{"id":328125,"date":"2025-12-03T14:23:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-03T14:23:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/328125\/"},"modified":"2025-12-03T14:23:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-03T14:23:10","slug":"matthew-perrys-parents-write-emotional-letters-for-doctors-sentencing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/328125\/","title":{"rendered":"Matthew Perry’s Parents Write Emotional Letters for Doctor’s Sentencing"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tMatthew Perry<\/a>\u2019s 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<\/a> of crimes connected to Perry\u2019s 2023 ketamine<\/a> overdose death.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHow 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,\u201d the letter from Perry\u2019s mother and stepfather, Suzanne and Keith Morrison, wrote.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe pair called their pain a \u201cdeep well\u201d 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 \u201camong the most culpable of all.\u201d 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 \u201cwithout a legitimate medical purpose.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHis story moved so many people,\u201d they continued, recalling the momentos they find when they visit Perry\u2019s grave. \u201cAnd he wanted, needed, deserved..a third act. It was ..in the planning. And then, those jackals.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cNo one alive and in touch with the world at all could have been unaware of Matthew\u2019s struggles. But this doctor conspired to break his most important vows, repeatedly, sneaked through the night to meet his victim in secret,\u201d the Morrisons wrote. \u201cFor what, a few thousand dollars? So he could feed on the vulnerability of our son\u2026and crow, as he did so, with that revealing question: \u2018I wonder how much this moron will pay. Let\u2019s find out.\u2019 Some things are very hard to understand.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\tPerry\u2019s father and stepmother, John and Debby Perry, wrote that Plasencia \u201cdidn\u2019t deserve to hear\u201d their feelings. They called the late actor \u201ca 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cMatthew\u2019s recovery counted on you saying NO. Your motives? I can\u2019t 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\u2019t 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,\u201d they wrote.<\/p>\n

\n\tPlasencia, 43, last appeared in court over the summer, pleading guilty in July<\/a> 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<\/a> alongside Jasveen Sangha, the woman described by prosecutors as the \u201cKetamine Queen\u201d of North Hollywood. Sangha pleaded guilty<\/a> to her own charges in September and is due to be sentenced on Dec. 10.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs part of Plasencia\u2019s deal, prosecutors agreed that the exact batch of ketamine that was in Perry\u2019s system when the 54-year-old actor was found floating face down in his hot tub<\/a> on Oct. 28, 2023, was not sold by Plasencia. (An autopsy later determined<\/a> Perry died at his home in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles from the acute effects of ketamine.)<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cDr. 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,\u201d the doctor\u2019s lawyer, Karen L. Goldstein, said in a statement previously shared with Rolling Stone. \u201cDr. Plasencia intends to voluntarily surrender his medical license, acknowledging his failure to protect Mr. Perry, a patient who was especially vulnerable due to addiction. \u2026While 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\tWhen federal officials first unsealed their 18-count indictment last year, they identified Plasencia and Sangha as the \u201clead defendants\u201d in the case. They said Perry\u2019s live-in assistant Kenneth Iwamasa, Dr. Mark Chavez (another physician), and Erik Fleming \u2014 a local man who allegedly acted as a go-between for Sangha in ketamine sales to Perry \u2014 already had agreed to plea deals in the case.<\/p>\n

\n\tOfficials said Perry \u201cbecame addicted\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

\n\tAccording 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\u2019s life. The doctors charged Perry $2,000 for a single vial that cost Chavez approximately $12, officials said.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\u201cI wonder how much this moron will pay?\u2026[Let\u2019s] find out,\u201d Plasencia allegedly texted Chavez on Sept. 30, 2023, according to the indictment. Later that day, Plasencia injected Perry with ketamine at the actor\u2019s 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 \u201clike a bad movie.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tChavez 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Matthew Perry\u2019s parents are sharing their grief in new victim impact letters submitted to the court ahead of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":328126,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[236,2160,28037,88,63250,28157],"class_list":["post-328125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-controversy","tag-courts-and-crime","tag-entertainment","tag-ketamine","tag-matthew-perry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=328125"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328125\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/328126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=328125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=328125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=328125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}