A coroner has dismissed claims that Southland man John Beckenridge staged his own death and escaped overseas with his stepson, ruling it is more likely than not that the pair died when their vehicle plunged off a cliff 11 years ago.
In March 2015, Beckenridge, a Swedish-born helicopter pilot, broke a court order by collecting his then 11-year-old stepson Mike Zhao-Beckenridge from his Invercargill school.
A week later, Beckenridge’s 4WD Volkswagen Touareg went off a cliff near Curio Bay, in Southland.
When police recovered the vehicle, there were no bodies. Beckenridge and Mike have been missing ever since.
Mike’s mother, Fiona Lu, is convinced her son is alive and that Beckenridge, her former partner, staged the pair’s deaths.
She claims he did this after she moved Mike from Beckenridge’s Queenstown home to Invercargill with her new partner, Peter Russell.
In 2023, Coroner Marcus Elliott held a hearing into the pair’s disappearance.
After new evidence came to light in June 2024, Coroner Elliott called for a new hearing to assess new information, including that a friend of Beckenridge allegedly told people after the pair vanished: “We helped him out, and they are alive.”
Coroner Elliott’s decision can now be published.
“The police position is that on March 20, 2015, Mr Beckenridge drove the vehicle off the cliff with Mike in it. They describe it as a case of murder/suicide,” he said.
“Ms Lu believes that Mr Beckenridge staged their deaths and that he and Mike left New Zealand. Ms Lu believes that they are still alive.
“I have concluded that it is more likely than not that ... Mr Beckenridge drove his vehicle off the cliff. Mike was in the vehicle.
“Mr Beckenridge and Mike died due to the injuries they sustained when the vehicle crashed into the sea. Their bodies were washed away and have not been found.”
Coroner Elliott said any other theories about what happened to the pair are “implausible”.
He said all of the information put before him – in particular the evidence from the cliff-top scene, which included expert evidence – was “sufficiently strong to conclude that it is more likely than not” that Beckenridge drove the vehicle off the cliff.
“The staging and escape theory is implausible on the evidence,” he said.
“Mr Beckenridge’s actions illustrate that he either did not have, or did not display, the characteristics of the intelligent, resourceful, rational and well-prepared criminal which Ms Lu and [her partner] Mr Russell believe him to be.
“His actions were in many respects contrary to what would be expected if a man with those characteristics planned to stage two deaths and depart New Zealand with an 11-year-old.
“The planning was poor, even farcical, the preparation negligible and rudimentary.”
Coroner Elliott said Beckenridge was “deeply affected by losing the control over” Lu and Mike, which he “so craved and cultivated”.
“The Family Court had ordered that Ms Lu would have sole care of Mike,” he explained.
“He had no employment, and his financial position was poor. His communications show that he was upset about his circumstances in the period before he went missing. He felt that his life was ‘no good’, that it was falling apart, and there was no purpose to it.”
In his own words, Beckenridge had said he had “been in a lot of bad stuff over the years” but the situation in the lead-up to his disappearance was “beyond repair”.
“Olympus, he said, had fallen,” Coroner Elliott said.
“In the period before he took Mike, Mr Beckenridge displayed low mood, pessimism and thoughts about death and suicide. During that period, he was attending to affairs relating to his estate.
“He made comments in some communications suggestive of an intention to end his and Mike’s lives.
“He said he would ‘act according to the situation’, that there were ‘no winners’ and that ‘lift-off’ was ‘no more than a week away’.”
On March 20, Beckenridge sent a text message saying “Midnight Express ... leaving very shortly”.
Coroner Elliott said Beckenridge also showed a “willingness to use Mike as a weapon” against Lu, which revealed “a callous disregard for the harm he was causing” the boy.
“He did everything he could to turn Mike against, and incite hatred of, his mother and Mr Russell,” he said.
“The only conclusion one can draw from Mr Beckenridge’s indoctrination of Mike against his mother is that he was at least indifferent to the harm he was causing to Mike.
“He had become so vindictive towards Ms Lu and so self-obsessed and self-righteous that he was willing to harm Mike.”
Coroner Elliott said from the moment Beckenridge took Mike from school on March 13, he was “in effect, on the run”.
“His actions were those of a man who was desperate and irrational, making things up as he went along and driven by a desire to lash out at those he perceived to have done him wrong,” he said.
The coroner believed Beckenridge and Mike may have slept at the clifftop the night before they vanished forever.
That day, he suspected the fugitive “saw a marked police vehicle” nearby at about 1.15pm and “perceived that police were about to find him and Mike”.
“The situation went from desperate to dire,” he opined.
“The evidence is consistent with Mr Beckenridge sending text messages between 1.40pm and 1.45pm and then driving the vehicle off the cliff.
“The timing of the messages is inconsistent with the staging and escape theory.”
Coroner Elliott said the evidence showed that in the lead-up to disappearing, Beckenridge was “angry, self-righteous and vengeful”.
“Even at times delusional,” he said.
“This is consistent with him carrying out the act of ending his and Mike’s lives by driving the vehicle off the cliff.”
Coroner Elliott’s decision spans 195 pages and traverses all of the evidence presented to him.
Many pages are dedicated to Lu’s theory that Beckenridge successfully staged a murder/suicide scene by “rigging the driverless vehicle to go off the cliff and leaving the country with Mike, probably by boat, travelling to a country or countries overseas and establishing new lives under new identities”.
She claimed he and Mike then hid, “possibly in the huge silage stack near the cliff-top scene”, which, given that it was covered in plastic, would have been warm and sheltered.
From there, she believed they “made their way to a seagoing vessel, potentially using a second car and/or with the help of an accomplice”.
“In short, this theory requires Mr Beckenridge to have put on a convincing act, a complete sham, for months and even years, portraying himself as someone other than who he really was,” Coroner Elliott said.
“Because, to carry out this plan, Mr Beckenridge could not have been irrational and out of control. It is a necessary feature of this theory that he was a highly intelligent, resourceful man, a man with great presence of mind, the ability to make plans and back-up plans, to remain calm under intense pressure and to execute his plans successfully.
“This sort of subterfuge would have been no insignificant feat. To successfully execute every aspect of this plan, Mr Beckenridge could not have been as irrational and out-of-control as his communications show him to be.”
Coroner Elliott said escaping New Zealand and remaining completely hidden for 10 years would be “a perfect crime”.
He said the evidence before him showed Beckenridge simply was not “calculating, meticulous and resourceful” enough to have pulled such a stunt off.
“Mr Beckenridge’s actions [before he disappeared] illustrate that he either did not have, or did not display, the criminal abilities which have been attributed to him,” he ruled.
“His actions were in fact those of a man who was desperate and irrational, making things up as he went along and driven by a desire to lash out at those he perceived to have done him wrong.
“It is incumbent upon me to consider the available evidence, to scrutinise the various possibilities and to reach a conclusion which is based on reason and logic,” he explained.
“I will bear in mind the seriousness of the possible conclusion that Mr Beckenridge and Mike are dead. I could not reach this conclusion unless the evidence is sufficiently strong.
“Given the mysterious circumstances in which Mr Beckenridge and Mike went missing and the level of public speculation, it is also worth remembering that my conclusions must be based on evidence, not suspicion, speculation or conjecture.
“I have concluded that ... it is likely that Mr Beckenridge and Mike are dead. Their bodies were lost at sea after their vehicle entered the water on March 20, 2015. They were in New Zealand immediately before their deaths.”
Under New Zealand law, when a person dies by suicide or self-inflicted injuries, the method of their death cannot be published.
However, Coroner Elliott has allowed the details of Beckenridge and Mike’s death to be reported.
“The circumstances of the disappearance of Mr Beckenridge and Mike and the means of their possible deaths were reported from the time it became clear that Mr Beckenridge’s vehicle had gone off a cliff into the sea,” he ruled.
“Since then, there has been extensive reporting about their disappearance.
“Further reporting of matters which are already well and truly in the public domain is unlikely to be detrimental to public safety. For this reason, I authorise continued publication of particulars relating to the deaths of Mr Beckenridge and Mike.”
Anna Leask is a senior journalist who covers national crime and justice. She joined the Herald in 2008 and has worked as a journalist for 20 years with a particular focus on family and gender-based violence, child abuse, sexual violence, homicides, mental health and youth crime. She writes, hosts and produces the award-winning podcast A Moment In Crime, released monthly on nzherald.co.nz