The Japan Times - Canadian poison seller pleads guilty to aiding suicides, avoids murder trial

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 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.

Prosectors on Friday told the court in Newmarket, north of Toronto, that they no longer believed they could secure murder convictions.

Law then stood in a semi-enclosed area reserved for defendants, flanked by his three lawyers, and said "I plead guilty" to aiding 14 suicides in Canada.

Jeshennia Bedoya-Lopez, who died in 2022 aged 18, was one of Law's victims.

Her father, Leonardo Bedoya, told reporters outside the court that he found her dead in her bedroom.

"She was my only daughter, my light, my life," he said.

Three years after Law's arrest, he called Friday's outcome "a disgrace."

"That man does not even face the victims. He always keeps his back turned," Bedoya said in Spanish.

Despite pleading to a lesser offense, experts say Law could still receive a sentence of 10-20 years imprisonment.

Sentencing will be determined at a separate hearing in September, when the court will hear victim impact statements.

- Sought out clients -

After the guilty pleas were entered, prosecutors devoted several hours to reading an "agreed statement of facts," which detailed how Law shipped material for suicide across Canada and abroad, often for about $80.

Law proactively looked for customers, the 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 an option for suicide, Law 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 body.

- 'Angry' -

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 Canadian sentencing.

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 handcuffed by the fact that, under Canadian law, it's not clear if the same conduct can amount to both aiding suicide and murder.

burs-bs/sla

S.Suzuki--JT