A Canadian man who mailed “suicide packets” of poison to more than 100 people in dozens of countries – including Canada, the UK, the US, Italy, Australia and New Zealand – has pleaded guilty to 14 counts of assisting suicide.

Kenneth Law appeared in a packed courtroom in Newmarket, Ontario, on Friday to enter the plea after prosecutors agreed to withdraw 14 murder charges. Sentencing is expected to take place in September.

Law, 60, pleaded guilty to multiples charges of “counselling or aiding suicide”. He told Justice Michelle Fuerst he understood the scope of his crimes and was voluntarily entering a plea.

Family members were emotional as the court read out each of the charges and Law confirmed his role in the deaths of 14 people, aged 16 to 36, across the province of Ontario. He also admitted sending the lethal substances that caused the death of 79 people in the UK.

The closely watched case has highlighted the challenges of policing online forums that promote suicide and sell fatal substances. Bereaved families in the UK, where Law is linked to scores of deaths, have renewed their call for a public inquiry.

The court was told that Law sent suicide kits to people in 40 countries and territories, but most were sent to people in the UK and the US.

Law, a one-time engineer and cook at a Toronto hotel, ran a series of websites that sold lethal chemicals to at-risk people around the world. To evade detection, Law offered other products – including hot sauce – to give the illusion that he operated as an industrial food-prep wholesaler. The distinct silver packets warned that the use of the product was the sole responsibility of the user. He also sold suicide paraphernalia and gave detailed instructions about how to use the items. Investigators say Law sent 1,209 packages to people in 41 countries before his websites were shut down.

Law had previously denied reports that he was willingly selling products to help people kill themselves.

Prosecutors submitted a statement of facts that exceeded 60 pages and was expected to take hours to read in court. In many of the deaths, the victims were found by parents.

In a particularly harrowing case, a young man was heard vomiting by his family and pleaded for help from his parents after telling them he had consumed a toxic substance.

In another, a 29-year-old man called 911 himself, asking for medical help. He said he had ingested a toxic substance, repeating: “Please, and I am going to die soon”, and then began crying. He became unresponsive and had difficulty breathing when first responders arrived, and was pronounced dead at the hospital.

One man in his 30s, who was found in a rental car in Toronto, made a donation to first responders in anticipation of the trauma they would experience on finding his body.

A victim in the UK called emergency services and told the operator he had taken a substance to kill himself but did not want to die and began panicking, according to a transcript of the call. Paramedics arrived less than 30 minutes later and found him lying face down on his bed with his phone in his hand, still connected to emergency services. They were unable to revive him.

Packages from Law’s companies were often found near the victims.

At the time of his arrest, Law had received C$296,981 in his Shopify and PayPal accounts linked to his four companies.

Outside the court, family members of two Canadian victims condemned the plea deal.

“I feel very indignant,” said Leonardo Bedoya, whose daughter, Jeshennia, was 18 when she took her life. “After waiting three years, this [plea deal] is a disgrace – more than anything because this man has not faced up to the victims ... it is very painful.

“She was my only daughter, my light, my life … He made money from deaths all round the world.”

Addressing the Canadian government he said: “Ministers, please shut down these platforms [which encourage suicide] and which are still open. Shut them down to prevent more deaths, and please keep helping the victims.”

Kim Prosser, whose son Ashtyn, 19, died in March 2023 just weeks before Law’s arrest, said the hearing was a “heavy” day. “It’s been three years. Three years of uncelebrated birthdays.”

She said she remembered her son as “always happy, always standing up for the little man, and giving people a voice when they couldn’t find their own”.

Prosser said she had leaned on the concept of restorative justice in order to help make sense of the tragedy. “I walk with him in my heart, in everything that I do. I carry forward his legacy in my heart, and my soul, and in the work that I do.”

An investigation by the UK’s National Crime Agency into Canadian websites found that 286 individuals in the UK had received packages from Law, leading to 112 deaths. A deal between Canadian prosecutors and the UK’s National Crime Agency, announced on Friday, means Law’s role in the UK deaths will also be considered by the judge in his sentencing.

Families in the UK have said the impunity with which Law operated for years – and British authorities’ failure to prevent deaths linked to an online pro-suicide forum – necessitated a public inquiry. They said that beginning in 2019, 65 warnings were issued by coroners to three government departments. In October 2025, those families petitioned for a public inquiry, but were rejected in March. They now have less than a month to appeal against the decision.

“The driving force that keeps all bereaving families going is the fact that other people are still losing their loved ones,” said Adele Zeynep Walton, who lost her sister, Aimee, to a supplied poison. “The online forums linked to these deaths are still accessible. Unless something changes, then more people are going to continue to lose someone.”

While the case centred on the 14 confirmed deaths in Ontario, police in other parts of Canada and countries around the world have also investigated Law’s links to deaths deemed to be suicides.

When prosecutors initially brought first-degree murder charges against Law, the scope of the allegations appeared poised to make it one of the largest murder cases in Ontario history. But a ruling from the Ontario appeals court in an unrelated case suggested that merely supplying a substance used in a suicide might not be enough to sustain a murder or attempted murder conviction. Prosecutors would probably have needed to prove that Law played a more active causal role in the deaths, potentially in a way that “overbore” the victims’ free will.

Canada’s top court later pushed back, suggesting the distinction between murder and aiding suicide was not so rigid. But it stopped short of creating a definitive rule for cases such as Law’s, in which the accused allegedly supplied lethal substances to people who later took their own lives.

As a result, prosecutors downgraded the charges. Still, Canada’s criminal code punishes anyone who “counsels or abets” a person to die by suicide with a sentence of up to 14 years in prison. Experts believe the scope of Law’s actions suggest he will receive a harsh sentence.

Victim impact statements and sentencing are expected in September.