Matthew Perry Was Receiving Multiple Ketamine Injections a Day Before Death
Matthew Perry was receiving multiple ketamine shots per day and was twice found unconscious at his home in Los Angeles in the lead-up to his death on Oct. 28, 2023. He reportedly asked his assistant to “shoot me up with a big one” before he was found face down in a hot tub at his home in Los Angeles.
The new details about the actor’s final month alive emerged in documents pertaining to the plea deal taken by Perry’s former live-in assistant, Kenneth Iwamasa. Iwamasa was one of five people arrested this week and charged in connection with Perry’s death, along with Eric Fleming, Dr. Mark Chavez, Jasveen Sangha, and Dr. Salvador Plasencia.
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Iwamasa, Fleming, and Chavez have all agreed to plea guilty, while Sangha and Plasencia have pleaded not guilty.
Iwamasa’s plea agreement, obtained by Rolling Stone, contains one of the most in-depth timelines of Perry’s final month alive. It states that Perry, who’d long struggled with addiction and staying sober, asked Iwamasa to start procuring illegal drugs for him in late Sept. 2023. Perry gave Iwamasa money or promised to reimburse him and “directed him to find sources from whom to acquire the drugs.”
The plea agreement primarily outlines Iwamasa’s dealings with Plasencia and Fleming, from whom he allegedly obtained the ketamine he gave to Perry. Iwamasa allegedly met with Plasencia no less than seven times between Sept. 30 and Oct. 28, 2023, handing over at least $55,000 of Perry’s money to purchase liquid ketamine and ketamine lozenges.
Fleming, meanwhile, appears to have been the broker that linked Iwamasa with Sangha, who’s been described as the “Ketamine Queen” of North Hollywood. Sangha is not identified in Iwamasa’s plea agreement, but in a text message, Fleming said of his source: “She only deal[s] with high end and celebs. If it were not great stuff she’d lose her business.” (The full indictment also includes several alleged communications between Fleming and Sangha, including after Perry’s death.)
According to the documents, Iwamasa was obtaining ketamine for Perry on a near-daily basis. In his exchanges with Plasencia, the pair allegedly referred to the drug as bottles or cans of Dr. Pepper. At one point in early October, Iwamasa even asked Plasencia if he could pay him with “something besides cash” because it was getting “hard to get to the bank on the fly with all that’s going on, which happens so fast now.”
Iwamasa often administered Perry’s ketamine shots himself, despite his lack of medical experience (“Found the sweet spot but trying different places led to running out,” Iwamasa texted Plasencia once). Though on several occasions, Plasencia allegedly injected Perry, too. According to prosecutors, one of those instances took place in the back seat of a car in a parking lot in Long Beach, California, where Iwamasa and Perry had agreed to meet Plasencia to get more ketamine.
Another time, at Perry’s house, Plasencia allegedly administered a “large dose” to Perry, which caused an “adverse medical reaction.” Perry’s blood pressure reportedly spiked, and his body froze up to the point where he “could not talk or move.” At some point, Plasencia allegedly said something along the lines of, “Let’s not do that again.” The agreement claims he still left “additional vials of ketamine” for Iwamasa to give Perry upon leaving the actor’s home.
Iwamasa started dealing with Fleming around Oct. 10, and over the next few weeks, Fleming brokered multiple deals with his source. After Fleming first told Iwamasa about his source, Iwamasa agreed to purchase and told Fleming, “If it works [Perry will] probably want all the supply, only interested in the unmarked ones not the horsey version. Confirm with supply that the unmarked one is u.s. non veterinary supply or whatever they will tell you when you ask.”
According to prosecutors, all of the ketamine administered to Perry on his final day alive was provided by Fleming and his drug source. The plea states that, at Perry’s direction, Iwamasa first injected him with a shot of ketamine at around 8:30 a.m.; he gave him a second at 12:45 p.m. while Perry watched a movie. About 40 minutes later, Perry asked Iwamasa to “prepare the jacuzzi” for him and then said, “Shoot me up with a big one.”
“[Iwamasa] filled a syringe with ketamine and administered it to [Perry] while [Perry] was in or near the jacuzzi,” the plea states. Iwamasa then reportedly left Perry’s home to run errands, and when he returned, he found the actor “face down in the jacuzzi and deceased.”
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