A detective became emotional while describing the search for the bodies of Jesse Baird and Luke Davies, telling a jury she recognised a “strong smell” at a Greek Orthodox monastery in New South Wales.
Former police officer Beau Lamarre-Condon is accused of killing the Sydney couple in February 2024. He has pleaded not guilty and is arguing self-defence in the murder trial before the NSW Supreme Court.
Detective Christine Abela told the court that information provided by Lamarre-Condon’s friend, known as Elizabeth Kennedy for legal reasons, helped investigators locate the bodies.
Kennedy went to Bondi Police Station with her solicitor on February 23, around the time Lamarre-Condon attended the station. The jury has previously heard that he turned himself in that morning, with prosecutors alleging he knew he was a suspect in the couple’s disappearance.
Detective Abela said Kennedy told police she had travelled with Lamarre-Condon in a white van to Goulburn in the days beforehand. She allegedly bought an angle grinder at Bunnings before they drove to a rural farm, where he was said to have cut a padlock on the gate.
Kennedy could not recall the property’s location but remembered the letters “C, U, L, L” forming part of its name. A Bunnings employee who sold the angle grinder told investigators that Bungonia had been mentioned during the purchase.
Detective Abela described the search for the property as being like “trying to find a needle in a haystack”, but said she located Cella Farm on February 25.
A cut padlock was found in the letterbox, while police discovered weights and large blocks of cement after the property was declared a crime scene. Dams at the farm were also searched.
Prosecutors allege Lamarre-Condon placed the men’s bodies in surfboard bags and attempted to sink them in a dam using cement and weights.
The investigation then led police to a Greek Orthodox monastery about 20 kilometres from the farm. Detective Abela told the jury she noticed a smell as soon as she got out of her car.
When prosecutor Brett Hatfield KC asked whether she recognised it from her police work, she replied: “Yes … It was the scent of decomposing, a decomposing body.”
The detective became choked up while describing how two surfboard bags were found stacked on top of one another and covered with sticks and rocks. Prosecutors allege the bags contained the bodies of Baird and Davies and had been left along a fence line at the monastery in Bungonia.
The condition of the bodies made identification difficult, the jury heard. Detective Abela said she used Instagram photographs of the couple to match jewellery found on the two men.
Two keys were discovered in plastic bags near the bodies. A video shown to the jury appeared to show that both keys opened the front doors of Baird’s Paddington home.
Several relatives and friends left the courtroom during that evidence, while one woman who remained appeared visibly distressed as Detective Abela spoke about the smell.
