Plasencia, an operator of an urgent care clinic in Malibu, is set to be given his sentence in LA at around 7pm UK-time tonight. He had been set to go on trial in August in the case prior to reaching a plea deal
Matthew Perry’s heartbroken mum and stepdad have blasted the doctor who supplied him with ketamine weeks before his death.
Suzanne and Keith Morrison conveyed their anger towards Salvador Plasencia in a moving victim impact statement ahead of his court sentencing in LA today. Plasencia faces years in jail after pleading guilty to four counts of distributing ketamine to Friends star Perry, who died of an overdose in his jacuzzi in October 2023.
The pair’s statement, written as part of a victim impact statement lodged in the United States Courthouse in LA today, described Plasencia and others as “jackals” who exploited their son before his death aged just 54.
The new statement by his parents says: “I believe the man you are going to sentence today is among the most culpable of all. His crime I find truly hard to understand. “Here was a man who’d studied for years and years, poured sweat and tears, I imagine, into his quest to become a doctor. A long road with a narrow gate, to enter that esteemed profession. Why become a doctor?
“To cure the sick of course. To heal people. To save lives. I imagine too that the most important and sacred promise he ever made was the Hippocratic oath… that ancient vow to, first, do no harm.
“Sometimes it’s a little easier to understand when a person commits a terrible crime. Maybe in the heat of passion, or because that person makes one very bad decision.. Or some drug dealer, bad to the bone, who takes the calculated risk of getting caught and spending many years in prison.
“But…a doctor? Who trades on respect, and trust? And not just one bad decision.. 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. 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.”
Plasencia is one of five people who have pleaded guilty to giving Perry drugs, including British woman Jasveen Sangha, 42, dubbed the “ketamine queen”.
Plasencia, an operator of an urgent care clinic in Malibu, had been set to go on trial in August in the case prior to reaching a plea agreement. He faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison for each count, prosecutors said. A postmortem report said Perry was receiving the drug “for depression and anxiety”, but that “the ketamine in his system at death could not be from that infusion therapy”.
Mr Morrison told how long-suffering Perry’s addiction to drugs came between him and his mother. He said: “She – Suzanne – warned me, when we got serious about each other, that no man could ever come between her and that boy. She certainly didn’t expect that addiction would do that very thing, or that he’d be hastened to an early death by the very people he trusted.”
The pair admit they are both still struggling to cope with the actor’s death more than two years on. They said: “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.
“Many people, mothers mostly, have told me over the years how a thing like that breaks you, makes you feel broken. And I didn’t quite get what that meant until I watched what this thing did to Matthew’s mother. Still does, two years on. It’s a deep well, can’t see the bottom yet.
“There is a confusion of emotions. Anger seethes away down deep, whether you want it to or not. And there’s the playing out of unalterable events, over and over and over. As if it could make any difference now. And the dull ache goes on and on.
“Memories are like little knives. That funny, brilliant, demanding, insecure, annoying kid, bursting with talent, always the center of attention. Because you couldn’t take your eyes off him. Not when he was a famous TV star… not when he was just a brash kid. That Matso-ratso, his mom used to call him.”
Plasencia’s attorneys have previously argued prison time is unnecessary given “the punishment Mr. Plasencia has already experienced, and will continue to experience for many years to come.”
“He has already lost his medical license, his clinic, and his career,” they wrote. “He has also been viciously attacked in the media and threatened by strangers to the point where his family has moved out of state for their safety.”
His attorneys stated that Plasencia recklessly treated Perry “without adequate knowledge of ketamine therapy and without a full understanding of his patient’s addiction,” and that it was “the biggest mistake of his life.”
They said he accepts the consequences of his actions and is working to find ways to help people without a medical license and one day hopes to start a non-profit focused on food insecurity.
His attorneys have also tried to differentiate Plasencia from the four other defendants in the case who have also all pleaded guilty, including two dealers who provided the fatal dose of ketamine to Perry, the actor’s personal assistant who administered it and another doctor who ran a ketamine clinic.
Plasencia, his attorneys said, treated Perry for “a discrete thirteen-day period in the physician-patient context for depression.”
They added: “Despite the serious treatment mistakes he made, Mr. Plasencia was not treating M.P. at the time of his death and he did not provide him with the ketamine which resulted in his overdose.”
According to Plasencia’s plea agreement, he distributed 20 vials of ketamine, ketamine lozenges and syringes to Perry and the actor’s live-in assistant, Kenneth Iwamasa, between Sept. 30, 2023, and Oct. 12, 2023.
He “admits that his conduct fell below the proper standard of medical care and that transfers of ketamine vials to Defendant Iwamasa and Victim M.P. were not for a legitimate medical purpose,” his plea agreement stated.
In their witness statement, Mr and Mrs Morrison added: “And now we are left with…victim impact statements. And people all around the world could join us in those. “Even now, when we visit his grave, we find little momentos there: Flowers of course, and coins, and bits of Friends swag, little stuffed toys, batman stickers, notes scrawled on scraps of paper, and cards and letters full of emotion. Often full of gratitude. His story moved so many people.
