Laura Letts Beckett and her husband Peter Beckett were out on their boat on a sunny day in August 2010.
As Peter tells the story, he was fishing while his wife read a book as they soaked in the scenery around Upper Arrow Lake in B.C.’s Interior.
Laura, who could not swim and was not wearing a life-jacket, suddenly ended up in the water, he says.
Peter says he dove in to try to save her but found he was too buoyant. He says he swam to shore to get a large rock to help him sink in an effort to save her.
Laura, a school teacher from Westlock, Alta., drowned that day, and the circumstances around her death have remained something of a mystery.
In 2017, Peter Beckett was found guilty of the first-degree murder of his wife, but his conviction was overturned in 2020.
The story of the Becketts is now the subject of In Cold Water: The Shelter Bay Mystery, a new three-part docuseries on Amazon Prime directed by Vancouver filmmaker Trish Neufeld.
“I got hooked on the story really, really early because there’s a lot of twists and turns,” Neufeld said. “You never know which way the story is going to go.”
Beckett, who is now a free man, plays a central role in the series, explaining his perspective on his wife’s death and the subsequent investigation into his involvement.
Police, lawyers and Laura’s friends and family members were also interviewed, as well as Kamloops reporter Tim Petruk, who saw the case through the courts.
In an interview with CBC’s Shelley Joyce, Petruk said Beckett’s decision to represent himself on a first-degree murder charge caught his attention early on.
“He was this larger-than-life character, really unusual,” Petruk said. “You don’t see that often at the courthouse. It’s often everything’s kind of buttoned up and people talk a certain way in courtrooms and this was the opposite of that.”
While there are many tragic stories that come out of B.C.’s Interior, he said, this incident felt more relatable.
“This one, for whatever reason, it felt more like, I don’t know, something that could happen to your aunt or your mom,” he said.
Neufeld was introduced to the story when executive producer Pablo Salzman brought her on to produce and direct the series.
She said it was challenging to balance the compelling nature of the story with the fact that Laura Letts Beckett left behind many people who loved her.
“Her friends had to be really, really brave to sit down and tell the story of their friend and their regrets of things that they wish that they had done or said or things that they wish that they could do over again,” she said.
“I think there’s a conclusion to that or a closure to that, which is also very beautiful, and I think [it’s] one of the benefits of true crime stories; there’s a lot of learning to be done or to be had and there’s a lot of healing that has the possibility of happening.”
In Cold Water: The Shelter Bay Mystery is airing now on Amazon Prime.