By late February 2015, the 11-year-old’s emails to his stepfather intensified and provided an insight into their desperation.
"I have so much to ask u dad but Mum never will let me talk to u I wanna kill my self from Mike much love to u."
"I am not ever allowed to go back to u I do not want that I miss u s much and I love u can u please come here and we start kill? [sic]," one read.
On March 13, 2015, Fiona Lu arrived at school to collect Mike, but he was gone.
She would never see him again.
The pair were on the run in Mr Beckenridge’s Volkswagen, evading police for the next week, setting up camp near Curio Bay.
On March 20, when Mr Beckenridge saw a passing police car, he sent a series of texts including one to a friend: "Sorry for the outcome of this terrible affair."
Coroner Marcus Elliott said Mr Beckenridge drove off the cliff shortly after. An investigation found the car was likely travelling at more than 50kmh when it went over the edge. Senior Constable Kenneth Patterson explained there were no tyre marks beyond 4m from the precipice, due to the weight of the vehicle momentarily lifting.
Only one set of tracks led towards the cliff edge, followed by an "arc" to the left.
The coroner determined the single set of tread prints meant the car must have travelled directly over already existing marks before it plummeted.
A wooden stake in the ground about 10m before the edge and 2.4m to the right of the tracks was indicative of a guide to ensure the car hit an area of deeper water, rather than rocks, he said.
The coroner said the car could not have been "rigged" with a simple system such as a brick on the accelerator and rope holding the steering wheel.
A driver-less car was unlikely to have continued in a straight line given the uneven ground.
The coroner also found it was "highly unlikely" that Mr Beckenridge jumped from the vehicle before it slammed into the ocean because it must have been travelling at least 42kmh at the time.
He would have had to let go of the wheel 38m-44m from the edge to avoid going over, and it was unlikely the car would have continued in a straight line, if that was the case.
Due to dangerous sea conditions, the dive squad could not begin its search until nine days later, Senior Sergeant Bruce Adams said.
By then, the vehicle had degraded significantly.
The coroner said the sea conditions at the time could explain why the bodies were never found.
The front seatbelts were engaged but were tight against the seats, the inquiry heard.
The coroner concluded Mr Beckenridge and Mike must have been sitting on latched seatbelts, but the reason remained a mystery.
"If [Mr Beckenridge] had wanted to ensure that their bodies would be washed away in the sea, thereby perpetuating the mystery about what had become of them, not wearing seatbelts would fit with this plan," Mr Elliott said.
The coroner acknowledged Mr Beckenridge’s past was "sufficiently mysterious and suggestive to provide fertile grounds for innuendo and speculation". He had gone by three different names, had multiple passports and had spent time living in multiple countries.
He was brought up in Gothenburg in Sweden, worked as a fireman, was employed at a dive school and obtained a commercial helicopter pilot’s licence.
Ms Lu said Mr Beckenridge had geographical knowledge, was familiar with technology and computers and knew kung fu.
His most recent job was with Pacific Helicopters in Papua New Guinea, but he left the role in March 2014.
Mr Beckenridge owned a house in Queenstown valued at $625,000 in 2007, but the inquiry heard he was running out of cash at the time he went missing and had been organising his estate.
Reported sightings of Mike and his stepfather after March 20 added to the intrigue. About three months after the cliff plunge, a woman claimed she saw them on Gili Air Island in Indonesia.
But her descriptions of the pair did not perfectly match Mr Beckenridge and Mike.
The coroner said such visual identification was "prone to unreliability" and dismissed the account as "honest but mistaken".
After the first coronial hearing in May 2023, a man reported his cousin had said: "We helped them out and they are alive", but further questioning revealed it to be a misunderstanding.
The coroner considered messages found on Mr Beckenridge’s phone supported the murder-suicide scenario.
The man had said he would "act according to the situation", that there were "no winners" and that "lift-off" was "no more than a week away".
"When considering whether Mr Beckenridge simultaneously ended his own and Mike’s lives by driving his vehicle off the cliff, it is tempting to assume that these actions are so extreme and heinous and so incompatible with Mr Beckenridge’s professed love for Mike, that they could not have happened."
But that was contradicted by the evidence, he said.
Ms Lu said she still believed her son was out there somewhere.
Timeline
2006: John Beckenridge and Fiona Lu meet.
2007: Fiona Lu and 4-year-old Mike move to New Zealand from China to live in Queenstown with John Beckenridge.
December 21, 2007: Ms Lu and Mr Beckenridge marry.
2013: Ms Lu moves out of the Queenstown home. Mike stays with Mr Beckenridge.
February 24-25, 2015: Family Court hearing in Queenstown, following which Mike is placed in Ms Lu’s care.
February 25-March 13: Mike lives with Ms Lu and her new partner in Invercargill while secretly messaging his stepfather.
March 13: Mr Beckenridge abducts Mike from his Invercargill school.
March 19: They set up camp on a cliff top south of Curio Bay.
March 20: Mr Beckenridge drives off the cliff.
March 27: Police Dive Squad identify vehicle parts in the bay below the cliff using an underwater camera suspended from a helicopter.
March 29: Divers reach the wreckage of the vehicle.
May 6: The vehicle is recovered.
June 30: Woman reports seeing Mike and Mr Beckenridge on Gili Air Island.
May 2023: Coronial hearing begins
June 26: Closing submissions are heard at coronial hearing.
June 27: Man reports his cousin, a local at Curio Bay, said "we helped them out and they are alive".
Yesterday: Coroner’s decision is publicly released.
