The personal assistant who injected Matthew Perry with ketamine multiple times without medical training, including on the day the Friends actor was found dead in a hot tub at his Los Angeles residence, was sentenced on Wednesday.
Sentencing Details
Kenneth Iwamasa, 61, pleaded guilty to distributing ketamine that resulted in death or serious bodily injury. Prosecutors had sought a sentence of three years and five months. The sentencing concludes the criminal investigation into the five individuals authorities say played a role in Perry's overdose death in 2023.
Other Sentences in the Case
The lengthiest sentences were handed down to Jasveen Sangha, a drug dealer known as the “Ketamine queen” for her prolific criminal enterprise, who supplied the fatal dose, and Perry's acquaintance, Erik Fleming, a drug addiction counselor who served as a middleman. Sangha is set to serve 15 years in prison, while Fleming is expected to spend two years behind bars.
Salvador Plasencia, a former doctor who continued to supply Iwamasa with ketamine after Perry had an adverse reaction that left him mute and immobile, was sentenced to 30 months in prison. Another doctor, Mark Chavez, who sold ketamine to Perry, was sentenced in December to eight months of home detention and three years of supervised release.
Relationship Between Perry and Iwamasa
Iwamasa's case has drawn sympathy from some Hollywood insiders, who characterized the relationship between a celebrity and their assistant as a stark power imbalance. Iwamasa's attorneys wrote in a recent court filing that he “could not ‘simply say no’” to Perry.
Between 2022 and 2023, Iwamasa was employed as Perry's live-in personal assistant. The two had been acquainted for over two decades.
Perry's Struggle with Addiction
Perry, who had publicly shared his struggles with opioid addiction, enlisted Iwamasa's help in the fall of 2023 to procure ketamine – an anesthetic that is only legal when prescribed and can cause mind-altering effects, including a sedated state. Perry had sought ketamine infusion therapy at a California clinic to treat anxiety and depression but turned to outside sources to increase his dosage, according to federal authorities.
Prosecutors say Iwamasa paid Plasencia at least $55,000 to purchase ketamine on several occasions between September and October 2023. He also obtained the drug via Fleming.
Events Leading to Perry's Death
In the three days leading up to Perry's death, Iwamasa injected the actor with six to eight shots of ketamine per day, according to court documents. Authorities say Iwamasa had found Perry unresponsive at least twice that month.
In letters to the judge, Perry's family condemned Iwamasa's behavior. The actor's mother, Suzanne Morrison, said the family trusted Iwamasa to help Perry remain sober. She stated: “Kenny knew, should he feel unduly pressured, that with one phone call to any number of the people in Matthew's orbit, reinforcements would be on the way.”
Perry's sister, Madeline Morrison, recounted the days after her brother's death, when she observed Iwamasa behave in an unsettled manner. “He repeatedly volunteered his version of events without being asked, as if he were being interviewed rather than mourning a friend,” she said. “At the time, I told myself he was simply in shock, grieving as we all were. In reality, he was trying to distract us from the truth: that he had injected my brother with a lethal dose of ketamine and left him in a hot tub to die.”
