Albert Square plan a party to celebrate his comeback. However, on the day he is due back, the police inform Pauline that Pete and Rose have died in a car accident in Leicester. It is later revealed that the Chapman family are responsible for their deaths.<ref name="20years">{{cite book |last= Smith|first= Rupert|title= EastEnders: 20 years in Albert Square |year=2005|publisher=BBC books|isbn=978-0-563-52165-5|title-link= EastEnders spin-offs#Non-fiction books}}</ref> Pete's twin grandchildren are born the same day as his death; a girl called Lucy Beale and a boy, Peter Beale, who Ian names in honour of his father. His body is returned to Walford and buried. Creation and development Background and casting Pete Beale was one of the original twenty-three characters invented by the creators of EastEnders, Tony Holland and Julia Smith. Holland took the inspiration for some of the series' earliest characters from his own London family and background. Pete was based on one of his cousins, the twin brother to Pauline and son of Holland's aunt Lou; a family set-up that would eventually be recreated on-screen and would go on to be forever hailed as the first family of EastEnders, the Beales and Fowlers. Pete's original character outline as written by Smith and Holland appeared in an abridged form in their book, EastEnders: The Inside Story: "Pete runs a fruit and veg stall in the market....married very young to Pat (Pam St Clement) - It turned out to be a total disaster. They were too young, rushing into a difficult life for all the wrong reasons, and truthfully, his wife was a vicious shrew ... he divorced his wife and married Kathy (Gillian Taylforth) when he was 24 ... Ian (Adam Woodyatt) was born a year later. It took Kathy and Pete about ten years to woo [Pete's mother] Lou (Anna Wing) round to the idea of their marriage, and she can still sometimes be a bit cutting about it.... She doesn't believe in divorce ... He did have crazy dreams of making something of himself, he was going to be singer, a red-coat, run his own hotel ... On special occasions it's always Pete who's the life and soul of the party.... His two sons by his first marriage are nineteen and twenty and he hardly sees them.... If it wasn't for Thatcher, he'd consider voting Tory.... Never works on the anniversary of his dad's death, and with [his sister] Pauline (Wendy Richard), escorts