A Canadian man who allegedly helped more than a dozen young people across the province of Ontario kill themselves by sending them poison has been charged with 14 counts of second-degree murder, police said on Tuesday.
Kenneth Law, 58, had previously been charged with 14 counts of counselling or aiding suicide.
Police said Law mailed about 160 packages containing lethal substances to people in Canada and also sent at least 1,200 packages to addresses in more than 40 countries.
“It’s clearly significant … to lay that many [charges] and it’s not taken lightly by the investigative team,” Inspector Simon James of York police, a district north of Toronto, told a televised news conference.
The victims ranged in age from 16 to 36, but James declined to name them or explain why the charges against Law had been upgraded. He also said he did not know how many people may have died abroad.
“We continue to co-operate with law enforcement and work with them around the world,” James said.
The Canadian Broadcasting Corp, citing official records and statements, said Law could be linked to 117 deaths around the world, most of them in Britain. It said authorities in New Zealand, France, Ireland, Italy, Germany and Switzerland had all confirmed that Law had sent packages to their countries.
Law, who police say used a number of websites to contact his victims, is in prison and is due to appear in court on 19 December.
“One of the challenges we face is that a number of these websites are located in other countries where Canadian law does not apply,” James said.
If found guilty, Law will go down as one of the worst mass murderers in Canadian history. In April 2020, a 51-year-old man shot and killed 22 people in the Atlantic province of Nova Scotia before being killed by police.