Beau Lamarre-Condon gloated about causing Jesse Baird’s car to break down and told a friend he needed a gun silencer, months before allegedly shooting the TV presenter, a court has been told.
The then police officer had become “fixated” on Baird, the jury heard, and had been “creeping” outside Baird’s house where he took photos of him having sex with other men.
Lamarre-Condon, 31, is accused of fatally shooting Baird and his partner, Luke Davies, with his police service weapon in Baird’s Paddington home on 19 February 2024.
Related: Beau Lamarre-Condon told officer friend ‘I love you’ and ‘not everything in the news is true’ after arrest, court told
He has pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder and one charge of aggravated break and enter.
A childhood friend of Lamarre-Condon told the New South Wales supreme court on Tuesday the police officer had become “infatuated” with Baird.
Lamarre-Condon and Baird were seeing each other in 2023 but went through relationship breaks and twice broke up, the court heard.
During one period when they had stopped seeing each other, Lamarre-Condon told his friend, known to the court by the pseudonym Elizabeth Kennedy, he had put water in the fuel tank of Baird’s car, causing it to break down.
Baird was driving to Victoria at the time with his sister, who posted about it in an Instagram story viewed by Lamarre-Condon from a fake account.
Sign up for the Breaking News Australia email When Lamarre-Condon told Kennedy about seeing the post, he was laughing, she said.
“He felt satisfied and like he’d ruined his trip,” she told the court.
Before the alleged murders, Kennedy said Lamarre-Condon would ask her to rent cars for him under her name, and on one occasion asked if she knew where he could get a silencer.
“I said ‘obviously not’, and asked him why and he said it was just to scare someone,” she told the court.
She then asked: “Don’t you have a gun?” He responded: “Yes, but I need a silencer.”
Earlier, Kennedy told the jury she met with Lamarre-Condon around the time of their first breakup and gifted him banana KitKats.
“He ate a couple and then he said ‘I’ve got to tell you something crazy’,” she told the court.
Lamarre-Condon knew where Baird kept a spare key to his home and told Kennedy he had a copy of it cut, the jury heard.
He then entered Baird’s house while he was asleep, took his phone, left the house and went across the street with the device.
He then deleted Baird’s contacts, turned off his morning alarms and turned on his Snapchat location so Lamarre-Condon could track Baird, Kennedy said.
Lamarre-Condon also unmuted himself from Baird’s Instagram so when the officer went on a planned holiday later that year, Baird would “see him living his best life in Europe”.
He then returned the phone to Baird’s bedside table.
Kennedy recalled the moment he told her.
“He sounded excited – like happy – like he’d gotten away with it,” she told the jury.
“He also mentioned that it was crazy and that I need to stop him.”
She responded: “How can I not let you do that when you don’t tell me until after,” the jury heard.
Lamarre-Condon later told her about a second time he allegedly broke into Baird’s home, telling her he had “done something crazy again and I almost got caught”.
Baird had woken up when the officer dropped the presenter’s phone charger while attempting to take the device again.
Lamarre-Condon told Kennedy he then grabbed Baird’s wallet “to make it look like a robbery”, she said.
Baird then chased the intruder down the street, but Lamarre-Condon said he was not recognised.
“If Jesse had caught up to him, [Lamarre-Condon] said he would have had to assault him because he couldn’t find out who he was,” Kennedy said.
“He said he would feel bad if he had to assault him.”
Around this time, Kennedy received messages from Lamarre-Condon on the encrypted messaging app Signal, she told the jury.
“I was sent photos through the window of Jesse having intercourse with another man,” she said.
“[Lamarre-Condon] was creeping out the front window taking photos.
“The accused told me the other person Jesse was with noticed someone at the window and that’s when he got up and ran away.”
On Tuesday morning, the court heard Lamarre-Condon attended St Vincent’s hospital in Sydney’s east for surgery on the morning of 21 February – two days after Baird and Davies were killed.
The surgeon who performed the operation said he first met the officer when Lamarre-Condon arrived at the hospital for an emergency presentation in March 2023.
He underwent a surgery that day, returned a few more times for follow-ups and recurrent issues, before another surgery in December 2023.
By 2024, the doctor said he was “booked in for a final operation which I performed on 21 February 2024”.
It was done at 7.30am, according to a statement read to court.
“The procedure I performed was of a minor nature and would not lead to any physical restrictions,” the surgeon said in his statement.
Lamarre-Condon was then placed in a short stay ward and discharged two hours later.
There were no sutures involved, no follow-up was required and Lamarre-Condon’s demeanour appeared “unremarkable”, the jury heard.
CCTV footage played in court on Monday and Tuesday showed Lamarre-Condon going between Baird’s home in Paddington and Bunnings Alexandria to buy cleaning equipment on the day after the alleged murders.
Further video showed Lamarre-Condon at St Vincent’s hospital on 21 February 2024.
Later that afternoon, the police officer drove to Bungonia, the area where Baird and Davies’ bodies were eventually found, the prosecution has said.
The defence team claims Baird and Davies were accidentally shot in two separate struggles with the accused who was acting in “self-defence”.
Lamarre-Condon cleaned up the scene and disposed of the bodies afterwards because he “panicked considerably”, the defence lawyer John Stratton SC has said.
The trial before Justice Natalie Adams continues.