Matthew Perry's live-in assistant gets 41 months for role in actor's death

LOS ANGELES (CN) — Matthew Perry’s live-in personal assistant was sentenced to 41 months in federal prison Wednesday for obtaining and injecting the actor with a fatal dose of ketamine in October 2023.

Kenneth Iwamasa, 61, was the last one to be sentenced of the five defendants who have pleaded guilty to their role in supplying the former “Friends” star with the anesthetic drug in the last two months of his life.

U.S. District Judge Sherilyn Peace Garnett rejected Iwamasa’s bid to be given just six months’ incarceration and six months’ home detention, noting he was aware of the actor’s substance abuse problems and the adverse reactions to ketamine injections Perry had shown in the weeks leading up to his death.

“Your conduct was reckless, and we’re here because of it,” the Joe Biden appointee told Iwamasa.

The 41-month prison sentence was what prosecutors with the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles had asked for.

Iwamasa, who pleaded guilty in 2024 to one count of conspiracy to distribute ketamine causing death, admitted to repeatedly injecting Perry with ketamine without medical training, including performing multiple injections on him on Oct. 28, 2023 — the day he died.

While Iwamasa’s attorney Alan Eisner sought to minimize his client’s culpability by arguing he had been deferential to a fault and would do anything the actor asked of him, the judge rejected the idea that he had been unable to say no to Perry’s demands that he arrange for ketamine to be delivered to the actor’s home and that he injected him with the drug.

“He was unwilling, not unable,” Garnett said.

Perry’s stepfather, Keith Morrison, who was among the family members present in the courtroom in downtown LA, told Iwamasa the assistant had made himself indispensable in Perry’s life but failed to do the one thing he had been expected to do if the actor slipped up and started using drugs again — that is, to call the family so they could arrange for treatment.

“You could’ve called somebody,” Morrison said, adding Iwamasa instead chose “living the good life in control of one of the most famous people in the world.”

Perry’s longtime business manager Lisa Ferguson, who said she considered her client as her little brother, berated Iwamasa for persuading Perry to get rid of the people in his life who made sure he took his proper medications and stayed off drugs, including the “sober companions” he employed, and trying to take control over Perry’s affairs because he felt entitled to the affluent lifestyle he was enjoying.

Ferguson accused Iwamasa of calling the celebrity gossip site TMZ after he had called 911 when he found Perry unresponsive in his hot tub, rather than his family.

She also said the assistant had sought three-year severance pay after Perry’s death, even though he had only worked one year for him as a personal assistant, and had expected the actor’s family to take care of him for the rest of his life.

“I’m so sorry to all of you,” Iwamasa told the family. “I’m horribly, horribly sorry.”

Perry, who rose to fame in the 1990s for playing Chandler Bing on NBC’s sitcom “Friends,” died at the age of 54. His death was due to a ketamine overdose after he had received several injections of the drug from Iwamasa on the day he died.

Two doctors, a drug addiction counselor and a bona fide drug dealer, the so-called Ketamine Queen, were sent to prison for supplying Perry with ketamine.

Iwamasa helped Perry obtain 71 vials of ketamine in the last two months of the actor’s life. After Perry’s death, he cleaned up the crime scene and lied to the police that the actor had been injecting himself with the drugs.

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