A former New South Wales police officer driven by an "obsessive and jealous infatuation" allegedly disguised himself as an Uber Eats delivery rider before shooting dead his ex-partner and a witness at a Sydney home, a court has heard. Beau Lamarre-Condon, 31, has pleaded not guilty to two counts of domestic violence-related murder and one charge of aggravated break and enter. His trial opened on Monday at the NSW Supreme Court in Sydney, with proceedings expected to run for three months.
Prosecutor Brett Hatfield SC told a 15-member jury that Lamarre-Condon shot Jesse Baird, a 26-year-old television presenter, and Baird's partner Luke Davies, a 29-year-old Qantas flight attendant, at Baird's home in Paddington — an inner-eastern Sydney suburb — on 19 February 2024, using his police service weapon. The court heard that Lamarre-Condon and Baird had met in late 2022 and begun a romantic relationship that Baird regarded as casual, but which Lamarre-Condon hoped would become long-term. After Baird ended the relationship definitively in November 2023, the accused allegedly stalked him, misused his police authority to obtain CCTV footage of Baird at a local pub, used a friend's phone to send a 1,600-word message falsely claiming he had been diagnosed with cancer, and tampered with Baird's car.
On the morning of the alleged murders, Lamarre-Condon reportedly set his alarm for 4.30am, rented a car under his mother's name, and waited outside Baird's home for three hours, watching for housemates to leave. He was dressed in high-visibility clothing and a motorcycle helmet and carried an Uber Eats paper bag to conceal his identity. Using a key he had previously stolen, he entered the home and shot Baird twice in the kitchen — including what the prosecutor described as an "execution-style shot" to the right temple. Davies, who was in the bedroom and had begun calling emergency services, was shot through the bedroom door. Hatfield told the jury that Lamarre-Condon had purchased a surfboard bag in advance to dispose of Baird's body and had researched ways to suppress gunfire, suggesting premeditation. Davies was killed, the prosecution alleged, to eliminate him as a witness.
In the days that followed, Lamarre-Condon allegedly returned to the property, sought help from a friend to clean the scene, sent messages from Baird's phone to give the impression he was still alive, and attempted to sink the bodies in a dam. The couple's remains were eventually found near the fence of a Greek Orthodox monastery in Bungonia, a rural area roughly 200 kilometres south-west of Sydney, eight days after the alleged killings. Police had first been alerted when bloodied items belonging to the two men were found in a bin in Sydney's south. Lamarre-Condon handed himself in to a police station later that week and was subsequently dismissed from the NSW Police Force.
The case has drawn widespread attention in Australia for its intersection of domestic violence, the abuse of police authority, and the deliberate nature of the alleged crimes. Before the trial began, Lamarre-Condon offered to plead guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter in relation to Baird's death, but the prosecution rejected the offer. Family members of both victims, including their mothers and siblings, were present in the courtroom as proceedings got under way before Justice Natalie Adams.