My son died in agony in Premier Inn after buying poison from sick suicide site…grief drove me to hunt down evil seller

The Sun

08-07-2025

SCROLLING through a string of deeply disturbing online posts, David Parfett was horrified.
Dozens of desperate users were openly discussing suicide - sharing not just their intentions, but graphic, step-by-step methods.
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Even more chilling were the replies. Instead of offering help or directing them to support services, other users cheered them on, offered praise and gave practical advice on how to end their lives.
As David read on, one specific substance was mentioned again and again - a deadly poison users recommended, complete with instructions on where to buy it and how to take it.
It was the chemical his 22-year-old son Tom had used just months earlier, after being drawn into this same dark corner of the internet.
With just a few clicks, David found himself on a website where he was able to order a lethal dose of the substance - which The Sun is not naming - for £50.
'It arrived a few days later - I found myself with a packet of the poison I knew my son had used,' David, 56, tells The Sun.
'I couldn't believe what I was seeing.
'It was clear that there were people who were selling these poisons and other methods on the site as well.
'It was quite obvious to me how Tom was able to get it - and that there's people out there who are posting this poison to vulnerable people, facilitated by internet forums like this one.
'It was blindingly obvious that there's a bigger problem here.'
Determined to protect others from suffering the tragic fate of his son - and with police 'uninterested' in probing the sites David had found, the dad turned to journalist James Beal.
My son died in agony in Premier Inn after buying poison from sick suicide site…I was so distraught I hunted down seller
That call triggered an investigation that unmasked chef Kenneth Law, from Toronto, Canada as the man suspected of supplying a lethal substance to suicidal people around the world.
So far, 131 deaths have been linked to Law's products - with at least 97 in the UK and Law is currently in jail, awaiting trial.
Canadian police say he sent 1,209 packages to 41 countries.
Now, a new Channel 4 series, Poisoned: Killer in the Post, explores the case and the scale of devastation left in its wake.
Childhood struggles
The two-part documentary follows David and other bereaved relatives as they grapple with the ease with which this substance is shipped around the globe - along with their combined efforts to track down Law, 59 and bring him to account.
'This is a man that knew what he was doing,' David, a data director from Twickenham, south-west London, says.
'Just because he was posting the means [for people] to kill themselves rather than applying it in person doesn't make it any less of a murder case, in my opinion.
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'The scale of loss is astonishing.'
David remembers Man United fan Tom as a high achiever with a distinctive laugh, a dry sense of humour and a 'lovely group of friends.'
A gifted student, he excelled at maths and got 'almost perfect GCSEs' - but this 'came at a cost,' as Tom, who was autistic and had ADHD, struggled with academic pressure.
He developed severe anxiety which led him to taking some time out of school, and his mental health declined sharply when he was 19, after a fellow sixth-form student died by suicide.
'I think that was the starting place of actually Tom contemplating doing the same himself,' David says.
'He started openly discussing an idea about ending his own life.'
While Tom, who went on to study at the University of St Andrews, was engaged with mental health services, he 'was not getting the support he felt he should get,' David says.
There was a knock on the door about five o'clock in the morning... I think at that moment I knew what had happened
David
In the weeks leading up to his death, Tom - whose parents are not together - had been staying with his mum.
On the day of his death he had said that he was checking into a mental health support facility.
David says: 'He was telling us quite a positive story of [...how] he was hopeful that they'd be able to help him. Obviously that clearly wasn't what was on his mind.'
Lonely death
Learning of Tom's death was 'every parent's nightmare,' he says.
'There was a knock on the door about five o'clock in the morning [...] and there was a police car outside. I think at that moment I knew what had happened,' he recalls.
'I felt really sorry for the [two] young policemen standing there, shaking and clearly quite agitated.
'[I] was saying, 'Is it Tom? Has he killed himself?''
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The police explained that Tom had been found in a Premier Inn in Sunbury-on-Thames, Surrey, with the deadly substance.
Not wanting others to be harmed, he had stuck a note to his door warning that there was poison inside, which prompted an evacuation of the hotel.
In the aftermath of Tom's death, David says he went into 'emergency mode,' arranging his funeral, dealing with the coroner's office and alerting his friends to the tragedy.
'You're just in shock,' he says. 'It was only when that shock started to abate that I became curious about understanding what had happened.'
David felt that the police investigation 'had its blinkers on' - looking at what had happened in the hotel room and not the wider circumstances that led to Tom taking his life.
'Tom lived a lot of his life online,' David explains.
'I think it's only natural these days if you've grown up using the internet, you'd turn to the internet if you wanted to find a group of like-minded people that could help you understand your own feelings.'
He continues: 'So, not long after his death, I sat down and almost put myself in Tom's shoes [...] a young person, vulnerable with their mental health, but intelligent and curious.
"And I did what I think we would do if we're looking to buy something online - just started searching.'
Twisted enablers
He was stunned by how easy it was to stumble on forums offering 'help' to suicidal people - only they weren't offering help to recover, they were helping people to kill themselves.
The dad found how-to manuals, adverts from users looking for partners to join them in suicide pact and post celebrating so-called 'success stories' of suicides.
Anyone recommending support services was banned from the site.
Spending time on the site took its toll on grieving David: 'I'd just lost my son. I wasn't necessarily in the best place myself. And that really made me very aware of the dangers of these places, being pretty vulnerable at the time myself.'
He has since discovered that Tom started a forum post when he took the substance.
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Heartbreaking scenes in the documentary show the dad reading through the comments his son posted as he died.
'What this substance actually does is horrific,' David says in the series.
'The poison suffocates the body from the inside. I know Tom would've died in agony. And yet nobody calls an ambulance. Nobody tries to find him. Nobody asks the question, 'Where are you? What can we do?' It's all congratulatory messages.'
Having seen for himself how easy it was to source the poison - and how the forum promoted its use - David says he urged the police to act.
But he says this 'came to nothing' - as the substance is legal to buy, sell and export.
Fearful that many more could die like Tom, David contacted Times reporter James Beal.
The journalist went undercover to request a phone consultation with Law, in which the seller boasted that 'many' of his customers had died.
He also admitted he'd sent 'hundreds' of packages to the UK.
A week after Law was exposed in The Times, he was arrested.
He is now awaiting trial in Canada next year, facing a total of 14 first-degree murder charges and 14 counts of aiding and counselling suicide.
His lawyer has said he will be pleading not guilty.
Present threat
While Law's arrest came as a 'tremendous relief' to Tom's family, David says there is still 'a long way to go' to crack down on the substance and the sites that promote suicide.
'I'm sitting here talking nearly four years after Tom died, and I can tell you that everything I've described you could still do today,' he says.
'The scary thing is that there are other people still supplying exactly the same poison. There are other poisons being supplied through communities like this as well.'
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He is calling for tighter regulations on pro-suicide forums - and wants the Home Office to increase scrutiny on substances imported from abroad, adding: 'It's relatively easy to do and yet we're not doing it - and yet the cost of not doing it is in lives.'
David is also hopeful that the C4 documentary, out on Wednesday, will help those who are supporting a loved-one through mental health difficulties.
'If you know somebody who's really struggling, please don't be as naive as I was and think that, 'They won't [take their life],' he adds.
'Please, please put together safety plans with people who you think are potentially thinking of ending their own life. And please recognise the harm some of these internet sites do...these are horrible dark places that do a lot of harm to people's mental health.'