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Ted Vadala, left, and Rosa Vadala, centre, console each other as their daughter, Adrienne Dalli, right, speaks to media outside the Ontario Superior Court of Justice in Newmarket, Ont., during sentencing hearings for Kenneth Law on Wednesday. Her brother, Maurizio Antonio Vadala, died after ordering products from the website Law ran.Sammy Kogan/The Globe and Mail
The first phase of Kenneth Law’s sentencing hearing for aiding 14 suicides has closed with stories of parents and police attempting to intercept packages sold through his online businesses to vulnerable people around the world.
They were among the accounts entered into evidence on Thursday, as prosecutors finished putting 74 victim impact statements on the record in a Newmarket, Ont., courtroom.
Mr. Law, who has been jailed for more than three years, attended these hearings while sitting a prisoner’s box. He listened to dozens of people denounce him without reacting.
In May, the 61-year-old Mississauga man pleaded guilty to the crimes. He also signed off on an agreed statement saying that between 2021 and 2023 his online business shipped 1,200 packages of suicide kits to people in 41 countries.
Legal arguments will begin on Nov. 27, with a decision to be released later on Mr. Law’s conviction on 14 counts of aiding suicide. A sentencing ruling on Law’s prison term would follow, possibly not until 2027.
Faith George wrote in her victim-impact statement that by the time her daughter, 21-year-old Faith Ike-Elechi, killed herself in August, 2022, she had already intercepted a poison package, sent to her daughter, that Ms. George knew was potentially lethal.
Families detail lasting grief as judge weighs Kenneth Law’s sentence
But Ms. George, a mental-heath nurse who lives in Britain, said a second package shipped by Mr. Law got into her house unseen and that her daughter used it.
“I genuinely believed that we had prevented a tragedy,” Ms. George wrote. “What I did not know was that while she was receiving treatment and support, Kenneth Law supplied her a second package,”
The mother said she only learned of the second shipment when her daughter screamed from her bedroom one midnight. She found her daughter dying and terrified.
“The only words I repeatedly heard were: ‘I’m sorry I drank it,’” Ms. George wrote. “I looked into her eyes and saw fear and what I believed to be profound regret.”
“There was nothing I could do to save her.”
“Kenneth Law did not know my daughter,” Ms. George wrote. “He did not know she was receiving treatment and had every opportunity to recover.”
Court also heard about the 2024 death of Emma Coletti, a 47-year-old who was found dead in a British forest more than two years after buying a suicide kit.
According to an agreed statement of facts in the case, she purchased the poison in 2022, but did not consume the product until November, 2024. By then, Mr. Law had been in jail for a year-and-a-half.
Members of her immediate family submitted a written victim impact statement saying Ms. Coletti had been unsure about whether she wanted to take her own life, but that she felt she was facing “a fatal deadline” because of how Mr. Law had marked his kits with “best before” dates.
The statement from the Coletti parents and a sibling – who asked prosecutors to preserve their privacy – said that Emma was the heart of the family and that for nearly half a century they shared a house where they celebrated every Christmas together.
A timeline of key events in the Kenneth Law case
Court heard about Mark Bailey, a 44-year-old British man who died by suicide only in January of this year. This was more than four years after he bought his poison.
In a video victim-impact statement members of the Bailey family said they could not properly mourn. That was because Mr. Bailey’s body was sheathed in plastic for weeks, because it was still considered toxic from the chemicals he had bought from Mr. Law.
The agreed facts in the criminal case say that authorities had tried to stop Mr. Bailey from taking his life years earlier.
“In May, 2023, Mr. Bailey was visited by police for a welfare check, following disclosure of Mr. Law’s customer list to law enforcement,” the agreed facts in the case stated. British authorities said they were falsely told that Mr. Bailey had disposed of the chemicals he bought back in 2021.
Thursday’s proceedings closed with statements from several survivors, including three formerly suicidal British adults, who wrote to the court to say they purchased and received chemicals they could have used to kill themselves – but did not.
When Canadian police arrested Mr. Law in May, 2023, they seized his shipment list. Then, they shared it globally through Interpol with police abroad. This led to worldwide wellness checks and attempts at parcel seizures – especially in Britain, the jurisdiction to which Mr. Law shipped more than one-quarter of his 1,200 deadly packages.
One woman said in a victim impact statement that she was saved when six British police officers showed up at her door and demanded she hand over her parcel – arriving already knowing her identity and what she had bought. She was ashamed at the time but told the court that she now knows that this was the day that her life was given back to her because it made her get the help she needed.