Crime Weekly - S3 Ep234: Crime Weekly News: Multiple People Arrested in Death of Matthew Perry

Episode Date: August 21, 2024

Five people have recently been arrested in connection with the death of 'Friends' star Matthew Perry, including two doctors and people close to Perry himself. Perry tragically died last year due to the effects of ketamine, causing him to drown while in a hot tub. Those arrested have been accused to supplying Perry with the drugs, taking advantage of the actor's well-known struggles with addiction. Try our coffee!! - www.CriminalCoffeeCo.com Become a Patreon member -- > https://www.patreon.com/CrimeWeekly Shop for your Crime Weekly gear here --> https://crimeweeklypodcast.com/shop Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CrimeWeeklyPodcast Website: CrimeWeeklyPodcast.com Instagram: @CrimeWeeklyPod Twitter: @CrimeWeeklyPod Facebook: @CrimeWeeklyPod ADS: 1. PDSDebt.com/Crime - Get you FREE debt analysis today!

Bettering your business takes working with the best. With the James Hardy Alliance, you gain access to leads, training, networking, and support from the number one brand of siding in North America. Achieve new levels of success by joining the James Hardy Alliance today. Hey everyone, welcome back to Crime Weekly News. I'm Derek Levasseur. And I'm Stephanie Harlow. We're going to be talking about Matthew Perry tonight, as you can probably see from the title of this episode. Before we get into it, I know some of you have a bone to pick with me. I'm getting a few emails, a few DMs. The Stay Safe Out There hats are sold out after we promoted them.

That's because you bought them all. I got more coming in. Just give us about a week or two. We'll have them back in stock, so I apologize for that. But if you want to go check out what else we have, just head over to CrimeWeeklyPodcast.com. And Derek was also, we were just talking about how a lot of people have been asking about the leather hat that he always wears and including it in the merch store. And we are, we're talking about that too, and trying to figure out how to make that happen. Cause a lot of people like your hat, which it's cool hat. It's a really nice, really well-made high quality hat. So I get

the people on it. Yeah. I got it for myself and then, yeah, and people keep asking me about it. So we will get that up on the criminal coffee website as well. All right, you ready to dive into this? Uh-huh, yep. Most people have heard the case, but there's been some recent developments. But for anyone who doesn't know the story, real quickly, the 54-year-old friend's actor was found dead face down in the heated end of his pool at his Pacific Palisades home on October 28, 2023. The Los Angeles medical examiner determined Perry's death to have been caused by an accidental overdose. But recently, five people, including two doctors,

have been arrested and charged in connection with his death. So interesting turn of events here. We always felt like there was more going on than what we knew. But I don't think many people saw this coming. I think when Matthew Perry died, there was a lot of conspiracy theories going around. We just remember he had like taken a picture the night he died. And it was like of him in the pool where he was found dead. And he took a picture of the moon and he was saying some things. And people thought that there was some

conspiracy that he had been murdered. As it turns out, not really a conspiracy in the way that they thought, more your run-of-the-mill conspiracy of a bunch of people getting together and taking advantage of somebody who was in a vulnerable state. Because it appears that Matthew Perry has had a lifelong struggle with substance abuse. Alcohol has always been in the picture for him. And then apparently drugs became a problem for him when he was prescribed Vicodin after a 1997 jet ski accident. So, I mean, it's a tale as old as time. You have an accident or surgery, you get some opiates, and then all of a sudden, I mean, there's documentaries and movies out there talking about the opioid crisis and how it caused this just string of addiction in the United States and I'm

sure other places. But yeah, it's a tale as old as time. And it's a very sad and tragic one, especially when it's somebody that a lot of us grew up with. You know, you hate to see it. The five people charged in the ketamine overdose death are 41-year-old Jasveen Sangha, otherwise knownyear-old Kenneth Iwasama, who has been Perry's longtime assistant since 1994. And we also have 54-year-old Eric Fleming, an L.A. area drug dealer. They kind of just called him a street dealer. Now, these five people are accused of profiting off of Matthew Perry and his drug addiction, which resulted in his fatal overdose. When U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada announced the charges, he said, quote, these defendants took advantage of Mr. Perry's addiction issues to enrich

themselves. They knew what they were doing was wrong, end quote. And it has been reported that Matthew Perry's assistant, who's been with him, remember, since 1994, his name's Kenneth Iwasama, he injected Perry with 27 doses of ketamine in the last five days of his life. This included three shots that the prosecution alleges resulted in Matthew Perry's death and serious bodily injury. But it's really not as simple as that because where's the ketamine coming from? So reportedly, Matthew Perry had been undergoing ketamine therapy for depression. He had last been treated over a week before he died. But when the physicians at the clinic where he was being treated refused to increase his

ketamine injectors, that's when the actor allegedly sought out this Dr. Placencia. And then Dr. Placencia asked his colleague, Dr. Chavez, for help with getting the drugs to give Perry, but it wasn't just like a helpful thing. It was right from the get-go very nefarious, honestly, because they've released some text messages that Dr. Placencia has sent. So from September until Matthew Perry's death in October, Placencia and Chavez, who are both doctors, remember, they allegedly supplied Perry with about 20 vials of ketamine in exchange for around $55,000 in cash. And on September 30th, Dr. Plasencia texted his friend, Dr. Chavez, and he said, how much this moron would be willing to pay for the drug? And obviously this moron, he's referring to Matthew

Perry. And Dr. Plasencia also expressed a desire to become Perry's go-to for drugs. So this is horrible. This is not behavior that should be happening from a doctor. And not only that, but they charged him way too much for this ketamine. In one instance, Matthew Perry paid $2,000 for a vial of ketamine that was worth $12. So the issue here is really horrible, by the way, really horrible. So we've got Matthew Perry's assistant, Kenneth Iwasama, who is coordinating with Dr. Plasencia in encrypted message apps and coded language. So he would refer to bottles of ketamine as Dr. Pepper, cans, bots. And keep in mind, Kenneth Iwasama has absolutely no medical training, and yet he still injected Perry with the drug based strictly and simply and only on instructions from Dr. Plasencia. Now, what we have found out is Dr. Salvador Placencia went over to Matthew Perry's

house about two weeks before Perry died. He injected him with a dose of ketamine. At this point, he saw with his own eyes, Perry froze up, his blood pressure, and I believe his heart rate skyrocketed because of this large dose of ketamine. But even though Dr. Placencia saw this with his own eyes, saw the bad reaction that Matthew Perry was having to this large dose, he allegedly sold Kenneth Iwasama, Perry's assistant, more ketamine for $6,000, despite being told that Perry's addiction became worse and worse, not only was he getting the drugs from Dr. Placencia, but he was getting them from this Eric Fleming guy who's a street dealer. Eric Fleming was getting them from the ketamine queen, who is Jasveen Sangha. And just four days before his death, Fleming, Eric Fleming, the drug dealer, bought 25 vials of ketamine from Sangha's North Hollywood stash House in exchange for cash. And as part of this transaction, the ketamine queen included ketamine lollipops as an add-on for Perry's large ketamine order. So customer service is important with these people. Basically, all of these people just took advantage of him in every way. And I know you have background in drugs and you were on a drug task force, right? You did undercover work with drugs and things. So this is right up your alley,

but obviously on a grander scheme, we have a high profile person. We have a very, very bad drug addiction. He's getting ketamine now from doctors. He's getting them from street dealers. It's pretty bad. And yeah, I don't know. What do you think about this? So it's clearly unfortunate. And it's one of those situations where most of us already know that Matthew Perry has had an addiction problem for a very long time. He's talked about it. I think he's written a book about it and he's gone on public forums and shows and talked about it. I think he's written a book about it and he's gone on, he's gone on public forums and shows and talked about his addiction and how he's now, he was now using that addiction and his, the things he went through to help others. But unfortunately it only, it only takes one, one relapse to set you back and you can go in the right direction for years. And then

just something happens in your life where you resort back to what you were accustomed to using in the past and you're back at square one. And it can be even more depressing to make so much progress and then still slip up and it can cause you to go even further back than you were originally. Well, if you have the wrong people around you, right? Yeah. Yeah, of course. Enablers and people that don't care about you that are just using you, which I think a lot of actors and people with money, it's like, oh yeah, I've got money. I've got fame. I've got it all, but you don't know who your real friends are. That's right. And that's a great segue because that kind of leads us to where we are now. How did we get here? We went from

a lot of people thinking this was an unfortunate accidental overdose to now, as you mentioned, five people being charged. And it's, this isn't just the police shooting in the air and hoping it hits something. They have developed cases against all of these individuals and are now going forward with it. So I really want to dive into that. But before we do, let's take our one break and we'll be right back. So originally, and I believe we talked about Matthew Perry before.

It might have been on Crime Weekly News. No, I don't think we did. Or maybe we did. I don't know. I can't remember the conversations that you and I have off record as opposed to recording. They blend together. But everybody at the time was talking about Matthew Perry because this is someone is someone I mean friends was one of the biggest shows of all time So whether you watch friends or you watch some of his work after that because he's done other movies and stuff like that

Everyone for the most part knew who matthew perry was and it just it reminds everyone I think whenever these stories happen of doesn't matter how successful you are, how famous you are, how much money you have, we all have problems. We all have things that we go through and nobody is immune to addiction and being caught up in something that you know is wrong, but you just, you're having a hard time digging yourself out of that hole. And he's even said that by the way, he was like, oh, I had money troubles. I had all these money troubles. It felt like nothing was going right. I couldn't get a job. And then all of a sudden, he gets this friend's job.

And obviously, I mean, they were making bank every episode. Now he no longer has money troubles. And I think he said something in his book like, I had eight months of feeling like, OK, and feeling happy and like, oh, I've made it. And then I realized, like, money does not solve your problems. Nope. They're still there. Yeah. Doesn't matter how much it is. More money, more problems, right? So I was thinking about it and this is me just kind of looking at it and speculating as far as how this came to be, how we got to where we are today. And what I think happened is, and I've said this phrase

before, but you, in investigative work, when you're building a case and it may involve some high rollers, some people that are big in that space of organized crime or drugs, you got to start low. And it usually means going after the person who has little involvement, but a lot to lose. And if I had to guess that person would have been Kenneth, the assistant, because he's someone, and I'm not trying to let him off the hook here, but he's working for Matthew Perry. And I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that Matthew Perry, at least initially was like, Hey, I'm paying you. This is what you're doing. Go do it. And then maybe it turned into something more, but initially Kenneth was quote unquote doing his job. So when law enforcement gets the autopsy report back, they start to see that there's ketamine in

the system and the amounts that are in the system. And there was probably some, maybe some syringe marks on his arms or whatever it was that where they could see that this had been going on habitually, right? So they go to Kenneth, they get subpoenas for his text messages, for his phone calls, and they start to uncover other conversations that Kenneth may have thought would never be under the microscope of law enforcement. So they go to him and they say, hey, Kenneth, right now, as it stands, we have you dead to rights. So you're going to go down for manslaughter, maybe even murder. We don't know yet. And you're never going to be a free person. Again, you're going to go to jail for the rest of your life. Unless you give us the person that you got this from, unless you give us the person who was supplying you the ketamine. Now, Kenneth, who again, at this point is an

assistant. Since 1994, by the way, which is crazy. 1994, long time. You know, he's sitting there saying, well, I don't want to go to prison for the rest of my life. I'm going to give up the next person. So now you have this low level person ratting on the next person up the ladder. As he should. They all do. They all do. Trust me. They all do. Unless you really have someone who is loyal to the code, 99.9% of the time, they rat as soon as they can.

And so then you go to the next person. And when you go to the next person, now, whether that was Dr. Chavez or Palacenia, how do you say his last name? Placencia. Placencia. Placencia. One of those two guys. Now you get text message conversations between those two. And just like Kenneth never suspected that law enforcement would be combing through his text messages and his emails. Now, because of the interactions with the two doctors, law enforcement is legally able to gain access to their phone

records, to their text messages. And as you were stating earlier, quoting some of what they said to each other, this moron is willing to do all this. Let's see how much, you know, let's see how much he's willing to pay. Like, let's see, like, Ooh, all those conversations clearly not meant for law enforcement, but they're thinking, if I had to guess, you know what? We have this level, this buffer between us. We're not giving it to Matthew Perry most of the time. It's the assistant.

So we're in the clear. Whatever the assistant decides to do with it, that's on him. Why would they think that as doctors, though? So that's where I'm wanting to get your your insight because you've dealt with these people like knowing how bad the addiction was knowing how much ketamine you were giving him as dr placentia injects him with a strong dose of ketamine and sees his physical aversion like the the signs that hey this guy's body that his heart can't take this what would make you feel so safe that this person is not going to overdose when all signs point to he is and the police are going to ask because

he's a high profile person, how did this happen? Where did these drugs come from? Well, you just said it right there. So there's obviously a risk that the doctors are seeing when they're administering the drugs themselves. But there was a variable that they didn't factor in. And that variable was that in addition to Matthew Perry receiving ketamine from them, he would also go to other sources and would be doubling down or doubling up, I should

say, on the ketamine doses. And that's why Jasveen and Eric are part of this equation as well, because the variable that these two doctors did not consider was that, hey, this guy is an addict. No matter how much we give him, it's never going to be enough. So as they're administering whatever they're giving, whatever they're selling to him, they're not knowing that Matthew Perry and or his assistant is also obtaining ketamine from two other drug dealers. So now the combination is lethal in nature. And those are variables that were not considered by the two doctors. And that's why now the whole house of cards is crumbling down because in reality, maybe they were giving him

enough where they said, Hey, it's bad. He's right on the cusp of maybe ODing, but as long as he's just sticking with what we have, we're good. They didn't realize that Matthew Perry was getting ketamine from other resources, which ultimately resulted in his death. I think the combination of it, where he was just doubling up on the doses is why we are where we are now and is why Matthew Perry unfortunately passed away. So is it an excuse for the doctors? No, but clearly they thought they had the system figured out. And I say it all the time. What do I say?

If criminals were smart, they wouldn't get caught. These are things that happen where they're corresponding in text messaging, talking about committing actual crimes. Yeah, but they are using encrypted, which lets you know that they know they're doing something wrong because they're using encrypted messaging apps. Well, so that gives you intent and that obviously gives you a level of culpability to it where you can use that later in court. But either way, electronic transmissions, I don't care who you are, what they are. If it's some type of communication via an electronic device More than likely it can be ascertained it can be it can be recovered By the the nerds out there who have that ability to do so so I think we're looking at a situation here where you had

doctors taking advantage of a Celebrity who had a lot of money which shouldn't be happening No, of course not. But I think at the root of all of it would have been Kenneth. And law enforcement went to him, and I promise you, initially, they went to him and said, listen, you can stay quiet, but it's going on you. Everything is going on you. Or option B, you give us your suppliers.

Your call. We're good either way. Someone's going down for his death. You decide who. I mean, it looks like, it looks like Kenneth, the assistant is going down harder than these doctors. Well, let's see how it plays out in court because I wouldn't be surprised if at some point law enforcement reveals that Kenneth is a cooperating witness. I could be wrong, but they're going to need someone to, to verify and validate what they're saying other than the text messaging. And yeah, Kenneth is still going to get charged with something,

but maybe it'll be a lesser charge or a lesser sentence. Maybe they'll come up with some type of plea deal in order for Kenneth to testify against the doctors, because I would make this argument. Maybe you'll agree. Maybe you won't. Kenneth is a problem. I think he's the worst.

Oh, I disagree. No, I disagree. He's the worst because he's been with Matthew Perry since 1994. He was his personal assistant, clearly trusted, trusted by Matthew Perry. So anything that Kenneth says, Matthew Perry is going to think, oh, he has my best interest at heart. The fact that he's the closest to him, that he lives in his house with him, that he's been with him for decades and he still did this knowing how bad it was. That is to

me the worst betrayal, like morally at least. Morally, I'll give you that. Here's the comparison that I would make. I would put the two doctors, Chavez and Palacenia. I'm going to torture that name all night. Palencia. Palencia. Palencia. I would put those two individuals in the same category

as some of the police officers we've talked about. Oh, they're disgusting too, yeah. Because this is a societal issue where these types of people are put in positions where our community trusts them. They take an oath to do no harm. Correct.

And so when you have a police officer or a doctor violate that oath, you have to pin them to the wall because we are susceptible to being in a position where another doctor like them could also take advantage of us. And so when you have people like this come forward where you're able to identify them, you almost have to make an example out of them and they have to be held to a higher standard because the amount of power that they have over our health is extreme. So, and they, they have a, they have a built-in like, um, feeling of they're like, yeah, they're like the, the, the expert, you know, it's like this. When they tell you something, you do they, and they have the ability to get these drugs and not everyone can go just order a prescription of ketamine. So it's one of those things where

you want to make an example out of them. You want every other doctor out there who has thought about doing something like this or is currently doing something like this. Because I promise you, especially out in Hollywood, they're not the only ones. You want them to see this case and you want to see what now they're going through. And maybe it'll serve as a deterrent to any other doctors that are currently

or thinking about getting into something like this. Maybe this will deter them from doing so. You know, many are probably already in something like this. I know, 100%. So that's what you have to do here. Yes, you have to stay within the confines of what the law allows. But when you have two physicians who, as you mentioned, took an oath, violating that oath, just like police officers, they are held to a higher standard and therefore they should be treated as such

when it comes to accountability and the justice system, as far as what they're going to be held responsible for and the sentencing that may come from this. Yes, I agree with you. As far as Matthew Perry is concerned, I would agree that Kenneth is the ultimate sign of betrayal there, where he's the one who could, he was the facilitator. He was the conduit to all these people. But as far as we're concerned, as far as what we take from this case as a community, these doctors got to go down. Oh, and they said that basically like the, when they're announcing it, they said, hopefully this sends a message to any of these other providers out there who are taking part in something like this. Yeah. Like,

hopefully you understand, like, you're not going to get away with it anymore. Absolutely. It's a sad story because, because initially you have a situation where you feel like, oh, it's Matthew Perry's decisions that led to this. And to a certain degree, it is, right? It is. But he was relying on the people around him and they didn't help the situation either. So it just made a really bad situation even worse and unfortunate because someone who had so much talent, so much success was still in a position in his final days who had no one around him who was looking out for his best interest. So just a really sad situation. And we're thinking about his family and hopefully they get the justice they deserve. And hopefully these individuals that were involved in this whole

case, they all go down and it serves as an example to everyone else out there who's currently participating in this type of activity. Any final words from you, Stephanie? No, I'm good. Okay, cool. We're going to get into Gainesville Ripper part three. So until then, everyone stay safe out there. We will see you later this week. Bye.