As authorities raided the North Hollywood alleged “stash house” apartment of Jasveen Sangha in March 2024, they say they found key evidence connecting her to Matthew Perry’s overdose death from ketamine.
The agents also say they learned of a second victim who died years earlier – with little fanfare…and no press conferences. His name was Cody McLaury.
Back in 2019, after some of Cody’s friends hadn't heard from him in over a day, they went to his apartment and found him on his bed unresponsive. He was later declared dead. The autopsy report listed his cause of death as “acute ketamine,” along with heroin, methamphetamine, and cocaine toxicity.
Cody’s sister, Kimberly, told Impact x Nightline "it's tough to think that something that you've never heard really, being a cause of death." Kimberly also said of her brother Cody "addiction was not something that was a part of Cody's life."
Kimberly said months after he died, police mailed Cody’s belongings to her, including his cell phone. She said the phone revealed a disturbing discovery: her brother’s text messages with the accused so-called Ketamine Queen, Jasveen Sangha. “I see messages back and forth between the two of them, talking about ketamine and how much she has available, how much it costs,” Kimberly said.
Kimberly says she texted Sangha herself stating: “The ketamine you sold my brother killed him. It’s listed as the cause of death.”
The indictment alleges that within days of receiving that text, Sangha did a Google search for “can ketamine be listed as a cause of death[?]”
Prosecutors allege she continued to sell ketamine from her stash house after Cody’s death.
In an interview with ABC News, U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada, who is prosecuting the Perry case, was asked, “Is it possible that Cody McLaury’s death would never have been investigated had it not been for Matthew Perry's death?” Estrada replied, “It's certainly possible, but I will say that we investigate the deaths of many people who are not celebrities. I think there's a shift in terms of how we look at these.”
Authorities say the lead defendants are Dr. Salvador Plasencia, 42, who worked at an urgent care center in Calabasas, and Sangha, 41, known as the alleged "Ketamine Queen" to her customers.
Sangha and Plasencia were each indicted on a number of charges including “conspiracy to distribute ketamine” and “administering ketamine.”
Both defendants have pleaded not guilty. Sangha’s attorney Mark Geragos defended his client saying to Newsweek, “I think all of these so-called urban legends that somehow my client knew Matthew Perry are demonstrably false.”
The other defendants according to the criminal complaint are 54-year-old Dr. Mark Chavez from San Diego; 59-year-old Kenneth Iwamasa, Perry’s assistant, and 54-year-old Erik Fleming, a former movie producer-turned-drug middleman, according to authorities.
"In September and October of 2023, he went deep into a reliance on ketamine," Alex Stone, an ABC national correspondent recently reported about Matthew Perry, said citing details from the indictment. "He needed more and more of it. It was progressive and quick in those weeks that he was getting six to eight shots of ketamine a day."
According to the indictment, Dr. Plasencia met Perry on Oct. 10, 2023 in a public parking lot near the aquarium in Long Beach, California, and injected him in the back of a car. Dr. Plasencia and Dr. Chavez would rake in $55,000 from Matthew Perry in less than a month, according to the indictment.
Dr. Salvador Plasencia and Jasveen Sangha are scheduled to stand trial together in March. Sangha remains in custody, while Plasencia was released on a $100,000 bond. Iwamasa and Fleming have both pleaded guilty and Chavez is entering a guilty plea, admitting to his role in this case.
Last year, U.S. Customs and Border Protection seized more than 8,000 pounds of illegal ketamine, with a street value estimated at over $170,000,000. Some of it ended up in the hands of street dealers.
Mike Fiore says he is a former drug dealer and in recovery for substance abuse disorder. Today he’s the director of Facing Fentanyl, which provides education about the deadly drug, fentanyl. He says he once dabbled in illegal ketamine and knows firsthand how popular the drug is.
Speaking to ABC News in front of Jasveen Sangha’s apartment, Fiore said of illicit ketamine, “I sold drugs. I didn't have a clientele base like [Sangha], but when I had high-end clientele, I was able to get high-end product.”
Fiore says about his past experience with Ketamine, “I would snort it, an instant disconnect of everything that's going on. If you're in a club, the music becomes you. You become the club. It's something that allows you to be comfortable in an environment that's very crazy around you.”
While illegal ketamine did, in part, lead to Perry’s death, when prescribed and administered legally, many doctors and their patients say results can be groundbreaking. “The research is favorable when you're looking at ketamine as a treatment for depression, particularly individuals with resistant depression who don't respond to traditional therapies,” said Dr. Stephanie Widmer, a toxicology and addiction expert.
"Impact x Nightline" visited Bespoke Treatment in Los Angeles and met with Sebastian who has been receiving ketamine therapy for his treatment-resistant depression. Sebastian said, “I would say my depression symptoms have probably reduced by 50% by now, which is, which is good.”
Sebastian’s wife, Brenda, receives ketamine therapy for what was once unmanageable anxiety.
“I was like, oh, my God, my anxiety. Like, it's gone. I don't know how I was functioning before with that kind of anxiety,” Brenda said.
ABC News' Laura Coburn and Elizabeth Perkin contributed to this report.