Five charged in connection to Matthew Perry's death

Los Angeles law enforcement has made an arrest related to their investigation into the October 2023 death of "Friends" actor Matthew Perry, per a report from the New York Times.

A postmortem toxicology report by the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner's Office found that Perry had died from a combination of drowning in a hot tub, coronary artery disease and the effects of buprenorphine, with the effects of ketamine as the primary cause.

According to CNN, during a Thursday morning press conference in Los Angeles, U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada said of the five individuals charged, “The knew what they were doing was wrong,” but took advantage of the actor's addiction by “distributing ketamine to Perry during the final weeks of the actor’s life." The defendants include two doctors, Perry’s live-in personal assistant and a person referred to by authorities as “The Ketamine Queen."

The NYT report noted that Perry had been on ketamine infusion therapy around the time of his death; however, the autopsy report concluded that the level of the drug found in his blood was much higher, equivalent to the dosage that would be administered for general anesthesia.

DEA Administrator Anne Milgram said in the press release, “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."