Teen’s mum asks psychic
Loved ones searching for missing teen Mike Zhao-Beckenridge turned to celebrity psychics.
Last Tuesday marked the third anniversary since John Beckenridge picked up his then 11-year-old stepson from school and disappeared.
Beckenridge’s vehicle was later found in the surf off the Southland coast, but there were no bodies and police said before the anniversary the investigation is active. Last weekend, Mike’s mother, Fiona Lu, told the Herald on Sunday she believed her missing boy was still alive.
Her partner, Peter Russell, also revealed why he thought Mike, who would now be 15, was alive and why the pair’s disappearance was so carefully planned.
The disappearance is also addressed in Sensing Murder medium Kelvin Cruickshank’s latest book, Surrounded by Spirit. In it, Cruickshank said he gave Lu a 25-minute reading in a carpark.
He writes he was unable to connect with Mike, because he wasn’t dead. Cruickshank declined to be interviewed. In the book, Cruickshank writes Mike’s mother was persistent in trying to get a reading, including going to his motel and to shows.
Russell said his partner talked to many psychics and they said Mike “was living on an island”. In her first public comment since the disappearance, Lu said there wasn’t a single day she didn’t think of her son.
— Carolyne Meng-Yee