Detective breaks down recounting discovery of two men's bodies in alleged police officer murder trial

In a Sydney courtroom, a detective recounted the moment she discovered two bodies wrapped in surfboard bags, her voice breaking as she described the smell of decomposition that greeted her the instant she stepped out of her car. Jesse Baird was 26. Luke Davies was 29. They had been shot dead in a terrace house in February 2024, and eight days later, their remains lay hidden beneath branches and stones at Cella Farm, 200 kilometers south of Sydney.

Beau Lamarre-Condon, a former police officer and Baird's ex-partner, stands accused of their murders. He has pleaded not guilty, arguing instead that both men died in separate violent struggles after he entered the home disguised as a food delivery rider. His defense maintains that what followed—the drive south, the attempt to sink the bodies in the farm's dam, the concrete blocks and gym weights positioned at the water's edge—was panic, the desperate improvisation of a man confronted with unexpected death.

Detective Senior Constable Christine Abela had been searching Cella Farm when she was redirected to a Greek monastery about twenty kilometers away on February 27. The smell hit her immediately upon arrival. As prosecutor Brett Hatfield SC walked her through the discovery, she became emotional, describing how the odor intensified as she approached two blue and silver surfboard bags. They were covered with sticks, branches, and stones. At the farm itself, crime scene officers found a padlock that had been cut—prosecutors allege it was severed with an angle grinder that Lamarre-Condon had asked a friend to purchase during the drive from Sydney.

The prosecution's case rests on a different narrative entirely: that Lamarre-Condon became obsessed with Baird after they ended contact in November 2023, and that this obsession hardened into resolve. To support this theory, prosecutors have presented evidence of calculated deception spanning months. Nicole Harvell, Lamarre-Condon's close friend and a sworn officer herself, testified that despite being in almost daily contact with the accused, she could not recall any conversation about Baird after their breakup. Yet she described a pattern of elaborate lies designed to manipulate Baird's emotions.

Lamarre-Condon posted an Instagram story showing a bouquet of flowers with a caption suggesting they had come from Baird while he was in Melbourne. The post was restricted to select friends who did not include Baird himself—a fabrication designed to create the appearance of an ongoing romantic connection. When Baird discovered the deception, Lamarre-Condon spent $160 on an identical bouquet and sent Baird a photograph of his mother holding it, complete with a handwritten note implying the flowers were from her partner in Melbourne. Harvell testified that Lamarre-Condon told her his mother had written the note. The accused had enlisted his mother to help him lie.

When Harvell saw media reports that Lamarre-Condon was under suspicion for the two men's deaths, she attempted to reach him. "Fuck Beau, are you ok?" she texted to his phone. The message went unanswered. Under cross-examination, Harvell maintained her account of these deceptions, painting a portrait of a man who had constructed an elaborate fiction to keep Baird emotionally tethered to him. The trial continues, with the prosecution building its case that what occurred was not the accidental outcome of violent struggle, but the culmination of months of obsessive planning and calculated manipulation.