As a video was played to the jury, the sound of the gunshots that killed Jesse Baird and Luke Davies echoed through a Sydney courthouse while their loved ones listened and wept. Family, friends, reporters and members of the public were packed into the creaking pews of the King Street court on Monday as the long-anticipated trial of Beau Lamarre-Condon began.
The former police officer is accused of fatally shooting the Sydney couple with his service weapon after breaking into Baird’s Paddington home on 19 February 2024.
Dressed in a light grey blazer with a white collared shirt and dark tie, Lamarre-Condon repeated his pleas from the courtroom dock, telling the jury he was not guilty of two counts of murder and one charge of aggravated break and enter.
The soft-spoken crown prosecutor Brett Hatfield SC laid out his case.
Baird, 26, was an AFL umpire and TV presenter who moved to Sydney in 2022 to work for Network 10; Lamarre-Condon was a New South Wales police officer.
The men began seeing each other in 2022. Lamarre-Condon became “completely infatuated” but Baird did not feel the same.
This lack of reciprocity led to a “significant degree of jealousy” that manifested in “obsessive” and “compulsive” behaviours, the court heard.
Sign up for the Breaking News Australia emailThe accused told friends and colleagues he would go through Baird’s phone, without his knowledge, and delete messages from people he perceived as “romantic rivals” before blocking their contacts, Hatfield said.
After they stopped seeing each other in April 2023, Lamarre-Condon admitted to a friend that he would follow Baird around Sydney’s eastern suburbs, attempting to bump into him at the gym or the supermarket, the court heard.
Hatfield alleged that a month later, Lamarre-Condon misused his authority as a police officer to obtain CCTV footage of Baird and his friends at a pub in Paddington.
And in August 2023, the prosecution said, Lamarre-Condon broke into Baird’s home with a stolen key and took Baird’s phone and wallet before the younger man woke, saw the intruder, and chased him on to the street, Hatfield said.
The two later began seeing each other again, and in November 2023, when Baird was in Melbourne for work, the cop posted a photo of a bouquet of flowers with the caption: “When he’s in Melbourne but still sends you these” and a heart-eyes emoji.
It was shared on Instagram with a group of close friends that included a man Baird had been seeing, but not Baird himself.
The flowers were not from Baird – who confronted Lamarre-Condon after finding out about the post.
The officer told him the flowers were a gift from his stepfather to his mother and he hadn’t meant to imply they were from Baird, the court heard.
But Baird said he felt as if he was being lied to and permanently ended things.
In a text read to the court, Lamarre-Condon responded: “I’m not a liar, you’ve met my closest friends who have known me for 15+ years … my biggest quality is my honesty overall”.
He later admitted he had lied, Hatfield said.
A few days later, Lamarre-Condon sent a series of messages from his friend’s Instagram account to Baird, attempting to explain his behaviour by falsely claiming he had cancer in his left shoulder.
“Worst-case scenario, it could result in … possibly having his arm amputated,” a text message read out in court stated.
Lamarre-Condon continued to speak with friends about Baird, telling one he had the tyres cut on Baird’s car and asking another what would happen if water was added to a diesel engine, knowing the 26-year-old drove a diesel ute, Hatfield said.
They were no longer seeing each other, but Baird told his friends he was scared of the accused and knew he had a gun.
By 2024, Baird had met Davies, a 29-year-old Qantas flight attendant, and posted a photo of them together on his Instagram in February.
The prosecution alleges Lamarre-Condon began planning Baird’s murder in early 2024: investigating hire cars, retaining his police service weapon and buying a surfboard bag that would be used to dispose of the body.
On the morning of 19 February 2024, Lamarre-Condon was captured on CCTV disguised as a food delivery driver, wearing a motorcycle helmet, hi-vis jacket and holding an UberEats bag.
In video shown to court, he can be seen disappearing from sight before the neighbour’s camera picks up audio of gun shots.
A shot is heard at 9.49am, then another four seconds later.
A Triple Zero call was placed from Davies’ phone and the crown suggests the words “get out, fuck off” can be heard before the last shot is heard, 51 seconds later.
The prosecution alleges Lamarre-Condon entered Baird’s home with a stolen key, walked into the kitchen and shot Baird twice – once at the base of the neck and through his jaw, and another time through the right temple in an “execution-style” shot.
Davies, who was in the bedroom, was shot in the head through the door, the court heard.
But Hatfield acknowledged much of the evidence during this period is circumstantial.
“Jesse Baird and Luke Davies can’t give evidence about what happened inside,” he told the court.
Lamarre-Condon’s defence lawyer John Stratton SC said the deaths of the two men were a “tragedy” and conceded his client did “stupid things”, but the officer did not murder either of them.
“What he did was in self-defence,” Stratton said.
Using a key he had been given, Lamarre-Condon entered the house in disguise to avoid the “embarrassment” of seeing Baird while picking up his belongings, Stratton said.
But Baird did not recognise him and a struggle ensued, during which the 26-year-old was killed, the defence barrister said.
The officer’s gun was flung across the room and Davies picked it up, Stratton told the court. Lamarre-Condon grabbed Davies by the arm and pushed the gun towards him then Davies pulled the trigger and shot himself, the court was told.
The defence does not dispute Lamarre-Condon attempted to dispose of the bodies and clean up the crime scene, but instead argues his behaviour was “understandable”.
“He was a police officer and he knew this looked bad,” Stratton told the court.
“[These are] the actions of a man who panicked considerably, who knew the gravity of the situation he was in.”
He was seen buying another surfboard bag and a plethora of cleaning items at Bunnings, before returning to Paddington and sending messages from Baird’s phone to make it look as if he was alive, the prosecution alleges.
As the texts were read to the court, Baird’s family glared at Lamarre-Condon, who took notes from the dock.
Hatfield detailed how the officer disposed of bloodied items in a skip bin, hired a van, and unsuccessfully tried to sink the bodies in a dam near Goulburn before abandoning them near a Greek monastery in Bungonia and handing himself in to police.
With the opening addresses complete, those whose lives were touched by Baird and Davies took to the witness box.
Many sobbed and shook as they remembered the last time they spoke to them.
But some took the opportunity to pay tribute to the couple and the love they shared.
“I’d never seen Jesse as happy,” Baird’s friend Matthew Edwards said.
“There was something about Luke that just lit Jesse up. They were the real deal.”
The trial before justice Natalie Adams continues.
