Matthew Perry’s parents are sharing their grief in new victim impact letters submitted to the court ahead of the Wednesday sentencing hearing set for Dr. Salvador Placenscia, one of the five people convicted of crimes connected to Perry’s 2023 ketamine overdose death.
“How do you measure grief? Can you possibly provide any rational accounting? The bottom falling out? Yes, that. Here was a life so entwined with ours and held aloft sometimes with duct tape and bailing wire, with anything that might keep that big terrible thing from killing our first-born son, and our hearts with him. And then those greedy jackals come out of the dark, and all the effort is for naught; it all crashes down,” the letter from Perry’s mother and stepfather, Suzanne and Keith Morrison, wrote.
The pair called their pain a “deep well” with no bottom in sight. They said when they first got together, Suzanne warned Keith no man could come between her and her son. The addiction and the people Perry trusted did that instead, they wrote, calling Plasencia “among the most culpable of all.” In his plea agreement, Plascencia admitted he injected Perry with liquid ketamine in the weeks before his death, including once in a car parked outside the Long Beach Aquarium. He admitted he sold Perry vials of the dissociative anesthetic for home use “without a legitimate medical purpose.”
“His story moved so many people,” they continued, recalling the momentos they find when they visit Perry’s grave. “And he wanted, needed, deserved..a third act. It was ..in the planning. And then, those jackals.”
“No one alive and in touch with the world at all could have been unaware of Matthew’s struggles. But this doctor conspired to break his most important vows, repeatedly, sneaked through the night to meet his victim in secret,” the Morrisons wrote. “For what, a few thousand dollars? So he could feed on the vulnerability of our son…and crow, as he did so, with that revealing question: ‘I wonder how much this moron will pay. Let’s find out.’ Some things are very hard to understand.”
Perry’s father and stepmother, John and Debby Perry, wrote that Plasencia “didn’t deserve to hear” their feelings. They called the late actor “a warm, loving man who was to be our rock as we aged. An uncle to our grandchildren and the mountain his siblings could turn to. Our next patriarch.”
“Matthew’s recovery counted on you saying NO. Your motives? I can’t imagine. A doctor whose life is devoted to helping people? What ever were you thinking? How long did you possibly see supplying Matthew countless doses without his death to eventually follow? Did you care? Did you think? How many more people have you harmed that we don’t know about? We ask the court to give you plenty of time to think about your actions by extending your sentence beyond the mandatory time,” they wrote.
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Plasencia, 43, last appeared in court over the summer, pleading guilty in July to four counts of distribution of ketamine. His charges carry a total maximum sentence of 40 years in federal prison. He was arrested last year alongside Jasveen Sangha, the woman described by prosecutors as the “Ketamine Queen” of North Hollywood. Sangha pleaded guilty to her own charges in September and is due to be sentenced on Dec. 10.
As part of Plasencia’s deal, prosecutors agreed that the exact batch of ketamine that was in Perry’s system when the 54-year-old actor was found floating face down in his hot tub on Oct. 28, 2023, was not sold by Plasencia. (An autopsy later determined Perry died at his home in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles from the acute effects of ketamine.)
“Dr. Plasencia is profoundly remorseful for the treatment decisions he made while providing ketamine to Matthew Perry. He is fully accepting responsibility by pleading guilty to drug distribution,” the doctor’s lawyer, Karen L. Goldstein, said in a statement previously shared with Rolling Stone. “Dr. Plasencia intends to voluntarily surrender his medical license, acknowledging his failure to protect Mr. Perry, a patient who was especially vulnerable due to addiction. …While Dr. Plasencia was not treating Mr. Perry at the time of his death, he hopes his case serves as a warning to other medical professionals and leads to stricter oversight and clear protocols for the rapidly growing at-home ketamine industry in order to prevent future tragedies like this one.”
When federal officials first unsealed their 18-count indictment last year, they identified Plasencia and Sangha as the “lead defendants” in the case. They said Perry’s live-in assistant Kenneth Iwamasa, Dr. Mark Chavez (another physician), and Erik Fleming — a local man who allegedly acted as a go-between for Sangha in ketamine sales to Perry — already had agreed to plea deals in the case.
Officials said Perry “became addicted” to intravenous ketamine while seeking treatment for depression and anxiety at a local clinic in fall 2023. They said Perry turned to the four suppliers charged in the case when the clinic refused to increase his dosage.
According to prosecutors, Plasencia and Chavez distributed an estimated 20 vials of liquid ketamine to Perry in exchange for $55,000 cash during the last few weeks of the actor’s life. The doctors charged Perry $2,000 for a single vial that cost Chavez approximately $12, officials said.
“I wonder how much this moron will pay?…[Let’s] find out,” Plasencia allegedly texted Chavez on Sept. 30, 2023, according to the indictment. Later that day, Plasencia injected Perry with ketamine at the actor’s house and left vials behind for Iwamasa to administer to Perry even though the assistant had no medical training, the filing stated. After the meeting, Plasencia allegedly texted Chavez that the interaction was “like a bad movie.”
Chavez is due to be sentenced on Dec. 17. Fleming has his sentencing scheduled for Jan. 7, while Iwamasa has his sentencing set for Jan. 14.
From Rolling Stone US
