DAVID Parfett’s son Tom was an academically brilliant Manchester United fan studying for a philosophy degree at St Andrews University, when in 2021, he took his own life.
He was just 22 when he checked into a hotel room and used a “suicide kit” sent to him by Kenneth Law, the “Merchant of Death”. Five years on, the sick website that gave Tom instructions on how to take his own life is still running. Here, David reveals how he exposed the website, his fight to get it closed down, and get the people behind it jailed.
David hunted down Kenneth Law with the help of a journalist, exposing the twisted world he inhabited Credit: AFP
Tom had confessed to considering suicide before, but admitted he was unlikely to act on it
David and his son had discussed suicide before, with the young student confessing that he had considered it but wouldn’t act on it.
So, when Tom did take his own life, David was shocked and went on a crusade to bring down the vile man and the accomplices who helped his son into the grave.
Without David’s knowledge, his son had been accessing a twisted online forum where suicide and the methods to achieve it are discussed openly.
The site, where twisted ghoul Kenneth Law would prowl for victims, still operates to this day – despite being linked to dozens of deaths in the UK and more globally.
The site where Law would prowl for victims still operates to this day Credit: PA
Tom was a bright student with a close-knit friend group Credit: PA
Law, and others like him, used the dark website to encourage people to take their own lives – and in Law’s case – sell “suicide kits” to the struggling individuals on the forum.
Law distributed toxic chemicals disguised as meat preserves to people across the world – shipping about 1,200 packages containing the substance, around one quarter of which ended up in the UK.
Prosecutors have linked Law – who once said some saw him as doing “God’s Work” – to the death of at least 79 Brits who purchased his chemicals to take their own lives.
And while the 60-year-old hotel cook has pleaded guilty to 14 counts of aiding suicides in Canada – in a deal that saw murder charges withdrawn – he won’t face justice in the UK despite David being one of the people who helped to expose his twisted works.
According to David, autistic Tom, “was just one of these people that saw no bad in anyone”, adding: “I guess it’s kind of ironic what happened to him in the end.”
The University of St Andrews student had mental health struggles since he was a teenager. He sometimes refused to go to school because of his anxiety.
The problem was exacerbated by the Covid pandemic, with the uncertainty of the world making it extremely “difficult for Tom to operate.”
When one of the 22-year-old’s friends took his own life, David recalls talking to his son about suicide for the first time.
He tells the Jattvibe: “Tom was trying to rationalise why somebody would do that, but from the point of view of not that they necessarily shouldn’t, but that it might be valid for somebody to do when they’re struggling with issues.”
“Over the next 2 or 3 years — because he took a year out between going to his sixth form college and going to uni — Tom would quite regularly talk about potentially taking his own life.
“It was something that he was clearly considering, clearly thinking about.
“But in the same sentence, it’d be clear that it was very unlikely that he was going to do so, that he wouldn’t know how to do it.
“Sometimes in his darkest moments, he’d talk about methods and say that he wouldn’t take his own life because of the risks involved of potential disability, if it went wrong, and he certainly wouldn’t want to do anything painful.
“Unfortunately, it was quite a regular conversation that we had in terms of his mental health and his suicide ideation.”
David believes that if the forum did not exist, his son would still be alive
Tom was drawn into the suicide forum with the promise of a painless death
Tom was receiving help in the real world, engaging with the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) and talking to his GP and his dad about the struggles he faced.
But, as David explains, the sick website undid a lot of the work that Tom’s support network provided.
Desperate for answers, after Tom’s death, David, who has a background in IT, delved into the sick world of the forum to try to retrace the digital footprints Tom left behind.
Speaking about the horrific site, David says: “You don’t even need to register on it. It was just a Google search away; it still is.
“I guess the best technical description of it is an echo chamber.
‘It pretends to be a community for people who are struggling to meet other people and potentially get a better understanding of what everybody’s going through.
“But if you just scratch the surface of that, it’s absolutely a community where they normalise suicide, and they encourage people to take their own lives.
“They provide detailed instructions. If you’re autistic, you want detailed instructions, and you want evidence that it will work.
“He was able to find a painless method as well—a reliable method—so if, for some reason, you took it and it didn’t kill you, then you wouldn’t be disabled afterwards. All of that information was just so easily available.”
David went on to discover that people on the website had connected his son with Kenneth Law, the so-called “Poison Chef.”
He retraced the harrowing details of his son’s suicide, from ordering the substances from Law to the moment he used them.
David remembers reading a message from Tom on the forum explaining that he was “losing feeling in his hands” after using the substances sent to him by Law.
After tracking down the site and observing the twisted advice shared by other users on the dark webpage, David came to a simple conclusion: “In short, if that site didn’t exist, Tom would still be around.”
“Yes, he was receiving help, but because of this website, still accessible today, it gave him the temptation to act.
“Given everything that was going on in his life… he was struggling at the time, it just made it all too easy.”
In the aftermath of Tom’s death, David worked to bring down the website, Law and others like him.
Tom was guided to his grave step by step by anonymous people online
The 22-year-old took his own life in October 2021, the site that helped him remains live today
How to get help
EVERY 90 minutes in the UK a life is lost to suicide
It doesn’t discriminate, touching the lives of people in every corner of society – from the homeless and unemployed to builders and doctors, reality stars and footballers.
It’s the biggest killer of people under the age of 35, more deadly than cancer and car crashes.
And men are three times more likely to take their own life than women.
Yet it’s rarely spoken of, a taboo that threatens to continue its deadly rampage unless we all stop and take notice, now.
If you, or anyone you know, needs help dealing with mental health problems, the following organisations provide support:
He quickly discovered that the scale of the problem was huge, over the coming years and months, he would order the same substances from Kenneth Law, delivered to his home in identical packaging.
He then tracked down the “Merchant of Death” with the help of a journalist.
He is now pushing for a clampdown on the shipment of toxic chemicals and the regulation of online forums.
David says: “The scale of this is incredible. It seems to completely flummox the police, regulators, and governments.
“Ofcom recently fined the website £950,000, and that’s great. That’s a milestone, a step forward for sure.
“But to me, this goes beyond online safety. There were 7 prevention of future deaths reports issued about this website before Tom died, and yet no action was taken because we seem to be confused at the moment about what action we can take to protect vulnerable people like Tom.
“I know a couple who lost their daughter last August. I know a lady who lives up in the Northeast who lost her husband in January.
“I know a Canadian lady who lost her daughter in April, and it’s the same pattern.
“Obviously, Law has been in jail during that time, so it’s not Law supplying them; it’s other people.”
David’s investigation into the twisted site and Kenneth Law led him to some chilling discoveries about the people who continue to operate the sick forum and the online sickos who encourage struggling people to take their own lives.
“The two people who run this are American citizens,” David adds.
“This site is the only site they allow women on. They run other sites that are ‘manosphere’ sites, and they run ‘incel’ sites.
“Those people should be arrested for assisting suicide at the very least.”
However, complex international laws mean the couple haven’t been arrested.
“There is certainly enough evidence to do so, but because they’re American citizens and because of things like Section 230 they’re not.”
Section 230 is an American law that provides immunity to online platforms and users from civil liability for content posted by third parties.
David was alone in his investigation, with police failing to look at his son’s devices until a year after his death – only investigating Tom’s digital footprints when prompted to by a coroner.
Throughout the process, David linked his son’s death to Kenneth Law and several other users of the website, including a moderator who provided details to Tom about how to end his life and was allegedly the person who connected Tom and Law.
And while Law was caught, he escaped UK justice, and David says he is just the tip of the iceberg, alleging that there are dozens of other people selling similar “suicide kits” and encouraging people to end their lives.
David explained: “I’d like to think that lessons were learned from the Law case, but I’m not seeing it.
“I’ve been working with CTV in Canada on trying to catch a guy who supplies this poison from Ukraine, having over two years ago worked with the BBC to catch the guy. So we know who he is and we know what he’s doing.
“I ordered a suicide kit from this Ukrainian. It was stopped by Border Force, so Border Force could identify the package.
“They knew what I’d ordered even though it was disguised as a phone case. They then ordered a welfare check on me from my local police, Thames Valley Police, and also the Met Police.
“I passed the welfare check. They then released this poison to me!
“There are instructions on the forum about how to avoid welfare checks.
“It’s easy to convince a couple of junior police officers that you’re sane and there’s nothing you’re going to do.
“It’s utterly bonkers. You’ve actually got our Border Force who can identify these poison packages, but because it’s not related to terrorism, with a simple and fallible welfare check, you’re letting those packages go.”
While some progress has been made, with UK users now blocked from the online forum, the site is still available across the globe.
And, as David proved, the substances can still be purchased and delivered to homes in the UK, with Law being just a small part of a much larger and more sinister machine.
David adds: “So when Tom died, I knew the substance he had taken. I knew there would have been detailed instructions and he would have had some reassurance that it would ‘work’—that it would reliably kill him.
“So I wanted to find out how on earth could you find that out? What had Tom thought?
“I thought, ‘well, I’m going to have to take a journey into the dark web here’ but I found it within probably a couple of weeks of Tom dying.
“It was so easy. It was a Google search, then I created an account – I probably didn’t even need to do that – and I started interacting.
“Tom died in mid-October. By mid-January, just after Christmas, I had ordered two packages: one from the UK, and one from someone we know now is Kenneth Law.
“So within a few weeks of Tom’s death, I had Kenneth Law’s suicide kit in my house.”
If you are affected by any of the issues raised in this article, please call the Samaritans for free on 116123.
