Source : Perth Now news
A detective has choked up recalling details of the search for the bodies of a Sydney couple Beau Lamarre-Condon is accused of murdering, telling the jury about the moment she sensed a “strong smell”.
The court was told on Wednesday about how information from Mr Lamarre-Condon’s friend led investigators to the bodies of his alleged victims.
The former police officer disguised himself as an Uber Eats rider before allegedly killing Jesse Baird and his new partner Luke Davies at the journalist’s Paddington home in Sydney in February 2024.
The 31-year-old has pleaded not guilty, and is arguing self-defence as he fights the murder allegations before a jury trial in the NSW Supreme Court.
His friend, known for legal reasons as Elizabeth Kennedy, went to Bondi Police Station on February 23 with her solicitor around the time Mr Lamarre-Condon attended the station. The jury was previously told he turned himself in to police that morning, with prosecutors alleging he knew by then he was a suspect in the couple’s disappearance.
Ms Kennedy told police she had gone on a drive to Goulburn with Mr Lamarre-Condon in a white van in the days prior, Detective Christine Abela told the court on Wednesday.
The woman said she bought an angle grinder at Bunnings before they drove to a rural farm, where he allegedly cut the padlock of the gate.
Ms Abela told the jury she suspected the bodies of Mr Baird and Mr Davies may be at the property after speaking with Ms Kennedy, sparking a days-long search to find the property and bodies.
Ms Kennedy could not remember where the property was but recalled the letters C, U, L, L being in the farm’s name, the jury was told.
The employee at Bunnings Goulburn who sold the angle grinder told other investigators around this time that they had mentioned Bungonia while purchasing the item, the jury was told.
Searching for the farm was like “trying to find a needle in a haystack”, Ms Abela said, but she managed to find Cella Farm on February 25.
She found a cut padlock in the letterbox along, while other officers discovered weights and large blocks of cement at the property after it was declared a crime scene.
Various dams were also searched.
Prosecutors previously alleged Mr Lamarre-Condon tried to sink the couple’s bodies in a dam at a farm by pouring cement into the surfboard bags he had stuffed their bodies into, and using weights.
The breakthrough came when Ms Abela was given information that led her to a Greek Orthodox monastery about 20km away from the farm.
She told the jury she sensed a “strong smell as soon as (she) got out of the car” at the monastery.
“You recognise that kind of smell from your police work?” prosecutor Brett Hatfield SC asked her.
“Yes … It was the scent of decomposing, a decomposing body.”
Ms Abela became choked up as the jury was told she found two surfboard bags stacked on top of each other, covered with sticks and rocks, at the property.
Prosecutors previously alleged Mr Lamarre-Condon dumped the couple’s bodies, still in the surfboard bags, along a fence line at a Greek monastery in Bungonia.
The decomposition of the couple’s bodies made it difficult to identify them, the jury was told, with Ms Abela needing to use Instagram photos of the couple to match jewellery worn by the two men.
Two keys were found in plastic bags near the bodies, Ms Abela said, with a video shown to the jury revealing the keys matched the doors at Mr Baird’s home.
Ms Abela was tasked with testing the keys at his Paddington property in the following days, with the video showing she had to remove flowers placed inside the metal security door in order to test the keys.
Both keys opened the doors at the front of Mr Baird’s home, according to the video.
Several of the couple’s loved ones left the court for this portion of the evidence, with one woman who remained in the court visibly distressed as Ms Abela spoke about the “smell” of the bodies.
