Kidnapping is vile

The Herald reports:

Locals in the remote Catlins area who saw John Beckenridge in the days before he disappeared with his 11-year-old stepson are adamant the pair are alive and have probably fled the deep south.

Mr Beckenridge, 64, was captured on security cameras paying for supplies in cash in the days after he took Mike Zhao-Beckenridge from James Hargest College’s junior school in Invercargill on March 13.

Over the next week, the pair were spotted driving around the Catlins, southeast of Invercargill, and seen camping in tents and in the back of the Swedish-born pilot’s dark-blue Volkswagen Touareg.

Sometime over the next 24 hours, Mr Beckenridge’s car went over an 88m cliff near Curio Bay – a remote spot notorious for rough seas.

A missing persons alert went out the day Mike Zhao-Beckenridge disappeared and border alerts were issued within 24 hours, police say.

It took six weeks to recover the vehicle from the wild cove’s crashing waves. Police found “no signs of human remains” in the car.

Mr Beckenridge is believed to have several aliases, including John Locke, John Robert Lundh, Knut Goran Roland Lundh and John Bradford. Friends believed he faked his and Mike’s deaths.

I think anyone with multiple aliases tends to be a bad sort. Beckenridge is basically a kidnapper. He stole his step son from his actual mother.  I hope he is caught one day.