Main doctor charged in actor Matthew Perry overdose to plead guilty
The main doctor charged in connection with the drug overdose of 'Friends' star Matthew Perry is expected to enter a guilty plea in the coming weeks, the US Justice Department said Monday. Salvador Plasencia 'has agreed to plead guilty to four counts of distribution of ketamine, which carries a statutory maximum sentence of 40 years in federal prison,' the department said in a statement. The second doctor in the case, Mark Chavez, pleaded guilty last October to conspiring to distribute ketamine in the weeks before the actor was found dead in the hot tub of his Los Angeles home in 2023.
Perry's lengthy struggles with substance addiction were well-documented, but his death at age 54 sent shockwaves through the global legions of 'Friends' fans. A criminal investigation was launched soon after an autopsy discovered he had high levels of ketamine - an anesthetic - in his system. Plasencia allegedly bought ketamine off Chavez and sold it to the American-Canadian actor at hugely inflated prices.
'I wonder how much this moron will pay,' Plasencia wrote in one text message presented by prosecutors. He went to Perry's home to administer ketamine by injection, according to a plea deal published Monday by the Justice Department. In total, Plasencia distributed 20 vials of ketamine over a roughly two-week period in autumn 2023, the document said. Perry had been taking ketamine as part of supervised therapy for depression.
But prosecutors say that before his death he became addicted to the substance, which also has psychedelic properties and is a popular party drug.
Dark struggle
Five people have been charged over Perry's death. Jasveen Sangha, the alleged 'Ketamine Queen' who supplied drugs to high-end clients and celebrities, is charged with selling Perry the dose that killed him. She has pleaded not guilty. Perry's live-in personal assistant and another man pleaded guilty last August to charges of conspiracy to distribute ketamine.
Comedic television series 'Friends,' which followed the lives of six New Yorkers navigating adulthood, dating and careers, drew a massive global following and made megastars of previously unknown actors. Perry's role as the sarcastic man-child Chandler brought him fabulous wealth, but hid a dark struggle with addiction to painkillers and alcohol.
In 2018, he suffered a drug-related burst colon and underwent multiple surgeries. In his 2022 memoir 'Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing,' Perry described going through detox dozens of times. 'I have mostly been sober since 2001,' he wrote, 'save for about sixty or seventy little mishaps.'--AFP
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Kuwait Times
2 days ago
- Kuwait Times
Soft power: BTS fans rally behind Korean international adoptees
K-pop megaband BTS is back from military service, and their international fandom - long known for its progressive activism - is celebrating by rallying behind a cause: adoptees from South Korea. Now Asia's fourth-largest economy and a global cultural powerhouse, the idols' native South Korea remains one of the biggest exporters of adopted babies in the world, having sent more than 140,000 children overseas between 1955 and 1999. The country only recently acknowledged, after years of activism by adult adoptees, that the government was responsible for abuse in some such adoptions of local children, including record fabrication and inadequate consent from birth parents. The septet's fandom, dubbed ARMY, is known for backing causes like Black Lives Matter and ARMY4Palestine, and launched the #ReuniteWithBTS fundraising project last week to support Korean adoptees seeking to reconnect with or learn about their birth families, which can be a painful and legally tricky process. Peter Moller, KoRoot's co-representative, pointing to a screen showing the #ReuniteWithBTS fundraising campaign on Facebook. Almost all of BTS members have completed South Korea's mandatory military service, required of all men due to the country's military tensions with North Korea. 'We are celebrating both the reunion of BTS and ARMY, and BTS members being able to reunite with their own family and friends,' the BTS fan group behind the initiative, One In An ARMY, told AFP. 'Helping international adoptees reunite with their birth country, culture, customs and families seemed like the perfect cause to support during this time.' The fans are supporting KoRoot, a Seoul-based organization that helps Korean adoptees search for their records and birth families and which played a key role in pushing for the government to recognize adoption-related abuses. Peter Moller, KoRoot's co-representative, told AFP it was 'very touching' that the BTS fans had taken up the cause, even though 'they're not even adoptees themselves'. For many adoptees, seeing Korean stars in mainstream media has been a way for them to find 'comfort, joy, and a sense of pride' in the roots that they were cut off from, KoRoot's leader Kim Do-hyun added. Peter Moller, KoRoot's co-representative, posing for a photo after an interview with AFP at KoRoot.--AFP photos Soft power BTS, who have discussed anti-Asian hate crimes at the White House and spoken candidly about mental health, have long been considered one of the best examples of South Korea's soft power reach. For years, Korean adoptees - many of whom were adopted by white families globally - have advocated for their rights and spoken out about encountering racism in their host countries. Some adoptees, such as the high-profile case of Adam Crapser, were later deported to South Korea as adults because their American parents never secured their US citizenship. Many international adoptees feel their immigration experience has been 'fraught', Keung Yoon Bae, a Korean studies professor at Georgia Institute of Technology, told AFP. Some adoptees have found that, like Crapser, their guardians failed to complete the necessary paperwork to make them legal, she said. This is becoming a particular problem under US President Donald Trump, who is pushing a sweeping crackdown on purported illegal immigrants. Bae said it was possible that ''accidentally illegal' adoptee immigrants may fall further through the cracks, and their deeply unfortunate circumstances left unremedied'. A general view of the sign of KoRoot, a Seoul-based organization that helps Korean adoptees search for their records and birth families, at its house in Seoul. The whale Reunions between Korean adoptees and their birth families can be emotionally complex, as Kara Bos - who grew up in the United States - experienced firsthand when she met her biological father through a landmark paternity lawsuit. During their encounter in Seoul in 2020, he refused to remove his hat, sunglasses, or mask, declined to look at her childhood photos and offered no information about her mother. He died around six months later. 'The journey of birth family searching is very lonely, difficult, and costly. Many adoptees do not even have the means to return to their birth country let alone fund a family search,' Bos, 44, told AFP. To have BTS fans rally around adoptees and provide help with this complex process is 'a wonderful opportunity', she said. For Malene Vestergaard, a 42-year-old Korean adoptee and BTS fan in Denmark, the group's song 'Whalien 52', which references a whale species whose calls go unheard by others, deeply resonated with her. 'I personally sometimes feel like that whale. Being amongst my peers, but they will never be able to truly understand what my adoption has done to me,' she told AFP. 'For me, finding BTS at the same time I started looking for my birth family and the truth about my adoption and my falsified papers, was such a comfort.' Vestergaard said the grief woven into her adoption would never go away, but that 'BTS and their lyrics have made it easier to reconcile with that truth'. - AFP
Kuwait Times
2 days ago
- Kuwait Times
Amsterdam honors its own Golden Age sculpture master
This photograph shows a sculpture by 17th century sculptor Artus Quellinus during a press preview of an exhibition displaying over one hundred pieces created by Artus Quellinus, at the Royal Palace in Amsterdam on June 16 2025.--AFP Imposing but delicate marble sculptures of Graeco-Roman-style figures grace the vaulted corridors of a huge palace. But this isn't Florence or Rome. This is Amsterdam. As part of celebrations to mark 750 years since the founding of the Dutch capital, the city is unveiling from Wednesday an exhibition dedicated to Artus Quellinus, the 17th century 'sculptor of Amsterdam.' Virtually unknown outside Flanders in present-day Belgium where he made his name, the city has Quellinus to thank for the decorations on the Royal Palace that dominates the city's iconic Dam Square. Quellinus 'lifted our sculpture to a new level' with a fresh style, Dutch art historian Bieke van der Mark told AFP. Born in Antwerp in 1606, Quellinus sculpted with marble, as well as ivory and clay. His style, heavily influenced by Flemish baroque painter Reubens, was a complete novelty for the Protestant Netherlands, used to a more sober style at the time. His subjects -- mythological figures, chubby angels, and animals -- are perhaps a nod to the great masters he would have seen while an apprentice in Rome. 'Like (17th century Italian master Gian Lorenzo) Bernini, he masters the way the flesh looks, and hands,' said Van der Mark. 'It's really fantastic,' said the 46-year-old, pointing to a statue of the God Saturn devouring his son, whom he holds in his huge veiny hands. Organized by the Amsterdam Royal Palace and the Rijksmuseum, this is the first-ever retrospective devoted to Quellinus, displaying more than 100 of his works from national and international collections. 'We spent quite some time to select and to collect, to bring together all these very special works... to show Quellinus at his best,' said curator Liesbeth van Noortwijk. 'Because I think he's an artist that deserves that.' 'We dare to call him the Bernini of the North... And I think this is no exaggeration,' she told AFP. The decorations of Amsterdam's Royal Palace, built as a town hall between 1648 and 1665, remains Quellinus's statement work, with an iconic figure on the roof of Atlas bearing the world on his shoulders. Now, nearly 400 years on, the city hopes the show will raise awareness of the hitherto unrecognized 'sculptor of Amsterdam.'— AFP
Kuwait Times
2 days ago
- Kuwait Times
Main doctor charged in actor Matthew Perry overdose to plead guilty
The main doctor charged in connection with the drug overdose of 'Friends' star Matthew Perry is expected to enter a guilty plea in the coming weeks, the US Justice Department said Monday. Salvador Plasencia 'has agreed to plead guilty to four counts of distribution of ketamine, which carries a statutory maximum sentence of 40 years in federal prison,' the department said in a statement. The second doctor in the case, Mark Chavez, pleaded guilty last October to conspiring to distribute ketamine in the weeks before the actor was found dead in the hot tub of his Los Angeles home in 2023. Perry's lengthy struggles with substance addiction were well-documented, but his death at age 54 sent shockwaves through the global legions of 'Friends' fans. A criminal investigation was launched soon after an autopsy discovered he had high levels of ketamine - an anesthetic - in his system. Plasencia allegedly bought ketamine off Chavez and sold it to the American-Canadian actor at hugely inflated prices. 'I wonder how much this moron will pay,' Plasencia wrote in one text message presented by prosecutors. He went to Perry's home to administer ketamine by injection, according to a plea deal published Monday by the Justice Department. In total, Plasencia distributed 20 vials of ketamine over a roughly two-week period in autumn 2023, the document said. Perry had been taking ketamine as part of supervised therapy for depression. But prosecutors say that before his death he became addicted to the substance, which also has psychedelic properties and is a popular party drug. Dark struggle Five people have been charged over Perry's death. Jasveen Sangha, the alleged 'Ketamine Queen' who supplied drugs to high-end clients and celebrities, is charged with selling Perry the dose that killed him. She has pleaded not guilty. Perry's live-in personal assistant and another man pleaded guilty last August to charges of conspiracy to distribute ketamine. Comedic television series 'Friends,' which followed the lives of six New Yorkers navigating adulthood, dating and careers, drew a massive global following and made megastars of previously unknown actors. Perry's role as the sarcastic man-child Chandler brought him fabulous wealth, but hid a dark struggle with addiction to painkillers and alcohol. In 2018, he suffered a drug-related burst colon and underwent multiple surgeries. In his 2022 memoir 'Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing,' Perry described going through detox dozens of times. 'I have mostly been sober since 2001,' he wrote, 'save for about sixty or seventy little mishaps.'--AFP
