Peter Beckett a former New Zealand city councillor, was arrested and charged with murder a year after the Aug. 18, 2010 drowning of his wife Laura Letts-Beckett in Upper Arrow Lake, near Revelstoke.
He stood trial twice the first, held in Kamloops, ended with a hung jury after jurors remained deadlocked following more than a week of deliberation. The second trial, taking place in Kelowna, resulted in a first-degree murder conviction, which was successfully appealed by Beckett on a number of grounds.
Then 11 years later the legal proceedings against the husband accused of killing his wife ended after the first-degree murder charge was stayed in a B.C. Supreme Court in 2021.
But, the story doesn’t end there.
Now, Amazon Prime is releasing a new three-part docuseries titled In Cold Water: The Shelter Bay Mystery of the, “chilling true story of schoolteacher Laura Letts-Beckett’s drowning in the ice-cold waters of the Canadian Rocky Mountains. The only witness: her husband, Peter.”
Directed by Vancouver filmmaker Trish Neufeld, the series sets out to tell the convoluted and years-long saga of the death of Laura and what became of her husband thereafter.
On the evening of Letts’ death, she and Beckett were riding in their Zodiac on Upper Arrow Lake. Letts, who was not a strong swimmer, drowned in the lake. No one witnessed the incident.
Through both trials, prosecutors contended Beckett killed Letts out of greed, hoping to cash in on life insurance payouts and her teachers’ pension.
Beckett had steadfastly maintained his innocence throughout, claiming Letts simply fell off the boat and drowned before he could save her.
The story is strife with drama including the husband having jailhouse conversations with a known conman about taking out the witness “MVA style” and the family by burning his house.
The former New Zealand politician would be incarcerated from his arrest in August 2011 until Dec. 2020, where he appealed his conviction successfully on the grounds that the Kelowna trial judge erred in instructing jurors and that prosecutors made improper submissions to the jury.
The docuseries takes place between Canada and New Zealand and even has Beckett publicly share his side of the story once again, this time from outside the courtroom.
