A police officer has been charged with the double murder of Channel 10 presenter Jesse Baird and his boyfriend Luke Davies.
Police will allege Lamarre-Condon, 28, shot the pair with his police pistol at Mr Baird’s home in Paddington, in Sydney’s inner east.
Lamarre-Condon appeared in Waverley Local Court on Friday afternoon, sitting in the dock in a black t-shirt after he handed himself in to police at Bondi.
He did not apply for bail and was ordered to reappear in court on April 23.
According to court documents, Mr Baird and Mr Davies were both allegedly killed by Lamarre-Condon at Paddington between 12.01 am and 5.30pm on Monday.
The shooting occurred just hours after they were last seen alive at a pre-Mardi Gras party night on Sunday at the Beresford Hotel in Surry Hills.
Later on Monday evening, Lamarre-Condon hired a white Toyota HiAce van from Mascot and allegedly used it to dispose of the couple’s bodies, police said.
Detectives believe Lamarre-Condon then returned the alleged murder weapon to a police station’s locked firearms safe on Tuesday.
According to Mail Online, he took sick leave from the NSW Police Force for the rest of the day and failed to return to work on Wednesday.
Bloodied clothes and other belongings including credit cards belonging to former Studio 10 staffer Baird, 26, and Davies, 29, were found dumped in a skip bin in Cronulla on Wednesday.
That discovery led police to Baird’s home in Paddington where pools of blood and blood-spattered furniture were found.
Homicide Squad commander Detective Superintendent Danny Doherty said police had matched a bullet cartridge found in the premises to a police weapon.
‘Police located a projectile at the premises which had been discharged and also a fired cartridge case,’ Det Supt Doherty said.
‘This has now been physically matched to a NSW Police firearm and forms part of the evidence for the alleged facts to face court for this 28-year-old man.’
A street in New Lambton, Newcastle, 165km away from the Paddington crime scene, was sealed off by police on Friday after the white van was sighted near Lambton Pool in Karoola Road.
The vehicle matched the description of the one the police were searching for.
Lamarre-Condon is suspected to have driven the van, registration CW 82 PM, to a home in the Newcastle suburb where it was spotted at 10pm on Thursday before it had vanished again by 2am.
Police located the van at Grays Point near Cronulla later on Friday and it has been seized for forensic examination.
The bodies of Mr Baird and Mr Davies are yet to be found.
It is understood police will allege Mr. Baird was already dead when friends received messages from his phone and social media accounts on Tuesday.
Superintendent Doherty said a Triple Zero call had been made to emergency services but could not confirm whether it was made by Lamarre-Condon.
It is understood Lamarre-Condon handed himself into police with the assistance of worried family members. Police raided his family’s home in Balmain in the early hours of Friday.
He surrendered at Bondi police station at 10.30am on Friday.
Lamarre-Condon was being questioned by police on Friday afternoon. He will be formally refused bail by police and face court on Friday or Saturday.
