Matthew Perry's Assistant Sentenced to 41 Months in Actor's Ketamine Death

Kenneth Iwamasa, the live-in assistant who injected Matthew Perry with fatal doses of ketamine and left the actor alone in his backyard jacuzzi on the night he died, was sentenced on Tuesday to three years and five months in federal prison.

The hearing brought together Perry's family members and business associates for a series of victim impact statements, closing the final chapter of a criminal case unraveling the circumstances of Perry's death in October 2023.

Iwamasa had pleaded guilty in August 2024 to a single count of conspiracy to distribute ketamine resulting in death, making him the last of five co-defendants to be sentenced in the case. His defense had asked for a far more lenient outcome, six months in prison followed by six months of home detention, arguing that Perry himself was not without agency in the chain of events that led to his death.

Federal prosecutors pushed back, recommending the 41-month term the judge ultimately imposed. In a statement to the court, Assistant U.S. Attorney Ian Yanniello said the sentence reflected both the "life-ending harm" Iwamasa caused and the "significant cooperation" he eventually provided to investigators after a search warrant was served at his residence in January 2024.

Perry's longtime business manager and estate executor, Lisa Ferguson, delivered her victim impact statement. She accused Iwamasa of knowingly exploiting a man in the grip of addiction to sustain a luxury lifestyle inside Perry's home, and she catalogued what she described as a series of betrayals that extended far beyond the night of Perry's death. Ferguson said Iwamasa lied repeatedly to Perry's family in the aftermath, took photographs as Perry's remains were interred at his funeral, demanded three years of his $150,000 annual salary as severance, and filed a workers' compensation claim against the estate.

Ferguson also challenged Iwamasa's account of the evening's events, accusing him of fabricating a timeline for investigators to secure a more favorable plea deal. She argued that Iwamasa had left Perry unconscious or already dead before leaving the house, and that he deliberately waited hours before calling 911 to create the appearance of distance between himself and what had happened.

Perry's stepfather, veteran news anchor Keith Morrison, was the only family member to address the court in person. Morrison told him that he had Perry's entire family on speed dial and chose not to use it because doing so would have meant giving up the privileged position he had carved out for himself.

In letters submitted to the court, Perry's mother, Suzanne Morrison, and his sisters added their own accounts. Suzanne Morrison wrote that Iwamasa's primary responsibility had always been clear: to serve as her son's companion and guardian in his fight against addiction. She described the ways Iwamasa had remained close to the family in the weeks following Perry's death, sending songs, drawing her a map to help navigate the cemetery, calling whenever he saw a rainbow, which she noted was one of Perry's favorite things, and suggesting he may have been monitoring what she knew. Perry's sister, Madeline Morrison, addressed the fact that Iwamasa had spoken at Perry's funeral.

Iwamasa offered an apology that many in the courtroom appeared to find inadequate. His defense attorney, Alan Eisner, argued that Perry had been the one to initiate contact with each of his drug suppliers and that Perry had directed Iwamasa's actions throughout. The judge was unmoved by the argument.

The factual record established through Iwamasa's plea agreement details the weeks leading up to Perry's death. Iwamasa arranged Perry's first meeting with Dr. Salvador Plasencia on September 30, 2023, and paid the physician $4,500 in cash. During that meeting, Plasencia administered two ketamine injections to Perry, demonstrated to Iwamasa how to inject the drug himself, and left behind syringes and vials. Iwamasa subsequently ordered more ketamine from Plasencia, referring to the vials in text messages as "cans of Dr. Pepper."

Over the following two weeks, he spent at least $55,000 of Perry's money on ketamine from Plasencia alone. On October 10, Iwamasa arranged for Plasencia to meet him and Perry in a parking lot near the Long Beach Aquarium, where Plasencia injected Perry in the back seat of a car. A few days later, a large dose administered at Perry's home caused his blood pressure to spike and his body to seize up, an episode Iwamasa witnessed firsthand.

Iwamasa later began sourcing ketamine from a second supply chain. On October 14, he purchased 25 vials from dealer Erik Fleming, who obtained them from Jasveen Sangha, the so-called "Ketamine Queen", who was sentenced last month to 15 years in prison. He arranged another delivery of 25 vials on October 24.

Between October 24 and October 27, Iwamasa admitted to injecting Perry with approximately six to eight shots of ketamine each day. On the morning of October 28, 2023, the day Perry died, Iwamasa injected him once at around 8:30 a.m. and again at around 12:45 p.m. Roughly 40 minutes later, Perry asked Iwamasa to start the jacuzzi and give him "the big one." Iwamasa administered the injection, and he then left.

Perry was found face down in the water later that evening. According to his autopsy report, he died from the acute effects of ketamine at age 54. Prosecutors noted that Perry had three times the amount of ketamine typically used for surgical anesthesia in his system when Iwamasa called 911.

Iwamasa's 41-month sentence is substantially longer than those received by two of his co-defendants, but falls well short of the 15 years handed to Sangha. Fleming, who acted as the middleman between Iwamasa and Sangha, was sentenced to two years in prison earlier this month. Plasencia received 30 months last December. Dr. Mark Chavez, who assisted Plasencia in supplying ketamine to Perry, received the most lenient outcome of any defendant in the case: eight months of home detention and three years of supervised release.

Perry had been open about the severity of his addiction throughout much of his public life. Best known for playing Chandler Bing across all ten seasons of Friends, he went to rehab multiple times and spoke candidly about his struggles in his 2022 memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing. The book opens with a line that now reads as painfully prescient: "Hi, my name is Matthew, although you may know me by another name. My friends call me Matty. And I should be dead." He disclosed in the memoir that at the height of his addiction during the filming of Friends, he was taking up to 55 Vicodin a day.