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WARNING: Distressing content
The Canadian man who sold packages of poison to distressed people in dozens of countries, including Australia, pleaded guilty on Friday to 14 counts of aiding suicide, but prosecutors said he will not face murder charges.
Kenneth Law, a 60-year-old former chef, ran online forums that offered people advice on how to end their lives and made fatal substances available for purchase.
The details of Law’s online operation have caused widespread outrage since his arrest in 2023.
The list of 41 countries where Law sent poison included Australia, China, France and Brazil. He sold 330 packages to people in the United Kingdom.
Canadian prosecutors had charged him with 14 counts of murder and 14 counts of aiding suicide.
At a court in Newmarket, north of Toronto, prosecutors said they did not believe they had a viable path towards murder convictions.
Law stood in a semi-enclosed area reserved for defendants, flanked by his three defence lawyers, and said, “I plead guilty” to aiding the suicide of 14 people in Canada.
Sentencing will be determined at a separate hearing in September, when the court will hear victim impact statements.
Legal experts note that aiding suicide is a serious crime, and Law could receive a sentence of 10 to 20 years’ imprisonment.
Sought out clients
After the guilty pleas were entered, prosecutors began reading an “agreed statement of facts,” a roughly 60-page document that detailed how Law shipped material for suicide across Canada and abroad, often for about $80.
Law proactively looked for customers, the agreed statement of facts said.
He would appear on a suicide discussion forum under the pseudonym “Greenberg.”
When users would mention the meat preservative sodium nitrite as a possible means for suicide, he would direct them to one of his sites where the powder was available in lethal concentrations.
Prosecutors also played a recording of a call between Law and a British journalist posing as an interested customer.
The reporter from The Times of London asked if Law’s business is legal. Law offered explanations he could give to police if questioned, including that the product can help improve a swimmer’s lung capacity.
Prosectors also recounted how people, after taking their own lives, were often found by family members with an open package of Law’s sodium nitrite near their bodies.
‘I am angry, but I am not surprised’
News that he will not stand trial for murder in Canada came as a disappointment to some families.
David Parfett’s son Thomas was 22 when he ended his life in 2021 with materials supplied by Law.
Now an advocate for more rigorous legislation to confront online spaces that guide people toward harm, Parfett told AFP that Canadian authorities were missing an opportunity to establish the gravity of Law’s conduct.
“If (Law) hadn’t been offering detailed instructions about how to take your own life, then the chances are my son would still be here. So again, for me, it’s murder,” Parfett said.
In the agreed statement of facts, Law’s poison was tied to 79 deaths in Britain.
Britain’s National Crime Agency confirmed in a statement that Law will not face additional prosecution, but that the British deaths will be considered during sentencing in Canada.
A joint statement by the NCA and Britain’s prosecution service said the agencies had explained their decision to not prosecute Law “in detail to the victims and their families.”
Parfett said in a statement: “I am angry, but I am not surprised.”
He reiterated the families’ rebuffed calls for a UK public inquiry. “If our own country will not put anyone on trial for these deaths, the very least it can do is hold a proper inquiry into how they were allowed to happen.”
Dalhousie University law professor Robert Currie told AFP that Law’s prosecutors were watching a separate case before the Supreme Court, hoping Canada’s top judges would offer clarity on the issue.
But the Supreme Court left that question unanswered, and prosecutors doubted they could secure murder convictions against Law, Currie said.
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