Kenneth Iwamasa, the longtime assistant of Matthew Perry, allegedly took the actor’s car for a drive hours after his fatal 2023 overdose.
Iwamasa, 60, who pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to distribute ketamine resulting in the Friends star’s death, was sentenced Wednesday to 41 months in prison. He was the last of five people charged in connection with Perry’s tragic death to be sentenced.
Ahead of the sentencing hearing, TMZ obtained a letter written to the judge by Perry’s friend and former publicist, Lisa Calio, describing Iwamasa as a person whose “true concern was not upsetting the lifestyle to which he’d become accustomed.”
She claimed that in the hours after Perry’s death, “I received a text from Kenny at 4 a.m. as he was driving one of Matthew’s cars from the house in the Hollywood Hills to the house in the Palisades. And he was loving it.”
“Kenny Iwamasa killed my friend. His narcissistic, outrageous, irresponsible behavior, his psychotic plan, caused him to heat up the jacuzzi, give Matthew the giant shot he requested and leave him alone to die,” Calio added.
“Whatever sentence he receives, it won’t be long enough. He will always be known as the man who killed Matthew Perry, I suppose there should be some comfort in that.”
Perry was found dead in his hot tub in October 2023. An autopsy showed he died from the “acute effects” of ketamine. He had been on ketamine infusion therapy, the autopsy stated, but the ketamine found in his system at the time of death could not have been from his most recent session, which he had about a week and a half before his death.
Iwamasa — whom Perry had hired in 2022 and was paying $150,000 a year to live at his Los Angeles home and act as his assistant — later admitted to having injected his boss with at least 27 shots of ketamine in the days leading up to his death, including three shots on the day he died.
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Iwamasa’s lawyers said in a court filing that he was an employee doing his employer’s bidding and had a “particular vulnerability” in his relationship to Perry. “In short, he could not ‘simply say no.’ That inability had tragic consequences.”
Perry’s family members, however, made it clear in letters to the judge that there is no one they blame for his death more than Iwamasa.
“Matthew trusted Kenny. We trusted Kenny,” Perry’s mother, Suzanne Morrison, wrote in a letter to the court. “Kenny’s most important job — by far — was to be my son’s companion and guardian in his fight against addiction.
“But instead of protecting Matthew, he aided and abetted illegal drug taking, arranged for one source of supply, then another.”