Warning: Graphic content
Beau Lamarre-Condon made a “pew, pew” sound to mimic a gun as he confessed to a friend that he had killed two people and asked for help to clean the crime scene, a court has heard.
The former friend testified in the NSW Supreme Court on Friday that Lamarre-Condon, then a NSW police officer, was “stressed and panicked” as he revealed he had shot two people with his service weapon.
“I was in shock,” the man said. “I didn’t know what to do.”
Lamarre-Condon, 31, is standing trial on two counts of murder over the shooting deaths of Jesse Baird, 26, a former Network Ten producer and presenter, and Luke Davies, 29, a Qantas flight attendant, on February 19, 2024. The former NSW police officer has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
The witness told the court that Lamarre-Condon called him on an unknown number after the alleged murders and said: “Hey bro, I need to speak to you. I’m out the front of [your work].”
The accused was in a rented car rather than his distinctive grey Tesla, the court heard.
The man said Lamarre-Condon told him: “I’ve done something. I’ve killed people.” It “felt like it was an out-of-body experience”, he said the accused told him.
He said Lamarre-Condon “made a gesture with his fingers indicating a firearm” and said “pew, pew”, telling him he had used “my gun”.
“I shot the first one through the head and the second one through the door,” he said Lamarre-Condon told him.
“He said that he … waited for the other tenants of the property to leave and then made entry,” the witness said. Lamarre-Condon said the second person “wasn’t even meant to be shot” but he couldn’t leave any witnesses, the man said.
‘I shot the first one through the head and the second one through the door.’
The accused asked him to take the day off work “to help him clean up his mess”, the man said, but he told Lamarre-Condon he could not take the day off.
The witness said Lamarre-Condon later told him: “Did you like my Oscar performance? Got you, I was just joking.”
He said he was “quite angry that someone would even joke about that” and told Lamarre-Condon that this was “not a f---ing joke, you’re mentally f---ing with me, this is not cool”.
Lamarre-Condon had responded that it “is real; I just don’t want you to tell anyone”, he said.
He recalled another conversation in which Lamarre-Condon said he was going to “dump them in a body of water” at “a mate’s property”, and he replied that they would float. “You were right, bodies do float,” Lamarre-Condon allegedly told him at a later date.
The man said the accused took him for a drive to the Royal National Park in Sydney’s south in early 2024 after telling him in a phone call: “I need to show you something; I can’t tell you.”
Lamarre-Condon pulled his police-issued Glock pistol out of a brown paper bag, he said, and told him he was going to shoot the weapon using bullets from police training. “I was kind of in shock at that point,” the man said.
Lamarre-Condon handed him his police-issued radio, he said, and asked him to “listen out for any reports of police movement in this direction after he shot the firearm”.
After firing the gun into bushland, the accused allegedly asked his friend: “Was that loud? How loud was that?”
“He then proceeded to put the firearm back into the bag and then said, ‘Does this make any difference to the sound?’ and ... proceeded to shoot another shot into the bushland,” the man said.
The former friend said he told Lamarre-Condon: “You could hear that anywhere. It was super loud, but I was also standing 30 centimetres away from where the gun was fired.” It “echoed” through the gully, the man said.
“I know that he found one [cartridge] … but I don’t think the other one was found,” he said. “Beau was looking for the cartridges and asked me to also look on the ground.”
The accused told him afterwards that “you can’t tell anyone about this”, the witness said.
The man testified that Lamarre-Condon told him, in about December 2023 or January 2024, before the national park trip, that he wanted “to buy a suppressor or a silencer, which is to muffle the sound of a gun going off”.
“He said that he was going hunting on a mate’s farm,” he said. But they could not find one at a particular shop, he said.
The man said Lamarre-Condon had told him on February 17, 2024, two days before the alleged murders, that “I’ve got to get my surfboard back from Jesse” and bought a surfboard bag. The man said he did not believe that Lamarre-Condon surfed.
The court has heard that the bodies of Baird and Davies were found on February 27 in two layers of surfboard bags.
While the Crown alleges Baird’s murder was premeditated and Lamarre-Condon shot Davies through Baird’s bedroom door to eliminate a witness, the defence case is that both men died accidentally in a struggle and Davies shot himself.
The Crown alleges Lamarre-Condon plotted to kill Baird after developing an infatuation with him that escalated when Baird ended their casual relationship in November 2023.
According to the defence, Lamarre-Condon acted in self-defence after entering Baird’s Paddington home disguised as a delivery rider to retrieve some of his belongings. He panicked, the defence says, and disposed of the bodies days later.
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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