Source : the age
A 1600-word message Beau Lamarre-Condon allegedly sent from a friend’s Instagram account to pretend he had cancer has been released among a tranche of exhibits in his criminal trial.
Lamarre-Condon, 31, is standing trial in the NSW Supreme Court on two counts of murder over the shooting deaths of Sydney couple Jesse Baird, 26 and Luke Davies, 29, in Paddington on February 19, 2024. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
The prosecution alleges Lamarre-Condon, then a NSW police officer, murdered Baird after developing an “obsessive and jealous infatuation” with him that escalated when the former Network Ten producer and presenter ended their casual relationship in November 2023.
Davies, Baird’s new boyfriend, was killed to eliminate a witness to the crime, the Crown alleges.
The jury has been shown a series of audiovisual exhibits including CCTV footage, a marked-up floorplan of Baird’s share house and photos of evidence examined by investigating police inside the home.
Among the latest tranche of exhibits to be released publicly by the court were screenshots of a lengthy Instagram message the court has heard Lamarre-Condon sent to Baird from the account of his friend, Shae Davison, after Baird ended their relationship.
Davison testified last week that Lamarre-Condon pressured her to let him send the message to Baird to give the impression that it was from her.
“He told me that he wanted the message to come from me as one last try to win Jesse back,” she said. “At the time I absolutely didn’t want to do it.
“He wore me down. It felt like guilt-tripping to me and using our friendship to get what he wanted out of that.”
In the message, sent in multiple parts because it exceeded Instagram’s word limit, Davison appears to commiserate with Baird about the recent axing of Network Ten’s Studio 10, where he had been working before the show’s cancellation led to his redundancy.
The sender then claimed Lamarre-Condon had a cancerous tumour in one of his shoulder joints.
Crown prosecutor Brett Hatfield, SC, said in his opening address to the jury: “On the Crown case, that was a lie. The accused did not have cancer, nor was he being treated for cancer.” Hatfield said the message was over 1600 words long.
Davison told the court that Lamarre-Condon had said “he didn’t want me to read the message” because there were “medical things in the message that he didn’t want me to know”.
“He said … once he had surgery on the 4th of December, then I could read the messages.
“He had pre-written it, and he told me that he wrote it in a way that it would sound like it came from me.”
She said the situation made her feel “incredibly uncomfortable”. Davison told the court she had not gone with the accused to Westmead Hospital.
“Did you know anything about a cancerous tumour growing within his left shoulder joint [or] ligament area?” Hatfield asked. “No,” she replied.
Davison said that it appeared the message was “never read” by Baird, and some days later Lamarre-Condon had asked her to unsend it. She agreed to that request.
Justice Natalie Adams told the 15-person jury on Tuesday that there would be a “view” at the Paddington terrace, slated for October 14, attended by the judge, the lawyers and the jury.
It would take place after the court had heard forensic evidence relating to the property, the judge said.
There is no dispute that Lamarre-Condon was at the terrace when Baird and Davies died, that they died of gunshot wounds from his police-issued pistol, and that he was disguised as a delivery rider.
However, the defence case is that Lamarre-Condon was there to pick up some of his belongings and did not expect anybody to be home. A struggle ensued in which his gun accidentally went off twice, killing Baird, and Davies accidentally shot himself in a second struggle after grabbing the gun, the defence says.
The trial continues.
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.
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