LOS ANGELES (AP) — The wide-ranging prosecution of those involved in the death of “Friends” star Matthew Perry has come to a close with the sentencing of his personal assistant, the last of the five people who pleaded guilty to playing various roles in supplying the actor with ketamine, the drug that killed him at age 54 on October 28, 2023.Here’s a look at each defendant.
Kenneth IwamasaPerry’s 60-year-old live-in personal assistant Kenneth Iwamasa was intimately involved in the actor’s illegal ketamine use, acting as his drug messenger and personally giving him injections — six to eight per day in the last days of his life — according to his plea agreement.Iwamasa, a longtime friend, was hired for the $150,000-a-year job because those surrounding Perry trusted him to help with the actor’s sobriety. But he ended up being the actor’s chief enabler.“Shoot me up with a big one,” Iwamasa told authorities Perry said to him on the last day of his life. After several injections, Iwamasa left him at his home in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles and returned to find Perry dead in his hot tub. An autopsy found the primary cause of death was the acute effects of ketamine, with drowning as a secondary cause.
