John Beckenridge (left) disappeared with his stepson Mike Zhao-Beckenridge in March 2015.
WARNING: This article discusses suicide and may be distressing.
A woman holidaying in Indonesia is adamant she saw missing boy Mike Zhao-Beckenridge and his stepfather three months after their mysterious disappearance and has described her frantic race across the island on a bike to alert police.
“I was 100 per cent sure that it was John and Mike Beckenridge that I saw,” she told the court on Wednesday.
Swedish-born helicopter pilot John Beckenridge broke a court order and picked up his 11-year-old stepson from his Invercargill school on March 13, 2015.
A week after the pair’s disappearance, Beckenridge’s dark-blue 4WD Volkswagen Touareg went off an almost 90-metre cliff near Curio Bay, in Southland, but when police recovered the vehicle there were no signs of any bodies. The pair have been missing since.
However, Mike’s mother Fiona Lu is convinced her son is alive and her former partner staged the pair’s death after she moved Mike from Beckenridge’s Queenstown home to Invercargill with her new partner.
Now, Coroner Marcus Elliot is looking into the case at the Christchurch District Court to consider whether it is likely the pair are dead.
The hearing, which began on Monday, is expected to take two weeks and will hear evidence from witnesses, including someone who believes she spotted the pair overseas four months after their disappearance.
On Wednesday, the woman in Gilli Air Island, who cannot be identified, was holidaying with her friend in what she described as a relaxed destination attracting retired couples and young families.
On June 30, 2015, she was walking along the beach when she saw an older European man with a younger Asian boy walking towards her, in a “happy conversation”.
She immediately recognised the pair from media reports in New Zealand as Beckenridge and Mike, stating several times during her evidence that she was “very confident” it was them.
The woman was interested in the Beckenridge case and had been checking her phone for updates in the media, saying images of the pair were still fresh in her mind.
She said the man’s eyes were the same as in pictures of Beckenridge, although they appeared more “friendly and relaxed” and the boy looked as if he had put on a bit of weight.
She said they looked like a “unique pair” walking together, as it was a school day, so it was strange to see a child walking along the beach. She noted that the boy looked taller and had a “bigger build” than most of the local children.
She went to a cafe to connect to Wi-Fi and called her father in New Zealand, who contacted police. The next morning the woman woke up to missed calls from a New Zealand police officer who told her to contact local police.
The woman then described a frantic “race” to alert local police as she was leaving the island that day.
She hired a bike and rushed around the island until she found two men in uniform and told them what she had seen. It was an “interesting challenge” as they didn’t speak much English.
When the woman returned to New Zealand, she received an email from police thanking her for contacting them, but they were no closer to finding the pair. She was interviewed by private investigator Mark Templeman in March 2016, relaying what she had seen.
She said she was “amazed” at how long it took police to ask her for a formal statement in 2017.
“I have felt throughout that the police have not taken my sighting seriously, otherwise they would have interviewed me in person. I was 100 per cent sure that it was John and Mike Beckenridge that I saw.”
In court, she said she was now 85 per cent certain it was the Beckenridges, as they seemed “more relaxed” than the pictures.
Deirdre Elsmore, for the police, questioned the woman on her sighting of the pair, suggesting it could have been a local Indonesian boy that she had seen.
The woman admitted she was “a bit naïve” to the differences between Asian features but said she knew the boy was Mike when she looked at him, so she knew he wasn’t Indonesian.
She may have had a “little bit” of doubt but reminded herself that she was an observant person who had been described as having an “eagle eye” by her mother.
She said she knew in her heart it was the Beckenridges she saw.
Elsmore asked her if she noticed the pair’s accents, seeing as an Asian boy with a New Zealand accent and a European man with a Swedish accent would have been unusual.
The woman said she heard the boy “giggle” as they walked past and the man was smiling but she did not notice their accents.
She also met Mike’s mother and her partner to talk about what she saw on the island, as she “felt for them”.
“I thought if it was my kid that had gone missing I would want to see the last person who had seen them alive,” she told the court.
She said she wasn’t shown any photos of Mike during the meeting, noting that Lu was quiet and seemed “overwhelmed”.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, the court heard from Sergeant Frederick Shandley, who conducted a scene examination of Beckenridge’s Lake Hayes Estate home in Queenstown after he disappeared.
Shandley found a calendar with the date March 13 circled, the day Beckenridge and Mike disappeared.
One thing that stood out to Shandley was how spotless the place was, inside and out.
“It was a very tidy, very clean house. It was well-kept.”
Shandley said there were two fridge-freezers side by side in the kitchen, one containing various medications under the names of John Lundh, one of Beckenridge’s aliases, and Mike Beckenridge.
He also found bottles and snap-lock bags of water-purifying tablets.
On Wednesday afternoon the court heard from commercial diver and fisherman Craig Leith, who is also a member of marine search and rescue in Tokanui.
Leith said he was aware of nine people who had disappeared in the Catlins, whose bodies have never been found.
Leith was involved in the search for the Beckenridges and described Curio Bay as more difficult to dive in compared to surrounding bays because of a lack of shelter causing swells and decreasing visibility.
When asked about predatory fish in the area, Leith said sea lice were “the worst”. He recalled pulling up a crayfish pot after two days, revealing “nothing left but bones”, putting it down to sea lice feeding on the meat.
Templeman asked Leith if he thought it was likely the Beckenridges’ bodies would have washed ashore had they been in the car when it went off the cliff.
Leith said it was possible and there was “no reason why they wouldn’t wash ashore” but he couldn’t be certain.
Earlier today, coroner Elliot addressed Lu’s partner Peter Russell, who was sitting at the lawyer’s bench with investigator Templeman, acknowledging how difficult the process could be. He also thanked police and counsel for their hard work on the case.
He said he would look into whether Beckenridge’s vehicle going off the cliff was a murder-suicide or a staged murder-suicide aimed at deceiving people into believing the pair were dead.
Lisa Preston, KC, assisting the coroner, also raised the possibility of a “mutual suicide” given the tone of Mike’s emails to his father, mentioning self-harm if he could not be with him.
Heartbreaking texts sent from Mike to his mother before his disappearance read: “You do not deserve to be my mum. You certainly do not deserve my love.”
As police continued their search, they were alerted to a reported sighting of the pair on March 19 at a campsite off Weir Rd on the Haldane estuary, about 14km from the cliff Beckenridge’s vehicle went off.
Swab testing and further examinations of the site revealed a plaster with Mike’s fingerprints on it as well as prints of a shoe belonging to Beckenridge, which would later wash ashore in the Curio Bay area.
On Monday, Preston outlined the case. She said Beckenridge met Mike’s mother, who is from China, in 2006. Lu’s parents were raising Mike at the time.
The pair later moved with Mike to Queenstown. Their relationship broke down in 2014. Shortly after that, Lu moved to Invercargill.
In February 2015, the Queenstown Family Court made an order that Lu should have care of Mike.
Mike was unhappy to be taken away from his stepfather and was secretly communicating with him by email, pleading for Beckenridge to come to take him away from his mother and her partner.
Mike told Beckenridge he was misbehaving so he could be sent back to live with his stepfather. He also called the police on one occasion, saying his mother had assaulted him, in the hope he would get sent back to Queenstown.
On March 20, Beckenridge’s friends began receiving “concerning” texts from him, stating the “Gestapo” was after him and Mike, and they would soon be getting on the “Midnight Express” for departure.
On March 22, items belonging to the Beckenridges, such as clothes and car parts, washed ashore in the Curio Bay area. Soon after, Beckenridge’s vehicle was found at the bottom of the cliff.
The police national dive squad was able to investigate the wreckage on March 29 but it wasn’t until May 6 that the vehicle could be recovered. No bodies were found.
To date, police have had 60 suspected sightings of the Beckenridges or their vehicle, some of which have been deemed unlikely or eliminated.
Information about possible sightings continues to be reported from within New Zealand and from Kiwis overseas.
The hearing continues.
Protesters tore flags, including those representing Islam and the UN.