Original subtitles

[chanting Maori]

[dramatic music playing]

[cell door buzzes]

[reporter] Former adventure tourism entrepreneur

has been charged with first-degree murder.

His Canadian wife Laura Letts-Beckett drowned in these icy waters.

Fifty-four-year-old Peter Beckett was arrested on Friday

and will remain in custody until he appears before a Kelowna court.

[Terry] I received a letter,

and that articulated some shocking developments in the case.

[informant] I don't like people that murder women.

[Tim] He said that they had an alphanumeric code

to describe the targets.

I've never had a threat on my life before in all 31 years of policing.

[dramatic music playing]

[dramatic music playing]

Out of the blue, you're under arrest for first-degree murder.

I think it was a Friday, and the cell was crazy with drunks.

And all the time I'm trying to organize a lawyer.

I thought it was gonna be over in a matter of hours,

but certainly within a matter of days or weeks.

This particular case, because there was no eyewitnesses,

we needed to take some time to collect evidence

before Peter knew that we were investigating him.

I didn't even know that they were running an investigation.

There you go, Terry.

First time that Peter met me face-to-face,

I was the boat operator on the Zodiac that Peter was on.

Terry Jacklin was the lead investigator.

A very dangerous, sadistic, ego-filled man.

[Terry] Peter Beckett maybe still has some resentment against me

because I led the investigation against him

for, you know, the death of his wife.

Such nonsense.

Super egos in the police force are bringing charges

that should never have been brought,

then they have to justify their decision to lay a first-degree murder charge.

First-degree murder in Canada

is the most serious offense of any of them.

A minimum of 25 years in jail.

Think about knowing you're innocent.

Is there a more painful way to live your life out?

Why should I pay $50,000 when I know I'm an innocent

and I know that there is no evidence?

How can you possibly lay a first-degree murder

when the coroner's report and the forensics that attend the scene

never found any grounds for homicide?

Foul play, as they call it.

None. Zero.

So I wasn't compliant in taking my bail.

[Donna] We take a long time in Canada to have trials done,

and you'll wait a year for your preliminary hearing.

Then you'll wait another year after the preliminary hearing

to get a court date.

[Tim] Whenever there's a new murder kicking around in the courthouse,

it will attract some attention from reporters.

His pre-trial hearings dragged on for a very long time,

so I spent a lot of--a lot of days in those courtrooms.

I quickly became familiar with Peter.

He would always be trying to start conversations with me.

Eventually, I got on his visitors' list.

He was very happy to have someone to talk to at that point.

I made it very clear to him that I wasn't on his team.

I was just doing my job, and he was a subject.

I think that Peter hoped that if I told a sad story about his life,

that it might influence the opinion of people in the justice system

and help him get out of jail.

[dramatic music playing]

[Terry] I received a letter in the mail, unsolicited, had no idea it was coming.

The author of the letter was incarcerated with Peter Beckett

at the same institution.

It was a handwritten letter

that articulated some shocking developments in the case.

[Terry] We needed to speak with this individual.

Presently speaking is Sergeant Terry Jacklin

of the Southeast District Major Crime Unit from Kelowna.

I think we were in the cell together about four days

and we spoke a lot in the cell.

He ran down the whole scenario of how his wife died.

So the informant, the cellmate,

was supposed to get out of jail in the near future,

and Peter knew that.

And according to the informant, Peter said to him basically,

"Let's work out a deal where you're gonna get out,

and you can do these things that I need to have done on the outside."

He was saying if things were handled on the street correctly

and certain witnesses didn't show in court,

that there would be ample amounts of money

for me and him to live comfortably ever after.

Basically, what he's saying here is,

"Listen, we've got to eliminate these witnesses."

That was to fucking kill them so they didn't come to court.

[Tim] He wanted to kill these witnesses,

including some of Laura's family and some police officers.

And they had an alphanumeric code that they used to describe the targets.

It started off with the, uh, parents of his wife.

Then you say double cousin Virginia Lyons-Friesen.

Laura's cousin was an important Crown witness.

Virginia Lyons is the one that heard the conversation

about being drowned in the lake.

He's telling me, "I gotta kill all these people

in order to beat this beef."

The whole meaning of this is to fucking murder,

and blow this shit up, and burn it up.

[Terry] This person himself is in jail.

What deception or honesty issues did they have?

We needed to determine who this person was and sort of their background,

and what maybe their motivations were in order to come forward.

I don't like people that kill their wives.

Due to the fact that I've had a loss in my family

that's, you know, it's left a dark cloud over all of us.

A family member of theirs had been murdered.

He resented the fact that somebody could take the life of a woman.

I knew there was rings and stuff.

Are those rings nearby and were to pay you for you,

for facilitating his plan?

Yes.

[Tim] Peter was alleged to have hid a stash of diamonds

in the windshield washer fluid reservoir of a luxury vehicle.

[camera shutters click]

We did a warrant, and we executed it unannounced to Peter's residence.

When we did the search of Peter's Jaguar in the garage,

we found two rings in a reservoir.

[camera clicking]

They were basically costume jewelry and had really no value.

Some of these things that we saw in this file can't be explained.

It just seems so bizarre.

There was supposed to be a stash of dynamite somewhere

that was found as a result of the police investigation.

He told me where the fucking dynamite was, where to go, who to kill.

[Terry] Peter Beckett was incarcerated for first-degree murder.

But a second and subsequent investigation was launched,

which was an investigation regarding counseling to commit murder.

History has shown us in the criminal justice system

that jailhouse informants,

uh, have a huge motive to lie

because they're always looking for a benefit.

They are given huge incentives to be untruthful.

And we know from numerous wrongful convictions

that informants cannot be relied upon

except in exceptional cases.

[phone line trilling]

[operator] This call is from a correctional institution

and is subject to monitoring and recording.

[informant] Big Man, what's up?

[Peter] Hey, I was worried like shit about you, man.

I thought that you'd been...

[informant] Dude, hey listen, man, I've been fucking sitting in hotels

and just waiting.

[Peter] But I've been trying and trying and trying this number,

and I almost just given up on you, buddy. What's going on?

[informant] What do you need right now, Pete? What do you need?

[Peter] Um, I'm cool, now I can get hold of you on this number.

[informant] I've been everywhere, man, and I've done everything.

I was on it, like, right now.

Looking at stuff diligently. Diligently looking at stuff.

[Peter] Yes.

Obviously we were quite concerned, so we notified the people in person

that they were specifically named in a plot to possibly be murdered or hurt.

Three of my relatives were on the list, her parents and a cousin.

The cousin who had come forward with the most evidence.

Peter told Laura how she was going to die.

She wouldn't know when and wouldn't know where.

[man] The RCMPs received information

that an individual has threatened to cause you harm,

and have a duty to warn you that these threats exist.

Should you feel that your safety is at risk,

you are to call 911 immediately, do you understand?

[Virginia] I do.

It got worse as it went along.

It got more serious.

And when he mentioned right at the end,

blowing up Sergeant Terry Jacklin.

Your name is sitting on that piece of paper, Sergeant Terry Jacklin,

and, you know, that's pretty concerning when you see that in writing.

So Peter Beckett was charged with counseling to commit murder

and obstruction of justice.

[man] Uh, Peter Ernest Beckett,

you're under arrest for the following offenses.

Count one is counsel to commit the murder of Virginia Lyons-Friesen,

Raymond Barlow, Sergeant Terry Jacklin,

Park Letts, and Beth Letts.

Do you understand that?

Well, I heard it, but I don't believe it.

I've got nothing more to say.

I just want to go back to my cell.

Former Napier City counselor charged with the murder of his wife

is accused of trying to arrange the killing of witnesses

in his trial in Canada.

Police say 56-year-old Peter Beckett has been charged

with counseling to commit murder and obstruction of justice.

He's already in custody.

[water lapping]

My boss knew that I had warned my staff

to stay away from Peter.

She relayed that information to the police.

So I was called to go into the court as a witness.

I had just rolled into my house,

just sat down, power on, Global News, boom.

The snitch said that Beckett had told him he had a lot of money coming his way,

and he needed some witnesses taken care of.

I'm like...

"That's me."

The Crown also pointed to the testimony of a jailhouse snitch...

Instructing the jailhouse rat to carry out the murders

of the Crown prosecutor, of Laura's mother and father,

and I had for payment $100,000 worth of diamonds

hidden in the windshield washer reservoir of my--

or of Laura's Jaguar convertible.

Just bizarre stuff.

When I first met the jailhouse informant,

he was a 30-year career criminal.

We get the--into the stinking cell and then he started talking about,

"Well, you know, um, I think you're effed."

"I think, um, you're in a lot of trouble."

"But I can help you. I can take care of the situation for you."

"Have you got any access to high explosives?"

And I thought, "I'm gonna find out what's going on here."

So I buy him a bit of canteen.

Keep your friends close and your--and your enemies closer.

What I didn't know at the time,

was that he was being prompted

to write what I said by Terry Jacklin, who was his handler.

They will manufacture anything they can.

They planted two $40 rings, that they were valued later,

right in the middle of the radiator reservoir.

Holy moly.

You couldn't make this stuff up.

I'm not even sure it was Peter's ring.

I'm not quite sure where it came from.

Why it was there.

If Peter is alleging that the RCMP placed those rings there,

we did not place those rings there.

We executed a search warrant to find what we believe the agent told us

we would find, and that's exactly what we found.

And the agent had never been there himself either.

Peter spent years in prison

before he ever stood trial, and that's pretty unusual.

But it was almost all of his own doing, from my perspective,

having watched a lot of those, like, pre-trial hearings.

Every time they had one of these hearings,

Peter would bring a bunch of applications that they would have to deal with.

There were things along the line of asking for a judicial stay,

like you're free to go.

[Peter] I did file application after application after application.

Every time that they presented something to me that I knew to be a lie,

I would challenge it.

So they had to take it before a judge.

[Tim] You keep doing that over and over, over a number of years, it takes so long.

[Peter] I fired three or four lawyers.

I had very little faith in the lawyers.

I think a lot of ways, he probably is his own worst enemy.

[Peter] So I was self-represented.

I was provided with law books.

As a layman, I became pretty equipped in law.

One of the prosecutors, I heard him describe Peter

as the ultimate test of the system.

This is an example of a handwritten document

that Peter would file with the court.

This is 41 pages.

It would just be these claims about the judge,

about him, his family, things about Laura's family.

He would accuse them of colluding with X, Y, and Z,

and being in on this big conspiracy to keep him behind bars.

And he would just tie all these things together in these applications

that really came across as kind of unhinged.

With Peter, you didn't know if he would have some crazy accusation

to make about the judge or about the prosecutor.

[Peter] Once again, manipulative, conniving.

You're supposed to be a prosecutor, not a persecutor.

You disgust me.

[Tim] There was another time that he turned to the gallery and he said,

"I'm the sleeping giant."

[man speaking Maori]

I was given the privilege of a Maori name,

although there's no Maori blood in me, a Rongokako.

A legendary figure, the sleeping giant in a silhouette

forms the skyline of Te Matau-a-Maui.

Peter got the name Rongokako simply because he was so big.

[Ngahiwi] When Peter came into our midst,

we had embraced him as part of our community.

You're six foot four, you're six foot five,

now you're six foot six.

And so we said to Peter jokingly, "You are now Rongokako."

My father always taught me to walk tall, straight,

and look the world right in the eye with my shoulders back.

And I tried to live up to his standard every day of my life.

Peter's dad was pretty firm on Pete and had high expectations.

Being the only son, it was all or nothing with this boy.

That went to, to mold the sort of character that he becomes,

a big man was gonna do big things.

I think that's how he thought of himself.

I didn't understand really why he wanted to run for council

but he loves being the center of attention.

[slow music playing]

It began appearing on the paper, these very large ads

that had his face at the top and his feet at the bottom

and it always said, "Head and shoulders above them all."

[John] After the election,

he came in 12 out of 12, but he still got in.

Near the end of his term,

he was regarded as the most odious individual

that has ever been on the Napier City Council.

At the same time as it was turning into custard,

so was his business.

Things were going from bad to worse financially for him.

When I next heard about Peter Beckett,

he had been charged with murder

for the death of his second wife in Canada.

[Peter] When I first went to jail, I had no inkling of what jail was like.

I was put on this ranch that was full of young people,

far more violent than the older people in jail.

Size doesn't necessarily protect you

against five or six coming at you at the one time.

I got boiling hot water

thrown over me on two occasions.

Put my big hands up and I blocked a fair bit of it.

And I got scalded pretty good.

The worst thing was, when we were lined up to go down to the exercise yard,

we went out of the cell door.

I think I was about the fifth in line.

And one of the guards had put the garbage out,

but failed to put it into a plastic bin.

I took a very awkward fall

and suffered a tibial plateau fracture.

And...

I was left

in a semi-fainting position

with immense pain for hours.

They denied me access to the orthopedic surgeon's list the next day

on the basis that I was a dangerous person.

I was wheelchaired because I never had corrective medical care.

[dramatic music playing]

Letters were coming into my office furiously from a man who was writing tiny,

tiny handwritten foolscap pages, both sides from top to corner.

And I actually found him and I said, "Tell me what's really going on."

He says, "I'm, uh, having to defend myself

without a lawyer on a first-degree murder case."

It was abundantly clear to me that he was not gonna have justice.

He was not gonna have a fair trial.

He was showing signs of mental illness.

There was animosity between him and the Crown and the court.

You shouldn't even represent yourself on a theft undercharge,

let alone a murder case.

Once he became my client in November,

we had about six weeks to prepare for this trial.

And I asked the judge for an adjournment. He refused it.

He pushed ahead.

We usually take months to prepare for a murder case.

[reporter] The trial of former Napier City councilor Peter Beckett,

who's accused of murdering his Canadian wife six years ago,

got underway in British Columbia.

[man] Cameras up. Prosecutor coming in.

[Sarah] She was a small-town girl from Alberta,

living a quiet life in the community where she was raised.

This man, the accused, was the last person to see her alive.

Our position for this trial

was that there was an accident...

and that's what happened.

[Joel] Thank you, My Lord.

The next witness for the Crown is Colin Titsworth.

I came into the court and realized I got to the stand

and he's the first guy right in front of me.

Jury's on your right, judge, everybody.

It's like walking into a movie, it was...

It's a pretty big deal.

We locked eyes and we acknowledged each other.

[Joel] Back in 2010, tell us what contact you had with the Becketts.

[Colin] I knew what had happened between me and Peter that week.

I knew what I had said in the statement.

I just wanna make sure that I told the story accurately.

This situation with him going out on the boat and staring me down.

Mr. Beckett stood on the bow of his boat, hands on his hips,

and he watched me as I proceeded down past the campsites.

He conveniently twisted that into some sort of a stare-down

aggressive type of act.

Absolutely pathetic.

[Donna] You didn't give a statement on this matter until four or five months

after this incident had happened.

Okay.

So you probably didn't think too much about this night,

until you had to give a statement in December.

[Colin] I did think quite a bit about that night.

[Donna] You did think about it?

[Colin] I thought about it enough to warn my staff to stay away from him.

Then it was like boom, mic drop. That kind of radio-silenced everybody.

I was just totally dumbfounded.

[Donna] This was not real evidence.

It's not somebody seeing something happen.

It's somebody speculating on a phenomena

to suggest this phenomena must mean guilt.

[Sarah] The Crown's next witness is Dr. Yann Brierly.

Is that a copy of your autopsy report?

[Yann] Yes, it is.

[Sarah] Were there any findings that were particularly remarkable to you

in going through your examination?

[Yann] Nothing that stood out, no.

Uh, had there been something that was suspicious,

I would've stopped the autopsy

and called in somebody who was more comfortable

with doing what's called forensic autopsies,

where foul play is suspected.

You tell me.

Where else in the world ever has there been a charge of first-degree murder

where there's been no findings of murder in the first place?

[Sarah] Now, you are a former constable with the RCMP dive team?

[Dave] Yes. I joined in 1990.

I was contacted by the Major Crime Investigators

to ask to go back to the site to do a search

for anything that have supposedly fallen over the boat.

Ultimately, we did find the umbrella and his fishing rod

at locations where he said they would be during his reenactment

with the Major Crime Unit.

We asked for an opinion from him about what Peter Beckett said he did.

Was he telling us the truth?

We were shown his video of his reenactment on site,

where he was out in the police boat.

[Peter] I'm in a panicked situation and I have to get some weight.

And I picked a rock from the shore here,

and I couldn't see Laura in the water.

So I obviously swam in,

and that's when I saw bubbles coming up.

He said he swam back to the shore, grabbed a rock,

swam back out to her location some hundred feet.

That's gonna take some time, and for him to get to the bubbles.

Of all the dive recoveries that I've been on

and it's been close to a hundred of body recoveries that I was involved in,

I never saw bubbles coming from a body, from a victim underwater.

Some bubbles might get trapped in clothing, but from 30 feet down,

to have bubbles extend to the surface, I really question that.

We asked them to see if they could simulate what Peter Beckett's

versions of events were in his efforts to save Laura's life.

[Dave] We said no.

It was, uh--it was--it was dangerous.

It was, uh--and unrealistic.

Mr. Beckett's claiming that he was able to descend 30-feet breath hold,

uh, holding a ten-pound rock without any scuba gear,

drop the rock, pick up his wife,

and then back to the surface, uh, all on one breath.

I find that impossible.

That's, uh--given my experience

and given my dive training, it's impossible.

[Brady] He was arrested, uh, of course, uh, six years ago.

And when he was in the cell,

he apparently spoke to one of his cellmates

and told him, uh, about what happened.

That cellmate has turned an informant

and, uh, will be testifying this afternoon actually,

as to, uh, the conversations, uh, that they had in the cell.

[Sarah] Who was your roommate as of Friday the 13th?

[informant] Mr. Beckett.

To finally see this informant, we'd heard about him for a long time.

We finally got to see him, we finally got to hear his story.

[informant] The retainer was to, uh, take care of witnesses.

[Sarah] Now, you've referred to a map that you received?

[informant] Yes.

[Sarah] How did that come about?

[informant] Uh, Mr. Beckett gave it to me.

[Sarah] And when did he do that?

[informant] Um, it was just prior to my release.

Peter, according to him, went so far as to draw a map to describe the targets.

[Sarah] And what was the plan for the map?

What was supposed to happen with it?

[informant] Well, it was detailed, it laid out where people were.

Uh, the Letts family, the dynamite, the diamonds.

A very detailed map.

[Sarah] And, uh, and whose handwriting was the map?

[informant] In Mr. Beckett's.

When you have somebody being paid, can you trust that person?

Now he was no angel, obviously.

But his testimony was powerful.

And, seriously, I believed every word he said.

No honor among thieves.

[Peter] And then it's headlining the papers through the whole of BC

and all of New Zealand.

"Man accused of murdering his wife

now accused of plotting

to kill five witnesses."

I became very, very despondent with the press.

Mr. Beckett sought publicity.

He did.

He saw the media, perhaps mistakenly, as somebody who could give him justice.

And I think, time and time again, those tables got turned on him.

[Tim] As a reporter, when you're meeting someone who's in prison,

they have an ax to grind.

I was trying to tell the story from both sides.

But then when I started writing stories that did not paint him in the best light,

he thought that I was being unfair to him.

He didn't want to have contact with me anymore,

and I became an enemy of Peter's.

I needed to bring in some press that I had some influence on

rather than the police through Tim Petruk.

Let's attract a bit more publicity to this, because this is wrong.

[Tim] Every day, at the start of court,

there's, like, maybe 45 seconds when it's kind of just quiet in the courtroom.

The judge isn't there yet.

Peter often used those little moments.

You never knew what he was gonna do.

There was one time when Peter stood up and did a haka.

[chants Maori]

[Tim] It was crazy.

I didn't know what to think.

Haka means Ha, is breath.

Ka, is burning.

So Haka is a burning breath.

So if he performed that, it was a pick-me-up, like...

"Picking myself up off the ground."

I'm not upset that he did do it,

because why would we share it with him in the first place?

I did it with no disrespect.

And the purpose of doing that was to give me the strength of my whanau,

my family, in New Zealand.

And it was also to attract some more attention...

uh, to counter what I considered the bias of Tim Petruk.

[man] Is he gonna take the stand at all, do we know?

[Brady] I believe, uh, we won't--we won't know that yet.

We're not sure whether or not he's going to take the stand.

He wanted to take the stand.

I could not say no.

We explained to him the difficulties of taking the stand.

Prosecutors can make black be white.

[bailiff] Please state your full name and spell your last name for the record.

[Peter] My full name is Peter Ernest Edward Beckett.

We were holding our breath for the entire time he took the stand.

Memories can convict you.

If it's the truth, it's easy to remember.

If it's a lie, sometimes those lies are hard to remember.

[Joel] Continuing with that first statement,

you say that she fell over the side and the umbrella was over the other side?

Wouldn't it have made more sense for her to go over the same side as the umbrella,

not the opposite side?

[Peter] I don't understand your logic there at all.

- [Joel] Well, if it's the... - [Peter] I'm not...

- [Joel] ...if the umbrella... - [Peter] I'm not prepared to speculate

on stupid little things like this.

I'll answer your questions, but this is just ridiculously petty.

[Joel] But this is you in a boat on the day your wife died.

[Peter] Mr. Gold, I cannot speculate as to what happened,

when I never saw it, and with my pleasing personality,

I'm trying to assist with what I think may have happened.

[Joel] Well, in this statement, you say the umbrella went over one side,

you think, and your wife over the other.

But in subsequent statements, you said the umbrella landed in the boat,

and in fact was part of what was obstructing your view.

- [Peter] It was. - [Joel] Both can't be true, can they?

[Peter] I explained that yesterday.

[Joel] They both can't be true, can they?

[Tim] The prosecutor kinda got under his skin during the trial.

You can take the stand

and by an ever-so-slight forgetfulness,

prosecution will point to that

and say you must be lying.

[dramatic music playing]

[man] Now, this was a trial spanning four months.

[Tim] The Crown case has gone pretty seamlessly, it seems.

[Donna] Since it's a circumstantial case,

the Crown will be asking you to take some leaps of faith.

No one testified.

I saw Mr. Beckett cause the death of his wife.

There are no witnesses saying Mr. Beckett confessed to saying,

"I want her dead."

Under our law, it is not correct to convict someone

on circumstantial evidence where there's an alternate explanation

for what happened because an innocent person

could end up in jail for the rest of his life.

[Sarah] We say that all of his lies demonstrate

that he is responsible for getting her in the water

and keeping her there until she drowned.

The puzzle pieces that once assembled,

allows you to be convinced beyond any reasonable doubt

that the accused, Mr. Beckett, murdered Laura.

[Tim] There had been times when I thought,

"There's no way that he did this. He has to be innocent."

There have been times that I've thought

he is a cold-blooded killer.

[judge] Murder is first-degree murder when it is planned and deliberate.

Before basing a verdict of guilty on circumstantial evidence,

you must be satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt

that the guilt of the accused is the only reasonably inference

to be drawn from the proven facts.

[Tim] The jurors were deadlocked for like a week.

[Donna] Six days.

It's, uh, not an easy case for them.

In the courthouse, we're thinking, "There's gotta be a holdout.

There's no other reason that it would take this long."

[tense music playing]

[bailiff] Jury is in.

Order in the court.

[judge] Foreman of the jury, we have your news, your note to us.

I have no choice,

I will have to declare a mistrial.

[gavel bangs]

Everybody was flabbergasted.

We were quite shocked.

We thought there was more than enough evidence.

In my opinion, it was only obvious

the bastard killed her.

[dramatic music playing]

[woman] So, this one ended up being a mistrial.

It's not the end of this though, is it?

[Tim] Beckett is still in custody, so he's at the jail

waiting for his next appearance.

[Peter] So, it's not just you had a hung jury.

No, it's far more than a hung jury.

A hung jury is when the jury can't decide.

It's not orchestrated.

This was orchestrated.

So he thinks it was 11 to one to acquit.

It sounds like it was actually

11 to one to convict.

But we don't know, we don't know what happened in there, and we never will.

[dramatic music playing]

He's fighting for his life.

The fact that there was a hung juror,

he just took it as a sign to keep fighting.

[Peter] I did not kill Laura.

I loved that girl, she loved me.

And this is for her.

[dramatic music playing]