Warning: Graphic content
NSW Police fired a test shot into the bedroom door of one of Beau Lamarre-Condon’s alleged murder victims after discovering an apparent bullet hole in the door this year, a court has heard.
Lamarre-Condon, 31, is standing trial in the NSW Supreme Court on two counts of murder over the shooting deaths of Sydney couple Jesse Baird, 26, and Luke Davies, 29, in Paddington on February 19, 2024.
The NSW former police officer has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
The court has heard police discovered a hole in Baird’s bedroom door in July this year, more than two years after the alleged murders.
The Crown alleges Lamarre-Condon shot Davies through the door as he tried to call Triple Zero for help. According to the prosecution, a “very muffled” gunshot can be heard in the call.
Lucas Van Der Walt, a police ballistics expert, gave evidence on Wednesday that police removed the door from Baird’s former share house and fired a test shot into it in July.
Prosecutors allege the original hole in the door was not visible in 2024 because Lamarre-Condon covered it with a stick-on hook on the inside of the door and a felt pad on the outside.
A video of the police test shot was played on Wednesday to the jury. It included a side-by-side comparison of the original hole in the door and the hole made by the test shot.
Van Der Walt said both holes measured approximately 10 millimetres in diameter, with a “very similar spread pattern of the propellant particles impacting with the paint and the wood in the door”.
He said that “the original shot would have been discharged at a very similar distance” of between five and ten centimetres from the door.
NSW Police Senior Sergeant Bronwyn Lansley, the lead forensic investigator at the property, has previously told the court she observed this year that “repairs had been made both to external and internal sides of the door”, where she believed the pad and hook had been located.
After removing a layer of paint and putty from around the site, Lansley said she found grey discolouration consistent with “burnt and unburnt propellant particles, which come out of the firearm when it’s discharged”.
DNA on the gun
The court heard evidence last week that a partial DNA profile matching Davies was detected from a swab inside the barrel of Lamarre-Condon’s police-issued Glock pistol.
Tests also recovered DNA from at least three people on the grip and trigger of the gun, the court heard. Davies was identified as a major contributor, while the accused was matched as a minor contributor. The third person was not identified.
Testing of a DNA swab from the muzzle of the weapon identified Baird and Davies as contributors.
The Crown alleges Lamarre-Condon killed Baird, a former Network Ten presenter and producer, after developing an “obsessive and jealous infatuation” with him that escalated when Baird ended their casual relationship in November 2023.
The prosecution alleges the then-NSW police officer shot Davies, Baird’s new boyfriend, to eliminate a witness to his crime.
The defence case is that Lamarre-Condon entered Baird’s share house disguised as a delivery rider and that a struggle ensued in which his police gun went off twice, killing Baird, and that Davies shot himself in a second struggle.
The jury’s question
The court heard on Tuesday that the 15-person jury had asked a question about the evidence of former crime scene investigator Greg Moon, a retired detective senior sergeant who worked on the Lamarre-Condon case.
Justice Natalie Adams said the jury’s note read: “Could the court please clarify if the expert witness Gregory Moon said blood back spatter could reach the inside of the muzzle of the gun through a bullet hole that traverses a door?”
Adams said that they would be reminded of Moon’s evidence during his cross-examination.
Moon was asked during his evidence last week if blood back spatter could travel back to the weapon through a door.
He said that “it could [travel] through the path of the bullet that is made through the door itself”.
Lamarre-Condon’s barrister, John Stratton, SC, put to Moon during his cross-examination on Tuesday that “the likelihood of biological material finding its way from the wound of the deceased through a hole in the door less than a centimetre in width and into the barrel of a gun ... approaches zero”.
“No, I disagree,” Moon said. “I believe it still can happen.”
Stratton said: “I’m putting to you that it’s very improbable.”
Moon said that he disagreed.
The defence case is that Lamarre-Condon acted in self-defence after entering Baird’s share house disguised as a delivery rider to retrieve some of his belongings.
He had his police-issued Glock pistol with him because he was trained not to leave it unattended, the defence has said. The Crown has said he should not have had the weapon because he was not rostered to work that day.
There is no dispute that Lamarre-Condon cleaned Baird’s share house and disposed of both of the men’s bodies in surfboard bags.
Stab wounds
Dr Kendall Bailey, a forensic pathologist who conducted the post-mortems on Baird and Davies, gave evidence on Tuesday that Davies had two stab wounds on the right thigh.
The wounds were “consistent with an injury made by a single-bladed weapon”, Bailey said.
She said the “wound tracks were relatively bloodless”. In her experience, she said, the wounds’ origins were probably perimortem – around the time of death – or postmortem.
Bailey added that from her recollection there were “sharp defects” on the surfboard bag in which Davies’ body was found, which may have correlated with those injuries.
Bailey said the cause of death for Baird was gunshot wounds to the head and neck, while for Davies it was a gunshot wound to the head.
Defence claim about gun
The court has heard Baird had a gunshot wound to his right temple. Bailey agreed this would have been instantly incapacitating but possibly not “instantaneously fatal”.
“A person wouldn’t be able to, for example, fling a gun across to the other side of a room?” Crown prosecutor Brett Hatfield, SC, asked.
Bailey said she did not think the person would be “making any conscious movements” but “you could always have involuntary movements”.
Stratton said in his opening address to the jury that Lamarre-Condon and Baird were engaged in a struggle in which the accused’s weapon went off twice, wounding Baird fatally, and “the gun was flung into the lounge room”.
The accused then picked up a mobile phone and began ringing Triple Zero, Stratton said, before he encountered Davies.
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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