At more than two metres tall and weighing 180kg, a former Napier councillor charged with murder was just too big to save his drowning wife, he says.
Peter Beckett, a Hastings-born 59-year-old is awaiting trial in Canada, accused of not only killing his wife, but also with trying to arrange the murder of five witnesses, including his wife's parents, a policeman who investigated his case and a lawyer.
Beckett's wife, Canadian school teacher Laura Letts-Beckett, drowned in August 2010 while fishing on Arrow Lake, 200km east of Kamloops, where the trial will be heard.
The man, described as having a booming voice with a thick Kiwi accent and calling himself "the real Mr Big", says it was all an "amazing love story" that ended in tragedy.
The pair met in 1995, while then-35-year-old Ms Letts was travelling New Zealand as a tourist.
Beckett was married with four kids at the time.
Sparks flew between the pair after a chance meeting, he told a local radio station.
"I'd had break-ups before, I'd fallen in love before but this was different than that."
Eight years later Beckett sold everything he owned and moved to Canada, with the pair marrying shortly after.
But the relationship turned rocky and they filed for divorce in 2007 after Mrs Letts-Beckett accused Beckett of abuse, although they reconciled later.
He claims he and his wife were fishing when a gust of wind blew an umbrella off their boat, causing her to fall overboard, and he tried to rescue her but failed because he was too big to stay submerged.
He ran to collect a rock to weigh himself down and later tried to resuscitate her on the shore, he said.
But the Crown says Beckett is a calculating killer who killed Mrs Letts-Beckett by shoving her off the boat.
Beckett has changed lawyers a number of times and alleges abuse of process, bias by police and court officials, and failure of the Crown to disclose documents.
"The [Royal Mounted Canadian Police] are financially given incentive to solve crimes," he told local newspaper Kamloops This Week.
"In this case, they tried to invent a crime that didn't exist. The RCMP want to get their man, even though there was no crime in the first place."
More than four years after Mrs Letts-Beckett's death a jury was picked for the Supreme Court trial from Kamloops, a town of 85,000 people, in January.
He was arrested in August 2011 and has been awaiting trial since.
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