Ex-New Zealand politician found guilty of wife’s murder
Woman’s death made to look like boating accident
Former New Zealand politician Peter Beckett will likely spend the rest of his life in jail after a Kelowna, B. C. jury found that he murdered his Alberta wife and tried to make it look like a boating accident.
Laura Letts- Beckett, an elementary school teacher in Dapp, Alta., drowned in B.C.’s Upper Arrow Lake in the summer of 2010.
According to Peter Beckett’s version of events, he had seen his wife fall off the back of their boat and immediately sink below the water.
As Beckett told police, his attempts to rescue LettsBeckett were useless because he was too buoyant, and that he could only retrieve her body once he had returned to shore for a large rock that he could use as ballast.
Crown prosecutors, in turn, alleged that Beckett had intentionally drowned his wife in order to collect her life insurance payout as well as her substantial inheritance.
A 2016 murder trial in Kamloops had ended in a mistrial after a single juror refused to convict. On Saturday, the jury for a new trial in Kelowna unanimously found Beckett guilty of firstdegree murder. The 62-yearold Beckett, who weighs more than 400 pounds, is now facing a sentence of 25 years in prison without the possibility of parole.
The murder case received widespread coverage in New Zealand as Beckett is a former city councillor for the city of Napier.
As the trial carried on, former colleagues of Beckett remembered him as an erratic, suspicious man prone to bursts of sudden aggression. Most notably, he once slapped a bar-goer because they had reportedly failed to recognize him as a local official.
Former Napier mayor Alan Dick told the New Zealand Herald that Beckett would sometimes randomly call him up in the middle of the night to hurl abuse over the phone.
“It was like he flicked a switch, as he could also be charming,” said Dick.
Beckett moved to Canada in 2004 after Letts- Beckett met him while on vacation in New Zealand.
Foul play was initially not suspected in Letts- Beckett’s death, and her obituary reported that she had been killed “as a result of an accident.” A year after the drowning, however, RCMP suddenly brought murder charges against Beckett.
At the Kelowna trial the jury heard from a former cellmate of Beckett who testified that the accused murderer had tried to pay him to “take care of witnesses.”