The trial of Beau Lamarre-Condon, the former New South Wales police officer accused of executing his ex-partner and his partner’s new boyfriend, has opened a window into a tragedy that has gripped Australia since the bodies of Jesse Baird and Luke Davies were discovered in rural bushland eight days after they vanished. On the second day of proceedings in the Supreme Court of New South Wales, the defence argued that the 31-year-old acted in a desperate struggle for survival, while the Crown laid out a chilling narrative of premeditation, infatuation, and a calculated cover-up that stretched from a Paddington terrace to a dam near Goulburn.
A Defence Built on Panic and a Struggle for a Gun
John Stratton SC, leading the defence, told the jury that his client entered Baird’s home on 19 February 2024 wearing a motorcycle helmet and posing as an Uber Eats rider. He had a key, given to him during the brief relationship, but Baird did not recognise the figure at the door. A struggle erupted. In the defence’s telling, the service weapon was discharged during the melee, killing the 26-year-old television presenter. The gun then skittered across the floor. Luke Davies, 29, a Qantas flight attendant, retrieved it. Lamarre-Condon, the court heard, grabbed Davies by the arm and forced the barrel toward him. In the ensuing grapple, Davies pulled the trigger, shooting himself.
“It’s his case that what he did was self-defence,” Stratton said. “[He was] understandably panicked. He was a police officer and he knew this looked bad.”
The argument rests on a moment of chaos. But the prosecution’s version of events, delivered a day earlier by Crown prosecutor Brett Hatfield SC, could scarcely be more different.
The Crown’s Case: Infatuation, Planning, and Execution
Hatfield described a man consumed by an “infatuation and obsession” with Baird that curdled into murderous intent after their relationship ended. The prosecution alleges Lamarre-Condon stole a key, waited, and entered the home with lethal purpose. He shot Baird twice. Fifty-one seconds later, he fired a third round through a bedroom door, killing Davies. The audio of those three shots — two rapid cracks, a long pause, a final report — was played to a hushed courtroom. Loved ones of the victims wept.
The pause is damning, the Crown suggests. It speaks not to a frenzied struggle but to a man moving methodically from room to room.
The Cover-Up: Surf Bags, Concrete, and a Confession
What followed the shootings, the prosecution argues, reveals a consciousness of guilt that no claim of self-defence can explain. Lamarre-Condon allegedly began cleaning the crime scene immediately. He confessed to a friend: “I wish I was [joking], I don’t feel like it was me … I feel like I need some help, this job has fucked me up.” Asked how he had done it, he mimed a gun with his hand. “Pew pew.”
He purchased surfboard bags — two, bought days apart — and stuffed the bodies into them. A housemate noticed a rust-coloured liquid seeping onto the courtyard pavers. She photographed it, unaware she was documenting the aftermath of a double homicide.
The disposal was amateurish and frantic. Quick-set concrete and weights were bought in a bid to sink the bags in a dam near Goulburn. The bodies refused to submerge. Days later, Lamarre-Condon moved them again, dumping them near a monastery at Bungonia. They were found on 27 February.
A Trial That Tests the Limits of Credibility
The contrast between the two narratives is stark. On one side, a trained officer who claims he was ambushed in a home he had been invited into, who watched a gun fly across a room, who wrestled a grieving partner and watched him die by his own hand — then panicked. On the other, a jilted lover who planned, executed, and then spent days trying to erase his crime with concrete and surf bags.
Justice Natalie Adams will preside over the jury’s deliberations. The trial continues.
Why it Matters
This case has already transcended the courtroom, becoming a flashpoint for debates about police culture, domestic violence in LGBTQ+ relationships, and the terrifying ease with which authority can curdle into predation. The victims — a rising media star and a beloved flight attendant — were taken in what should have been the safety of their own home. If the Crown proves its case, it will stand as a harrowing indictment of a system that armed a dangerous man and failed to see the warning signs. If the defence prevails, it will rewrite the legal boundaries of self-defence in circumstances that defy ordinary belief. Either way, the silence left by Baird and Davies echoes far beyond Sydney.
