Newly released court documents show that starting in 2022, coroners across Ontario noticed a succession of people who had died from the effects of consuming the same chemical.
But it took 18 months and a call from a reporter before police took a series of investigative steps to establish links between them and issue global public warnings. Within weeks of a call from the Times of London, police arrested and charged Mississauga chef Kenneth Law.
Mr. Law, 59, is accused of murdering and aiding the suicides of 14 people in Ontario. The documents were filed in court as part of police applications to obtain search warrants and production orders. They had been previously sealed but were released in redacted form after an application to the court by The Globe and Mail and the CBC.
The records show coroners probing several deaths in Toronto, York, Peel, London, Durham, Waterloo and Thunder Bay investigated and attributed the cause to fatal methemoglobinemia – a rare failure of the blood to carry oxygen that can be induced by consuming chemicals.
The records say the Peel Regional Police investigation – which is now a multijurisdictional probe involving many police forces – took on urgency in April, 2023. That month, British reporter James Beal e-mailed that police force “indicating the intent of The Times of London to publish a three-part podcast and online article.”
The released records say Peel detectives started sharing notes about past cases involving apparent suicide deaths and also combing their databases for occurrence reports mentioning the toxic chemical.
As The Times article was published in late April, Peel police began obtaining judicially authorized search warrants and production orders aimed at stopping what they believe were worldwide shipments of the toxic substances in question.
Mr. Law was arrested the following month and is scheduled to go on trial in September, 2025.
Authorities allege he was an online vendor of chemicals sold to assist other people in their suicide attempts. The newly released documents say that he is believed to have shipped 1,209 packages to 41 countries.
“Police believe that Kenneth Law knowingly sold numerous individuals the substance they ingested to ultimately commit suicide,” the released records state.
The allegations contained in the documents have not been proven in court.
“On April 27, 2023, in an effort to protect the public, Peel Regional Police and Canada Post acted exigently to track and intercept packages shipped by Kenneth Law,” the records say, adding that “investigators liaised with police agencies across the globe.”
The records note that a Peel Regional Police detective “intervened and shut down the sites that Kenneth Law operates.” (Details are not given but the Canadian e-commerce company Shopify has previously said in a statement that it “took action to terminate all stores associated with Kenneth Law” when it received adverse information about him.)
Police searched Mr. Law’s home on May 2, 2023, and arrested him there. Later that month, the Financial Intelligence Transaction Agency of Canada passed to Peel police what it calls suspicious transaction reports about Mr. Law. FINTRAC passed along another report in June, but details about these exchanges are not being released.
Mr. Law’s case is proceeding under a standard pretrial publication ban, and the documents contain many redactions.
Mr. Law’s lawyers have said that he plans to plead not guilty to all 28 charges he faces. He stands accused of both murder and aiding suicide in the cases of the 14 Ontarians who died.
Crown attorneys in Ontario wrote the country’s top court this fall seeking an expedited Supreme Court hearing over fears that the 14 murder charges laid against Mr. Law may no longer be viable because of a June Ontario high-court ruling in an unrelated case.