The final sentence in the investigation and the two and a half year judicial process after the death due to drug overdose Matthew Perry will be that of the personal assistant who was at the center of the whole thing, buying the ketamine that would cause the death of the star of “Friends” and injecting him with the lethal dose.
Kenneth Iwamasa60, will be sentenced Wednesday in federal court in Los Angeles before Judge Sherilyn Peace Garnett, who has already sentenced four of his co-defendants in the last year.
He was the first of them to reach a plea deal, pleading guilty in August 2024 to one count of conspiracy to distribute ketamine resulting in death. Wednesday will be his first court appearance since the case became public.
Iwamasa became the most important witness for the prosecution. They ask Judge Garnett to sentence him to three years and five months in prison, a sentence significantly less than what he could have faced without cooperating, but still more than that of all but one of his co-defendants.
Iwamasa’s lawyers stated in a court document that he was an employee doing his employer’s bidding and had a “particular vulnerability” in his relationship with Perry. “In short, I couldn’t just say no. That inability had tragic consequences.”
Perry’s relatives, some of whom could testify in court, made clear in letters to the judge that they blame no one else for his death but Iwamasa, a lifelong friend they believed would help the actor stay sober, but who instead gave in to the worst impulses of a lifelong addict.
«Mathew trusted Kenny. We trusted Kenny. “Kenny’s most important job, by far, was being my son’s partner and protector in his fight against addiction,” Perry’s mother wrote, Suzanne Morrison. “We trusted a man without a conscience, and my son paid the consequences.”
Perry had hired Iwamasa in 2022 and paid him $150,000 a year to live in his Los Angeles home and act as his assistant.
The actor had been legally taking ketamine, a surgical anesthetic, to treat depression, an increasingly common use outside approved indications. But he wanted something more than what his doctor could prescribe.
According to Iwamasa’s plea agreement, he clandestinely purchased ketamine from another doctor, Salvador Plasencia, who taught him how to inject it. Plasencia was sentenced to two and a half years in prison in July.
Iwamasa also started buying ketamine from Eric Flemingan acquaintance of Perry, who in turn got it from a street dealer. Fleming was sentenced to two years in prison two weeks ago.
The trafficker, Jasveen Sanghanicknamed “The Ketamine Queen,” was sentenced to 15 years in prison on April 8.
In the final days of Perry’s life, Iwamasa injected him six to eight times a day. On October 23, 2023, he administered a high dose of ketamine to the 54-year-old actor and went out to run errands. Upon returning, he found Perry dead in the hot tub. The Los Angeles County medical examiner determined that ketamine was the primary cause of death. Drowning was a secondary cause.
At first, Iwamasa lied to police, omitting ketamine from the list of medications Perry took and not mentioning the injections. But when investigators executed a search warrant in January 2024, he began to confess.
Perry became one of the biggest stars of her generation along with Courteney Cox, Jennifer Aniston, Matt LeBlanc, David Schwimmer and Lisa Kudrow on “Friends,” the hit sitcom NBC which aired from 1994 to 2004.
