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Good morning and welcome to our live coverage of Beau Lamarre-Condon’s criminal trial in the NSW Supreme Court in Sydney.
Lamarre-Condon, 31, has pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder over the deaths of Jesse Baird, 26, a former TV presenter, and Luke 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.
The former NSW police officer 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.
Lamarre-Condon started giving evidence on Thursday and returns to the witness box today. He denied breaking into Baird’s home and said he used a key the TV presenter left for him in the letterbox, but admitted he put a bobby pin in the front door lock.
He said he wanted to take Baird’s phone outside while he was sleeping to check if he was in a relationship with another man, and “if he was to wake up and come outside, he would see the bobby pin [and] not be under the impression that it was me going through his phone”.
He has yet to give evidence about the day Baird and Davies died of gunshot wounds from his police-issued Glock pistol.
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 defence case is that the accused 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 he cleaned Baird’s share house and disposed of the men’s bodies.
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 that “things just didn’t feel real” and he called a friend and told him “something’s gone horribly wrong”.
He drove to the man’s work and said he was “not in a normal state.” He says he told the friend: “‘I’ve killed somebody’, referring to a singular person.”
The hearing has resumed after the morning tea break.
Asked if he did anything with the gun after the third shot, Lamarre-Condon says that “the gun was on the ground”.
“I picked it up and I actually remembered thinking do not touch the hand grip of the gun,” he says.
He says he picked it up without touching these parts of the weapon “and immediately holstered it”.
He checked if Davies was responsive, he says, and he wasn’t. He says he was saying to Baird: “‘Jesse, please get up, please don’t be dead, please get up.’
The court is taking a short break for morning tea. The hearing resumes at 11.50am.
“The bullet was still in the door. It was wedged and lodged,” Lamarre-Condon says.
He says he was still trying to call for help, but he had dropped the phone and the screen had cracked.
Lamarre-Condon says he struggled with Davies.
“What happened was, I was in the surrender position … I just moved his arm … I just went from a pivot point on his left wrist [to] turn the gun away from me. I watched the gun the entire time.”
He says that he saw Davies pulling down on the trigger, and it must have been to shoot him.
“The gun went off during this motion,” he says. He says Davies was standing directly in front of Baird’s bedroom door. He says the bullet “wedged” into the door after going through Davies’ head.
He says Davies had the gun and was pointing it at his chest and was saying: “I’m going to f---ing shoot you.”
Lamarre-Condon says he had both hands in the air and he was calling Triple Zero. “That’s when he raised the gun towards my head. That’s when he said, f--- off.”
He says that his “police training kicked in”.
Lamarre-Condon says that his “first thought process” was to get Baird help and “there was a phone on the kitchen counter”.
“You don’t need to have someone’s have someone’s password to call … Triple Zero,” he says. His voice sounds emotional through his evidence.
“I couldn’t tell that the bullet had gone through his head. I get up; I get into the kneeling position,” he says.
“Again, now I’m into police mode, it’s what do I do to save him. I checked his pulse, and then I started saying, ‘Jesse, Jesse, can you hear me? Please wake up. Please squeeze my hand if you can hear me.’
“I put him into the recovery position. I thought I could actually still feel a pulse at that time, so I thought he was still alive.”
He says his thought process was that St Vincent’s Hospital was nearby. He wanted to “get onto the street” to flag down an ambulance.
He says he still had his helmet on “and the visor was on”. He says he looked up and saw someone he didn’t know, who he now knows to be Luke Davies.
Lamarre-Condon says he and Baird fell to the ground, and he accidentally discharged the gun for a second time.
“His hand was not on the trigger, it was my fault. But it wasn’t intentional. I just thought it scraped the side [of his head].”
He repeats that he is responsible for Baird’s death but “it wasn’t intentional”.
Lamarre-Condon says that he thought he might be able to “de-escalate the situation” by attempting to push Baird out the door.
He says that he “asked Jesse multiple times … to drop the knife. He pushed me up into the corner.”
Lamarre-Condon says he was pinned up against the wall. “I had it [the knife] this close to my neck,” he says. He says the helmet did not cover this part of his neck, indicating to the left side of his throat.
“Were you afraid that something was going to happen to you?” his barrister asks.
“Yes. It felt like an eternity. At one point he swung the knife he tore my whole blue shirt open. That was when I realised, shit, if he drives that into my throat, I’m going to be dead.
He says the front door was shut when he came back downstairs.
When he looked to his right, he says, “I saw Jesse”. He says Jesse had masking tape in his left hand and a knife in his right hand and was sealing shut a storage box in the kitchen.
“He looked up at me ... he started yelling ‘we’re getting robbed, we’re getting robbed.’
“He couldn’t see that it was me because the visor was down. I froze, and then I realised that, shit, he doesn’t know it’s me. He dropped the tape and he lunged at me [with the knife].”
He says he said: “Jesse, it’s Beau, it’s Beau, it’s me, calm the f--- down. His adrenaline was through the roof; he was not registering what I was saying.
“Jesse wouldn’t have reacted that way if he knew it was me.” He says they began having a struggle over the knife and he couldn’t get the visor on the helmet up “because I had both of my hands holding his forearms and his wrist”.
Baird “kept swinging the knife towards me”, he says.
