The mystery of missing Southland boy Mike Zhao-Beckenridge, who disappeared a decade ago with his stepfather John Beckenridge, is back in the Coroner’s Court next week.
A coroner’s hearing was adjourned in 2023 after two weeks of evidence and will resume on Tuesday with fresh evidence from five new witnesses.
John Beckenridge broke a court order and picked up his 11-year-old stepson from his Invercargill school in March 2015.
A week after the pair’s disappearance, Beckenridge’s car went off a nearly 90m cliff in Southland.
There were no signs of bodies when the vehicle was recovered and the pair remain missing.
The new information to be presented at the continuation of the trial on Tuesday includes a further report from an expert who had examined discharged items at the Caitlin’s cliff top.
A decade ago, Mike Zhao-Beckenridge vanished with his stepfather John Beckenridge and their car was found at the bottom of a near 90m Southland cliff. (Source: 1News)
At the two-week hearing in 2023, the coroner heard conflicting evidence from police who believed the disappearance was a murder-suicide.
However, just over ten years on, Mike’s mother Fiona Lu believed her boy, who would be now 21, is still alive.
Family private investigator Mark Templeman told Coroner Marcus Elliott that Fiona believed Mike would reach out when he was no longer under the influence of Beckenridge.
“She further believes [John] cared too much for Mike to hurt him.”
Police maintain it was an apparent act of filicide, when a parent kills a child, in retaliation for Lu leaving John for another man.
Police lawyer Deirdre Elsmore said they believed Beckenridge’s hatred for his ex-wife may have driven him to kill himself and Mike.
“John’s attitude, his absolute white hatred and feelings of intense betrayal towards Fiona – you might be left wondering that it is no coincidence that the two have died in circumstances that have left Fiona wondering if they are dead or alive,” she said, “whether that is what might have been the intention, the ultimate punishment for her betrayal.”
The 11-year-old had been railing against a court order to live with his mother, but a police witness told the coroner Mike admitted allegations his mother had hit him were false.
However, at the same time, his stepfather John had alerted police to a series of increasingly concerning emails.
Twenty of them were read out in the hearing with a common theme emerging among them.
“I hate my mum, in fact she is not my mum she f****d up my life so bad. I hate her I hope she die painfully (sic).”
Mike’s family maintained John staged the disappearance.
His final text to Fiona was read out: “You have destroyed my life and Mike’s. Me and Mike are leaving now on the Midnight Express 3 mins to departure. Bye my love and thanks for everything JB and MB (sic).”
Lu said her ex-husband, a helicopter pilot with four aliases, had the skills to disappear.
Three months after the car was found submerged, a New Zealand woman on holiday in Gili Air Island in Indonesia contacted police to report seeing John and Mike together.
This prompted a missing person’s poster to be made using her more recent descriptions.
She told the coroner she was “100% sure” it was them.
Two vastly different theories will be developed further at the hearing next week before the coroner decides if a full inquest will determine if the pair are dead, or alive and in hiding.
