Kiwi jailed for murder
Former Napier City councillor Peter Beckett has been found guilty of the first degree murder of his wife following a jury trial in Canada.
Castanet reported yesterday that the 12-member jury found Beckett, now 60, guilty after four days of deliberation in what was the former New Zealand man’s second trial. A previous jury had been unable to reach a unanimous verdict.
Beckett was found guilty of drowning his wife, Laura Letts Beckett, on Upper Arrow Lake in August 2010 and was handed an automatic life sentence with a minimum non-parole period of 25 years.
Former Napier City mayor Barbara Arnott, who served as a councillor alongside Beckett from 1998 to 2001, said he was not well received within the Hawke’s Bay community during his term.
‘‘He wasn’t the sort of councillor that the people of Napier could respect. He was arrogant, he saw conspiracies everywhere, he was not a team player.’’
Beckett was someone who put himself first, something which you could not do as a councillor, and his election campaign was odd because of his lack of publicity, she said.
‘‘He did a very good campaign but you never saw him. Nobody knew who he was. He spent three years on the council and then he went off to Canada. He had no history after that in New Zealand.’’
Beckett was on trial in the Supreme Court of British Columbia in Kelowna. A jury in the British Columbia city of Kamloops was unable to reach a unanimous verdict in April last year following a three-month trial.
Letts-Beckett, a Canadian, drowned while the couple were out boating at Arrow Lakes Provincial Park in the Rockies. Beckett, who left New Zealand with his wife in 2002, always denied being responsible for her death.
Speaking to Castanet after the verdict, Letts-Beckett’s father, Park Letts, described his daughter as a ‘‘gem of a gal’’ who ‘‘wanted to please’’.
‘‘[Beckett] had such a wonderful gal, that supported him, and he couldn’t enjoy that, because it seemed like his only motive was dollars. I wonder if he really loved the girl or loved what she had.’’
He and his wife would eventually try and forgive Beckett, Castanet reported. ‘‘If we can’t forgive, we live in misery the rest of our life,’’ Letts said. ‘‘It’s not easy, but we do have to do it.’’
During last year’s trial Beckett said he believed his wife probably committed suicide, having suffered years of depression after she was raped as a child.