A deadly, but legal, chemical substance, routinely mailed to more than forty countries. Dozens, perhaps hundreds of recipients around the world have used this poison to take their own lives. On the back of the package, no name but the same shipping address: a post office box domiciled in Mississauga, a Canadian city of nearly nine hundred thousand inhabitants backed by Toronto, the capital of Ontario. For five months, Canada has lived to the rhythm of the sprawling investigation, launched on several continents, intended to establish the exact number of victims of its alleged “postal serial killer”.
Suspected of being at the heart of this consensual poisoning on a global scale, Kenneth Law, 57, was arrested by the Mississauga regional police on May 2, 2023. He was charged with providing a “suicide counseling or assistance” to two people in Ontario, a crime punishable by fourteen years in prison under Canadian law. Since the summer, twelve other alleged victims, aged 16 to 36, have added to his case in Canada.
In the United States, Italy, New Zealand, Australia and Ireland, police services are also tracking all suicides which, in each of their countries, could be linked to Kenneth Law. In the United Kingdom, the National Crime Agency said in August it had identified two hundred and thirty-two people who had received products sold by the individual over the past two years. Eighty-eight died.
Additive in meat preservation
Ontario investigators suspect this Canadian of having shipped more than 1,200 packages of sodium nitrite sachets around the world. This white crystalline powder, used as an additive in the preservation of meats and cold meats under the code E250, turns out to be a formidably effective poison if ingested in high doses.
By reducing oxygen levels and impairing breathing, it can quickly lead to death. Since 2021, several teams of American, British and Italian toxicologists have published studies showing that the ingestion of sodium nitrite was becoming an increasingly widespread method of suicide, particularly among 15-39 year olds who use the Internet as their main source of suicide. ‘information.
On his still active LinkedIn profile, Kenneth Law, wearing small round glasses, introduces himself as ” senior executive “, holder of an engineering degree and an MBA in marketing and “international business”. He ignores his last professional experiences: a brief stint as a cook in a luxury hotel in Toronto, where he discovered, according to the police, this “food salt”and the marketing of it.
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