Matthew Perry’s Death: LAPD Launches Criminal Investigation

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The Los Angeles Police Department has confirmed that its homicide detectives and federal agents are investigating Matthew Perry’s death on October 28, 2023. They’re trying to find out how the ketamine that caused his death got into his system, since getting such a high dose of the anesthetic requires a prescription.

Last year ended on a sad note for entertainment fans around the world. The news that the Friends star had died in the jacuzzi at his Los Angeles home was a huge shock. On December 15, the Los Angeles Medical Examiner’s Department revealed details of the autopsy. They confirmed that ‘the cause of death for actor Matthew Langford Perry, 54, was the acute effects of ketamine.’

“The factors that contributed to Perry’s death include drowning, coronary artery disease, and the effects of buprenorphine (used to treat opioid use disorder). The manner of death is accidental,” confirmed the document about his passing.

New Information

It has now been revealed that there is an ongoing criminal investigation. Captain Scot Williams explained that the Los Angeles Police Department is working with the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service to find out how the actor obtained such a large amount of ketamine. They believe he may have gotten the drug illegally rather than through a prescription.

At the time, the coroner ruled the death accidental since the actor was being treated for depression. However, the amount of the substance in his body was much higher than recommended, equivalent to the dose used for general anesthesia in surgery. The coroner also pointed out that the last treatment the actor received, a week and a half before his death, couldn’t explain the high levels of ketamine in his blood.

On the same Saturday he died, the actor who played Chandler Bing spent several hours playing pickleball at a club near his home in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood. But hours later, around 4:00 PM, the police found him after his assistant called them.

Previous Addictions

The actor, who had struggled with various addictions like alcohol and other substances for several decades, as he revealed in his memoir ‘Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing’ (2022), died from the effects of ketamine, an anesthetic used in hospitals and clinics since it was approved by the FDA in 1970.

In that same book, Perry explained that ketamine ‘is used for two reasons: to reduce pain and for depression,’ and said it felt ‘like a big exhalation. It’s like it had my name; they could have called it Matty,’ he noted.