Poison seller Kenneth Law pleads guilty to abetting 14 suicides in Ontario

Added: 2026-06-01

[00:00:00]Kenneth Law has just pleaded guilty in a Newmarket courtroom to counseling or aiding suicide in connection with 14 deaths across the province. The CBC's Jamie Strashin is on the story for us.

[00:00:12]He joins us now live from outside the courthouse. So, Jamie, take us through what happened this morning.

[00:00:18]>> Well, Arthi, a very obviously emotional day here in court in Newmarket, Ontario.

[00:00:24]Kenneth Law formally entering guilty pleas to 14 counts of aiding suicide. Many members of the families of these 14 victims were in the courtroom as they read through all of these different counts. They said the names, you could hear tears and and and people crying in the courtroom. People seeing Kenneth Law for the first time, hearing him plead guilty to charges related to the death of one of their family members.

[00:00:55]Interesting thing to note here, Arthi, Law was originally charged with 14 counts of first-degree murder. That was back in 2003.

[00:01:04]And it sounds like prosecutors, like the Crown, wanted to press forward with those first-degree murder charges. But in the time since he was indicted, a Court of Appeal decision here in Ontario that was subsequently upheld by the Supreme Court of Canada related to another case, not this one, but with a similar kind of set of facts, made, in the words of the Crown, the probability of a first-degree murder conviction impossible in this case against Kenneth Law. So, they went for these other charges, bringing some sense of finality for these 14 families here spread across Southwestern Ontario. The agreed statement of facts is being read in the court right now.

[00:01:49]We're told it's going to take upwards of 3 hours to kind of go through exactly what happened in all of these cases, how it happened, how these people came to to know Mr. Law, how he was able to to get some of these materials to these people. We know from the original police indictment that Law that Law had an online store that that shipped out various chemicals and suicide-related paraphernalia to people he knew that were at the risk of harm. This Ontario case, as I mentioned, relates to 14 people aged 16 to 36. Now, obviously, Mr. Law's scope, his reach was not contained just entirely to people here in Ontario. It reached around the world, especially to the UK, where authorities there say 112 deaths, they believe, are linked to chemicals that Mr. Law sent to people there in in the UK. Interestingly enough, authorities there are saying that they are not going to prosecute Mr. Law, that they're going to let the charges and the guilty plea here in Canada stand. So, obviously, a lot of disappointment there. This case, as you mentioned off the top top, touching people around the world. But for the here and now, here in Newmarket, Ontario, Canada, a sense of closure for 14 families. 14 families who had the names of their loved ones read out in court today. Mr. Law from the prisoner's box in a in a suit pleading guilty to all of those 14 charges. More details being read out in court now as we speak, Arathy. In terms of sentencing and other things like that, that's going to come in September. We're going to have submissions from the Crown, from the defense, and most importantly, victim impact statements related to this entire affair. Arathy?

[00:03:45]>> Thanks for this, Jamie. That's the CBC's Jamie Strashin in Newmarket, Ontario.