The snapshots on Jesse Baird’s Instagram account are pictures of young, carefree love. In a photo posted this month, Jesy, 26, and her boyfriend Luke Davies, 29, attended a concert, smiling broadly for the camera as pop star Pink took to the stage. waiting.
Another image shows Luke looking lovingly at his partner, while a third shows Jesse dancing in the rain, smiling despite the downpour.
Neither of them could have imagined that they would both die within days of these happy photos being taken – their bodies being transported by car from Sydney, the Australian city where they had recently made their home. The house was discovered inside a surfboard bag discarded in a makeshift grave in a remote farmland two hours away.
The incident was a tragic end to two young lives and shocked the nation. Especially since the murder suspect, a former celebrity blogger and local police officer, is accused of using a Glock service pistol as a weapon.
Jesse Baird, 26, right, and Luke Davis, 29, allegedly murdered by former famous blogger and local police officer Beau Lamarre-Condon.
Beau Lamarre-Condon (commonly known by his surname Lamarre) is a charming character with a side to Walter Mitty, with a jet-setting lifestyle as a designer and an 80,000 Australian dollar as a constable. This left colleagues struggling to balance their $40,000 (£40,000) salary. .
He is now accused of violent murder, allegedly fueled by a long-standing motive of thwarted desire.
The exact nature of their relationship is unclear, but investigating officer Superintendent Danny Doherty revealed this week that there was “some sort of relationship” between Lamar and Baird that “didn’t end well”. .
Given this interesting background, it is perhaps no wonder that this gruesome incident shocked all of Australia.
This week, friends and strangers alike came to leave flowers at Ms Baird’s rented home in the fashionable Sydney neighborhood of Paddington. “RIP” reads one card. “I still grieve your loss.”
Not many people know about Luke Davis, who always had a smile on his face while working as a flight attendant for Australian airline Qantas, but Jesse Baird was a minor celebrity.
The theater and media graduate left his hometown of Melbourne in 2017 to pursue a career in television, eventually making his way to Sydney, where he became a wandering reporter for popular network television station Channel 10.
A jovial presence on and off screen, he was also a respected Aussie Rules football referee and was scheduled to referee a pre-season training match on February 20th.
But Baird never showed up. Because by then, Baird’s life had been brutally ended the previous day at the hands of Lamar.
So did things go horribly wrong between Baird and LaMarr?
Friends suggested this week that things worsened because Baird didn’t want any further relationship after their “brief encounter”.
“[Lamar]was not his ex-boyfriend,” one of Baird’s friends, TV producer Isaac Muller, claimed on an Australian TV show. “They never went out.”
Baird’s ex-girlfriend Corey Dean Thorpe echoed similar sentiments, saying Baird’s ex-girlfriend was ultimately forced to end her relationship with Lamar after Lamar posted a video on Instagram pretending they were a couple. He revealed in an email this week how he no longer received a job. .
Lamarr-Condon, pictured with Lady Gaga, started her celebrity-focused blog in 2017 and has also been photographed alongside Taylor Swift, Miley Cyrus and Ben Stiller.
Thorpe revealed that Baird helped compose a text message to Lamarr telling him that they had crossed the threshold of friendship and that they should no longer communicate with each other. “We kindly ask that you refrain from contacting us,” it says.
So how did last week’s bloody events ultimately come about?
Lamarr joined the police force at the age of 20, two years after he reportedly came out as gay by throwing a letter on stage at a Lady Gaga concert in 2014 and reading it out to the audience. Ta.
He clearly enjoyed the good life. Among the photos posted on his now-deleted Instagram account were images of him drinking champagne on his private plane and riding a horse shirtless on a tropical beach. He drives a Mercedes and was spotted behind the wheel of a Tesla earlier this month.
“He was always very secretive about where the money came from,” one acquaintance said this week. “There were rumors that he must have had a rich boyfriend.”
One former female police officer who also knew Lamar told her that she was an “influencer or blogger” and that the cash, travel and lavish lifestyle “came with the job.” He said he was talking to him.
The former was certainly true. After starting her celebrity-focused blog around 2017, LaMarr has been photographed alongside numerous A-listers, including pop stars Taylor Swift, Miley Cyrus, Lady Gaga and actor Ben Stiller. It was getting worse.
“Outdoor bar and blurry night,” he captioned a photo of himself alongside singer Dua Lipa.
In another photo, said to have been taken shortly before the alleged murder, he posted a photo of himself in front of Kourtney Kardashian upon her arrival in Sydney. “Sneaky selfies on set,” he wrote.
But within days of that post, and after Baird and Davis themselves had gone on a happy trip to a Pink concert, gunshots were heard at 9:50 a.m. on Monday, February 19, at Baird’s home.
No one reported the noise to police, but detectives pieced together a timeline showing that Mr Baird’s phone called emergency services four minutes later, but went off before anyone could respond. found.
Jesse and Luke’s bodies were found inside a surfboard bag abandoned in a makeshift grave in a remote farmland two hours’ drive from Sydney.
Two days later, workers found the bloody belongings of Baird and Davies, who were absent as referees, including a £4,000 watch, phone, credit cards, set of keys and clothing 30 miles from their home. . his house.
After identifying the items, police rushed to Mr Baird’s address where they found clear evidence that a crime had taken place.
Furniture was overturned and the walls were stained with blood. The bullet was found embedded in a wall, and ballistics tests showed that the shell casing found at the scene had been fired from a police Glock handgun, which LaMarr had stolen from the police safe on Thursday, February 15th. It was found to match a gun that had been “signed out” and then returned. The day after the murder.
Police initially suspected that Baird had killed her boyfriend, Davis, after finding messages on Baird’s cell phone suggesting their relationship was not working out.
But detectives appear to have determined that the message was written by the killer to deflect suspicion.
Later, when officers learned of the alleged breakdown between Baird and Officer Lamarr, they refocused their attention and discovered that Lamarr had hired a white Toyota Hiace van from Sydney Airport on the night the gunshots were heard. found.
Police believe the van was used to transport the bodies of Baird and Davis. But here?
As the missing man’s family anxiously awaited news, police traveled hundreds of miles searching for possible dumping sites, including on the outskirts of the Australian city of Newcastle, in forests, on farms and in waterways. .
For many days their efforts proved in vain. Then on Friday lunchtime, Lamarr dramatically surrendered to police at Sydney’s Bondi station.
Three hours after his arrival, he was charged with two counts of murder, even though his body had not yet been found.
As police continued to search for the missing person, another strange development took place.
Over the weekend, officers were contacted by a female friend of Mr Lamar who said she had traveled with him to the Southern Tablelands, a beautiful rural area about 240 miles from Sydney, in a white Toyota she had hired.
She told detectives that Lamarr asked her to wait on a secluded roadside while he used an angle grinder to cut the padlock on the farm gate. He then drove the van back to the waiting woman and replaced the padlock on the gate with another padlock he had purchased. Police have not released details of the bizarre trip, saying only that she was an “innocent investigator” who was “not involved” in any crime, but said she was “an innocent investigator” who was “not involved” in any crime, although the In the end, it was enough information to start a fruitless search.
Police now believe Lamar may have initially dumped the body there, but then returned to the farm alone again to retrieve the body, possibly suspecting that a friend had contacted police. ing.
According to the van’s data, he then drove from Sydney to Newcastle, 158 miles away, where he went to a friend’s house (a former police officer) and asked for a “hose to clean the van”.
The same day Lamarr surrendered to police, his Toyota was found abandoned near a national park near Sydney.
On Tuesday, Lamar finally told detectives where he had put the body. Police rushed to the isolated community of Bungonia on the southern plateau, a two-hour drive from Sydney, and found two surf bags near a fence.
Inside were the decomposed bodies of men.
Superintendent Doherty said yesterday that detectives believed the body had been abandoned for up to 72 hours after the murder, adding: “An attempt was made to hide the surfboard bag with stones and branches.”
NSW Police Commissioner Karen Webb later told assembled reporters: “We are confident that we have located Luke and Jesse.”
She added that while the discovery was shocking for the victim’s family, it also brought them closure.
“It was painful waiting for them every hour of every day,” she said. “They wanted to know where their children were.”
As devastated families made pilgrimages to the victims’ burial sites, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he understood their grief.
But many unanswered questions remain about this extraordinary case that has gripped Australia. The biggest question is why (assuming he was guilty) Lamar committed such a brutal act against two innocent young men.
