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Accused double-murderer Beau Lamarre-Condon allegedly asked a friend if he would fit inside a surfboard bag as he planned the murder of a former romantic partner, a Sydney court has heard.
Lamarre-Condon, 31, has pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder over the shooting deaths of Jesse Baird, 26, his former casual romantic partner, and Luke Davies, 29, in Paddington on February 19, 2024. His NSW Supreme Court criminal trial started in Sydney on Monday.
Police obtained more than 14,000 hours of CCTV footage from 200 locations in Sydney as part of the investigation into Lamarre-Condon, the court heard.
On Thursday, the Crown played the jury a series of compilations of the CCTV footage, including from inside a sports store in Westfield Miranda where the accused was shown buying a large surfboard cover with a friend on February 17, 2024, two days before the alleged murders.
The Crown has foreshadowed that the court would hear evidence that Lamarre-Condon asked whether his friend would fit inside the surfboard bag.
The friend allegedly replied “probably not”, according to the prosecution’s opening address to the jury, and the accused said: “I’ll grab this one instead, it should be big enough.”
In part of the footage from inside the sports store, the accused appears to hold one surfboard cover next to his friend. A receipt for the $85 cover Lamarre-Condon eventually bought with cash was tendered in court.
The Crown alleges that buying the surfboard cover was one of the steps Lamarre-Condon took while planning Baird’s murder.
The prosecution case is that the accused shot Baird, a former AFL umpire and Network Ten presenter and producer, after developing an “obsessive and jealous infatuation” with him that escalated when Baird ended their relationship permanently in November 2023.
Lamarre-Condon, then a senior constable with NSW Police, allegedly disguised himself as an Uber Eats rider and used his police-issued pistol to shoot Baird twice in the kitchen of his Paddington share house, according to the Crown case.
The prosecution alleges he shot Davies, Baird’s new boyfriend, spontaneously to eliminate a witness to the crime as Davies called Triple Zero for help.
The jury was shown separate CCTV footage on Thursday of Lamarre-Condon leaving home in Balmain at 5.01am on the day of the alleged murders, and switching from his grey Tesla to a rented Mazda in Kensington.
He was also shown getting out of the Mazda in Baird’s street wearing a dark-coloured T-shirt. He later appeared in footage after 9am dressed in a high-visibility top, black pants with a reflective strip, and a motorcycle helmet while holding an Uber Eats bag.
The jury was played CCTV footage from a neighbouring property for a second time, in which three audible gunshots were heard at 9.49am and 9.50am.
There is no dispute that Lamarre-Condon was at Baird’s home when the men died, and that he was disguised as a delivery driver, including wearing a helmet.
However, the defence says the accused had gone to Baird’s home to pick up some of his belongings after their break-up and was surprised by Baird, leading to a struggle in which Lamarre-Condon’s gun went off twice and fatally wounded Baird.
The defence case is that Davies picked up the weapon and shot himself accidentally during a second struggle with the accused, and that Lamarre-Condon panicked and dumped the men’s bodies in surfboard bags in Bungonia near Goulburn.
Lamarre-Condon’s barrister, John Stratton, SC, told the jury in his opening address, “It is very much in dispute that the accused … ever planned to kill or even cause any harm to anyone.”
“It’s his case that what he did was in self-defence.”
The Crown alleges Lamarre-Condon bought a second surfboard bag after the alleged murders, for Davies’ body, and then two more when he discovered the first two bags were too small.
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