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Anew stop has been added to the map of Movie Star Homes and Crime Scenes, on sale at LAX airport: 18038 Blue Sail Drive, Pacific Palisades, the sleek single-storey $6 million ocean-view house where the Friends actor Matthew Perry was found floating in his hot tub last October. His death has revealed something of the dark world of LA’s celebrity staff.
Perry’s assistant, two doctors and LA’s ‘Ketamine Queen’ have been charged with supplying the drugs
Last week it was reported that Perry’s live-in assistant Kenneth Iwamasa injected his boss with ketamine before his death. While watching a movie around noon, the actor asked Iwamasa – part-butler, part-nurse and head of shopping (including meds and drugs) – for his third jab of the day. He reportedly told Iwamasa: ‘Shoot me up with a big one.’ Perry was always a master of the sarcastic one-liner.
Five people, including Iwamasa, two doctors and LA’s ‘Ketamine Queen’ drug dealer, have been charged with providing the drugs that killed him. Perry paid the two doctors around $55,000 in cash in the two months before his death.
Questionable doctors and assistants have long been part of LA staff culture. Michael Jackson died in 2009 from acute propofol intoxication after digesting a cocktail of anti-anxiety drugs prescribed by his personal doctor Conrad Murray (who was sentenced to four years in prison). Marilyn Monroe died from barbiturates, despite her doctor instructing the housekeeper to watch her. John Belushi, who died in 1982, was injected with a speedball (cocaine and heroin) by a groupie at a party at the Chateau Marmont. Perry’s assistant knew the risks: five years before his death, Perry’s colon exploded from drug use. He was in a coma for two weeks but survived, alas none the wiser.
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