 on federal charges of providing drugs resulting in death and three counts of distributing methamphetamine. The deaths are those of Gemmel Moore, 26, a young black sex-worker, on July 27, 2017, and Timothy Dean, 50, also black, who had worked at Saks Fifth Avenue in Beverly Hills and was found dead in Buck’s apartment on Jan. 7 of this year.

Those deaths sparked a number of protests outside the Laurel Avenue apartment building that attracted Los Angeles television crews and reporters from publications such as the Los Angeles Times the U.K.’s Daily Mail.  Buck was often inside his apartment, unit No. 17, during the demonstrations and covered his second-floor windows with bedsheets while they took place.

Buck has been in the one-bedroom, rent-stabilized apartment since April 1, 1993. It is not clear what rent he was paying.  While Buck has been described as wealthy, his apartment apparently was quite modest. Photos taken there by other sex workers show a nearly empty living room with a couch and a mattress on the floor.

Buck fought the eviction and was represented by Seymour Amster, the lawyer known for having represented Lonnie David Franklin Jr., better known by the nickname Grim Sleeper, who was convicted of having committed at least ten murders around Los Angeles from 1988 to 2002.  WEHOville has been unable to reach Amster for a comment on the eviction decision.

Shane Enterprises was represented by Ryan Block of Dennis P. Block & Associates.  Dennis Block said the next steps are getting rid of Buck’s possessions, which will be handed over to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

The eviction is likely to please Buck’s neighbors, who petitioned Shane Enterprises after the Jan. 7 death of Timothy Dean.  Christopher Shane responded with a letter citing the difficulty of evicting a tenant in California. “Under the law, a suspect/defendant is ‘presumed innocent until proven guilty, beyond a reasonable doubt.’ Attempts to evict a suspect who is presumed innocent will likely be met with a vigorous defense and retaliatory action,” he wrote. “If an action to evict is initiated, we want reasonable assurances that we will prevail.”