Former Sydney police officer Beau Lamarre-Condon asked a friend in Western Australia to dispose of a phone by throwing it into water after briefly turning it on "so it could ping", a jury has heard.
Mr Lamarre-Condon is on trial after pleading not guilty to the murders of couple Jesse Baird and Luke Davies on February 19, 2024.
The 31-year-old is accused of shooting the couple in Mr Baird's Paddington home using his police pistol. His lawyers have indicated a self-defence argument.
The Crown's case is that Mr Lamarre-Condon cleaned the scene, allegedly attempted to sink the men's bodies in a dam at Bungonia before moving them to another location, and allegedly used Mr Baird's mobile phone to give the impression he was still alive.
Jurors in the Supreme Court trial on Thursday heard evidence from a WA-based former friend of Mr Lamarre-Condon who met him in 2010 while she was in Sydney "celebrity hunting" during a trip for a concert.
NSW Police officers and vehicles at a property in Bungonia as part of the search for Mr Baird and Mr Davies. (ABC News: Isobel Roe)
The woman said they became close, spoke about topics including their shared interest in celebrities, and she would see him when she visited Sydney.
She recalled also speaking to him online about her disagreement with the COVID vaccine and remembered at one point raising a protest and asking how police officers could push back against people "fighting for freedoms".
Mr Lamarre-Condon described it as "the devil's work", the woman said.
He asked to switch their communication to the encrypted app Signal on February 12, 2024, the jury heard.
During a Signal call on February 20, she said Mr Lamarre-Condon asked if she could "do him a favour".
"He told me that he'd stolen some police files from the commissioner to do with COVID and he wanted me to get rid of a phone," she told the jury.
She said his instructions were to be 30-40 kilometres away from her home, turn the phone on for "about 10 minutes so it could ping", turn it off, and throw it into a body of water.
"I agreed to do that … I was going to do it, not knowing what it was," the witness said.
She said he asked for her address and told her he would express post it.
Two days later, on February 22, the pair spoke again on Signal and the accused told her detectives had been to his mother's house looking for him.
"He also told me … he was going to be set up for two guys that had gone missing," the woman said.
Mr Lamarre-Condon is accused of shooting the couple in Mr Baird’s Paddington home. (Instagram)
She said the accused told her he used to know one of the men, and wanted her to relay his instructions concerning the phone.
There was "a lot of background noise" during the call "like when you're driving", the woman said, but she did not get an answer from Mr Lamarre-Condon when she asked him about the noise.
Witness questioned about vaccine beliefs
She said he sounded "different" to the previous calm conversation and "wanted to hear from me I knew what I had to do".
The woman later read a news article about the disappearance of Mr Baird and Mr Davies which mentioned Mr Lamarre-Condon's name, along with allegations Mr Baird's phone had been used to send messages about a Perth road trip.
She said she became "very" concerned, but never received any package and had no more contact with Mr Lamarre-Condon.
Under cross-examination, defence counsel John Stratton SC asked if the woman and the accused had a "shared concern" that the COVID vaccine had "killed some people" which was "being covered up".
"I never said that, I just said I didn't agree with it," she told the court.
"There wasn't enough studies done into it, for me to want to take it."
Mr Stratton also asked if she had a conversation with the accused in which he expressed a preference to use cash for everyday purchase and used the phrase "cash is king".
"That's something I've always said myself, I don't know if I had a conversation with him about it," she replied.
The trial, which has an estimated duration of three months and is in its fourth week, continues.