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Hello and welcome to our live coverage of former NSW police officer Beau Lamarre-Condon’s double murder trial in the Supreme Court in Sydney.
Today marks the beginning of the defence case after more than six weeks of evidence from the Crown.
The accused killer and former NSW police officer will give evidence about what he says happened on the day Sydney couple Jesse Baird and Luke Davies died of gunshot wounds from his police-issued Glock pistol.
Lamarre-Condon, 31, has pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder over the deaths of Baird, 26, a former TV presenter, and Davies, 29, a Qantas flight attendant, in Paddington on February 19, 2024. His case is that he acted in self-defence, the 15-person jury has been told.
He has also pleaded not guilty to an aggravated charge of breaking into Baird’s home six months earlier on August 17, 2023, and stealing his mobile phone and wallet.
The Crown alleges Lamarre-Condon developed an obsessive and jealous infatuation with Baird that escalated when Baird ended their casual romantic relationship in November 2023.
The prosecution case is that he planned to kill Baird and took a number of preparatory steps, including practising shooting his police weapon in a national park to experiment with the sound of gunshots and buying a surfboard bag to dispose of his body. The Crown alleges the accused killed Davies spontaneously to eliminate a witness to the crime.
The defence case is that Lamarre-Condon went to Baird’s home disguised as an Uber Eats delivery rider to collect some of his belongings and that his gun went off twice during a struggle with Baird, wounding him fatally, and that Davies shot himself during a second struggle.
There is no dispute that Lamarre-Condon cleaned Baird’s share house while his housemates were out and disposed of the men’s bodies.
Baird had been due to move out of the home that week, the court has heard. The Crown alleges he sent messages from Baird’s phone to the housemates’ group chat to give the impression he was still alive and in the process of packing.
As to the charge of aggravated break and enter, the defence says Lamarre-Condon used a key Baird had given him to enter his home at night.
Crown prosecutor Brett Hatfield, SC, said in his opening address to the jury in September that Lamarre-Condon had “indicated that he pleaded not guilty to murder but guilty to manslaughter of Jesse Baird”.
“He’s entitled to enter a plea in those terms, but it’s not accepted by the Crown,” Hatfield said.
Support is available from the National Sexual Assault, Domestic Family Violence Counselling Service at 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732) or the Men’s Referral Service on 1300 766 491.
Lamarre-Condon says he met with Baird and the TV presenter told him he was not ready for a relationship “with anyone”, and not just him.
He said Baird told him: “‘Please let me know when you’re ready to hang out again.’
“It was very amicable. Jesse was very emotional. He was crying. It was very, very civil.”
The court hears Lamarre-Condon sent Baird a long message in the morning on April 17, 2023, saying he felt “feel hurt and sick all over again and I’m over feeling like this”.
He asked when Baird might be free in the afternoon to talk and said he wanted to have an “open and honest conversation”.
Lamarre-Condon told a friend: “Ending it with him this arvo.” He agrees in court that this was a reference to Baird.
Lamarre-Condon says that “Jesse and I would spend a lot of time together at his place” and Baird would leave a key out in his letterbox so that he could let himself in.
He says Baird did this because Lamarre-Condon finished work earlier than the TV presenter.
Lamarre-Condon says his relationship with Baird was “definitely still a romantic, intimate relationship” in early 2023 when he saw Instagram messages between the TV presenter and another man on April 14.
The accused says Baird had given him access to his phone one night to edit a video, and messages from the man popped up on Baird’s Instagram account while he was doing this. He read the messages, he says, and took a photo of the screen of Baird’s phone using his own phone.
“Essentially, they were Jesse saying that our relationship was somewhat casual,” Lamarre-Condon says.
He sent the messages to “multiple friends asking for advice” about what to do, he says, but did not block or unfollow anybody “on this date”.
Lamarre-Condon says he left Baird’s house after this.
The hearing has resumed after the lunch break. The accused’s barrister, John Stratton, SC, is asking Lamarre-Condon about when he says his relationship with Jesse Baird became romantic.
“By December 2022,” Lamarre-Condon repeats.
He is taken to messages between him and Baird on December 22 that year. Lamarre-Condon says:“I’ll see you when you get back, handsome boy xx.”
The court hears he sent a second message asking Baird, if it was “weird” or “too soon” to “say I kinda miss you already”. The accused says it is accompanied by the “love heart eye emoji and a face with multiple love hearts around it”.
Baird replied: “Yeah I miss you too. Kinda wish you were coming down to Melbs to meet the fam.”
Lamarre-Condon says he bought Baird a shirt for Christmas.
Accused double murderer Beau Lamarre-Condon started giving evidence in his NSW Supreme Court trial in Sydney shortly after 12.45pm, before the court took the standard lunch break at 1pm.
The court is taking a break for lunch and will resume at 2pm.
Lamarre-Condon says he met Jesse Baird in early October 2022 at the Universal nightclub on Oxford Street.
“It has a very large gay clientele,” he says.
For the months of October and November that year, the nature of their relationship was “friends with a sexual relationship”, he says. By December, they had started going on “romantic dates” including to the movies and dinner, Lamarre-Condon says.
“Jesse would get tickets to musicals and things like that,” he says. “As Jesse was new to Sydney I would show him around, to the Royal National Park, we would go on hikes together, go to the beach.
“Jesse was very much like me, he was very outgoing and into doing sporting activities. He was willing to give anything a crack … He also had his scuba licence, like me, so we did that as well.”
“My full name is Beaumont Lamarre-Condon,” the accused says at the start of his evidence. “I’ve just used the name Beau Lamarre my entire life though.”
He agrees with his barrister, John Stratton, SC, that as a NSW police officer he found himself in confronting situations and had to deal with the bodies of deceased people on many occasions. His testimony is at times tearful.
One of the first pieces of evidence he gives is to allege that a senior officer engaged in homophobic behaviour in his presence, including referring to him using a gay slur.
He says that he was openly gay when he started working as a police officer after graduating in 2017.
He said the man would also “talk to many officers about what he used to do to gay people very openly”, including saying: “I used to bash gay people whilst working in Jindabyne.”
Detective Sergeant Sasha Pinazza, the officer in charge of the Lamarre-Condon investigation, said in a statement read in court on Tuesday that she explained NSW’s “no body, no parole” laws to the accused after his arrest on February 23, 2024, and suggested he speak to a lawyer.
“I explained that legislation excluded a person convicted of murder from release on parole in circumstances where the victims had not been located, and the accused had failed to assist,” Pinazza’s statement said.
The court heard Lamarre-Condon gave information about the location of the bodies of Jesse Baird and Luke Davies to investigators on February 27, including by reference to maps shown to him by police.
“The accused believed to the best of his recollection this to be location where he left the bodies of Jesse Baird and Luke Davies,” Pinazza’s statement said.
