Beau Lamarre-Condon trial live updates: Former NSW Police officer returns to witness box for cross-examination over alleged murders of Jesse Baird, Luke Davies

Hello and welcome to our live coverage of Beau Lamarre-Condon’s double murder trial in the NSW Supreme Court in Sydney.

The former NSW police officer returns to the witness box today to face further cross-examination by Crown prosecutor Brett Hatfield, SC.

The 31-year-old has pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder over the deaths of Jesse Baird, 26, a former TV presenter, and Luke Davies, 29, a Qantas flight attendant. His case is that he acted in self-defence, the 15-person jury has been told.

He has given the following evidence in cross-examination:

• Lamarre-Condon denied stalking Baird in 2023 after their first break-up in April that year. The men had met in Sydney in October 2022, the court has heard, and their relationship was non-exclusive, but the accused said they started going on “romantic dates” in December that year.
• He rejected a suggestion by the prosecution on Tuesday that he was obsessed with Baird “right from the start”. “Smitten, yes. Obsessed, no,” the accused said.
• The court has heard the men resumed contact briefly around August or September 2023, after their first break-up, before Baird ended the relationship permanently in November 2023. Lamarre-Condon admitted he invaded Baird’s privacy and went through his phone on two occasions in March and April 2023.
• He denied that he had broken into Baird’s home on August 17, 2023, after the TV presenter responded to a text message he sent but did not engage with his suggestion of a catch-up. He said that Baird “did invite me to stay the night” later that day, and he used a key left out for him.
• The court has heard Baird woke to a man he did not recognise standing over his bed and chased him out of the home. He reported the alleged break-in and theft of his phone and wallet to the police. Lamarre-Condon has said he was trying to look through Baird’s phone and put a bobby pin in the lock so that if Baird woke up he wouldn’t think it was him.
• The court has heard that police found CCTV footage on Lamarre-Condon’s iCloud account of Baird on a date with another man at the Royal Hotel in Paddington on May 19, 2023. He denied he was stalking Baird and misusing his authority as a police officer to access CCTV of him.
• The accused said last week that he came across the footage while helping police colleagues with official duties, following a potential assault nearby. Baird had invited him to “swing by” the hotel in uniform while he was working, he said.
• He rejected Hatfield’s suggestion that it appealed to him that Baird was a TV presenter. “Jesse Baird could have been a garbage cleaner,” he said. “We actually never really talked much about his work. I wasn’t really interested in that, to be honest.”
• He also denied that he had misrepresented the nature of his relationship with Baird in a video he made of them on a farm stay holiday in March 2023.

Support is available from the National Sexual Assault, Domestic Family Violence Counselling Service at 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732), the Men’s Referral Service on 1300 766 491, and Lifeline on 13 11 14.

Lamarre-Condon has returned to the witness box and Crown prosecutor Brett Hatfield, SC, is asking him about his evidence that he saw Jesse Baird through his window having sex with another man.

The accused has told the court that he was there to pick up some of his belongings after the first break-up in April 2023.

“I didn’t watch Jesse having sex,” he said today.

He has told the court he intended to tap on the window to get Baird’s attention and left almost immediately after he realised he was seeing Baird with another man through the sheer curtains of his bedroom window.

Hatfield put to Lamarre-Condon: “It was stalking him.”

Lamarre-Condon replied: “I disagree.”

The court will be taking a break to observe Remembrance Day at 11am, after a request from some members of the 15-person jury.

Justice Natalie Adams said the court would adjourn for about 5 minutes before 11am to allow the jurors who wished to observe the minute’s silence to do so in the jury room.