The former Westlock-area man accused of murdering his wife now faces two new charges of counselling to commit murder and obstruction of justice.
Peter Ernest Edward Beckett, 56, was arrested Monday, Dec. 10, while in custody at the Surrey Pre-trial Center in Surrey, B.C., where he was already in custody awaiting trial for the August 2010 murder of Laura Letts-Beckett, who was originally from the Westlock area.
A media release from B.C. RCMP states that a four-month investigation called Project E-PEDLAR began in August 2012 and focused on allegations that Beckett was “attempting to influence the outcome” of criminal proceedings relating to the murder charge for which he has been in custody since August 2011.
The intended victims are people whom the Crown would rely on as witnesses at the murder trial. None of the intended victims have come to any harm.
RCMP media relations officer Cpl. Dan Moskaluk said that as of Dec. 11, Beckett is the only one to be arrested as a result of this investigation, but would not say who Beckett is accused of counselling or who the intended victims are.
“The intended victims of this counselling to commit murder were an RCMP investigator and a lawyer,” he said, but would not give the names of those victims. “We’re not going into that amount of detail.”
A courthouse clerk in Port Coquitlam, B.C., who asked not to be named, said the charge against Beckett states that between July 1 and Dec. 6, 2012, Beckett counseled “Agent A” to commit the murders of five individuals, some of them in the Westlock area. Great West Newspapers has chosen not to name the intended victims.
Moskaluk declined to say whom “Agent A” refers to, but confirmed no other charges have been laid in relation to this investigation.
Neil MacKenzie, a spokesperson for the B.C. Justice ministry’s criminal justice branch, said in an e-mail that as the matter is now before the courts he could not elaborate, either.
“We can’t publicly disclose or discuss the specifics of the investigation or provide details in relation to potential witnesses at this stage in the proceedings, beyond the information released by police,” he wrote.
Moskaluk noted that a situation like this is quite rare.
“The charge of counselling to commit murder, and successful investigations of this offence, do occur,” he said. “It being directly related to a previous charge where somebody’s in custody, and it being attached to trying to influence other previously laid charges, is not a common occurrence. It’s not common at all.”
Laura Letts-Beckett died on Aug. 18, 2010, while vacationing near Revelstoke, B.C. She apparently fell out of a boat on the Upper Arrow Lake near Shelter Bay Provincial Park. She could not swim and was not wearing a life jacket.
Police determined her death was a homicide and arrested Beckett near Christina Lake, B.C., on Aug. 12, 2011.
He has been in custody since then, and is scheduled to appear in Salmon Arm Provincial Court for a pre-trial conference on May 21, 2013.
