‘Broke all of our hearts’: Families give testimony at Kenneth Law sentencing

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The loved ones of Maurizio Vadala, who dies aged 36 in 2023 spoke especially movingly. His sister Adrienne Dalli said she is left with not just his absence, but “the presence of a constant, unrelenting grief.” She is tormented by the words in his last letter to his family: “It’s time to face reality. I love and will miss you all. Goodbye.” In his emotional suffering, “he encountered guidance toward death instead of support, protection or intervention,” she said, and this has left her feeling “anger, confusion, and an overwhelming sense of injustice.”

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Vadala’s long time close friend Daniel Calderone took the witness stand and unbuttoned his shirt to display a T-shirt with a picture of Maurizio, as he recalled camping trips and helping each other during difficult periods for both of them in the last months of his life. “I deeply wish I could have helped him more,” Calderone said. “I grieve the future experiences we will never have, the conversations we will never finish, the laughs we will never share.”

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Law denied murder, but evidence suggests he was not personally bothered by the idea of assisting suicide, which he admitted in the plea deal. On a journalist’s secret recording that led to his downfall, he even seemed pleased with himself for offering this service to which he believed people had a right, even proud of himself for only profiting modestly.

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His Ontario victims formally number 14, with details of 79 more shared by Britain to inform this sentencing hearing. But that does not include his American market, so the real number is likely higher, almost certainly more than 100.

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He sent 431 packages to the U.S., 330 to the U.K., and 157 within Canada, all during the pandemic in 2021 until his arrest in 2023 sparked a panicked international search for packages already mailed. In addition to poison, he also sold more expensive kits for asphyxiation by gas.

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One man who died by this manner made a donation before he died to a charity for first responders, and left cautionary notes to ensure those who found his body in a parked car were not injured or unduly traumatized.

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Most of the suicides, however, were by poison ingested by dissolving it in water, purchased for less than $100 from Law online, who made $300,000 from his various schemes, roughly equally through PayPal and Shopify.

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Thursday morning, Law sauntered slowly toward the central prisoner’s box in a black bomber jacket, khakis and brown leather shoes, making no eye contact with anyone. He sat impassively through all the proceedings as the Crown made its start on 74 victim impact statements, some read by their authors, others by prosecutors.

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“I have no words for how cold the blood ran in my veins, the ice that dropped me to my knees and destroyed the world I lived in until that moment, to hear the words ‘He did it this time,’” said Kim Prosser, mother of Ashtyn Prosser-Blake, 19. He had just called her to say good night, and she thought he sounded tired. “I didn’t know he was making his last call goodbye,” she said. It lasted 38 minutes and 18 seconds.

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She confessed that she has since made an attempt on her own life, not planned, after an unexpected emotional loss and the burden of the court process.

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“I am still here and Ashtyn is not,” she said.

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Her other son Drake Prosser, Ashtyn’s older brother, noted that Ashtyn spent 7274 days alive, and he knows there will be a day when he will have been gone longer than he was here.

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He talked about the stages of grief, and how he was stuck in anger without feeling acceptance, but he has changed. “I wasn’t angry with him, I was sad that he would never do anything to anger me again,” he said.

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“We are two people trying to survive the same loss while watching each other suffer,” said Leonardo Bedoya Forero, father of Jeshennia Bedoya-Lopez, 18, who gave a statement with his wife Maria Lopez, read out by a prosecutor due to language barriers. “It terrifies me to think what would happen if we both collapse at the same time.”