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Details about the alleged murder weapon have emerged after the bodies of Jesse Baird and Luke Davies were found on Tuesday afternoon.
NSW Police said Senior Constable Beau Lamarre-Condon, who has been charged with killing Channel 10 star Mr Baird and Mr Davies, had acquired a gun from Miranda Police Station the week before the double homicide.
According to police, the 28-year-old officer had the gun signed out to work at a “user pay event” over the weekend. The event is understood to have been the Free Palestine rally held in Sydney on Sunday.
A user pay event is part of a system where event organisers are charged a fee for policing at their events. The current fee per officer is $127.80 per hour.
Deputy Commissioner David Hudson said police will allege that the bullet cartridge found at the murder scene in Paddington was from a glock pistol that had been signed out from Miranda on Thursday.
“The gun we know was signed out from Miranda Police Station, where it is normally stored, last Thursday for the purposes of participating in a user pay event, which is not unusual,” Deputy Commissioner Hudson said.
“Post the incident, we believe the gun may have been stored at Balmain Police Station … before being returned to Miranda the following day.”
There is currently an investigation into whether the gun was legally checked out the entire time.
“The policies are under review,” Deputy Commissioner Hudson said.
“I would suggest that within policy, with user pays events that is not an unusual circumstance when police are deployed to locations they’re not normally attached to, where their firearm is normally stored.
“There are also approvals within the organisation for firearms to be stored at home as well.”
A manhunt was launched on February 20 after bloodied clothes and items belonging to the young couple were found in a skip bin at Cronulla, 30km away from where they were last seen.
Karen Webb, Commissioner of the New South Wales Police Force, said the discovery of the couple’s bodies was made with information provided by Lamarre-Condon.
He had previously refused to co-operate, police claim, but finally did so after advice from a lawyer.
Investigators interviewed him again on Tuesday morning at Silverwater Prison, which is when he revealed their location, police say.
“The first phone call was to the families, to let them know,” Detective Superintendent Danny Doherty said.
As well as the two surf bags containing the men’s bodies, police found “other items of interest of significance” along the fenceline at the rural property.
“A driveway goes up to a property and a fence line there and it’s off the side of the driveway,” Det Supt Doherty said.
“An attempt appears to have been made to cover the bodies with rock and debris.”
Det Supt Doherty said police will allege the surf bags were used to transport their bodies from the Paddington property in a rented van.
The van was seen outside the inner-city terrace house and later tracked to a property at Bungonia, as well as a suburb of Newcastle before being found parked in Sydney’s southern suburbs on February 23, police allege.
A female witness is said to have been with Lamarre-Condon during part of his journey around Greater Sydney but is “innocent”, police said.
“We will allege he acted alone and he is the sole person responsible for putting the bodies of Luke and Jesse at the current location,’ Dept Supt Doherty said.
“What we’ll allege is that the accused went to the first property at Bungonia, as has been outlined, then he did go back to the property which was the first property that was searched and moved the bodies to the current location.”
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