Eleven days after checking into a hotel with a man she met through a suicide forum, Aimee Walton passed away by ingesting a poison.
Police would later tell the Walton family that Aimee had left hundreds of notes in the hotel room, some addressed to and distressed at the American stranger who was in the room. While the man was arrested on suspicion of assisting suicide, he was later released and no further action was taken.
Ozlem and Adele Walton, Aimee’s sister, have joined forces with The Mirror and Molly Rose Foundation to call on the Government to act now ban the forum and the poison that took Aimee’s life in Slough, Berkshire, in 2022. The Mirror have taken the editorial decision not to name the forum or the poison.
Her mother, Ozlem, has chosen to speak to the media for the first time in the hope of protecting the lives of other people like Aimee. Ozlem warns: “It can be anybody. It can be anybody’s child, anybody’s young person… She was very much loved. She still is”
Aimee was a creative soul who loved music and art. She adored Pharrell Williams, and even performed on stage with him. For The Mirror documentary, Buy to Die, Ozlem and Adele proudly displayed Aimee’s artwork, which was only discovered following her death.
They showed videos of Aimee dancing and performing on stage with Pharrell, in those moments she was so full of happiness, energy and life. But during the pandemic, Aimee’s mental health deteriorated. She was diagnosed with OCD as a teenager, depression, and anxiety, which she struggled to come to terms with.
In a spontaneous act, she applied to a university through clearing and got a place to study. Adele said: “She had requested a quiet accommodation [from the university] because as part of her OCD she was really sensitive to sound,” Adele tells me. “She was in halls, which are bad for noise.”
But Aimee dropped out of the course, as “it was partying all night, real extreme noise and just it was really, really bad. She couldn’t deal with it.”
Watch campaign documentary Buy to Die on The Mirror’s YouTube channel.
When she returned to the family home, there were periods were Aimee would go missing, without much contact with her family. On her last visit home, Ozlem said: “You just couldn’t get through to her. She was so, so unwell.” She explains: “So we reached out to the mental health services which she’d been under, and sadly had no proper support from them.”
Her mother tells the Mirror that she pleaded with Aimee to talk to her. “I said, ‘Aimee, you need to help. Can you just talk to [mental health services]? Talk to us.’ She didn’t say anything. And then I was in the kitchen. I heard the door go, and I saw her running off with her backpack. And that was it,” Ozlem explains.
That was the last time Ozlem saw her daughter. What followed was intermittent emails with Aimee, and then: the knock on the door from the police to tell them that Aimee had passed away.
What came next was a living nightmare for the family. Police told them that Aimee had not only been on a suicide forum, but that was where she met the man she spent her final moments with.
Ozlem says: “She’d been in a hotel room with an American man for 11 days. She left the hotel room only once, to go and collect the poison that she took.”
This was unusual for Aimee, Adele adds, as she “really valued her personal space and privacy. So for her to be in a room with a stranger that she had only interacted with online was really out of character for her.”
The police would later tell the Walton family that notes were found in the room. Having received photocopies of these pages, Adele explains: “She had left hundreds of notes, scribbles, drawings. All that sounded really angry, really upset, like she was really distressed… Some of them directed towards the American man saying things like ‘Why won’t you give me a pen? I need a pen I need to write.’
“We felt that she had been isolated and I think she felt like she was being kept there and like she couldn’t leave in that situation and she didn’t know how to get help,” Adele added.
These glimpses into Aimee’s final days have caused the family to question why help was not sought for her. Ozlem says: “There was no way that that person who was in the room with her could not see that she was mentally very unwell and very distressed. She was crying out for help.”
Now the Ozlem and Adele Walton are joining forces with other bereaved families and a survivor to call for a ban to the forum and the poison. On the forum, users celebrate and promote suicide, despite the fact that assisting a suicide is a crime under the Suicide Act 1961.
Aimee is believed to be one of 99 people in the UK to have received this chemical from Canadian-national Kenneth Law, who is the subject of an on-going investigation by the National Crime Agency for these deaths. Law, 59, is believed to have sent a total of 1,200 packages to people in 40 countries.
Law is facing 14 murder charges in Ontario. He is in custody and his trial is expected to begin next January.
The suicide forum was the target of Ofcom’s first investigation under the Online Safety Act which began in April 2025. The US-based site responded to OFCOM enforcement proceedings by implementing a geo-block to restrict access by people with UK IP addresses. However, this appeared with a message on the landing page which advised UK based visitors on how to bypass this block.
In an update issued on October 13, Ofcom stated that the suicide site has now removed this messaging that promoted ways to bypass the block. Despite this update, the Ofcom investigation into the pro-suicide forum remains open and will continue on Ofcom’s watchlist to monitor that the block is maintained.
An Ofcom spokesperson added: “Ofcom does not have the power to ‘shut down’ a site completely. Where appropriate, we can seek a court order for ‘business disruption measures’, such as requiring Internet Service Providers to block access to a site in the UK.”
For more stories like this subscribe to our weekly newsletter, The Weekly Gulp, for a curated roundup of trending stories, poignant interviews, and viral lifestyle picks from The Mirror’s Audience U35 team delivered straight to your inbox.
In response to Ofcom’s update, Andy Burrows, Chief Executive of Molly Rose Foundation, told The Mirror: “It is unfathomable that Ofcom would not use all the tools at their disposal to crack down on this site which exists solely to promote suicide and groom and encourage people to die.
“Given the sheer scale of harm caused by the site Ofcom should continue with enforcement action and be prepared to use their powers to issue heavy fines or criminal sanctions for the illegal offences taking place on it.”
The Molly Rose Foundation is a suicide prevention charity, set up in memory of 14-year-old Molly Russell, who died in 2017 after being exposed to harmful online content.
The Online Safety Act 2023 is a law which puts responsibility on social media companies and search services to protect adults and children online. This means that these companies have duties to put in place systems and processes to hinder their services being used for illegal activity, and to take down illegal content when it does appear.
For emotional support you can call the Samaritans 24-hour helpline on 116 123, email [email protected], visit a Samaritans branch in person or go to the Samaritans website.
