Two of Matthew Perry‘s sisters, Caitlin and Madeline Morrison, have claimed the late actor’s assistant, Kenneth Iwamasa, left him “in a hot tub to die.”
According to a Tuesday, May 26, report by People, who obtained victim impact statements filed on Wednesday, May 20, that relate to Perry’s October 2023 death, the sisters placed significant blame on Iwamasa, 60, who served as the actor’s live-in personal assistant. (Iwamasa is one of five people who have pleaded guilty for various charges relating to supplying the Friends star with ketamine, the drug that killed him at age 54.)
After the Department of Justice determined that Iwamasa had injected Perry repeatedly with ketamine, despite him being “without medical training,” Madeline, 37, wrote in her statement that Iwamasa “had injected my brother with a lethal dose of ketamine and left him in a hot tub to die.”
Her statement continued, “It is difficult to put into words the sense of betrayal I felt when I found out what Kenny had done. In many ways, it felt like my brother died all over again. Everything I believed about the day he died—everything Kenny told us—was a lie. The idea that someone my brother considered family could betray him in such an unimaginable way is something I never could have conceived.”
Caitlin, 43, echoed the sentiment in her own statement. “I cannot read Kenny’s thoughts. I will never know if the lethal dose of ketamine was only lethal by accident. But I know that when Kenny left the house, he was doing one of two things. He was either escaping from something he knew he had done or he was willfully abandoning a vulnerable person in a dangerous situation,” she wrote.
Iwamasa was one of five people who were indicted on federal charges after Perry died as a result of the “acute effects of ketamine” on October 28, 2023. Iwamasa pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to distribute ketamine causing death, while Jasveen Sangka, also known as “The Ketamine Queen,” pleaded guilty to three counts of distribution of ketamine, one count of distribution of ketamine resulting in death or serious bodily injury, and one count of using her home for drug distribution.
Erik Fleming also pleaded guilty to one count of distribution of ketamine resulting in death, Dr. Salvador Plasencia pleaded guilty to four counts of distribution of ketamine and Dr. Mark Chavez pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to distribute ketamine.
While four of the five have been sentenced to a mix of prison time and home confinement, Iwamasa is scheduled to be sentenced later today.
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