Matthew Perry Death Probe Moves Into Final Stage With Focus On Who Provided ‘Friends’ Star With Ketamine
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Charges could be coming soon out of the death of Matthew Perry late last year.
An ongoing investigation by the Los Angeles Police Department, the U.S. Postal Service, and the Drug Enforcement Agency looks into the Friends star’s passing is set to conclude soon with recommendations likely going to federal prosecutors, Deadline has confirmed.
The claims center on “a number of individuals” who seemingly supplied 54-year-old Perry with ketamine and possibly “other drugs” in the days before the actor’s death on October 28, 2023, law enforcement sources say. Perry received “drugs from associates he met online,” a person with knowledge of the investigation states.
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No further details of how Perry contacted and connected with the said persons were provided. However, the relatively recent addition of the USPS to the investigation clearly suggests that something was sent through the mail by someone to Perry
Officially, there is no update on the investigation.
“It still stands right now,” a LAPD spokesperson told Deadline Wednesday of the Perry probe between the department and the DEA that was revealed last month. “There is no additional information at this time,” the Officer added. The office of E. Martin Estrada, U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California had no comment on the state of the investigation and potential forthcoming charges. If the feds decide not to pursue charges, state prosecutors could take up the matter, I’m told, but no decision has been made yet.
Six weeks after Perry’s death in his backyard hot tub, the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s Office announced on December 15, 2023 that the multiple Emmy nominee died from the “acute effects of ketamine.” Additionally, the autopsy report noted drowning, coronary artery disease and the effects of buprenorphine — a drug used to treat opioid use disorder — as contributing to Perry’s death.
Battling harsh habits and addiction for many years, Perry had been on a routine of ketamine infusion therapy in the months before his death. The uncertainty of Perry’s demise is complicated by the fact that the self-declared sober and clean actor hadn’t participated in the therapy for over a week before he died. Under that schedule and the nature of how ketamine is housed within a person’s body, the remnants of the drug from his last therapeutic injection would have left his system long before the day of his death.
Back when the LAPD and DEA look into Perry’s death was made public in late May, a law enforcement source told Deadline that “there have been concerns for a while about how that much ketamine was in the deceased’s system.”
A massive star of the small screen in a way that is virtually unheard of today because of the vast success of Friends over its 1994 to 2004 run, Perry had documented his struggles with booze and drugs in his 2022 best-selling Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing memoir.
People first reported the news of the latest status of the multi-agency investigation.