CONTENT WARNING: This article contains references to drug abuse.
Dr. Mark Chavez, the doctor who supplied Matthew Perry with ketamine, has pled guilty to conspiring to distribute ketamine.
Chavez entered the guilty plea in court on October 2. Back in August, the 54-year-old signed a plea deal with prosecutors to receive lesser charges for cooperative involvement with authorities.
Following the plea, Chavez turned in his passport and medical licence and is free on bond until his sentencing in April 2025. He currently faces up to 10 years in prison.
Back in August, his lawyer Matthew Binninger told reporters that his client is “incredibly remorseful” and “trying to do everything in his power to right the wrong that happened here.”
Chavez is one of two doctors charged in relation to Perry’s death.
The 54-year-old is one of five people waiting to be charged following Perry’s tragic passing from a ketamine overdose in October last year. Chavez is the third accused party to enter a plea deal. Perry’s assistant Kenneth Iwamasa and acquaintance Erik Fleming have both pled guilty. Iwamasa admitted to helping Perry obtain and inject the drug while Fleming confessed that he acted as a drug middleman.
Iwamasa, Fleming and Chavez are aiding prosecutors in building a case towards another doctor — Dr Salvador Plasencia — who is facing charges for selling the Friends actor ketamine in the month before his passing and Jasveen Sangha, a woman known as the “ketamine queen” who allegedly sold Perry the ketamine that killed him. Both Plasencia and Sangha are pleading not guilty.
Matthew Perry was found dead in his hot tub by Iwamasa on October 28, 2023. An autopsy later revealed that his cause of death was high levels of ketamine in his system. Although he was undergoing ketamine infusion therapy as a treatment for anxiety and depression, the levels in his body were significantly higher than they would have been from the treatment alone.
The report kicked off a further investigation which saw five individuals — Iwamasa, Fleming, Plasencia, Sangha and Chavez — arrested and charged for their involvement.
Court documents later revealed that Iwamasa even injected Perry with the fatal dose. His last words to Iwamasa were asking him to “prepare the jacuzzi” and “shoot me up a big one”.
When Iwamasa returned, he found that the actor had tragically drowned in the hot tub.
Prosecutors alleged that the five accused were supplying Perry, who had struggled with addiction for decades, with ketamine for their own personal gain.
“They knew what they were doing was risking great danger to Mr. Perry, but they did it anyways,” they told reporters.
“In the end, these defendants were more interested in profiting off Mr. Perry than caring for his well-being.”
Image: Getty
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