Following several months of hearings in 2015 related to admissibility of evidence, his trial started in Kamloops last January and included his claims that Ms Letts-Beckett had been suicidally depressed, and either committed suicide or drowned accidentally.
But the trial ended after three months with the jury unable to reach verdicts and Beckett was ordered to undergo a new trial.
Raised in Hastings, Beckett was running a business taking tours groups from Napier to Cape Kidnappers when he became a Napier councillor in 1998.
He served a three-year-term, but he did not stand for re-election and moved to Canada, where he married the then Ms Betts whom he was reported to have met while operating the tours.
The judge was reported to have been told in a note from the jury foreman that there had been one dissenting voice, and Beckett claimed in a prison interview it had been an 11-1 vote for acquittal, and that the proceedings had been a "kangaroo court."
He now has another lawyer, at least the sixth he has had representing him in the long-running proceeds, in addition to acting for himself.
