Beau Lamarre-Condon trial live updates: Accused double murderer, former NSW Police officer returns to witness box after judge sends jury home due to to ‘unexpected issue’

Warning: Graphic content

Hello and welcome to our live coverage of Beau Lamarre-Condon’s double murder trial in the NSW Supreme Court in Sydney.

Yesterday’s hearing was cut short after Justice Natalie Adams told the 15-person jury at about 12.30pm that “an issue has arisen unexpectedly”. They were told to return at 10am this morning.

“These things happen in trials all the time, as you’ve probably learned by now,” the judge said.

The accused returns to the witness box today for further cross-examination by Crown prosecutor Brett Hatfield, SC.

The former NSW police officer 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. There is no dispute that the men died of gunshot wounds from his police-issued pistol on February 19, 2024, and that the accused disposed of the bodies on February 22, 2024.

The Crown alleges that Lamarre-Condon planned to kill Baird after developing an obsessive and jealous infatuation with him and that he killed Davies, Baird’s boyfriend, to eliminate a witness to his crime.

The defence case is that he acted in self-defence after entering Baird’s Paddington share house dressed as an Uber Eats rider to collect some of his possessions after Baird ended their non-exclusive relationship in November 2023. He said he struck upon the idea for the disguise that morning as a way to ensure Baird did not accuse him of harassment, and he thought nobody was home.

Lamarre-Condon said he shot Baird once to disarm him after he lunged at him with a knife and a second shot through his head was accidental. He says that Davies accidentally shot himself after grabbing the gun.

The 31-year-old accused has told the court he had his police pistol with him because he had contemplated taking his own life the previous night over work-related trauma.

He has given the following evidence over three days of cross-examination:

• Lamarre-Condon has denied executing Baird and said he stood by his decision to fire the first shot. He said he was responsible for Baird’s death but did not intend to kill him.
• He has also denied stalking Baird before his death, including when he saw the then TV presenter having sex with another man while standing outside his bedroom window after the men broke up for the first time in April 2023. He said he was there to collect some belongings.
• The men had met in Sydney in October 2022, the court has heard, and their relationship was not exclusive, but the accused said they started going on “romantic dates” in December that year. The men resumed contact briefly around August or September 2023, after their first break-up, before Baird ended the relationship permanently in November 2023.
• Lamarre-Condon rejected a suggestion by the prosecution that he was obsessed with Baird “right from the start”. “Smitten, yes. Obsessed, no,” the accused said.
• The accused admitted he invaded Baird’s privacy and went through his phone on two occasions in March and April 2023.
• He denied breaking into Baird’s home on August 17, 2023. The court has heard he messaged one friend in the aftermath that Baird had “a home invasion”. He said that he panicked and ran out of Baird’s home with his phone and wallet after Baird woke up while he was attempting to take the phone outside to go through his messages.
• The accused told the court he entered the home using a key that Baird left out for him that night, but put a bobby pin in the lock of the door to give the impression someone else had been in the house in case Baird woke up while he was looking through the phone outside. The Crown case is that he used a key he had stolen or had copied, an allegation he denied.
• After being shown a screenshot of a text message he sent Baird on the day of the alleged break-in, in which he wrote, “Haha I’ll take that as a no to doing the catch up then”, Lamarre-Condon said he communicated with Baird on other platforms including FaceTime and social media.
• He agreed that a friend had called him “Bobby P” in a joke referring to him putting the bobby pin in the door.
• He rejected Hatfield’s suggestion that it appealed to him that Baird was a TV presenter. “Jesse Baird could have been a garbage cleaner,” he said. “We actually never really talked much about his work. I wasn’t really interested in that, to be honest.”
• He also denied that he had misrepresented the nature of his relationship with Baird in a video he made of them on a farm stay holiday in March 2023.

Support is available from the National Sexual Assault, Domestic Family Violence Counselling Service at 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732), the Men’s Referral Service on 1300 766 491, and Lifeline on 13 11 14.

Lamarre-Condon has told the court that he disposed of Jesse Baird’s phone after his death.

Crown prosecutor Brett Hatfield, SC, put to him that he did so to “destroy evidence that might incriminate you”.

“Essentially, yes,” the accused replied.

He said that he threw the phone off Tom Uglys Bridge “near the Shire” or “one of those bridges leading into Taren Point or Sylvania”.

“It would have been on the Friday morning [February 23, 2024] or the Thursday at some point; I can’t give an exact timeframe,” he said. He said later that it may have been February 21.

“I didn’t want to have any evidence of Jesse’s phone on me,” he said. “I can’t accurately recall when I did it.” Baird and Davies died on February 19.

Hatfield put to him that he deleted iMessages with Baird as well as photos before handing himself in to police on February 23. “I disagree,” he said.

Lamarre-Condon has returned to the witness box for further cross-examination.

Justice Natalie Adams apologises to the jury for the delay as the trial continues.