# Kathe Sackler **Kathe Sackler** (born about 1948) is a physician and a daughter of [[Mortimer Sackler]] by his first wife, Muriel Lazarus. She sat on the [[Purdue Pharma]] board from 1990 to 2018 and is one of the eight board-member heirs covered by the Purdue settlement. The KB tracks her as the Sackler who, under oath before Congress, said she could find nothing she would have done differently. The shared family story lives on [[Sackler Family]]; this page carries what is specific to her. ## Family position Her full siblings are [[Ilene Sackler Lefcourt]] and a brother, Robert, who died by suicide at 23; she mentioned his death in her 2020 House testimony. [[Mortimer D.A. Sackler]] is a half-brother from her father's second marriage, to Gertraud Wimmer. [[Theresa Sackler]], her father's third wife, is her stepmother. ## Purdue years, 1990–2018 | Item | Detail | |---|---| | Board seat | Joined in 1990, when Purdue Pharma Inc. was created; left in 2018 (Massachusetts complaint; Boston Globe) | | Title | Vice president of Purdue as well as a director (Massachusetts complaint; House hearing record) | | Branch | Side A (Mortimer's family), which with Side B (Raymond's family) held the board majority throughout | The Massachusetts complaint (2019) names her among the eight Sacklers who, it alleges, controlled Purdue's misconduct and paid themselves billions from opioid sales. Most of its allegations against the directors are collective rather than individual. ## Project Tango In 2014, according to the Massachusetts and New York complaints, she worked with Purdue staff on **Project Tango**, a plan for Purdue to enter the addiction-treatment market by selling addiction-treatment drugs such as Suboxone. Purdue's own staff described that market as a "large unmet need" among a "vulnerable, underserved and stigmatized patient population." The New York attorney general's complaint says staff presented her Project Tango work to the board in February 2015. The plan became a centerpiece of the state cases because it showed the company weighing profit from both the addiction and its treatment. ## Testimony | Date | Venue | What she said | |---|---|---| | 2020-12-17 | [[House Oversight Committee]] hearing, with [[David Sackler]] and Purdue CEO Craig Landau | "When I served on the board of Purdue, I acted honestly, conscientiously, and in good faith." Asked by Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney to apologize: "There's nothing that I can find that I would have done differently, based on what I believed and understood then." | | August 2021 | Purdue bankruptcy confirmation hearing before Judge Robert Drain | Testified by video alongside other family witnesses as Drain weighed the family's liability releases | At the hearing she said it "distresses me greatly and angers me greatly" that OxyContin had become associated with so much suffering, and that she was "angry that some people working at Purdue broke the law." She did not accept personal responsibility. ## After Harrington The Supreme Court's [[Harrington v. Purdue Pharma]] ruling (June 27, 2024) struck down the first plan's nonconsensual releases for the family. Under the January 2025 framework, Judge Sean Lane approved the new plan from the bench on November 14, 2025, and signed the order on November 18. The plan took effect on May 1, 2026, when Purdue's assets passed to Knoa Pharma. The family contribution is reported as up to $6.5 billion (Tennessee AG) or up to $7 billion (AP/PBS) over 15 years. Her individual share is not public in the sources reviewed. ## See Also - [[Sackler Family]] · [[Mortimer Sackler]] · [[Ilene Sackler Lefcourt]] · [[Mortimer D.A. Sackler]] · [[David Sackler]] · [[Purdue Pharma]] · [[OxyContin]] · [[Opioid Crisis Timeline]] · [[Empire of Pain]]