A one-time cellmate of murder-accused former Napier city councillor Peter Beckett has told a court in Canada the murder of his own sister was one of his reasons for telling police Beckett was plotting to kill key witnesses.
The man told the British Columbia Supreme Court in Kelowna that Beckett, now 60, told him in Fraser Regional Correctional Centre in July 2012 that he didn't deserve to be charged with the murder of wife and Canadian schoolteacher Laura Letts-Beckett who was initially reported to have drowned when she died in Upper Arrow Lake on August 18, 2010.
The cellmate did not believe Beckett's claims that he failed to notice Letts-Beckett had fallen off the bow of their inflatable dinghy until it was too late.
Beckett, the cellmate said, was more than 2m and about 180kg - and said he was in the stern when the fall happened.
He couldn't see how Beckett, who claimed to have been facing the stern and fishing, would not have noticed immediately, and told the court: "I said that bow would have been standing straight in the air as soon as she fell off. How you didn't feel that or hear that in the boat, it's impossible."