PHOTOGRAPHERS SHOUT
HELICOPTER BLADES WHIRR
I got a phone call. Matthew Perry had been found dead.
He'd drowned in his Jacuzzi.
This could not be true. How could this possibly be true?
I was just in... utter shock.
He was such a heart-warming, kind, uplifting person
that I feel like everyone could just turn on the TV
and feel immediately comforted by him.
I flashed back on that young man
who would come bounding over on the set like a big puppy dog.
That's always how I remember him.
He's one of very few people in Hollywood
to have ever reached that level of success and acclaim.
OVERLAPPING CHATTER
But I genuinely don't think a lot of people
realise what fame really is.
One of the most dangerous parts of fame
is all of your worst instincts are going to be catered to...
..and that is a really dangerous place to be.
Tragically, Mr Perry fell back into addiction issues.
Mr Perry was getting his ketamine illegally.
How'd he get it? Who was giving it to him?
Following Mr Perry's death, law enforcement, my office,
began an in-depth, wide-ranging investigation.
SIRENS BLARE
There was just such a degree of almost disdain for Mr Perry.
And these are doctors.
It's sickening, actually.
When people cause the death of others,
there needs to be accountability.
We're talking about ketamine.
We're talking about drug rings in LA.
And then obviously, it spiralled out of control.
Someone who's seen him nearly die
and then gone back and preyed on him for money.
REPORTER: An investigation into exactly how Matthew Perry died
is still ongoing,
and it may be weeks before we know an official cause of death.
WOMAN: He sent his assistant out to do some errands,
and when they came back, they found Matthew unconscious,
where they immediately called 911.
KATY: I got a phone call.
I got in the car, drove up Pacific Coast Highway.
It's quite far up, the house.
I think it was nine, ten o'clock at night,
by the time I got up there.
And we were met with the road cordoned off,
a lot of police activity.
It honestly was a bit of a circus.
REPORTER: Reports say his death comes after some physical activity
this morning, two hours of pickleball,
and that his assistant discovered his body in the hot tub.
I heard about Matthew Perry's death.
This is something that was very tragic.
It was very sad for our community.
So initially, Los Angeles Police Department,
they investigated, preserved the scene
to make sure they could follow every lead.
The first people to get there are your patrol units.
He was determined to be dead on arrival.
It could be an accident, could be intentional,
could be an overdose, could be a suicide.
There's all these variables
detectives need to take into consideration,
to determine whether or not there's any foul play.
When I had first read that Matthew Perry
had this book coming out, I was like,
"Oh, that sounds like it's going to be really interesting."
In the book, Friends, Lovers, And The Big Terrible Thing,
the "big terrible thing" part was his addiction.
Friends, Lovers, And The Big Terrible Thing.
You start with a thunderclap.
"Hi, my name is Matthew,
"although you may know me by another name.
"My friends call me Matty, and I should be dead."
Yeah, that's definitely true.
With the Diane Sawyer interview,
I remember the picture you get is of a man
who's leading an extraordinarily solitary life.
MATTHEW: 'I had had all that the outside had to offer.
'Julia Roberts is my girlfriend.
'It doesn't matter, you have to drink.
'I just bought my dream house. It looks across the whole city.
'Can't enjoy that without a drink.
'I'm making a million dollars a week.
'I win, right? Would you like to have a drink?
'Why, yes, I would, thank you very much.
'I'm the luckiest man on the planet, and, boy, did I have fun.
'They just weren't the answer.'
I just had no idea what this person had been through.
It is interesting where he picks out certain events
that happened in his early childhood
and how they relate all through his life and haunted him.
Matthew Perry was born in 1969,
and he was raised in Ottawa, Canada.
His father was a singer.
His mom became a press secretary
for the Prime Minister of Canada, Pierre Trudeau.
His parents were just too young.
In his book, he talks about his mom becoming pregnant when she was 20.
And by the time he was about one, they were done.
He describes it as, "They were not meant to be together."
One of the most dramatic parts of the story
is really very early on.
He talks about being put on a plane by his mom
when he was five years old.
He could not understand, you know,
"Why isn't there anybody here with me?"
MATTHEW: I was sent on a plane from Montreal, Canada,
where I lived with my mom,
to Los Angeles, California, where I would visit my dad.
I was what is called an unaccompanied minor.
For maybe a millisecond, I thought it would be an exciting adventure
and then realised I was too young to be alone,
and this was all completely terrifying.
This is where a lot of this started,
this feeling very alone.
Matthew Perry talks about being 14 years old
the first time he experienced alcohol.
TOM: The first time you had a drink, you write about.
Yeah. You were 14.
I was with my best friends, the Murray brothers,
and they got some beers, and I got a bottle of wine.
And I drank the entire bottle and lay in the ground,
and looked at the skies
and just felt better than I ever had in my entire life.
And I thought to myself,
"This is probably what normal people feel like all the time."
Matthew points out in the book
that his dad went on to have an acting career.
Though he was what they sometimes call a journeyman,
he was working pretty steadily,
and would eventually become the Old Spice guy.
ADVERT ANNOUNCER: So even if you love only one woman,
you'll love Old Spice...
He was on a television set all day.
I saw his face more often on TV or in magazines
than I did in reality.
Perhaps that's why I became an actor.
In 1987, Matthew Perry was cast in a movie
opposite River Phoenix.
It was called A Night In The Life Of Jimmy Reardon.
I still got 20 minutes, right? 15.
The film was not exactly a massive success,
but he said it had a really huge impact on him.
Matthew was the first friend I made in Los Angeles.
When I moved there, I was 21.
He was 16.
We did a pilot together called Morning Maggie
that never saw the light of day.
But Matthew and I became really good friends.
And we were really more like brothers for a long time.
As the '80s went on, turns into the '90s,
he's working as a pretty good guest star on television.
And eventually, he was cast in Friends, obviously.
FRIENDS THEME PLAYS
Excuse me. Agh!
Ooh! THEY CHUCKLE
Uh, is your name Chandler?
Hi.
ROSS, JOEY & CHANDLER: Hey.
Chandler, Chandler is my name.
Chandler Bing. Do you know me, or...?
Friends was such a global phenomenon, you know?
It was such a huge hit all around the world.
The character of Chandler Bing
seemed to be custom-made for Matthew Perry.
Please, could she be more out of my league?
Could I be more sorry?
QUACKING AND CHIRPING
Could we be more white trash?
And it was about six young people in their 20s
living in Manhattan, figuring out life.
They developed really great characters,
and the actors, you know, play them well,
so it's really fun,
and we have a really good time doing it.
So I think that comes across.
All right, well, be good. I love you. Mwah!
My name is Morgan Fairchild,
and I've been an actor since I was ten years old.
Hey, hey, hey, she's on.
APPLAUSE ON TV
Ah, Nora Bing.
When they offered me the part,
I thought Mrs Bing sounded like a hoot to play.
'What is this about you being arrested in London?
'What is that all about?' Your mom was arrested?
Shh! Busy beaming with pride (!)
Working with Matthew and becoming his mother
was an interesting process.
I'm leaving for New York tomorrow, which I hate.
But I get to see my son, who I love.
You know, Chandler wanting a normal mother,
and Nora Bing never being able to execute being a normal mother.
Because she is who she is, and she's a little eccentric,
and she's a little over-sexed, and she's a little hyper,
but she loves him.
By the end of the first season, they knew, you know, this is it.
This is going to be a juggernaut.
Looking wonderful this evening. Thank you very much.
MAN: Matthew, Matthew, right back here.
REPORTER: Who's the funniest person in the cast?
Matthew Perry. Lisa Kudrow.
And at one point, they were being paid
more than $1.1 million an episode.
OVERLAPPING SHOUTING
WOMAN: Matthew, to your left.
MAN: Matthew. Hey, Matthew.
We think, as outsiders looking in,
"If I had millions of dollars, all my troubles would go away."
PHOTOGRAPHERS, SHOUTING: Matthew! Matthew! Matthew!
WOMAN: And, Matthew, one right here.
But there's a thing going on inside that can't be cured.
Money can't cure it. Fame can't cure it.
With the Diane Sawyer interview,
I remember I felt a little bit relieved,
like, "Oh, thank God. You know, he seems like he's OK."
You say, "Addiction, the big, terrible thing,
"is far too powerful for anyone to defeat alone.
"But together, one day at a time, we can beat it down."
Yeah. Your disease is just outside,
just doing one-arm push-ups, just waiting,
just waiting for you, waiting to get you alone,
because alone, you lose to the disease.
And now I finally feel OK and feel like I've got some strength.
KATY: I'd reported on him for so many years
and was seeing what he looked like on TV, speaking to her.
It seemed like he was doing so well.
Everyone thought he was clean and sober.
MARTIN: An autopsy was conducted.
That autopsy showed that he had died as a result
of the acute effects of ketamine.
REPORTER: There was ketamine found in Matthew Perry's system,
and it was reported that he had been receiving
ketamine infusion therapy to treat depression and anxiety.
When the toxicology report came back,
that's when we knew that, you know, there's way more to this story.
That began to open the door to the possibilities of, you know,
ketamine abuse, and if so,
how to get it, who was giving it to him.
It became incumbent upon us as investigators
to determine how he obtained that ketamine.
We began working the various leads,
and we learned that there were allegedly multiple sources
of supply for the ketamine.
And those sources were people who should have known much better.
You just don't want to believe it, that it...
you know, that it could be something that sinister.
REPORTER: The question now, where did Matthew Perry get the ketamine?
These defendants took advantage
of Mr Perry's addiction issues to enrich themselves.
These are the parts of the story
that then become even more disturbing.
REPORTER: A criminal investigation is underway tonight
into the death of Friends star Matthew Perry.
REPORTER: The investigators focusing on the amount of ketamine
found in the actor's body,
and they want to know where it came from.
Following Mr Perry's death in October of last year...
..law enforcement, my office,
and our partners represented on this stage
began an in-depth, wide-ranging investigation.
That investigation has revealed a broad,
underground criminal network responsible for distributing
large quantities of ketamine
to Mr Perry and others.
In the indictment, there are five people
who are involved in an ongoing conspiracy to provide
Mr Perry with ketamine.
These defendants took advantage
of Mr Perry's addiction issues to enrich themselves.
This network included a live-in assistant, Kenneth Iwamasa.
Matthew Perry's personal assistant, Kenneth Iwamasa,
arrested and charged, which I think was quite a shock
because he'd been with Matthew Perry for many, many years.
REPORTER: New details are coming to light
about Matthew Perry's long-time assistant
and his involvement in his death.
According to law enforcement, Kenneth "Kenny" Iwamasa
administered the dose of ketamine
that killed the beloved Friends star.
On the last day of Matthew Perry's life,
Mr Iwamasa injects Mr Perry several times.
And one last injection,
he leaves him, goes to run some errands,
comes back, and we find Mr Perry passed away.
JENNIFER: As far as being an assistant goes,
it can be super glamorous, but it's very hard work as well.
They have to meet so many criteria,
and I think trust is the number one criteria for a celebrity.
Ken was living with him.
He was working with him 24/7.
When you have a personal relationship,
the lines get blurred.
It's a very tough subject,
talking about being a celebrity's assistant,
because if you've been in Hollywood long enough,
you know how hard that job is.
I felt bad that he was in that position,
and I thank God that I was never in that position.
Your boss asks you to do something,
and you may not feel comfortable doing it,
but this is your livelihood on the line.
And if you say no,
they'll just find somebody else who will say yes.
I think it's easy for people to judge Ken
and say that he, you know, never should have done that.
I mean, I don't know him personally,
but if I were in his shoes,
I would be horrified at the situation.
In 1996, Matthew Perry was making a movie
with Salma Hayek, Fools Rush In.
And out near their shooting location,
he saw a bunch of jet skis out on the lake,
and he wanted to do it.
And there was an incident, and he hurt himself.
And he was given opiates for his pain...
..and thus began a new addiction.
At that point, he was aware of his own problems with alcohol,
but it was a new level with painkillers.
MATTHEW: 'You can track the trajectory of my addiction
'if you gauge my weight from season to season.'
You know what?
I'm not gonna end up like this.
'When I'm carrying weight, it's alcohol.'
I can't believe I ruined this.
'When I'm skinny, it's pills.'
Oh, my God.
'When I have a goatee, it's lots of pills.'
He talks very vividly
about his weight gains and weight losses.
You wanted it to be a surprise.
He has a very vivid description
of the scenes
when he's proposing to Monica.
VOICE BREAKING: I thought...
I... I can do this.
When they come back the next season,
there's such a marked difference in his weight.
Monica and I are engaged.
Oh, my God.
Come on.
Congratulations.
What doesn't Matthew know?
That he's all right.
We didn't know.
JENNIFER INHALES
We, you know...
We weren't equipped. We weren't, um...
To... To deal with it, you know?
Nobody had ever dealt with... with that.
I tried to reach out a little bit
and let him know I was there for him.
Because I have had other people in my life
who've had trouble with alcohol or drugs,
and, "I'm here to talk if you would like to."
His life was overtaken by addictions
that, in each phase that he writes about,
he finds a new way to try and handle and never can.
He talks about spending more than $9 million,
going to detox more than at least 12 times.
MATTHEW: I have lived half my life, in one form or another,
of a treatment centre or a sober living house,
which is fine when you're 24 years old,
less fine when you're 42 years old.
Now I was 49, still struggling to get this monkey off my back.
He talks about going to yet another detox programme,
yet another place, this time in Switzerland.
And this was the first time he was introduced to ketamine.
And you can tell by the way he writes
that it made an impression on him.
I was also doing ketamine infusions every day.
Ketamine was a very popular street drug in the '80s.
There is a synthetic form of it now, and it's used for two reasons -
to ease pain and help with depression.
Has my name written all over it.
They might as well have called it "Matty".
Ketamine felt like a giant exhale,
like being hit in the head with a giant happy shovel.
Matthew Perry described his first treatment
with ketamine as being hit over the head with a happy shovel.
It doesn't surprise me at all.
What Matthew Perry experienced was this lifting of this depression.
And what's profound about ketamine
is it does it almost instantaneously.
Typically, the patients that come here
are patients that have tried conventional treatments
for things like depression, anxiety, PTSD.
And they just found that they were really not making progress.
So they come in saying, "I need something different."
Hi, Annie. Hi, Dr Feifel.
It's great to see you. Good to see you too.
So it's been about three weeks, I think,
since your last treatment, right? Yeah.
Ketamine is actually a very old drug, if you will.
I mean, it's a drug that was developed in the 1960s
as an anaesthetic.
At lower doses, this drug seems to have remarkable properties
for treating mental illness.
And the idea behind that is it kind of kick-starts
the brain changes and the psychological changes
that can have that therapeutic effect.
Treating patients in a medically observed environment is critical
because ketamine can result in a person losing consciousness.
We're always continuously monitoring patients' blood pressure,
their heart rate and their oxygenation status.
KNOCK ON DOOR
Hey, Annie. Hello.
How are you feeling?
I'm doing good. Good.
I really hope that this becomes a more accessible treatment.
Because I know so many people who are stuck
feeling like they have to depend on SSRIs or pills
and stuff, and they don't always work.
The majority of our patients report for the days and weeks afterwards,
they just feel like they have more normal emotions.
They're free of the depression, the anxiety, the PTSD.
The speed at which it can improve things is unprecedented.
REPORTER: According to the autopsy report,
he had high levels of ketamine in his blood,
with Perry reported to be receiving ketamine infusion therapy
for depression and anxiety.
However, an investigation concluded
the ketamine did not come from the infusion therapy,
as his last treatment was a week and a half before his death.
And the drug clears the system in a few hours.
Ketamine is a controlled substance.
It is a substance that can have legitimate purposes.
But it has to be administered by trained professionals.
Unfortunately, it is a drug that is also abused.
Mr Perry fell back into addiction,
and he began searching for additional sources of ketamine.
If you're an addict,
anything that can be abused can sort of wake that beast up.
Hollywood is full of enablers,
and I don't think that's unique to Hollywood.
I think any industry where there's a lot of money to be made,
you're always going to find enablers.
There's a whole plethora of criminal activity.
They supplied Matthew Perry with large amounts of ketamine
in exchange for large sums of money.
That really hit me, out of anything -
you know, that they'd really preyed on somebody vulnerable.
One could describe the current state of ketamine access
and treatment as a Wild West
because there's a great demand for ketamine.
There's a lot of physicians making decisions
to provide ketamine because they can.
So we see a lot of physicians suddenly open up these clinics.
I think the main thing that can make ketamine dangerous
is its unsupervised use.
That's where we have a dangerous situation.
REPORTER: This morning, new details on potential charges
in the death of actor Matthew Perry,
a law enforcement source familiar with the investigation
into how he obtained the ketamine that contributed to his death,
telling NBC News,
several people who supplied Perry with the drug
could face federal charges.
GREG: Once a responsible doctor realises
a person is abusing drugs, they'll no longer prescribe it.
So then they have to go find another more friendly doctor
until they find somebody
with no consideration or concern about responsibilities.
MARTIN: Kenneth Iwamasa allegedly began obtaining ketamine
from these two medical doctors,
Dr Salvador Plasencia
and Dr Mark Chavez.
Ketamine is a schedule III narcotic
under the Controlled Substance Act.
And a schedule III narcotic has to be prescribed
for it to be legally distributed.
According to the indictment,
Dr Chavez creates prescriptions for the ketamine.
And he's distributing down to Dr Plasencia.
When you read some of the communications
that law enforcement was able to get its hands on,
it's sickening, actually.
Dr Plasencia was very clear in text messages and other messages
in saying that he saw this as an opportunity
to make a lot of money in a short amount of time.
And he allegedly did just that.
He sets the prices, which were exorbitant.
And the indictment contains evidence that he sold,
over about a month, 20 vials of ketamine to Mr Perry
in exchange for $55,000.
They supplied Matthew Perry with large amounts of ketamine
in exchange for large sums of money,
charging Perry $2,000
for a vial that cost Dr Chavez approximately $12.
They even talked about the fact
that this wasn't the right way to administer ketamine.
Yet this was a golden opportunity to make money.
And at one point, Dr Plasencia writes to Dr Chavez,
quote, "I wonder how much this moron will pay."
There was just such a degree of almost disdain for Mr Perry.
And these are medical doctors.
The text messages,
I think that really hit me, out of anything.
You know, that they'd really preyed on somebody vulnerable.
The demeaning way they talked about him,
it's sort of hard to believe these are human beings
walking among us.
According to the indictment, these individuals
were using the app called Signal, which is an encrypted app.
Often-times, people think that because it's an encrypted app
that law enforcement can't access it.
But it's not the case.
Often-times, law enforcement's ahead of the game.
Within the indictment, there's a whole plethora
of criminal activity.
Dr Plasencia even teaches Mr Iwamasa how to do the injections.
Allegedly, you have Dr Plasencia
providing ketamine to a live-in assistant
who has no medical training whatsoever.
And that live-in assistant is administering the ketamine
to a person whose risk factors are through the roof.
So you've got doctor, doctor, assistant.
But when it reached a point
where Mr Perry's request or demand for more ketamine
became so great
that Dr Plasencia and Dr Chavez could not provide that amount,
they then reached out to an intermediary,
who was this Mr Fleming.
Eric Fleming had no medical training.
So the risk factors are through the roof.
It sounds murkier with the assistant and the doctors.
And now the go-between person.
Mr Fleming, in turn, went to reach out
to an individual named Jasveen Sangha,
who became known as the Ketamine Queen.
We searched her house.
She was a massive source of drugs.
This was something bigger than people ever expected it to be.
And when I heard the details,
I was, like everybody else, horrified.
KATY: There's nothing like Hollywood.
Fame is hugely important to a lot of people that come here.
But a lot of people come here to make it.
But I genuinely don't think a lot of people
realise what fame really is.
I do think people seek fame and celebrity
to fill a hole that that's never going to fill.
Matthew! Hey, Matthew! Matthew!
PHOTOGRAPHERS SHOUT
WOMAN: Matthew, up top, please! Matthew!
Matthew Perry writes very vividly about seeking fame...
..but wanting fame to stop his own issues.
MATTHEW: Fame, fame, fame. That's all we wanted.
It was all we cared about.
Because, at least for me, I figured
being famous would fill that great hole
that was endlessly growing inside of me.
I think one of the most dangerous parts of success,
whether that's wealth or fame or both,
is that all of your worst instincts
are going to be catered to.
And that is a really dangerous place to be.
I think that people feel that stars can do no wrong,
and they love to build them up
as much as they love to tear them down.
It's an impossible place to be.
OVERLAPPING SHOUTING
I remember when Matthew was first starting to go public
about some of the issues.
And, yeah, I was terribly proud of him.
It's hard, especially in this town,
to admit you've got any problem, that there's anything wrong.
And I thought it was very brave of him,
and I was very, very proud of him,
and that he did seem to really want to help other people
that were also struggling.
You were in treatment for something, substance abuse?
Yeah. Well, it actually happened during this movie.
While we were shooting this movie.
It's been pretty well documented that I had some problems
with alcoholism and addiction.
And before this movie was over, I left the film to go get help.
And it was kind of... How are you doing now?
Oh, I'm doing great. I'm doing really great.
And this is... Thanks.
APPLAUSE
My true message is that, you know,
if you face this, then sobriety is possible.
And I've never been happier in my whole life.
Good for you. That's a lovely thing.
OVERLAPPING SHOUTING Up top!
Matthew! Matthew! Mr Perry, up top!
Matthew! Matthew!
He was trying to help people, even when he was struggling.
Even in the midst of his own pain,
he tried to reach out to other people.
PHOTOGRAPHER: Matthew, right here please?
All the way over. There you go. And that smile, Matt.
OVERLAPPING CONVERSATION
The night I went into AA, Matthew brought me in.
The whole first year I was sober, we went to meetings together.
And he was such a great...
I got to tell him this. He was just...
As a sober person, he was so caring and giving
and wise, and he totally helped me get sober.
MATTHEW: I hadn't been there for anyone for so long,
my addiction being my best friend and my evil friend
and my punisher and my lover all in one.
My big, terrible thing.
I sensed an awakening.
That I was here for more than this big, terrible thing.
That I could help people, love them,
because of how far down the scale I had gone.
I had a story to tell,
a story that could really help people.
And helping others had become the answer for me.
He got a lot of personal satisfaction,
pleasure, almost, from helping other people.
Loved helping people, loved the feeling that it brought him.
It's lovely to have you. I've been looking forward to this.
Congratulations on the book.
I really enjoyed it. Thank you very much.
How's the process been of just talking about it?
It's been... What it's all about is helping people.
And I've heard already five stories of people that read the book
and checked into treatment.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
We first started reporting on Matthew Perry
around the time of the Friends reunion.
Rumours were circulating.
Everyone was very excited.
Matty! Oh, my God. Flooshie! Hi.
JENNIFER: Could you be any later? MATT: Hey.
KATY: 'Matthew Perry is a little more low key,
'and he was more removed from the rest of the cast.'
How are you, bud? Good.
Look at all of this. Isn't it crazy?
DEBORAH: 'He may not have looked great.'
He may have seemed a little off.
But the fact that he was there, and he was with all those guys.
The cast of Friends, everybody!
APPLAUSE
It was like when your favourite rock band gets back together.
"Oh, thank God!"
You know, that's that feeling that all these people are together.
To me, I felt like I was going to die
if they didn't laugh.
And it's not healthy, for sure.
But I would sometimes say a line, and they wouldn't laugh,
and I would sweat and just go into convulsions.
He'd not been seen on screen in many years.
He was obviously somebody vulnerable.
ANNA: They say that no matter how long you're stopped,
your disease is doing push-ups.
You can have 30 years of having done everything right.
And if one day, it occurs to you that this would be OK to do,
and you do it, it can kill you.
MARTIN: Allegedly, Dr Plasencia would arrange with Mr Perry
different locations to meet to provide the ketamine.
On one occasion, they meet in a parking lot in Long Beach.
And he administers, in the back of a car, ketamine.
Doctors are not supposed to inject people
in the back of parking lots.
A trained doctor, like Dr Plasencia, knew much better.
One of the overall themes of our indictment
is that all these defendants should have known better.
They were taking advantage of an individual
and letting their greed drive them to endanger Mr Perry's life.
What should have happened at that point
was, first of all, been monitoring his vitals.
But more importantly, they should have made sure
that he was not near anything that could cause him harm.
When you're not in control of your body,
you're at risk of doing harm to yourself.
These are the parts of the story
that then become even more disturbing.
Someone who's seen him nearly die,
and then gone back and preyed on him for money.
Dr Plasencia had numerous red flags that were flashing in front of him.
The allegations show he's providing the ketamine.
He's injecting Mr Perry in parking lots.
He's seeing Mr Perry freeze up.
At one point, he tells another patient
that Mr Perry is, quote, "spiralling out of control".
But he does nothing about this.
He allegedly continues to provide ketamine
to Mr Perry's live-in assistant,
which is then going to be administered to Mr Perry.
According to the indictment, it reached a point
where Mr Perry's request or demand for the ketamine
became so great,
Dr Plasencia could not provide that amount,
and then they go beyond that scope to another distributor.
That's when they encountered Eric Fleming
and the Ketamine Queen, Jasveen Sangha.
REPORTER: Jasveen Sangha, aka the Ketamine Queen,
is accused of providing the doses of the drug
that actually killed Perry.
According to the indictment,
Sangha was an illegal narcotics dealer
in the North Hollywood area.
And she was distributing a variety of different drugs,
one of them being ketamine.
The evidence showed she sold about 50 vials of ketamine
over two weeks for about $11,000 to Mr Perry.
Well, you may have heard the nickname Ketamine Queen
in association with the overdose death of actor Matthew Perry.
Now, another family is coming forward.
They say she sold the drugs that killed their loved one.
This case involved not just one, but two victims.
Certainly, the well-known victim of Matthew Perry,
but also Cody McLaury, who we can't forget.
In 2019, Jasveen Sangha
allegedly sold ketamine to Cody McLaury,
who died as a result.
Then one of Cody's family members sent a message to Ms Sangha
telling her her brother had died as a result of ketamine.
Law enforcement now sees that there's this history.
In fact, they discover that after the other death
is where Jasveen had Googled
whether or not ketamine could cause somebody's death.
So it goes to show this kind of consciousness of guilt.
When we searched her house, it wasn't just ketamine.
We found cocaine.
We found bottles of Xanax, thousands of methamphetamine pills.
We found drug ledgers, scales.
The evidence showed she was a massive source of drugs.
REPORTER: When she was growing up in the posh LA suburb
of Calabasas, California, home of the Kardashians,
she went to one of the UC colleges.
She went to grad school in England, came back with an MBA,
but she kind of went astray.
REPORTER: Her high-end lifestyle also included private jets,
vacations at ocean-front resorts and posing with celebrities.
When you're dealing drugs at the level
that Jasveen supposedly was, it's very lucrative.
And so you've got this rather luxurious lifestyle.
REPORTER: Sangha, who earned a reputation in Los Angeles
as a ketamine queen, could get life in prison.
Authorities say that she ran a narcotics operation
from her North Hollywood apartment
and had a reputation as a celebrity drug dealer,
boasting of relationships with celebrities
and lavish vacations across the globe.
MAN: Guys, don't push! OVERLAPPING SHOUTING
Mr Perry brought this whole thing to the forefront
because of his celebrity status.
If Mr Perry had not been who he was,
this may not have gotten the attention that it needed
in order to expose those people.
Something was not quite right, and the tell-tale signs were there.
We did hear that he liked to get high in the Jacuzzi.
He loved to call himself "Mattman."
He was a huge fan of Batman,
and he nicknamed himself "Mattman."
He felt powerful. He felt invincible.
And when he was high, those are the sort of things he would say.
People who have been following Matthew Perry for years,
they probably sensed that this was strange.
So, as we get to those final days, he's seeking more ketamine.
Obviously, it spiralled out of control.
Kenneth admitted Matthew had asked him
to, "Shoot me up with a big one."
And then he went off to a run errands.
He was the one that delivered the fatal dose.
He just kind of seemed like that funny friend
that everybody has when he played Chandler.
So I guess I did kind of know him just a little bit, it felt like.
So, yeah.
You don't know him, but you feel like you do know him,
because it's, you know... It was really heartbreaking.
It's weird - we're strangers, so to be so sad about someone
you don't even really know, you know, in person,
that's how much of an impact.
You know, I feel like I wish... I wonder if he knew,
you know, that he meant that much to so many people.
My understanding was he ended up drowning.
If anyone was present, they should not have let him be anywhere near
a tub or a pool nearby.
He just lived to laugh, and...
..every night, he would... He was like a genius.
He would weave... He would start to weave comedy threads together.
Most nights you spent with Matthew, you were crying laughing by the end.
Um, I really loved him.
A lot of us who were close to him
felt like we lost him to drugs and alcohol,
um, a long time ago.
It's one of the terrible things about this disease
is it just takes away the person you... you love.
After Mr Perry died,
you have Jasveen Sangha allegedly telling Mr Fleming,
"Delete all our messages."
They knew that what they did was wrong,
but they did it anyways
and recklessly caused Mr Perry's death.
Clearly, there's a consciousness of guilt taking place.
That's very powerful.
Because if you're working legitimately,
you don't need to go back and cover your tracks.
You know, you can just see there in the indictment
that these people were like, "Holy shit, we're caught."
And so the house of cards came crumbling down.
We all knew that arrests were coming.
Obviously, the police had been investigating for a long time.
We knew people were being questioned,
that it seemed like a drug ring.
We just didn't know who exactly was going to be arrested.
The two lead defendants in this case
are defendants Salvador Plasencia
and defendant Jasveen Sangha.
First, I'll talk about defendant Plasencia.
Defendant Plasencia was a medical doctor.
He worked with another medical doctor,
defendant Mark Chavez, to obtain ketamine.
He then worked with Mr Perry's live-in assistant,
defendant Kenneth Iwamasa,
to distribute that ketamine to Mr Perry.
I am not going to have very many comments for you today.
Main reason is because there are other defendants in this case.
But he's incredibly remorseful that at the end of the day,
someone who was trying to seek treatment died.
The defendants have all been charged.
Three of them have pled guilty and will be cooperating.
They want to mitigate the amount of years
that they're likely to do by cooperating with the government.
Two remain - the two main defendants -
Dr Plasencia and Ms Jasveen Sangha.
My client never met Matthew Perry,
had nothing to do with Matthew Perry.
And all the supposed rumours otherwise
are just that, urban legend.
This theory that the so-called fatal dose
is somehow linked to my client is absolute garbage.
It's very important for us to bring charges in those instances.
We brought charges not just involving Mr Perry,
but also Mr McLaury's death as well.
This case was very important to us to bring justice to the family.
It's important they be given closure.
In the past, we used to call these things "overdose deaths"
and do more blaming of the victim.
We don't do that any more.
We blame the drug dealers, the drug sellers,
for taking advantage of those addiction issues
to cause death or serious injury.
And that's why we bring these cases.
The big takeaway from this case
is that when people involved in reckless activity,
whether that be drug dealing or other activity,
cause the death of others, there needs to be accountability.
He was such a heart-warming,
kind, uplifting person
that I feel like everyone could just turn on the TV
and feel immediately comforted by him.
I lost a friend in multiple ways.
And what's amazing is the outpouring from the fans
who lost a friend of theirs too.
And I hope wherever he is, he feels it.
The show is so great because you don't even know them,
but you feel like they're your friends.
And so he was my favourite one
because he just made me laugh all the time.
So this... this is not easy.
So incredibly sad that this story has become so big.
We're talking about ketamine,
we're talking about drug rings in LA
and how medical malpractice is everywhere,
that we're really forgetting this story is about one man,
and one man who simply wanted to be happy.
People are just forgetting who he was
and that he will be missed.
SUZANNE: If it doesn't stop, we're going to lose so many people.
He made it a big focus of his life to help other people.
It's clearly the work of your heart, and for him.
But what he taught the world is that no amount of money
will cure an addict.
It needs something else. And that's...
Yeah, that's what we're trying to do.
OVERLAPPING SHOUTING AND CHEERING
JENNIFER: I think the greatest gift that Matthew offered
is sharing his personal struggle with pain and addiction.
And I feel like he did that
because he really did want to help a lot of people.
COURTENEY: I'm so thankful I got to work
so closely with him for so many years.
He visits me a lot, if we believe in that.
I know you're a spiritual person, so you still feel his presence?
Yeah, I sense Matthew's around, for sure.
KATY: I think Matthew Perry's legacy is split in two parts.
On one side, his legacy will be
this is where you don't want to end up,
you know, if you're struggling with drug abuse.
And then I think on the flip side,
he's trapped in time, almost, as Chandler Bing.
Matthew Perry is the funniest person in the whole world.
On the planet. Thank you very much.
That's what keeps us an ensemble. I mean that, actually.
I'm saying it as a joke, and I absolutely mean it.
Ha! All right. We all laugh at Matthew's jokes.
There are very few things in entertainment
that are as ubiquitous as Friends.
MAN: Are you really actually friends?
Yes, for the last time, we are all actually good friends. Thank you.
Thanks very much. Thank you very much.
The way the actors and the characters and the ensemble
touched people's lives, made people feel like they had friends,
even if they were alone and feeling lonely.
In the show, we see him finally settle down with Monica.
And you know, I think they end up having twins.
I think there is a sense
of he never got Chandler Bing's happy ending.
Hey. ROSS AND RACHEL: Hi.
THEY GASP
Hey, so what is the big surprise?
HE GASPS
OVERLAPPING CONVERSATION
OK, OK, OK. Awkward question.
The hospital knows you took two, right?
Yes, it's twins.
Matthew, one more. Eyes right here.
MORGAN: It was always interesting to watch Matthew.
He didn't seem like he was acting.
It seemed like he really was Chandler.
Oh! SHE GASPS
Agh!
Oh!
Matthew's legacy is always going to be
the friendship that he and the cast represented
to people all over the world.
His legacy will be one of hope and joy
and friendship and love.