Australia

This is the best summary I could come up with:

A coroner has heard two police officers linked to early investigations into Jackson Stacker's death are on extended sick leave and a third has left the force and refused to give evidence to an inquest examining how the Melbourne man died.

Mr Stacker, 25, was estimated to have been dead for about month when his badly decomposed body was discovered in a paddock near the Sleepy Hollow rest area on the Pacific Highway in northern New South Wales in August 2021.

A NSW Coroner's Court hearing in Lismore on Monday heard he was face down, wearing his favourite fur coat and had a 30cm hunting knife embedded in his chest.

Counsel Assisting the Coroner, Kirsten Edwards, said the inquest aimed to shed light on whether Mr Stacker had taken his own life or met with foul play.

But his friend Callum Whitehead reported he was acting erratically and had angrily thrown a bicycle in the Main Beach car park at Byron Bay before crying.

Mr Stacker's family reported him missing on August 23, 2021, after being contacted by someone wanting to buy a van abandoned for weeks at the Sleepy Hollow rest area north of Byron Bay.

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