Matthew Perry's personal assistant pleads guilty to actor's death

Matthew Perry's personal assistant Kenneth Iwamasa has pleaded guilty to the death of the Friends star, who was found dead in a hot tub late last year. Iwamasa administered the actor a lethal dose of ketamine and helped the actor obtain drugs through illegal means.

Kenneth Iwamasa is one of five defendants in the case related to the death of Matthew Perry. The other defendants are Jaswin Sanga, known as the "ketamine queen", doctors Salvador Plascencia and Mark Chavez, and the actor's friend Eric Fleming. They are all accused of conspiring to illegally distribute ketamine. Iwamasa and Fleming could face 15 to 25 years in prison if they plead guilty. Chavez and Sanga could face 10 years to life in prison.

The ketamine injections, as it became known during the investigation, were given to Matthew Perry by his personal assistant Iwamasa, who worked with the actor for more than 25 years. 42-year-old doctor Salvador Plascencia, who provided the actor with drugs, taught 59-year-old Iwamasa how to give injections. The doctor had a license that allowed him to prescribe these drugs, but he needed the help of another doctor to provide the actor with the amount of drugs he required, reports DailyMail.

Doctors knew about the actor's growing addiction and took advantage of it, and in private correspondence among themselves called him a "moron" and found out "how much more he could pay them." 54-year-old doctor from San Diego Mark Chavez admitted that he wrote fake prescriptions so that Plascencia would pass drugs to the actor, who was ready to pay $ 2,000 for a bottle that cost $ 12. In total, Matthew Perry spent $ 55 thousand in the two months before his death on ketamine, which was supplied to him by Dr. Plascencia.

Iwamasa would relay requests from the actor to the doctor via messenger, using code words: they called the drug "Dr. Pepper," "cans," or "bots." The actor would inject up to six ketamine injections a day. In just five days before his death, Iwamasa had injected him 27 times. When the actor's requests grew even more, Iwamasa contacted the "ketamine queen" Jasveen Sangha, 41, through Matthew Perry's friend Eric Fleming, who was 54. She was selling drugs to celebrities and, as a bonus for a large order, gave Matthew Perry, 54, several ketamine candies. She knew that this could lead to an overdose, as her client Cody McLaury died from it in 2019.

Both Plascencia and Iwamasa knew that the actor could die because he had overdosed on the drug two weeks before his death, causing a seizure. Plascencia expressed his concerns in their correspondence and warned them to be careful, but he still gave his assistant a few more bottles.

After Matthew Perry's death, Sangha contacted Fleming and demanded that their correspondence be deleted. But in March, investigators tracked her down and raided her home. They found a significant amount of drugs.

"We allege that each of the defendants played a key role in unlawfully prescribing, selling or administering the ketamine that caused the tragic death of Matthew Perry. The actor's journey began with unscrupulous doctors who abused their trust because they saw it as a source of income, and dealers who gave him ketamine in unlabeled vials," said police spokeswoman Anne Milgram.

Iwamasa was reportedly the assistant who discovered Matthew Perry's body in the hot tub. The actor had a legal prescription for ketamine at the time of his death, but he did not receive it for a week and a half, leading prosecutors to conclude that Sangha provided the ketamine that killed him. An autopsy showed that the amount of ketamine in Perry's blood was equivalent to that of general anesthesia during surgery.

Let us recall that Matthew Perry died at the end of last year at the age of 55. He drowned in a Jacuzzi after taking ketamine, with the help of which he planned to get rid of depression. The actor suffered from alcohol and drug addiction for many years, including during the filming of the series "Friends". The actor described the details of his life in a memoir called "Friends, Lovers, and the Big Bad Thing". As he himself said, he spent about $9 million to fight his addiction and visited 15 rehabilitation centers.