DRUG DEALER

Matthew Perry’s Ketamine Queen’s Other Victim Revealed

Cody McLaury, who died in 2019 after buying ketamine from the same dealer Matthew Perry used, was a “sweet, gentle, misunderstood person,” his longtime friend says.

The “Ketamine Queen” accused of playing a part in Matthew Perry’s death should face justice for another fatal overdose, a grieving friend has told the Daily Beast.

Cody McLaury died from ketamine he allegedly purchased from Jasveen Sangha in 2019—but his death went ignored until federal prosecutors announced that Sangha would be charged over the deaths of both McLaury and the Friends star.

McLaury’s best friend Roger Montoya told the Daily Beast that he hopes the “people responsible for [the] bad things that happened to [McLaury]” will “pay their price in it.”

McLaury died from the effects of ketamine at age 31. Montoya told the Daily Beast that he and McLaury moved to Los Angeles together from their hometown of Phoenix, Arizona. McLaury returned, but they had remained close—until their friendship was ended by tragedy.

“There were just so many things left unanswered,” after McLaury’s death, Montoya said. “You kind of hear [stories] and don’t want to believe all those things. It’s still kind of fresh for me.”

When he heard his friend had died, Montoya said, “I literally wanted to throw up.”

Others close to McLaury claimed he “did this to himself.”

“A lot of people loved to talk about him,” Montoya said. “They just wanted to have an attachment to him. So when the person that told me [about his death] did tell me, I was like, ‘Whatever, what do you know?’”

He added, “Very few people really, really knew him on that type of intimate level.”

Prosecutors outlined a very different story on Thursday at a press conference: Sangha had callously supplied ketamine to McLaury, then, undeterred by his death, made herself rich by keeping up her illegal business, turning her California home into a “drug-selling emporium.”

Four years later, prosecutors alleged that Sangha sold Perry ketamine for the month leading up to his death on Oct. 28, 2023, at his Pacific Palisades home. She is accused of working with doctors Salvador Plasencia and Mark Chavez, Perry’s live-in assistant Kenneth Iwamasa, and “broker” Erik Fleming to keep the drugs flowing to the actor.

All five people involved are now facing charges, including conspiracy to distribute ketamine, distribution of ketamine resulting in death, maintaining drug-involved premises, and falsifying records, among other counts. Iwamasa, Fleming, and Chavez have each pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to distribute ketamine.

“I just hope whatever happened or may not have happened gets justice [and] that it’s granted to where it should be,” Montoya said. “Cody was such a sweet, sweet, gentle, misunderstood person.”

Although Montoya has “hope” that McLaury can “rest peacefully now that things have surfaced,” he said the sting of losing his friend remains.

“I just wanna call him all the time,” he said. “I just miss my friend.”

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Noor IbrahimManaging Editor

Eboni Boykin-PattersonEntertainment Reporter

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