Lamarre-Condon in damage control after ‘heart eyes’ bouquet post, court told

Accused killer Beau Lamarre-Condon allegedly lied and posted a generic photo of flowers online to give the impression former TV presenter Jesse Baird had sent him a bouquet before rushing to a florist to have the bunch replicated when his lie was exposed.

The former NSW police officer is standing trial in the Supreme Court on two counts of murder over the shooting deaths of Baird, 26, and Luke Davies, 29, in Paddington on February 19, 2024. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

On Tuesday, a former police colleague of Lamarre-Condon, Acting Sergeant Nicole Harvell, testified that the accused had told her he had posted “a photo that he found from the internet of a bouquet” when Baird, his romantic interest, was in Melbourne in November 2023.

It was captioned with a “heart eyes” emoji and the words: “When he’s in Melbourne but still sends you these.”

Harvell said she understood Lamarre-Condon had posted the image on Instagram to a group of gay men, excluding Baird, in a bid to “scare off” romantic rivals from the former Network Ten producer and presenter.

“So, Jesse was not meant to see this post,” she said. “The accused wanted these people to see that Jesse had sent him flowers, to basically tell all these other people, like, ‘back off, he’s mine.’”

When Baird questioned him about it, Harvell said, Lamarre-Condon “essentially went into damage control” and paid a florist to replicate the bouquet in the photo and asked his mother to pose with the flowers. He told Baird they were a gift from his stepfather to his mother.

“He just called me and told me he made a mistake and put this photo up to try and get these other guys to back off,” she said. “One of these other guys saw it, took a screenshot, [and] sent it to Jesse.”

Harvell said she believed Lamarre-Condon told his mother what had happened “and asked her if she would pose to make it look like she’s the one that received the flowers”. She said the accused told her that his mother wrote the accompanying note with the bouquet.

The prosecution case is that Lamarre-Condon planned to kill Baird after developing an “obsessive and jealous infatuation” with him that escalated when Baird ended their casual relationship in November 2023.

Baird broke up with Lamarre-Condon permanently after the Instagram post about the flowers, the court heard. “I would appreciate it if you could refrain from contacting me,” Baird said in a text message tendered in court.

The accused allegedly used his police-issued Glock pistol to shoot both men in Baird’s Paddington share house on the morning of February 19, 2024, and cleaned the home while Baird’s flatmates were out.

The prosecution alleges Lamarre-Condon killed Davies, a Qantas flight attendant and Baird’s new boyfriend, to eliminate a witness to his crime.

On Tuesday, the 15-person jury also heard evidence from NSW Police Senior Sergeant James Woodbury, co-ordinator of the weapons and defensive tactics training unit.

Lamarre-Condon attended training at the Blacktown Pistol Club with 10 colleagues a month before the alleged murders on January 17, 2024, the court heard.

“The live-fire training program typically consists of a number of practice sequences,” Woodbury said.

This generally included participants shooting at multiple targets, shooting very close to a target and from further away, reloading their pistol and fixing any stoppages, he said.

A sign-in sheet showed participant number two at the training was “Beau Lamarre” but Woodbury was not personally in attendance on January 17, the court heard.

There is no dispute that Lamarre-Condon was at the terrace when Baird and Davies died, that they died of gunshot wounds from his police-issued pistol, and that he was disguised as a delivery rider. There is also no dispute that he disposed of their bodies in surfboard bags.

However, the defence case is that Lamarre-Condon went to the Paddington home to pick up some of his belongings and did not expect anybody to be there. A struggle ensued in which his gun accidentally went off twice, killing Baird, and Davies accidentally shot himself in a second struggle, the defence says.

The accused’s barrister, John Stratton, SC, told the jury that Lamarre-Condon had his gun with him because he had been trained not to leave it unattended in his vehicle. However, the Crown case is that he should not have been carrying the weapon because he was not rostered on to work.

Stratton said in his opening address to the court that Lamarre-Condon dumped the bodies because he “panicked considerably”.

“[He] knew the gravity of the situation that he was in and how it might be perceived and was overawed by it,” he said.

The trial continues.