By Perry Duffin, Jessica McSweeney and Olivia Ireland
Police believe Jesse Baird was the singular target of Beau Lamarre-Condon’s alleged murder plot, while Baird’s new partner Luke Davies was killed simply for being with his partner at the Paddington terrace where they lost their lives, sources say.
Lamarre-Condon, 28, is in Silverwater’s metropolitan remand centre 24 hours after allegedly revealing the location of the couple’s remains outside Goulburn to police.
Luke Davies and Jesse Baird.
As forensic police pick through the debris that was allegedly scattered over their bodies on a remote fence line in the town of Bungonia in the Southern Tablelands, detectives are working to piece together the crime that claimed their lives in inner Sydney, hundreds of kilometres away.
Detectives now believe Lamarre-Condon planned to kill only Baird at his home, said police sources not authorised to speak publicly.
They also suspect Davies was killed simply because he was at the terrace with his new partner when Lamarre-Condon allegedly carried out the attack with his police-issued Glock pistol.
A bouquet on Jerrara Road, near the alleged crime scene.Credit: Kate Geraghty
Police are treating the alleged double homicide as domestic violence, and probing allegations Lamarre-Condon engaged in stalking in the lead-up to the deaths.
Assistant Commissioner Mick Fitzgerald told 10 News that police will allege Lamarre-Condon “keyed [Baird’s] car, that he broke into his house and that he poured water into his vehicle engine block”.
“Unfortunately, none of that was reported to police,” Fitzgerald said.
According to police, Lamarre-Condon also tried to cover up his alleged involvement in the killings.
“We will allege that he tried to claim that Jesse was in Western Australia at one stage, and then I think he later on tried to claim that Luke may have been responsible,” Fitzgerald said.
New details also emerged of the moment the alleged killer revealed where he’d discarded the bodies of Baird and Davies.
NSW Police conduct a line search walking towards the mound of dirt where the bodies believed to be Luke Davies and Jesse Baird were discovered.Credit: Kate Geraghty
In an earlier interview with Ben Fordham Live on 2GB, Fitzgerald said that after Lamarre-Condon engaged with new legal counsel on Tuesday, police were given some hope he might finally co-operate.
With what some officers described as “unprecedented” levels of public interest in the case, and two heartbroken families who had travelled to Sydney from interstate in the hope of getting some closure, Chief Inspector Glenn Brown and the officer in charge of the investigation, Detective Sergeant Sasha Pinazza, entered the Metropolitan Remand and Reception Centre at Silverwater on Tuesday morning.
“Glenn and Sasha went into a room out there at Silverwater jail; he obviously wanted to talk to his lawyer to confirm it was OK to talk to police … it was a bit of a logistical nightmare because you can’t take phones or any other equipment in there and we wanted to pinpoint where in Bungonia he had left the bodies,” Fitzgerald said.
Constable Beau Lamarre-Condon has been charged with the couple’s murder.Credit: Facebook
Eventually, arrangements were made to bring a computer into the room, and two hours later police allege Lamarre-Condon was able to pinpoint where he had taken the bodies: a rural road leading to the Greek Orthodox Holy Monastery of Saint Fanourios, just 20 minutes from the site police had first searched on Monday.
“He did take the bodies of the two young boys to the original site that we were searching on the Monday; for what reason which we will allege in court was his inability to dispose of them, he then came back again 24 hours later and removed the bodies from that site and then tried to secrete them in that street that leads up to the monastery there in Bungonia,” Fitzgerald said.
“It was a relief not only to investigators, but I imagine some solace and some less heartbreak for the family, who would have been going through unbelievable hell.”
Family members visited the Jerrara Road crime scene on Tuesday evening, where the bodies had remained in surfboard bags on a mound of dirt not far from the road.
The bodies were taken away later that night after a marathon mission to collect forensic evidence, and were moved to the Lidcombe mortuary where a post-mortem examination will take place in the coming days to determine their official cause of death.