'Why isn't he here now?'
Tom Parfett took his own life after joining a suicide forum and buying poison online. His father David is now on a mission to get answers
Channel 4
- Terry Payne
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David Parfett’s 22-year-old son Tom, described by his university as “exceptionally bright, much loved and with so much potential”, took his own life in October 2021. He had purchased a poisonous substance online that was delivered through the post in an A5-sized package and which he diluted, then drank, in the room of a Premier Inn hotel in Surrey.
“It asphyxiates you from the inside,” Parfett, 57, says matter-of-factly, the language of paternal love displaced by that of cold pathology. “You are in agony for a while and then you fall unconscious. Within two or three hours you’ll be dead.”
Parfett knew that his son was struggling with his mental health – a few weeks earlier he had expressed a wish to die – but he is adamant that, with the right support, Tom could have controlled his demons. “He was always going to have his challenges but there was so much going for him.”
What Parfett didn’t know was that Tom had been a member of an online forum on which suicidal people were encouraged to kill themselves. Also, there was a man in Canada who was selling them the means with which to do so. “This guy knew what he was doing,” says Parfett. “He might not have been in the room to force the substance down my son’s throat, but near as damn it he was.”
The man in question is Kenneth Law. In the UK alone, it’s thought that 97 people may have died as a result of buying this poison (which does have a legitimate commercial use but which we’re not naming) from him.
Tom Parfett died in October 2021. Courtesy of David Parfett
Because of Parfett’s disquiet about the manner of his son’s death, and what he saw as a police failure in examining it more thoroughly, he contacted The Times newspaper. Their subsequent investigation led to Law being arrested by Ontario police. He’s now accused of 14 charges of first-degree murder and assisting suicide relating to deaths in the province. He has pleaded not guilty and is due to stand trial next year.
A new two-part Channel 4 documentary follows Times journalist James Beal as he investigates the story. Eventually his digging leads him to Law. Posing as a potential customer, he quizzes Law over the phone about the effectiveness of the substance he’s selling. “What are the chances it will kill me?” Beal asks. “There’s a very, very high probability,” Law replies. “And people in the UK have died?” Beal follows up. “Yes. People in the UK have died. People in the US and Canada have died.”
Later, when Beal flies to Toronto to challenge Law about his toxic trade, the hotel chef defends his actions, saying, “They are committing suicide for themselves. I am not doing anything. I am just selling a product.”
It’s the online sale of such products that Parfett wants to see banned. “I want the social norm to be that you cannot do things on the internet that you can’t do on the high street. We have to ensure that products like this cannot be sold to individuals and that we regulate poisonous substances being imported from outside the UK.” He also wants the administrators of forums like the one his son joined to be charged with complicity in any resulting deaths. “They are normalising suicide and encouraging you to take your own life, to the extent that they celebrate when someone does take their life.”
I want the social norm to be that you cannot sell things on the internet that you can't sell on the high street
Parfett has seen a transcript of his son Tom’s final words, posted on the forum as he was dying. “I read those last words quite often,” he says. “I can almost hear him and in some ways that’s quite comforting.”
However, it’s the endorsement of his son’s actions by others on the forum that has so angered him. As Tom describes taking the poison, his heart beating “fast” and having to “breathe really hard”, he is told, “See you on the other side.”
“This is a man dying,” says Parfett. “Nobody looks to call an ambulance, nobody looks to help him. Those people would know there is an antidote that would work if administered within a couple of hours. And they do nothing. It does make you question humanity.”
Last month Parfett, a head of data, remarried after separating from Tom’s mum ten years ago. It was a ceremony tinged with the sadness
of loss. “The wedding gave me an opportunity to talk about my son. But the underlying emotion was, ‘Why isn’t he sitting here?’ He would be 26 now. He would be a different man to the 22-year-old we lost.”
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If you or someone you know is affected by the issues raised, Samaritans can offer support. Call free on 116 123
Authors
Terry Payne
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