California prosecutors, who have charged five people in connection with his death, allege that Matthew Perry’s assistant injected him with ketamine more than 20 times in the four days before his death.
Two doctors, an acquaintance and a woman known as the “ketamine queen” are among the suspects who supplied the actor with ketamine in September and October last year.
A doctor named in a lawsuit filed Wednesday said in a text message that he wondered[d] how much this idiot will pay for the drugs.
Some of those allegedly involved in distributing the drugs referred to bottles of ketamine using code words such as “Dr Pepper,” “cans” and “bots,” prosecutors said.
Salvador Plasencia, an emergency room doctor, and Jasveen Sangha, a woman prosecutors say was known as the “ketamine queen,” were arrested Thursday and are accused of supplying drugs to Perry, who was found dead in his LA home last year at age 54.
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A grand jury indictment was unsealed Thursday showing the two individuals attempted to obtain ketamine despite knowing the man had a history of drug abuse.
Prosecutors named Perry’s assistant, Kenneth Iwamasa, an acquaintance named Erik Fleming and another doctor, Mark Chavez, as accomplices in an “underground criminal network responsible for the distribution of [a] “large amount of ketamine to Perry and others”.
U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada said at a news conference on Thursday that the defendants “took advantage of Mr. Perry’s addiction problems,” adding: “They knew what they were doing was wrong.”
In a 34-page court document made public Thursday, prosecutors described how the conspirators communicated with each other to obtain and administer ketamine to Perry.
In September last year, Mr. Iwamasa contacted Dr. Plasencia, a licensed physician, in the hope of purchasing ketamine.
Prosecutors said in the weeks that followed, the doctor trained Mr. Iwamasa to inject his boss with the drug and provided him with syringes to do so.
He, in turn, is accused of purchasing the ketamine from Dr. Chavez, another doctor, who allegedly bought it from a wholesaler by making fraudulent statements about how he would use the drug.
In a text message, Dr. Plasencia described the meeting with Perry to Dr. Chavez as “like a bad movie,” the court document said.
On October 10, Dr. Plasencia is accused of meeting Perry in a Long Beach, California, parking lot and administering ketamine to him in the car.
In the weeks that followed, the two arranged for Mr. Iwamasa to purchase more ketamine, which was administered first by Dr. Plasencia himself and then by the assistant.
Prosecutors allege that on one occasion, Dr. Plasencia injected Perry with so much ketamine that he “froze” and his blood pressure “significantly increased.”
During the same period, Mr Iwamasa is also alleged to have purchased ketamine from Mr Fleming, a business associate who in turn obtained it from Ms Sangha, a “Ketamine Queen” accused of selling drugs to the rich and famous in Hollywood.
Prosecutors said Fleming told Iwamasa the ketamine was “great stuff” and that Ms Sangha “was just making a deal with the ketamine”.[s] with high-end and celebrities”.
On October 14, Mr Iwamasa is alleged to have purchased 25 vials of ketamine from Mr Fleming for $5,500 (£4,275).
Ten days later, he is accused of purchasing another 25 vials, which also contained Perry’s lethal dose.
Between October 25 and 27, he allegedly administered six doses of ketamine to Perry each day, followed by three more doses on October 28.
Later that day, Perry was found dead, face down in his hot tub. The coroner’s report after Perry’s death found that he had a high dose of ketamine in his system at the time of his death, which was ruled an accident.
On the same day, the court file shows that Ms Sangha instructed Mr Fleming: “Delete all our messages.”
Ms Sangha was charged earlier this year with possession of methamphetamine with intent to distribute. Police raided her home in March and found 79 bottles of ketamine and almost 2,000 methamphetamine pills. She has pleaded not guilty.
Authorities said drowning, coronary artery disease and the effects of buprenorphine, a drug used to treat opioid addiction, contributed to Perry’s death.
The actor, who was best known for his role as Chandler Bing in the American sitcom, had been open about his battle with alcohol and drug abuse before his death, although he said he had quit drugs.
The coroner’s report after his death found that he had a high concentration of ketamine in his body, equal to the amount that would be used for anesthesia.
Perry was undergoing treatment with ketamine infusions for his depression, but the amount of the drug in his body at the time of his death could not be attributed to the treatment alone, the researcher said.
In his memoir, Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing, Perry wrote extensively about his struggle with addiction, including while filming the popular sitcom.
He said he had used ketamine as part of treatment for his mental illness at a Swiss clinic.
“Ketamine was a very popular street drug in the 1980s. There is now a synthetic form of it and it is used for two reasons: to relieve pain and to help with depression,” he wrote.
He said his addiction began in 1997, three years after Friends first aired, when he was prescribed the drug Vicodin to treat pain from a jet ski accident.
During some series he took 55 pills a day and said he felt his hangover affected his performance on the show.
“Once, in a coffee house scene when I was in a suit, I fell asleep on the couch there, and disaster was only averted when Matt LeBlanc woke me up right before I was ready,” he wrote. “No one noticed, but I knew how close I was coming.”
His death was a huge blow to his fellow cast members, including Jennifer Aniston, who played Rachel Green.
“He was happy. He was healthy. He had quit smoking,” she said in December. “I was literally texting him that morning, funny Matty. He wasn’t in pain. He wasn’t struggling. He was happy.”
Lisa Kudrow, who played Phoebe Buffay, said she rewatched the series as a tribute to her friend’s death.