Accused sultan of suicide Kenneth Law has been fingered in the suicide deaths of four New Zealand residents.
The Mississauga man has been accused of sending suicide packages around the world through an online mail-order business. The 58-year-old Law is suspected of playing a role in the deaths of people in Canada, the U.S., Australia, the U.K. and Ireland, among others.
Criminologist and Western University professor Michael Arntfield has called Law an “angel of death by proxy.” So far, law officials allege Law has been linked to at least 127 suicide deaths in 40 countries.
The New Zealand victims died between April 2022 and April 2023, a coroner says.
Law is in custody after being arrested by Peel Region homicide detectives in May 2023. He is charged with 14 counts of first-degree murder in Ontario along with 14 more counts of counselling or aiding suicide.
The former engineer allegedly hosted online discussion forms online on killing yourself. He has denied the allegations and an eight-week trial is expected to begin in September 2025.
According to the coroner, the alleged New Zealand victims were:
— Personal trainer James Plunkett, 40, had a passion for house music and loved fantasy novels. But the COVID-19 pandemic sent him on a downward spiral. His marriage broke up, he was sometimes homeless and struggled with drug addiction. Items from Law’s business were found in Plunkett’s home. He died in July 2022.
— An unnamed 21-year-old psychology student died two months earlier. He was an avid chess player.
— An unidentified 21-year-old woman with a history of mental health challenges died in November 2022. She had allegedly ordered an item connected to Law. She had previously attempted suicide.
— A non-binary 18-year-old university student died in April 2023. The person had struggled with their mental health and had attempted suicide in the past. The person visited websites and discussion forums connected to Law, and ordered an item online from his business.
One Scottish survivor who visited a suicide website linked to Law told Global News it was “like shopping on Amazon.”
Emma Morrison, 23, said she bought sodium nitrite from one of the websites Law allegedly ran. In a dark place at the time, she visited an online forum on how to commit suicide.
“I was looking for suicide methods and things like that,” she told Global News. “It wasn’t a good time of my life, I’ve since got treatment and gotten a lot better and I regret that I ever even went down that path.”
On the forum, she was informed that sodium nitrate was a “quite easy and quite cheap” way to kill yourself.
“And that’s when they linked me to their websites that sold sodium nitrite,” she said, adding that other “cooking” items on the website were always sold out — except sodium nitrate. The kit was $75.
“It was like shopping on Amazon,” she said. “It was just a full site setup for it and shipped off — I had a tracking number and everything. It arrived in about a week.”
Morrison took the substance and her partner discovered her having seizures. She was saved at a Dundee hospital.
@HunterTOSun