Court hears secret police recording of Beau Lamarre-Condon describing events after alleged murders

Beau Lamarre-Condon, who has pleaded not guilty and claims self-defence, is on trial in the NSW Supreme Court for the February 19, 2024 deaths of TV presenter Jesse Baird and his partner Luke Davies at Baird’s Paddington home. A secret police recording of a conversation with an unnamed friend, identified in court documents only as Fiona Rosso, was played to the jury.

Rosso testified that Lamarre-Condon visited her on February 22, saying he was coming to say “goodbye” and that he had “done something bad”. She said he asked her to look up Baird’s name online, which returned news of the missing couple, and then went outside to “scrub” his van, noting a small amount of blood on it.

"I just walked out with my drink and sat on the gutter and I just remember … (he was) scrubbing, scrubbing, and I just sat there on the gutter because I was just like … what is happening?" – Rosso

Rosso said Lamarre-Condon later mentioned trying to dispose of “bodies” and referenced a coded message from his mother about a police search at her house. She also recalled that days before the killings he asked her to watch the film Saltburn and described himself as “playing the lead role of the nerd”.

During the trial, a recording from a listening device placed in Lamarre-Condon’s custody cell was released. In the call, Lamarse-Condon asked the friend to “just f*king hear me out” and said “sht went wrong”. He denied statements that he did not want to kill a second person but could not leave witnesses, telling the friend to “use your brain”.

The prosecution highlighted these excerpts as evidence of Lamarre-Condon’s knowledge of the events surrounding the murders, while the defence maintains his self-defence claim.