‘Broke all of our hearts’: Families give testimony at Kenneth Law sentencing

No matter what prison sentence is ultimately imposed on the suicide poison merchant Kenneth Law, Thursday’s proceedings before Justice Michelle Fuerst had the deflated air of inadequate compromise.

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No one will get what they want.

Rather, testimony from family members of people who died by suicide with Law’s poison during the pandemic was a heart-rending litany of grief and loss.

“My son is dead, he is gone, I am empty, hollow,” Cindy MacMinn said in an angry voice through tears. “If it hadn’t been for your offence, perhaps Clayton (Choquette, 32) may still be here … Your actions caused me to have no desire to live any longer, because Clayton is not there to share with. It is pointless. He was everything to me.”

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“There are things you do not realize you are memorizing while your child is still alive,” like the sound of his “gallop” down the stairs to ask if the chicken and rice is ready, said Sarjit Kaur Rana, mother of Amrit Rana, 21. “Now it’s one of the most precious memories of my life.”

The Ontario Crown originally wanted Law to get life for murder, but a legal obstacle rose up unexpectedly in an unrelated case. So the plea deal agreed in May on assisting 14 suicides was the best the Crown could legally do.

Now, Law faces sentencing for a crime with a maximum sentence of 14 years, but the possibility that some penalties for his 14 admitted offences could be imposed consecutively. He is 60 years old.

Some of the people who delivered victim impact statements looked Law in the eye and said his name, with one man even warning Law that he would always be vigilant in case he ever tried to sell poison again. “He was ill and he needed help and I tried my best to give him that help,” said Stephen Mitchell, Sr., father of Stephen Mitchell, Jr., who died by suicide aged 21. “Mr. Law robbed my son of the chance to be healed.”

“Mr. Law broke all of our hearts,” said Greg Bryson, father of Tyler Bryson, 34, a professional commercial pilot. He “knowingly took actions to steal something so precious in all of our lives.”

Others determinedly did not say Law’s name, and walked past his prisoner’s box with their eyes on the back wall of the courtroom in Newmarket, Ont.

One dramatic moment came when a woman told court she had taken Law’s poison in an effort to end her life but survived thanks to medical care, and has been left guilt stricken as a survivor.

A striking commonality across the many victim impact statements on this first day of a hearing expected to last several weeks was how many people have taken stock of their own life through their grief, and found a new sense that it is broken into unfamiliar chapters, punctuated by absences.

Many took note of the numerical fact that some day will come when their loved one’s absence grows longer than their presence was.

Over and over again, people said there was a before, and now there is an after. Their health has changed, emotions, finances, values, responses to the stresses of life.

The loved ones of Maurizio Vadala, who dies aged 36 in 2023 spoke especially movingly. His sister Adrienne Dalli said she is left with not just his absence, but “the presence of a constant, unrelenting grief.” She is tormented by the words in his last letter to his family: “It’s time to face reality. I love and will miss you all. Goodbye.” In his emotional suffering, “he encountered guidance toward death instead of support, protection or intervention,” she said, and this has left her feeling “anger, confusion, and an overwhelming sense of injustice.”

Vadala’s long time close friend Daniel Calderone took the witness stand and unbuttoned his shirt to display a T-shirt with a picture of Maurizio, as he recalled camping trips and helping each other during difficult periods for both of them in the last months of his life. “I deeply wish I could have helped him more,” Calderone said. “I grieve the future experiences we will never have, the conversations we will never finish, the laughs we will never share.”

Law denied murder, but evidence suggests he was not personally bothered by the idea of assisting suicide, which he admitted in the plea deal. On a journalist’s secret recording that led to his downfall, he even seemed pleased with himself for offering this service to which he believed people had a right, even proud of himself for only profiting modestly.

His Ontario victims formally number 14, with details of 79 more shared by Britain to inform this sentencing hearing. But that does not include his American market, so the real number is likely higher, almost certainly more than 100.

He sent 431 packages to the U.S., 330 to the U.K., and 157 within Canada, all during the pandemic in 2021 until his arrest in 2023 sparked a panicked international search for packages already mailed. In addition to poison, he also sold more expensive kits for asphyxiation by gas.

One man who died by this manner made a donation before he died to a charity for first responders, and left cautionary notes to ensure those who found his body in a parked car were not injured or unduly traumatized.

Most of the suicides, however, were by poison ingested by dissolving it in water, purchased for less than $100 from Law online, who made $300,000 from his various schemes, roughly equally through PayPal and Shopify.

Thursday morning, Law sauntered slowly toward the central prisoner’s box in a black bomber jacket, khakis and brown leather shoes, making no eye contact with anyone. He sat impassively through all the proceedings as the Crown made its start on 74 victim impact statements, some read by their authors, others by prosecutors.

“I have no words for how cold the blood ran in my veins, the ice that dropped me to my knees and destroyed the world I lived in until that moment, to hear the words ‘He did it this time,’” said Kim Prosser, mother of Ashtyn Prosser-Blake, 19. He had just called her to say good night, and she thought he sounded tired. “I didn’t know he was making his last call goodbye,” she said. It lasted 38 minutes and 18 seconds.

She confessed that she has since made an attempt on her own life, not planned, after an unexpected emotional loss and the burden of the court process.

“I am still here and Ashtyn is not,” she said.

Her other son Drake Prosser, Ashtyn’s older brother, noted that Ashtyn spent 7274 days alive, and he knows there will be a day when he will have been gone longer than he was here.

He talked about the stages of grief, and how he was stuck in anger without feeling acceptance, but he has changed. “I wasn’t angry with him, I was sad that he would never do anything to anger me again,” he said.

“We are two people trying to survive the same loss while watching each other suffer,” said Leonardo Bedoya Forero, father of Jeshennia Bedoya-Lopez, 18, who gave a statement with his wife Maria Lopez, read out by a prosecutor due to language barriers. “It terrifies me to think what would happen if we both collapse at the same time.”

“We are two people clinging to each other because neither of us knows how to stand up on our own,” he said. “The future we had imagined as a family disappeared.”

He spoke of powerlessness, how could not protect his daughter, and now fears he cannot protect his wife.

“I saw my daughter, pale, bruised and cold,” a prosecutor read in Bedoya-Forero’s words. “That image became part of me.”

“The place she went for understanding led her to greater danger,” he said, to a man who “paves a path to death … How was I supposed to protect my daughter from something I didn’t even know I was supposed to protect her from?”

“There was a before, and then there is an after when we have gained membership in a club that nobody wants to be part of,” said Norson Harris, father of Ashley Harris, 26, who graduated in computer science and systems design.

“I still write to Ashley, message her, in the hopes there’s a small corner of the universe where she has written a system that is able to receive them,” he said. He said he leads a smaller life now and has become an introvert, and is not working at a similar level as in the past.

“We all feel we should have been able to prevent Ashley’s death, or to intervene in a way that would have changed the course of events”

Before she died, Ashley had just got into a new therapy program. But Law “sold her a chemical that Ashley ultimately used to end her own life.”

Her father Norson said it is a “small consolation” that Law has admitted his responsibility, and he said he hopes Law recognizes the answer he should have given his customers is “that they were loved, they were not alone, and that help is available.”

The hearing continues with dozens more victim statements expected.

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