Nancy Dillon
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Matthew Perry during 2004 Vanity Fair Oscar Party at Mortons in Beverly Hills, California, United States. Jon Kopaloff/FilmMagic Matthew Perry’s live-in assistant was sentenced Tuesday to three years and five months in prison for injecting the Friends star with three shots of ketamine and leaving him alone in his backyard jacuzzi before he was found face down in the water on Oct. 28, 2023.
The assistant, Kenneth Iwamasa, had pleaded guilty to a single count of conspiracy to distribute ketamine resulting in death and was the last of five co-defendants to be sentenced in the high-profile case. He had asked for six months in prison and six months of home detention. Prosecutors recommended the 41 month sentence, saying that punishment reflected both the “life-ending harm” Iwamasa caused and the “significant cooperation” he later provided to investigators.
“What you are is the monster who killed him,” Perry’s longtime business manager and estate executor, Lisa Ferguson, said in a dramatic victim impact statement. She accused Iwamasa of lying to the family, taking photos at Perry’s funeral, demanding three years of severance, and suing the estate when he didn’t get the compensation he wanted. “Matthew deserved to live. You don’t.”
Iwamasa’s punishment was substantially less than the 15-year term handed down last month to his co-defendant Jasveen Sangha, the so-called “Ketamine Queen” who sold the ketamine that was in Perry’s system when he died. The three other co-defendants in the case received shorter sentences.
Erik Fleming, the drug dealer who acted as the middleman with Sangha, got two years in prison earlier this month. Dr. Salvador Plasencia, who admitted supplying Perry with large quantities of ketamine in the weeks before Fleming and Sangha entered the picture, was slapped with 30 months in prison last December. Dr. Mark Chavez, who helped Plasencia with his supply, got the most lenient sentence of eight months of home detention and three years of supervised release.
In letters to the court, Perry’s relatives blasted Iwamasa for lying to the family about what happened. They had known Iwamasa for decades and trusted him to help take care of the vulnerable actor, they wrote.
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“Kenny’s most important job – by far – was to be my son’s companion and guardian in his fight against addiction,” mom Suzanne Morrison wrote to the judge. “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, and his job would be safe.”
She claimed that after Perry died, Iwamasa tried to stay close, possibly to monitor what she knew. “He sent me songs, he drew a little map to help me find my way around the cemetery. If he saw a rainbow – one of Matthew’s favorite things – he would call me. He insisted on speaking at Matthew’s funeral. He clung to me and the family as if he was somehow the good guy who tried to save Matthew,” she wrote.
The grieving mom blasted Iwamasa for lining up multiple sources of ketamine for Perry, injecting her son without medical training, and allegedly threatening to file a workers compensation claim to “pry a settlement” when it became clear he would not receive a “financial payout” from the family. She called Iwamasa “a man without a conscience.”
Perry’s sister, Madeline Morrison, said Iwamasa’s address at Perry’s funeral was shameful. “The person responsible for my brother’s death stood up and addressed the people who loved him most. That is like a cruel joke I still struggle with,” she wrote. “He didn’t just take my brother’s life – he tainted our final memories of saying goodbye.”
In court filings, prosecutors said Iwamasa had seen the danger more clearly than anyone. They said he was “acutely aware” of Perry’s addiction issues, found him unconscious inside his home twice earlier that month, watched him “freeze up” and lose his ability to speak after a large injection from a doctor who has since been sentenced, and destroyed evidence before paramedics arrived. Iwamasa finally admitted his role in the fatal events, prosecutors said, after investigators served a search warrant at his residence in January 2024.
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According to the statement of facts incorporated in his deal with prosecutors, Iwamasa arranged Perry’s first meeting with Dr. Salvador Plasencia on Sept. 30, 2023, and paid the doctor $4,500 in cash. During the meeting, Plasencia gave Perry two ketamine injections, showed Iwamasa how to inject the anesthetic, and left behind several syringes and at least one vial containing ketamine.
Iwamasa later ordered more ketamine from Plasencia, referring to the vials in text messages as “cans of dr. pepper,” investigators said. Over the next two weeks, he bought at least $55,000 worth of ketamine from Plasencia using Perry’s money.
On Oct. 10, 2023, Iwamasa arranged for Plasencia to meet him and Perry in a parking lot near the Long Beach Aquarium, where Plasencia injected Perry with ketamine in the back seat of a car, according to the plea agreement. A couple of days later, Plasencia gave Perry a large dose at the actor’s home while Iwamasa was present, causing Perry’s blood pressure to spike and his body to “freeze up,” Iwamasa admitted.
Under the plea deal, Iwamasa said he later began buying ketamine from Fleming. On Oct. 14, 2023, he bought 25 vials supplied by Sangha for $6,000. He arranged another purchase of 25 vials that were delivered on Oct. 24, 2023, he admitted.
