Alleged killer Beau Lamarre-Condon told a friend he was going to be “set up” after the Sydney couple he is accused of murdering went missing, a jury has heard.
The former police officer dressed up as an Uber Eats rider before allegedly murdering ex-boyfriend Jesse Baird and his new partner Luke Davies at the journalist’s Paddington home on February 19, 2024.
Mr Lamarre-Condon, 31, has pleaded not guilty and is arguing self-defence as he fights the murder allegations before a jury trial in the NSW Supreme Court.
A friend on Thursday told the jury Mr Lamarre-Condon said to her on February 22 - three days after the alleged murders - that he was going to be “set up” over the disappearance of two men.
“I spoke with him, he told me that the detectives had been to his mum’s place looking for him,” his friend said.
“He also told me that there’s two guys that are missing.
“Then he said that he was gonna be set up for two guys that had gone missing, and then he went on to ask me again what I had to do with the phone.”
The jury was previously told Mr Lamarre-Condon instructed a friend in Western Australia to turn on a mobile phone he was going to mail to her, then turn it off and throw it into the ocean.
The woman told the jury he said he had “stolen police files” related to Covid and wanted her to dump the phone.
“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 the phone,” she said.
“Turn on the phone, turn it off…throw it into some body of water.
“I was going to do it, not knowing what it was.”
The jury was earlier told Mr Lamarre-Condon used Mr Baird’s phone to make it seem as though he was alive and going on a trip to Perth after his death.
‘Fascination’ with celebs
The friend told the court she met Mr Lamarre-Condon at Sunrise in 2010 as they were both trying to meet the rapper Pitbull.
They exchanged numbers so one could stand out front and the other at the back to increase their chances of meeting the artist, she told the jury.
They did not manage to meet the star that morning, but the friend says Mr Lamarre-Condon later saw Pitbull at the airport.
When asked if she shared any interests with Mr Lamarre-Condon, the woman replied: “Celebrities.”
“We just, I don’t know, had a bit of a fascination with them, used to try and get photos,” she told the jury.
On another occasion, Mr Lamarre-Condon allegedly walked with Kourtney Kardashian and Travis Barker in Sydney, with the woman wondering how he managed to get so close to them.
It is not the first time celebrities have been mentioned in the trial, with the jury earlier told Mr Lamarre-Condon had gone to a Halloween party for Kyle Sandilands.
He also used Taylor Swift’s You Belong With Me in a social media post he made about a farm trip he had gone on with a Hinge date, the jury heard on Wednesday.
The young man revealed he matched with the former officer on the dating app in March 2023, in a statement he made to police the following year when he was aged 20.
They caught up a handful of times, the jury was told, including going to watch the Taylor Swift movie in cinemas.
The young man’s parents own Cella Farm in Bungonia, and they stayed there together for two nights months before the couple’s deaths, the jury was told.
Mr Lamarre-Condon is accused of later trying to sink the bodies of Mr Baird and Mr Davies in a dam on the property.
He is also accused of trying to pin the decision to conceal the couple’s deaths on a friend, claiming in a statement – which prosecutors allege is a lie – that the friend urged him to hide the bodies and said “This is like Taylor Swift’s song No Body No Crime”.
‘Shared interest’ in Covid
The friend also revealed she and Mr Lamarre-Condon had a shared interest in “Covid”, telling the jury she “didn’t agree with it” and “used to bounce off him, used to ask him questions”.
While speaking about police pushing people at protests, she told the jury Mr Lamarre-Condon called it the “devil’s work”.
“You didn’t agree with Covid?” the prosecutor asked.
“Mhm…Just the injections and what not,” she replied.
“I used to go to protests and there was one protest that I went to and I remember speaking with (Mr Lamarre-Condon) that night.
“I just asked him how a police officer can stand there and push back against people who are just fighting for their freedoms, and he just told me it was the ‘devil’s work’.”
‘Cash is king’
Mr Lamarre-Condon’s barrister, John Stratton SC, asked the woman if his client had used the phrase “cash is king” before during cross-examination.
“That’s something I’ve always said myself, I don’t know if I had a conversation with him about it,” she told the jury.
The jury was previously told Mr Lamarre-Condon paid for a surfboard bag using cash days before the couple’s deaths, and that he allegedly withdrew cash on other occasions.
He is accused of stuffing the couple’s bodies in surfboard bags before dumping them along the fence line of a Greek monastery.
More to come