- 7/10/2025
Category
😹
FunTranscript
00:00New Year's Eve, 2022.
00:10Emmy was going to a party.
00:13She had plans for next year.
00:15It was lovely.
00:17She was really excited.
00:20About 20 past 5 in the morning, my phone was ringing.
00:24Straight away, I knew it was bad.
00:26It was her friend's mum who just realised Emmy's left the party.
00:35She hasn't got her shoes on.
00:37We're going to go out and look for her.
00:40For Emmy to go missing, something's happened.
00:47Her dad said, Lou, I'm just going to go straight to her flat.
00:50See if I can find her.
00:54He got there within 20 minutes.
00:56He rang me going to the police here.
01:02She's in the flat, but she's not breathing.
01:09And I just remember thinking, please, God.
01:13You know, please let them get her breathing again.
01:17When I started looking into this story, I had no idea it was going to become as prolific as it's become.
01:27I had no sense that it was going to involve the deaths of hundreds of people.
01:34A deadly poison being sold all over the world, intentionally.
01:39Who was behind this?
01:40I decided to track this person down, hold him accountable.
01:45What do you think the chances are that it will kill me?
01:48There's a very, very high probability.
01:50People who you can die, people in the US have died, people in Canada have died.
01:54This is the equivalent of posting a loaded gun to somebody with instructions to say, pull here on the trigger.
02:09This person could be one of the worst mask murderers ever.
02:16Nobody was doing anything.
02:17Nobody.
02:18It was a consistent shutdown.
02:21The FBI, the Food and Drug Administration.
02:23It's a systematic failure of everything.
02:28The number of dead continues to climb.
02:31Police said he sent more than 1,200 packages to 40 countries,
02:36earning him the nickname in British media of the Poison King.
02:41Every single victim needs justice.
02:53The number of dead continues to be killed.
03:23Hey, I'm here with Tim, and we're walking home.
03:31Tom was extremely gifted academically, some wonderful friends.
03:39He started university recently, he had a lot to look forward to.
03:50He was absolutely passionate about everything from Manchester United through to philosophy.
04:00Wicked sense of humor, quite a dry sense of humor.
04:05His laugh, yeah, he had very distinctive laugh that also actually made me laugh as well.
04:15He was just such a lovely man.
04:19Probably not even an hour I go through without thinking about him.
04:26I'm in service, is the patient breathing?
04:33No, the patient is there.
04:35We check his pulse, there's no pulse, his wife and the goat.
04:41Do you know his name?
04:42His name is Mr Tom Parfit.
04:49Tom was found in a hotel room in West London.
04:57He was found in a prison, a poison next to his body, having taken his own life.
05:04It's just a different world after that, after that moment.
05:09Not going to see him grow up and have his own family.
05:14That's all, that's all gone.
05:15When I found out about this poison, I was just ever so angry.
05:30It's not something I knew about, not something I'd heard of.
05:35How on earth can somebody like my son get hold of something like this to kill himself?
05:40How did he find out about this substance?
05:43I started searching on Google.
05:47I very quickly came across a forum discussing suicide.
06:00I was shocked, for sure.
06:02I didn't know such places existed.
06:04They talk about methods, success rates.
06:09If you're going to jump off a building, how high do you need to jump?
06:17It wasn't hidden away in a dark corner of the internet.
06:20It wasn't something that maybe just a few people were using.
06:24There were lots of people all over the world interacting with this platform.
06:30The scale of this was just so difficult to comprehend.
06:35This forum gets millions of hits every month.
06:41A lot of people in the States, Canada, UK, Europe, Scandinavia.
06:52To think about each individual person who's taking this decision,
06:56it's just so, so tragic.
06:59The lives that have been lost.
07:01It's just astonishing.
07:04I didn't know anything about suicide forums until this, all of this.
07:22Like, just didn't even know that existed.
07:25And it's, yeah, it's terrifying.
07:29And she didn't stand a chance.
07:31The minute I got that phone call, I just remember thinking, oh, my God.
07:46Oh, my God.
07:47It just went on and on and...
07:51It must have been about, I don't know how long it felt, like, forever.
07:56Waiting for them to ring.
07:58You know, to say, yeah, she's fine, she's breathing again.
08:03And I just ran.
08:06So, she's gone.
08:13No, guys, this is my deaf friend.
08:16She's deaf.
08:17I haven't, that is...
08:19Immy.
08:22Immy loved her social media.
08:24Yeah.
08:25That's when she found Immy.
08:27Did you follow her?
08:28Yeah, I followed her straight away.
08:30It just used to make me giggle.
08:32Hello, Sialangas, too.
08:34Bullshit!
08:37Immy wanted to, um, use her TikTok to help people understand
08:42that having a disability was okay.
08:47Having mental health problems was okay, you know.
08:50It's so, so important to talk to people how you are feeling.
08:55To let people know if you are struggling.
08:57Just know that you are not online.
09:00Stay safe.
09:06Immy was probably about 13 when she
09:10seemed a little bit quieter.
09:14And I think at that age
09:16it suddenly hit that being deaf
09:19was actually affecting her at school.
09:23Her mood just continued to drop.
09:28She was in and out of hospitals from 15 to 24.
09:33The nine years were a constant battle.
09:36Desperate, desperate battle
09:39to find someone that could help her.
09:42I'm so sorry you're dead.
09:45Oh, JP.
09:47Have a drink on me.
09:49Oh.
09:51Thanks.
09:57Was Immy on the forum, do you know?
09:59Yeah, Immy was on the forum.
10:01I've been shown a comment that was on there.
10:06As soon as I saw it, I knew it was in me.
10:09I could just tell by the way she said my parents love me.
10:14And they're going to be the straw.
10:17Why do you think she bought the poison?
10:22Maybe people have told her that it's definitely going to work.
10:27I quickly found discussions about how to source the poison.
10:31How much you need to measure?
10:33How much do you dilute it by?
10:35There was a huge volume of these discussions.
10:37How many do you think?
10:39Hundreds, hundreds of posts about this.
10:40It's just horrendous.
10:41Like many forums, there's a code.
10:42One of the codes was the abbreviation IC.
10:43It's just horrendous.
10:45It's just horrendous.
10:46It seemed to be referring to the poison.
10:47It seemed to be referring to the poison.
10:48It's just horrendous.
10:49It's just horrendous.
10:50How many do you think?
10:51How many do you think?
10:52Hundreds, hundreds of posts about this.
10:55It's just horrendous.
11:00Like many forums there, the code.
11:05One of the codes was the abbreviation IC.
11:14It seemed to be referring to a place which would sell that poison that Tom used to end his own life.
11:22But nobody in the open forum actually explained what it stood for and what it meant.
11:27I adopted a persona of somebody who knew into the forum, was contemplating suicide, and I started posting, asking them what IC stood for.
11:42After I'd been on the forum for a few weeks, somebody finally explained what that meant.
12:00It was in-time cuisine.
12:02It behaved like any other website where you might go and buy goods.
12:14I did some digging around the site and I found the poison.
12:21You'd go to the page, you'd add it to your basket.
12:25You don't even have to register.
12:26There were no checks.
12:28It was like buying a book online.
12:30They didn't ask my age.
12:34It was all too easy.
12:38So, I order the poison.
13:00It wasn't long, probably a few days after I bought the poison online.
13:08I get it in the post.
13:11A relatively small package.
13:13It's been through customs.
13:15Just seemed to indicate that this was a well-oiled machine.
13:19This was something that was being done at a considerable scale.
13:22It still astonishes me that it's that easy to get hold of this poison.
13:35One of the challenges with our poisons law is that it doesn't really cater for international trade.
13:48There's no effective regulation if you buy something that is a portable substance in the UK from abroad.
13:53You effectively bypass those laws.
14:01I wanted to shout it from the rooftops that there's a problem here that needs to be stopped.
14:05I could not persuade the police force investigating Tom's death that it looked to me like a bigger problem.
14:13They weren't interested in seeing this as more than just an individual taking his own life.
14:17I had ran out of options. I had nowhere left to turn.
14:28My last chance was to go to the newspapers.
14:36Thanks for calling me, David.
14:38I'd definitely be interested in taking a look at this.
14:41Would you mind talking through what's happened?
14:43I'm just, I'm just really, let's call it a surprise that, you know, the police have known, since they found Tom's body, where he bought this from.
14:54Yeah.
14:56But nobody's done anything about...
14:58As a journalist, you cover so many different stories.
15:00Politics, one minute crime, the next.
15:03You can definitely make a difference.
15:05Shining light on things that are not widely known about.
15:08This is one of the frustrations with the UK police. They just weren't interested in following up on this. You know, they weren't interested in highlighting this as any chance of a criminal case where, as you know, it's an offence to assist them with suicide.
15:29Mental health is a real pressing subject for a lot of people, so I think it's hugely relevant to talk about suicide.
15:36When I was speaking to David, I couldn't understand why the police weren't investigating.
15:43It was his belief that the website selling a poison knew it was selling to a person that was suicidal, and it is illegal to assist suicide.
15:51I felt that there was the chance to expose something going on here that hadn't been noticed before.
16:01There was a pressure to cut to the heart of the whole story and find out what was going on.
16:08After the call with David, I went straight on to NinetimeCuisine.com.
16:21The first thing you see is a plate of cold meats, and if you scroll down on the website, it appeared to be selling products that you might use around the home.
16:31Liquid food flavouring, salts, and then nestled among them was the poison.
16:37The website had painted a picture, a facade, if you like, of respectability.
16:47It looked like someone was trying to perhaps cover up its true purpose.
16:51So I wanted to find out who was behind it, who ran it, and what exactly was going on.
16:59The police thought Miles had taken an accidental overdose, you know, that didn't quite sit right with us.
17:26And so we were just trying to get an idea of what his final days and final weeks had looked like.
17:33And we'd started looking through his computer and his phone, and we had discovered that he was very, very active on a suicide forum.
17:47We started to do searches, just everything that we could find out at the time about this forum.
17:54There's a lot of talk about people becoming addicted to that site, and he was very welcomed in that forum.
18:03Miles was my first born son.
18:13We had Malin about 18 months later, and just had a great childhood growing up, happy and fun.
18:23I always looked up to my older brother, because he was just so good at everything.
18:28You know, he was brilliant and talented.
18:32As a mother, you don't want to see your kids hurt, and so you want to try to do everything you can to help them.
18:57And I wasn't able to do that.
19:00When I began to realize people in a mental health crisis like Miles had access to that forum, you feel so bad for them, you're trying to figure out a way to stop it.
19:25My mother was quite adamant to help people that were on that site.
19:31I was in the military for about 12 years, became a counterintelligence agent.
19:37I have a bachelor's degree in intelligence and security studies, and then I took a few courses in digital forensics.
19:44And so my mother had reached out to me one day and asked me to look into where to find the poison, basically.
19:53And so I posted on the site.
19:56I remember it was a Saturday morning, and I had received a message back from a user called Greenberg.
20:06He had a picture of a white dog and a short bio that kind of explained how he was a retired pathologist based in New York.
20:18I had seen the name on the site often, kind of one of those users that you would see posting very regularly.
20:29And he merely messaged me the name imetimecuisine.com.
20:40It just appeared to be a site that sold food service products, salts and things like that.
20:47Like a restaurant supply company.
20:49Yes.
20:50My brother, he didn't get it from Icy, but I decided maybe I should look at this a little bit further.
21:00And I scrolled down to see their products.
21:03And lo and behold, they had products being displayed, but they were either salt that was $10,000,
21:12or other products that were sold out.
21:19The only thing available for sale for $59 plus shipping was the poison.
21:27And I thought, that is strange.
21:30And further to that, there's no other use for that chemical at that potency.
21:35And I said, you know, I think there's something more here that needs to be looked at.
21:40I remember messaging back and forth with my mom saying, this is definitely a front site.
21:47This person's providing suicide methods that are favored by the forum.
21:53And then Greenberg is advertising the site and shuttling people over to this storefront.
22:01It just opens up this whole world of what seems to be black market selling for methods to commit suicide.
22:11The crucial element in this story was who exactly was the person behind this website.
22:21Under the contact information, there was a PO box address in Canada located in a city called Mississauga.
22:30About 45 minutes west of Toronto.
22:37There was also a phone number and an email address, klawatoutlook.com.
22:43I googled that and then I clicked on two further websites that came up.
22:50There was nambuka.com and eskimo.com.
22:56These two websites were definitely more explicit in their content and quite clearly selling goods for the purposes of suicide.
23:10There were testimonies on Eskimos saying that the products were expensive, but it was probably the last $1,000 they would ever spend.
23:18It was shocking to see that a website that this could operate under the radar.
23:25On both websites, the PO box address and the contact details were the same, klawatoutlook.com.
23:35And on Eskimo was the name Kenneth M. Law.
23:40I googled his name and immediately popped a CV of a Kenneth M. Law dated from 2005.
23:53And then at the bottom of the website, there was a picture of Kenneth Law himself.
24:01Dressed up in a tuxedo, smiling at the camera.
24:05Doing this job for a number of years, you've become quite sceptical about things.
24:11Quite cynical.
24:13I had no doubts that there was somebody called Kenneth Law living in Ontario.
24:20But would somebody really be as brazen or foolish to use their real name on a website that may well be conducting criminality?
24:29To really discover what was going on, I needed to track down Kenneth Law.
24:38I'd kind of gone down the rabbit hole at this point.
24:57I knew that David's son, Tom, purchased poison from a seller in Canada calling himself Kenneth Law.
25:05I was looking for any information about him, where he might live, what he might be up to other than these websites.
25:29Who was Kenneth Law?
25:33I discovered quite an old CV. It was dated from 2005.
25:38He was pretty well qualified in the engineering field.
25:43He has had several stints of employment at big companies, including an aerospace company called Dunlop in the Midlands in the UK.
25:51When I did social media searches, I found the same picture as on the CV on a Facebook profile for Kenneth Law in Canada.
26:05He didn't have many public posts. There was one strange post about erotic art, and there were other posts about the TV show Star Trek.
26:20A large percentage of his Facebook friends appeared to work at the Fairmont Royal York Hotel, a five-star hotel in downtown Toronto.
26:31I guess that he either worked there or had worked there at some stage.
26:42I was beginning to piece together who this person was.
26:44I needed to find out what was the scale of his business. How many people have they sold this stuff to?
26:55There was enough information in front of me to try and conduct a full investigation around this website and this substance.
27:04But we needed to be extremely careful because we knew it was so sensitive.
27:15Can you click on one of those?
27:18Yes. Here's a post from someone who's asking whether or not they should use the poison to commit suicide.
27:27After Miles had died, we were on the forum often.
27:31Day after day, hour after hour, you would see goodbye posts of people who just, they aren't getting the help that they need.
27:39I do believe that people should have the right to talk about suicide.
28:01I believe that people should have the right to choose as well.
28:04I am wholly behind the right to die movement for those who, you know, are suffering from a terminal illness that they can't come back from.
28:14And all that, all that's at the end of that is more suffering.
28:18But this is something different.
28:21This is a community that comes together for one single purpose.
28:39They become an echo chamber of despair and heartbreak.
28:47But the thing is, if you say, have you tried to reach out to a suicide hotline, you'll be banned from the site.
28:57If you tried to suggest, reach out for help, do you have family, do you have somebody, anybody, you'll be banned from the site.
29:04Day after day after day after day, you see them say goodbye.
29:13CTB, I'm going to catch the bus.
29:16You don't know if these people are minors, if they're going through an acute mental episode.
29:29You don't know if these people want to take back what they started and they can't.
29:35And there's nothing you can do about it. Absolutely nothing.
29:47It was only a few weeks ago that I found that Tom started a forum post when he took the substance.
29:53He says, I took the poison. My heart is beating fast. It feels like I've been on a run.
30:04I feel like I need to breathe really hard.
30:08And then somebody else on the forum says, see you on the other side.
30:12Tom then posts, I feel sweaty.
30:17My head is making a slightly screeching noise.
30:22I don't feel as bad now. I can hear a fuzzing noise. Weird.
30:27And this is all within minutes of each other. This is happening in real time.
30:33My fingers feel numb, like I can barely move it.
30:38Somebody else says, not alone. Ever one here with you.
30:46Somebody else puts, rest in peace, RIP.
30:50Tom doesn't post anymore.
30:54And then finally, I think they are gone.
30:58That's the end of the thread.
31:02So all of that's happened within a few minutes and that's my son dying.
31:08What this substance actually does is horrific.
31:16The poison suffocates the body from the inside.
31:19I know Tom would have died in agony.
31:23And yet nobody calls an ambulance.
31:26Nobody tries to find him.
31:27Nobody asks the question, where are you?
31:30What can we do?
31:32It's all congratulatory messages.
31:35It's all messages of support.
31:37Of all the forums that you looked at, David, did you get the feeling that this company is the biggest supplier?
31:47Or is it someone that's signposted?
31:48Yeah.
31:49I would say it's the only supplier I've seen signposted.
31:50But there's no doubt it's killing people.
31:51The thing I've been trying to find out, and I can't, is how many.
31:56If it's 10, 20, 100, 1,000?
31:57Hmm.
31:58If it's 10, 20, 100, 1,000?
31:59Hmm.
32:01I'm spending increasing amounts of time on this investigation and trying to get things moving.
32:14If it's 10, 20, 100, 1,000.
32:17I'm trying to find some answers for David's.
32:37This week, we are tackling the difficult topic of suicide as numbers rise at startling rates, especially among young people.
32:44Yeah, so suicide rates jumped 33% between 1999 and 2019.
32:50Then there was a small decrease in 2020.
32:56Kenneth Law's website started gaining traction in the summer of 2021 on the forum.
33:06There are accounts about how Kenneth Law's product arrived quickly in the post, without question from the authorities.
33:14No one in the general public really knew what was going on.
33:17No one in the general public really understood that people were so desperately ill that they would log onto a suicide forum, be ushered towards a poison seller, receive that poison through the mail, take it and die.
33:33And the sellers like Kenneth Law make a living out of it.
33:3660-something dollars cost my brother's life.
33:50Everything my brother's done in the past and what he could do in the future came down to 60 dollars.
33:56It brings me back to happier days, simpler days, the good old days.
34:24There we go.
34:28Benji, tell me your full name, honey.
34:32Benji.
34:33Benji?
34:34He's Bunny.
34:35All right.
34:36Do you have any brothers and sisters?
34:38No.
34:39My brother.
34:40How old is your brother?
34:41He's 11.
34:42What do you like about him?
34:43I'm married.
34:44Nothing?
34:45Okay.
34:46No.
34:47You're real mean to him, are you?
34:50No.
34:51Do you tease him?
34:52No.
34:53Am I teasing you?
34:55Yeah.
34:56Yeah.
34:57Do you look after your brother a lot?
35:00Most of the time.
35:01Yeah.
35:02Gets to be a big job sometimes, right?
35:04Sometimes.
35:05Right?
35:06Sometimes.
35:16Benji was my younger brother.
35:19I was really the only one that knew about all his struggles.
35:24I just didn't know how bad it was.
35:30I could protect him from other people and, you know, stupid decisions, but ultimately,
35:37the one thing I couldn't do, I couldn't protect him from himself.
35:42That's the thing that will drive me crazy.
36:02Benji left a suicide note on the table saying, make sure my brother gets my cell phone.
36:10It was almost like a map for me.
36:13He didn't log out of stuff.
36:15He didn't delete his browser history.
36:18Reading my brother's questions and comments, I'm seeing that he was guided to I'm Time Cuisine
36:25to purchase the poison.
36:28Let me grab this one.
36:31A user says, I'm Time Cuisine is where I get it from.
36:36Usually you need a license to obtain the poison, but I'm Time Cuisine just hands it out.
36:43I went through his emails and it's clear as day to see what Benji bought, when he bought it,
36:51and who he bought it from.
36:54I found he had made several purchases from Kenneth Law directly.
37:00He uses his name in the email for different amounts of poison.
37:07Kenneth Law was well aware of what he was doing.
37:11He knew why people were getting it.
37:14And he did nothing to stop or try and get them to get help or talk them down or anything.
37:21He just saw dollar signs.
37:23Customers were dollar signs to him.
37:26Comer signs to him.
37:36We started ringing the alarm bells about Kenneth Law in February of 2022.
38:06At the time, I worked in the cyber division for the FBI, and so I went to my section chief,
38:20and I brought the evidence that I had to him.
38:24I showed him how the site was being used, this person who's peddling the site to people
38:30who are trying to commit suicide in the United States.
38:34And the answer I was given was, he's not an American, and this is a legal substance, so
38:41there's nothing we can do about it.
38:43And I was kind of just shut down right there.
38:46Well, and then, that's when I picked it up and I contacted the police, the FBI, the Food
38:53and Drug Administration.
38:57There was a consistent shutdown at every avenue because that poison is not regulated right
39:06now.
39:07It's not marked as harmful.
39:14Nothing was being done.
39:16And Kenneth Law was still operating.
39:20And it was the most frustrating because at that point, you're thinking, where else can
39:26I go?
39:27Who can help us shut this down?
39:39What you want to do on a story like this is to hold somebody accountable and make them answer
39:43questions.
39:45This is someone who's evaded scrutiny and accountability for almost two years.
39:49At this point, I had absolutely no idea whether there was one death or a hundred deaths.
39:57I believed he knew his customers were purchasing his poison to take their own lives.
40:02But I needed to get him on the phone admitting this.
40:07On his EskMode website, he offered a 40-minute consultation call with a prospective buyer of one of his products.
40:17So I purchased a consultation call and waited for him to reach out.
40:37This is very much a modern phenomenon.
40:48The poison has legitimate uses and up until recently, the legitimate uses were its own uses.
40:56But for the last five or six years in particular, this poison has been linked to a number of suicides.
41:06This case gets complicated because this substance is reportable under the Poisons Act.
41:11But all that means is that the seller has to report suspicious transactions to the authorities.
41:21If you come across a seller that isn't reporting suspicious transactions, the implication is that
41:26they would be knowingly selling that substance to people who might be using it to harm themselves
41:33and profiting from that.
41:34I decided to speak to Kenneth Law under the guise of someone who needed help.
41:45In order to get him to tell me things, he wouldn't tell me if I was a journalist calling up.
41:50I needed to get him to admit on the phone that he was selling intentionally to a person that
41:57was suicidal.
41:59This would be the one and only chance to nail down who he was and find out the scale of his
42:06operation.
42:07Of course, I couldn't use my real name.
42:19Hello, Ken here.
42:21Hi, Ken.
42:22It's John.
42:23Hi, John.
42:24How are you doing today?
42:25Yeah, I'm good.
42:26How are you?
42:27I just wanted to be really sure about my purchase, basically.
42:34What do you think the chances are that it will kill me?
42:39I mean, it's a very, very high probability.
42:41Is it legal?
42:42Well, that's very much a grey area.
42:46As long as I don't say that the intent is to commit suicide, then it's fine.
42:51And you can assure me that you've done this before with people in the UK?
42:54Yes, yes, yes.
42:55And they've died because of this?
42:58Yes.
42:59Absolutely.
43:04Do I cause any problems for you?
43:06The only thing I ask is that any documentation, communication that we've exchanged that you
43:11destroy a prior, any type of labels that might be on the mailing box to destroy that
43:16are disposable prior.
43:17Yeah.
43:18Other than that, it's not really traceable.
43:20So you just tell the police that you don't know why this person's bought it?
43:25Yeah, yeah, yeah.
43:27It's even easier for me than sending it to national, right?
43:30So the UK government has no jurisdiction to the Canadian government.
43:34And they're not going to, you know, bring me over to the UK for this.
43:38It's too small.
43:39How many people have you sent it to in the UK?
43:44It will be literally in the hundreds.
43:47They've all received it.
43:48So people in the UK have died?
43:49Yes.
43:50People in the UK have died.
43:51People in the UK have died.
43:52People in the US have died.
43:53People in the US have died.
43:54People in Canada have died.
43:55People in other parts of the world, right?
44:11How many countries do you send this to?
44:14Those.
44:19Many countries.
44:20Probably at least in the US, the dozens now, right?
44:31Sounds like a full time job.
44:33I did check these here.
44:34Yeah.
44:35it's just evil okay take care of yourself thank you bye
44:49hearing his voice
44:55to me that's the man who murdered my my kid
45:01he knew exactly what he was doing kenneth law is a sure and present danger to the public
45:12he is connected to an enterprise of suicide methods hundreds of deaths dozens of countries
45:22and other people are still dying he has no intentions of stopping if somebody doesn't
45:28stop him i couldn't let him slip away i needed to go to canada to track him down
45:37and properly hold him accountable for these deaths
45:43hi uh kenneth hi kenneth law uh james field oh what are you doing here
45:50so
45:58so
46:04Amen.
46:34Amen.
47:04Amen.
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