See more Toronto Sun on Google — save as a Preferred Source
Kenneth Law preyed upon the vulnerable, peddling poison that promised escape, denying them the time they needed to find another way forward.
Now the 61-year-old sits in a prisoner’s box in a Newmarket courtroom, convicted of assisting the suicides of 14 Ontarians and contributing to the deaths of 79 people in the U.K., one just 14 years old, as he’s forced to listen to a parade of pain as victims began to tell the court of the endless grief the mercantile purveyor of death has so casually caused.
He sat there, unmoved.
Broken mothers and shattered fathers, crushed brothers and sisters, anguished friends — they all spoke of their unfathomable loss, their guilt and their anger that Law made money from exploiting their loved ones’ mental illness.
And he was confronted by Elisabeth Belien, a British young woman who is testament to what might have been for so many of his victims.
“On the 29th of January, 2023, at the age of 23, I ingested sodium nitrite, which I purchased from Kenneth Law approximately a month earlier. I had been struggling with my mental health for a long time leading up to this. I was vulnerable, and I found it really difficult to see a future for myself. I became more and more desperate for some sort of escape. Kenneth Law’s actions made it a lot easier for me to act on that despair,” she told Superior Court Justice Michelle Fuerst.
“Being here today reminds me of how easily it could have been my parents making a statement instead of me. They would talk about all the things I missed out on, about how I never got to go on that holiday I really wanted to go on, how I didn’t get my driving licence, how I never got that promotion at work, about the life I didn’t get to live.
‘Fortunately, I survived’
“Fortunately, I survived, and I’ve had the opportunity to experience these things and more through my ongoing recovery. I’m learning that things can get better. The feelings of hopelessness and despair that led me to purchase and ingest sodium nitrite weren’t permanent.”
Stephen Mitchell Jr. thought they were. At just 21, his father said, the young Toronto man couldn’t imagine a different future and Law robbed him of the chance to discover he was wrong.
As Law has languished in prison since his arrest in 2023, Stephen Mitchell Sr. imagined that he must have had his own feelings of despair and hopelessness. “Ironically, those are some of the same thoughts that my son Stephen had before he took the chemical that Mr. Law sold him to end his life,” he said fiercely.
“He once had dreams for a future, and to have meaning in his life. That is all gone now. But you, Mr. Law, are still here. You’ve had time to work out those depressive thoughts in your mind, but you didn’t give my son a chance to do the same.”
- MANDEL: 'Chef of Death' Kenneth Law to plead guilty to aiding suicide
- Murder charges to be withdrawn against Kenneth Law, his lawyer says
- MANDEL: Upgraded murder charges bring no satisfaction for alleged victim's mom
- MANDEL: Kenneth Law pleads guilty to aiding the suicide of 14 Ontarians
Plea deal in May
In a plea deal that took murder charges off the table, the former Royal York cook pleaded guilty in May to aiding in the suicides of 10 men and four women, two of his victims just 16 years old. Law admitted operating four websites that sold “exit masks” and 50-gram packages of 99.9% pure sodium nitrite, a chemical food preservative that’s fatal in larger doses. He charged about $80 US for each package and shipped them via Canada Post, mailing out more than 1,200 packages to 41 countries around the world, including 330 to the United Kingdom and 431 to the U.S.
“I cannot stop thinking that my little girl will never come back, that she could have had another opportunity in life, and this man, through his platform, took it away from me,” wrote Maria Lopez about the death of her daughter, 18-year-old Jeshennia Bedoya-Lopez. “I do not understand how there can be people like this who decide over life, who break the laws, who take from us what we love most, and do not face the crimes they have committed, as if life were worth nothing.”
Her father Leonardo Bedoya Forero is haunted by the memory of finding his dead child.
“I saw my daughter pale, bruised, and cold. There are things a parent expects to see during their lifetime: You expect to see your child grow up. You expect to see them laugh, struggle, succeed, change, and become the person they are meant to be. You never expect to see your child like that,” he wrote.
“A parent shouldn’t have to fight to push aside the image of their child’s death in order to access the memories of her life.”
One of the most harrowing fatalities was that of 21-year-old Amritaj Rana, who regretted taking the sodium nitrite he’d purchased online from Law in October 2021. After vomiting in the bathroom, he desperately asked his mother to call an ambulance and told his father what he’d taken just before collapsing unconscious in his dad’s arms.
Fighting back tears, Sarjit Kaur Rana said she can still hear her beautiful boy galloping down the stairs, asking, “Mom, chicken and rice ready?”
“I did not know I needed to hold on to the sound of him calling me mom. Why would I?” she wept. “I believed my child would come down the stairs tomorrow.”
Cindy MacMinn stood trembling as she held a portrait of her 32-year-old son, Clayton Choquette, her anger and agony still raw at the loss of her only child. “My son is dead. He is gone. I am empty, hollow,” she cried.
“If not for your offence,” the mother told Law, “Clayton may still be here.”
Did he feel anything after this day-long torrent of pain?
There is more to come. The sentencing hearing continues with more of the 74 victim impact statements on Thursday.
mmandel@postmedia.com