A doctor pleads guilty in the death of actor Matthew Perry

One of the two doctors charged in the death of actor Matthew Perry has pleaded guilty before a Los Angeles judge. Mark Chávez, 54, of San Diego, confessed to investigators in August that he had helped the other four defendants to illegally supply the actor with ketamine, taking advantage of his past as a drug addict and his economic availability. It was precisely an overdose of the powerful anesthetic that caused the death of the beloved Chandler Bing from Friends on October 28, 2023, at the age of 54.

In his agreement with the prosecutor’s office, the doctor admitted that he obtained the substance from his former clinic and from a wholesale drug distributor with fake prescriptions. Chávez, who faces up to 10 years in prison and is free after posting a $500,000 bail (but without a passport or medical license), is the third defendant to plead guilty. Also in plea bargaining were an acquaintance of the actor, who admitted to having acted as a drug courier, and Perry’s assistant, who helped him inject ketamine on the day of his death and then found him lifeless in the company’s hydromassage pool. his Pacific Palisades mansion.

In exchange for a reduction of the sentence, the three are helping investigators to frame the two main defendants: the doctor Salvador Plasencia, accused of being the mastermind behind the “vast clandestine network” that supplied ever-increasing and dangerous quantities of drugs to the actor , and the ‘queen of ketamine Jasveen Sangha, who gave the artist the lethal dose. Both have pleaded not guilty and are awaiting trial scheduled for March.