by Jeanni Ritchie
I reached out to Kimberly McLaury the day I read her story on a news site. Her brother, aspiring physical trainer Cody McLaury, had died of a ketamine overdose in 2019. After receiving her brother’s phone back from police, McLaury found a text chat with the alleged dealer, indicating her brother paid for the ketamine through Venmo.
“After his death certificate came out, I texted back and said, ‘just so you know the ketamine that you sold my brother was listed as his cause of death,’” she’s told various news outlets.
McLaury never heard back. “I just assumed that she didn’t care,” she said.
Turns out, the woman in question, Jasveen Sangha, known on the streets as the Ketamine Queen, reportedly googled “Can ketamine be listed as an official cause of death?” immediately after receiving McLaury’s text.
All of this came out during the investigation into Friends star Matthew Perry’s death, a months-long inquiry with multiple twists and turns. Perry had been participating in controversial ketamine therapy treatment but had not had a session in two weeks at the time of his death and didn’t account for the levels found in his body. McLaury became suspicious of a connection between her brother’s death and the actor’s when police came to her home.
I had my own connection to Perry’s death. The day he died I’d made the difficult decision to leave my marriage. I was in a hotel room, preparing to move back to Louisiana and watching reruns of Friends to take my mind off my sorrow. Friends was always my go-to pick-me-up.
Needing to stretch and decompress, I grabbed my phone and headed to the pool area. The starless night sky matched my heart inside.
Scrolling through Facebook, I began seeing reports of Perry’s death. No, I’d screamed silently. This has to be a joke, an erroneous report … Deep inside, though, I knew it wasn’t. I’d read his autobiography, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, the year prior. I knew what the big terrible thing was. I’d struggled with addiction, too.
It would be a few weeks later before the official cause of death was released: acute effects of ketamine.
In August, Sangha, the alleged dealer, was one of five people charged in an 18-count indictment. The news was bittersweet for McLaury.
“My peace comes in knowing that a drug dealer was caught and she’s responsible for her own fate,” she shared with me.
Addicts don’t always make the best choices, and I hold myself accountable for the decisions I made while using drugs. But those dealing the drugs, including pill-pushing doctors like the two who knowingly supplied $55,000 worth of ketamine to Perry over the course of one month, bear some responsibility as well.
It is the reason McLaury is sharing her brother’s story now.
Jeanni Ritchie is a contributing journalist from Central Louisiana. She can be reached at jeanniritchie54@gmail.com.
