The remains of former television reporter Jesse Baird, 26, and his flight attendant partner Luke Davies, 29, were found in the same surfboard bags that police allege the killer used to carry the bodies from Baird’s Sydney home last week, New South Wales Police Force Detective Superintendent Daniel Doherty said.

The bodies were found at a property near Bungonia, a town 200 kilometers (124 miles) southwest of Sydney, only 20 minutes drive from another property where police divers had spent days scouring waterways.

The breakthrough came when the suspect spoke to detectives on Sunday and told them where to look.

Police arrested Senior-Constable Beau Lamarre-Condon, who dated Baird until late last year, on Friday and charged him with murdering the couple, but he had previously refused to answer police questions.

Police suspect Lamarre-Condon first dumped the bodies on Wednesday at the property that officers later searched. But fearing that a traveling companion might reveal where they went, he returned alone on Thursday to move the bodies. Police say the acquaintance, who has not been named, was unaware they were transporting bodies and was not an accomplice.

Detective Sergeant Sasha Pinazza, who is in charge of the investigation, said the search ended Monday without finding any clue to the bodies’ location.

“I am exhausted. I barely have eaten or slept. We went home last night extremely deflated, but it’s not in our nature to give up,” Pinazza told reporters.

“So we rallied again this morning and have come upon a wonderful result for the families,” she added.

The allegation that a police officer committed a murder using his service pistol has shocked the nation and prompted Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras organizers to ask police late on Monday not to march at their annual parade this weekend.

Handgun ownership is highly restricted in Australia. Police are reviewing the gun handling procedures that enabled Lamarre-Condon to sign out his pistol to allegedly use in a violent crime while off duty.

“We’re in this position that a police firearm was used and that can never happen again,” said Police Commissioner Karen Webb said. “We have to look to ways to mitigate that risk in whatever way we can.”

Webb, who has taken part in the annual march in 2006, met with the Mardi Gras board on Tuesday to urge them to reconsider.

She later described the meeting as “fruitful” and “very respectful,” but police remained excluded from the parade on Saturday.

“There’s some positives that could come out of participating in Mardi Gras on Saturday, but it’s early days and we’ve got a few days left to work through this,” Webb said.

The Mardi Gras’ board said LGBTQ communities across Australia had been devastated by the loss of the couple, who had planned to celebrate at the parade.

“The Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Board feels that having the NSW Police march this year could add to the distress within our communities, already deeply affected by recent events. The Board has taken the decision to request that the Police do not march in the 2024 Parade,” the board said in a statement.

“This decision was not made lightly, especially considering that many NSW Police members who participate in the Parade are also members of the LGBTQIA+ community and are navigating the impact of this tragedy alongside us. However, we believe that their participation at this year’s event could intensify the current feelings of sorrow and distress,” the board added.

State opposition lawmaker Jacqui Munro said the state government should withdraw funding from the event, which is a major tourist draw, over the exclusion of police.

State Premier Chris Minns said he hoped police would be allowed to march, but ruled out withdrawing government funding.

Other floats would have boycotted the parade if police were allowed to march due to grief and extreme anger in the community, said Pride in Protest spokeswoman Charlie Murphy, a Queer community activist.

The Mardi Gras began in 1978 as a Sydney street protest against homosexual discrimination that was violently broken up by police. Uniformed police officers have been marching since 1998 as a gesture of respect and support.

Sydney-born Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said relations between police and the LGBTQ community had come a long way since 1978.

“I think it’s been very good that the police have marched,” Albanese said.

“The relationships have been turned around and have been positive, but I understand that the Queer community in Sydney, in particular, are grieving what is an enormous tragedy,” he added.

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Albanese told Parliament the days before Britain’s High Court of Justice hears Assange’s appeal next week against extradition to the United States on espionage charges were a “critical period.”

“I hope this can be resolved. I hope it can be resolved amicably. It’s not up to Australia to interfere in the legal processes of other countries, but it is appropriate for us to put our very strong view that those countries need to take into account the need for this to be concluded,” Albanese said.

“Regardless of where people stand, this thing cannot just go on and on and on indefinitely,” Albanese added.

Albanese congratulated independent lawmaker Andrew Wilkie for moving a motion in support of Assange in the House of Representatives on Wednesday ahead of the appeal.

Albanese was among the 86 lawmakers who voted for the motion that called on the United States and Britain to bring the “matter to a close so that Mr. Assange can return home to his family in Australia.”

The motion was opposed by 42 lawmakers including most of the main opposition party that unsuccessfully proposed amendments.

Leaders of both the government and the opposition have publicly stated that the United States’ pursuit of the 52-year-old had dragged on for too long.

Assange has been in London’s high-security Belmarsh Prison since he was arrested in 2019 for skipping bail during a separate legal battle. Before that, he spent seven years inside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden to face allegations of rape and sexual assault. Sweden dropped the rape investigation in 2019 because so much time had elapsed.

Assange’s brother Gabriel Shipton on Thursday welcomed the lawmakers’ vote, adding that his notorious sibling could potentially be extradited to the United States next week.

“That means all the ties to his family, his lifeline that are keeping him alive inside that prison will be cut off and he’ll be lost into a horrific prison system in the United States,” Shipton told reporters at Parliament House.

“This show of support from the Parliament is at a crucial time and now gives the government a real mandate to advocate very, very strongly for a political solution to bring Julian Assange home,” Shipton added.

Wilkie, who authored the motion, argues the extradition should be dropped.

But the Albanese government’s language has been more circumspect. Australia’s repeated calls for the charges to be “brought to a conclusion” leave open the possibility of a plea deal that could require Assange spend no more time in custody.

Assange’s plight is seen as a test of Albanese’s leverage with the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden.

U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken pushed back against Albanese’s position during a visit to Australia last year, saying Assange was accused of “very serious criminal conduct” in publishing a trove of classified U.S. documents more than a decade ago.

Senior opposition lawmaker Dan Tehan said the motion did not reflect his party’s wish that the prosecution progress more quickly.

“It was about criticizing the Americans for standing up for their right to be able to deal with the implications of people leaking national security issues and we have to get this right,” Tehan told reporters Thursday.

“What Julian Assange is accused of is leaking national security secrets. Now no one should condone that. What we do want to see though … is that justice can prevail in a quick time, that he can be heard in court and that the length of time that it’s taken to prosecute this isn’t so long,” Tehan added.

Assange faces 17 charges of espionage and one charge of computer misuse over WikiLeaks’ publication of hundreds of thousands of classified diplomatic and military documents more than a decade ago. American prosecutors allege he helped U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning steal classified diplomatic cables and military files that WikiLeaks later published, putting lives at risk.

Australia argues there is a disconnect between the U.S. treatment of Assange and Manning. Then-U.S. President Barack Obama commuted Manning’s 35-year sentence to seven years, which allowed her release in 2017.

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Video of the unusual rescue Saturday was shared on social media by Queensland Police on Thursday. It showed the toddler sitting inside the glass-walled box filled with plush toys, blissfully unaware of his predicament.

The boy’s father, Timothy Hopper, said his son had disappeared into the claw machine’s prize dispenser and inside it in a “split second.”

“I had zero chance to react to it, it was unbelievable how fast he climbed up there,” the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported Hopper saying.

The video then shows the officers and the boy’s parents encouraging him into a safe corner at the back of the machine, and to cover his eyes while the police shatter a glass panel to free him unharmed.

The video ends with one of the officers joking with the boy, “You won a prize. Which one do you want?”

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Designed to attract foreign business, it was cut in an immigration overhaul after the government found it was “delivering poor economic outcomes”.

Critics have long argued that the scheme was being used by “corrupt officials” to “park illicit funds”.

It will be replaced with more skilled-worker visas.

Thousands of significant investor visas (SIV) have been granted through the program since 2012, with 85% of successful applicants coming from China according to government data.

Marketed as a way to drive foreign investment and stoke innovation, candidates had to invest more than A$5m (£2.6m;$3.3m) in Australia to be eligible.

After multiple reviews, the government found that the scheme had failed to meet its core objectives. In a policy document from December, it announced that it would scrap it, focusing instead on creating more visas for “skilled migrants” capable “of making outsized contributions to Australia”.

“It has been obvious for years that this visa is not delivering what our country and economy needs,” Minister for Home Affairs Clare O’Neil said in a statement on Monday.

The move has been welcomed by Clancy Moore, the chief executive of Transparency International Australia, who told the BBC: “For far too long corrupt officials and kleptocrats have used golden visas as a vehicle to park their illicit funds in Australia and arguably hide their proceeds of crime.”

The program had already come under intense scrutiny for its alleged “loopholes” and “vulnerabilities”. Bill Browder, who is widely credited as being responsible for the creation of the Magnitsky Act – a US law designed to target individuals for abuses committed overseas, has also criticised the scheme.

In 2016, a government inquiry raised concerns that it had the “potential for money laundering and other nefarious activities”, while in 2022 The Australian newspaper reported that members of Cambodia’s Hun Sen regime were among the bad actors who had exploited the system.

The government inquiry also found that the visas were bringing people into Australia with “less business acumen” than would have otherwise arrived, while offering tax concessions that were costing the public.

Some asset managers have pushed back on those assessments, arguing that the follow-on investment from SIVs has ended up being significantly more than the A$5m buy in.

Australia now joins the UK, which scrapped a scheme offering fast-track residency to the mega rich in 2022, due to concerns about the inflow of illicit Russian money.

So-called golden visa schemes have also come under scrutiny in Malta, which has been granting speedy citizenship to wealthy non-European Union nationals. In 2022, an investigation discovered the visas being granted after people spent just days in the island nation, while the EU had raised concern over risks of money laundering, tax evasion and corruption.