How ‘studious’ uni grad became Matthew Perry’s ‘ketamine queen’
Friends of the woman who allegedly sold Matthew Perry a fatal dose of ketamine have said the LA native was a very different person before getting involved in Hollywood’s party scene.
Entertainment
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Jasveen Sangha, the woman who allegedly sold Matthew Perry a fatal dose of ketamine and was known in Hollywood circles as the “ketamine queen”, has been described as being “meticulous and studious” by friends.
The 41-year old who grew up in the Los Angeles celebrity enclave of Calabasas, home to Hollywood heavyweights, Kim Kardashian, Will Smith and Justin Bieber, seemed on a trajectory for success.
“Her parents owned a franchise business. She got into University of California, Irvine, which is a good school, and then she went to England for her MBA,” a friend told the New York Post.
But in March, Sangha’s secret life came to light after her mother had to bail her out on a $150,000 bond after she was arrested for allegedly being a “large volume drug dealer”.
Now, she stands accused of selling a lethal dose of ketamine to Friends star Matthew Perry.
Former US federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani told the New York Post, Sangha is “in a world of hurt right now … she could potentially get life in prison”.
Friends told the New York Post that when Sangha returned from studying in London she was “completely different”.
“It looked like she got a nose job and maybe other things done to her face.”
She started a nail business which flopped. Other friends started moving ahead with careers and families – Sangha, on the other hand, “was partying a lot and being excessive on the weekends”.
She tried being a party promoter, which put her into contact with a different crowd.
Among her friends was Perla Hudson, who was then married to Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash (they split in 2018). Photos on Instagram show Sangha with Hudson standing next to a private jet and in exotic locations, and with Perla and Hudson’s model son, London Hudson, at an event at Sotheby’s in Beverly Hills.
On social media, Hudson described Sangha as “My best wingman of all time.”
Other photos show Sangha with Charlie Sheen and DJ Khaled.
But around 2014, the friend told the New York Post, “she had a boyfriend who was significant and it didn’t work out. Friends attribute [her moving into the party world] to loneliness. She likes companionship and having people around her”.
She would host parties where drugs were allegedly part of the scene.
“Drugs are part of the everyday culture. I’ve never been to a party at Jasveen’s where drugs were out of the ordinary. She had access to drugs and it started to look like a viable option,” alleged the friend. “She could get liquid ketamine.”
According to TMZ, Sangha met Perry, as well as Charlie Sheen’s ex-wife Brooke Mueller in a Los Angele rehab. (Neither Mueller nor Perla Hudson are accused of drug use or any other wrongdoing in connection to Sangha.)
Bob Forrest, an LA-addition specialist who has appeared on Celebrity Rehab, told the New York Post that people can make future drug connections in rehab.
“Sometimes you’re in rehab with people who can get you better dope or cheaper dope or whatever,” he said.
The friend, however, said Sangha didn’t brag about her stockpile. “To me, she was more of a middle person. She would give ketamine to me and ask me to Venmo her the money.”
DISTURBING FIND IN PERRY’S HOUSE
It also emerged that the bedroom of Friends star Perry was a “disaster” after his death, with claims it looked like the tragic actor was “in the middle of a long bender”.
A source told the New York Post that the rest of the star’s Pacific Palisades mansion was extremely clean but that Perry’s bedroom was in a shocking state.
Perry, who had long battled drug and alcohol addiction, overdosed on ketamine and was found floating face down in his hot tub last October.
He had openly discussed his substance abuse issues, which he detailed in his tell-all memoir Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing, but in the months prior to his death had claimed to be sober.
“It was a disaster,” the source told The Post. “The master suite looked like someone was in the middle of a long bender. Clothes everywhere, towels on the floor, just dirty.
“But the rest of the house was clean, really neat. Like maybe the cleaning lady wasn’t allowed in those bedrooms.”
ASSISTANT FOUND PERRY UNCONSCIOUS MANY TIMES
Five people have been arrested in relation to his death, including his assistant Kenneth Iwamasa.
Iwamasa has admitted he found Perry “unconscious” numerous times in weeks prior to his death.
Kenneth Iwamasa, who spent at least $US55,000 ($A82,000) on ketamine in the 29 days before the actor died, administered the fatal shot of ketamine that killed Perry on October 28.
He recently pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to distribute ketamine causing death.
In his plea agreement obtained by the New York Post’s Page Six, Iwamasa revealed he injected Perry with “significant quantities of ketamine,” totalling around “6-8 shots per day,” in the days before his death.
Iwamasa also said he found Perry “unconscious” at his LA home on at least two occasions in October.
When Perry died, Iwamasa said he injected the actor around 8.30am and again around 12.45pm.
Around 40 minutes later, Perry allegedly asked Iwamasa to prepare his jacuzzi and “shoot [him] up with a big one”.
After he gave Perry his third shot of ketamine for the day, he ran a few errands before discovering his body face down in the jacuzzi hours later.
Documents also state Perry and Iwamasa met a doctor in a car park of injections that took place in the back of a car.
They suggest Iwamasa handed over thousands of dollars for the drug.
Iwamasa, Erik Fleming, Dr Mark Chavez, Dr Salvador Plascencia and Jasveen Sangha — known as the “Ketamine Queen” — were charged over their role in Perry’s death.
Dr Chavez and Dr Plascencia have had their registrations to prescribe medications revoked, the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) told TMZ.
PERRY’S FAMILY TELLS OF HEARTBREAK
Perry’s stepfather – Dateline presenter Keith Morrison – has thanked authorities for taking the case “seriously”.
“We were and still are heartbroken by Matthew’s death, but it has helped to know law enforcement has taken his case very seriously,” he said in a statement to Entertainment Weekly.
“We look forward to justice taking its course and we’re grateful for the exceptional work of the multiple agencies whose agents investigated Matthew’s death. We’re hoping unscrupulous suppliers of dangerous drugs will get the message.”
DEA Administrator Anne Milgram said: “Matthew Perry’s journey began with unscrupulous doctors who abused their position of trust because they saw him as a payday, to street dealers who gave him ketamine in unmarked vials.
“Every day, the DEA works tirelessly with our federal, state, and local partners to protect the public and to hold accountable those that distribute deadly and dangerous drugs, whether they are local drug traffickers or doctors who violate their sworn oath to care for patients.”
FRIENDS CREATORS ASK PERRY IF HE WANTED TO LEAVE
Friends creators Marta Kauffman and David Crane have revealed they asked Matthew Perry if he wanted to leave the hit show due to his addiction issues.
“By the time we became aware of it, we were already a family on a lot of levels,” said Crane, during a new interview with The Times in London.
“There was a point where we said to him: ‘Do you want to stop [being in the show]?’ And he was adamantly like: ‘No, this is really important to me.’”
Kauffman told the outlet that she had “the most contact” with Perry of all six Friends stars before his death.
“He is the one I had the most contact with. About two weeks before [he died] he and I were FaceTiming and he seemed really good,” she recalled.
Perry was found dead in his hot tub last October with the coroner ruling he had died from the “acute effects of ketamine use”.
Last week, multiple people – including Perry’s assistant Kenneth Iwamasa and two doctors – were charged in connection with Perry’s death. Iwamasa told police he had administered at least 27 shots of ketamine to his boss during the final five days of his life alone — including the last three that prosecutors allege resulted in his “death and serious bodily injury”.
Perry played Chandler Bing on the beloved sitcom, which ran from 1994 to 2004. In his 2022 memoir Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing, Perry opened up about his addiction and how it affected his performance on the show.
“You can track the trajectory for my addiction if you gauge my weight from season to season,” Perry wrote in his book.
“When I’m carrying weight, it’s alcohol; when I’m skinny, it’s pills. When I have a goatee, it’s lots of pills,” he said.
Speaking to The Times for a Friends 30-year retrospective, Debra McGuire, the show’s costume designer, said no one ever had any idea how Perry would front up at the beginning of each season.
“We never knew how [Perry] was going to come back after the summer,” she recalled. “Is he going to be skinny? Is he going to be fat? Is he going to be an addict? Is he going to be clean?”
Perry revealed in his memoir that straight after filming his on screen wedding to Courteney Cox’s Monica, he was driven straight to rehab.
He wrote that he was “driven back to the treatment centre … in a truck helmed by a sober technician” right after the scene wrapped. The late star also said that Season nine was the only season of the show he was fully sober for.
But Kauffman wants Perry to be remembered for his comedic talent rather than how his life ended.
“Two things come to mind [about how to celebrate him]: one of them is to donate to drug treatment centres — let’s fight the disease,” she says.
“And the second way is to watch Friends and remember him not as a man who died like that but as a man who was hilariously funny and brought joy to everybody.”
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