Families grieve as Kenneth Law pleads guilty to aiding 14 suicides in Ontario

The final moments of those who took their own lives using products bought online from Kenneth Law were laid out before a packed Ontario courtroom Friday after the Toronto-area man at the heart of an international investigation pleaded guilty to 14 counts of aiding suicide.

Some of the 14 Ontarians whose deaths are linked to Law were found by relatives, others by first responders. Some left notes explaining their decision. Some were in their 30s, while others — who cannot be identified because of their age — were minors.

One of them, 29-year-old Robert Hu, called 911 himself after ingesting a chemical he’d bought from Law, pleading for medical help, court heard.

“He repeatedly said, ‘please,’ and ‘I am going to die soon,’ and then began crying,” Crown prosecutor Cindy Nadler said. By the time paramedics got there, he was unresponsive and struggling to breathe, she said. Hu died in hospital.

Another man, 19-year-old Ashtyn Prosser-Blake, was discovered by his grandmother after she came across a journal containing his goodbyes while checking that their Thunder Bay, Ont., home was locked up for the night, court heard. She called 911 and paramedics tried to resuscitate him but he was pronounced dead in hospital, Nadler said.

Law, 60, sat largely motionless as the details of his crimes were read aloud by the prosecution. In the audience, some dabbed their eyes with tissues and held each other for comfort. Several people briefly left the courtroom.

Outside the Newmarket, Ont., courthouse, Kim Prosser held back tears as she talked about the loss of her son Ashtyn three years ago.

“Hearing his name read in there is tough,” she said. “Seeing his name next to the word deceased has always been the most challenging to grasp.”

Stephen Mitchell Sr., whose 21-year-old son Stephen died in 2023, said outside court that many more would have died as a result of Law’s actions if it wasn’t for grieving families abroad who “raised concerns, spoke up and cried out in their countries over what Mr. Law was doing in Canada.”

“We grieve with you,” he said.

Leonardo Bedoya, the father of 18-year-old Jeshennia Bedoya-Lopez who died in 2022, told reporters outside court that he was upset that Law didn’t look at the families during the plea hearing. Speaking in Spanish, Bedoya said that was disrespectful.

Law, a former chef, was scheduled to stand trial last month on these charges as well as 14 counts of first-degree murder but notice of a plea deal came from his defence lawyer, Matthew Gourlay.

The Crown said Friday it plans to withdraw the murder charges after Law is sentenced. A sentencing hearing is expected to take place in September, giving friends and relatives of those who died a chance to explain how Law’s actions affected them.

Under the Criminal Code of Canada, those found guilty of aiding suicide can face up to 14 years in prison.

Law ran several websites that were used to sell sodium nitrite and other items that can be used for self-harm, shipping some 1,200 packages to people in more than 40 countries, according to an agreed statement of fact read in court. Nearly 160 of those packages were sent to addresses in Canada, it said.

Nearly $290,000 in sales from his companies were deposited into his accounts by Shopify and PayPal between Jan. 1, 2020 and May 23, 2023, the statement said.

When he made his sales, Law “was aware that these customers were likely to use those products” to die by suicide, court heard.

Using a pseudonym, he occasionally responded to posts on a forum where people discussed using certain substances for suicide, at times directing people to his websites, court heard.

Court heard a recorded call between Law and a Times of London reporter in the United Kingdom who posed as a prospective customer in early 2023 and questioned him on how the products worked and how quickly, as well as the number of people who had died using them.

Law touted the effectiveness of the products, saying “many, many, many” people had successfully used them to take their own lives in the two years since he’d started the business. He acknowledged in the call that it was a legal “grey area” but said he could argue the products have other, non-lethal purposes.

The same reporter later travelled to Canada to confront Law about seven deaths in the U.K. linked to his business, an interaction that was also recorded and played in court.

Law accused the reporter of approaching him under false pretences during their phone call, and denied responsibility in the deaths, saying he wasn’t forcing anyone to buy his products or dictating how they used them.

“They are committing suicide. I’m not doing anything,” he said in the recording.

Not long after, he drafted a will, saying he believed he was “helping people to alleviate their suffering while making a small modest profit,” court heard.

While the Crown and defence agree Law made these statements, what his words suggest about his “true motivation” will be argued at his sentencing hearing, court heard.

Prosecutors also laid out details on 79 people in the U.K. who died because of products bought from Law.

Britain’s National Crime Agency said Friday that while it initially planned to request Law’s extradition, it ultimately agreed to have his offences in the U.K. included in the facts of his Canadian case so he “could be sentenced for the full extent of his offending within a single process in Canada.”

“This means victims and families in the U.K. will see Law held accountable for the crimes he committed,” the agency’s deputy director of investigations, Craig Turner, said in a statement.

The families of people who died in the U.K., however, said the decision, combined with their government’s refusal to hold a public inquiry into the matter, “leaves no forum in this country to examine how the deaths were allowed to happen.”

David Parfett, whose 22-year-old son Thomas died in 2021 after consuming a substance purchased from Law, said he is angry but not surprised.

“For months, we have been told that the system is working and that existing measures are enough. They are not. 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,” he said in a statement.

The Canadian court case faced multiple delays as the Crown and defence awaited a Supreme Court of Canada decision in a separate matter they said would affect the case.

In the end, Canada’s top court declined to “conclusively resolve” the issue in that appeal, which related to the circumstances under which murder charges can be laid against people who aid in suicides.

That made a murder prosecution “impossible” in Law’s case, the Crown explained Friday, because it left the Ontario Court of Appeal ruling that sparked the appeal as the binding authority in the province.

That ruling suggests a person may only be liable for murder if they both provided a person who died by suicide with the lethal substance but also “overbore the victim’s free will in choosing suicide.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 29, 2026.

Paola Loriggio and Kathryn Mannie, The Canadian Press