Lamarre-Condon admits entering Jesse Baird's home uninvited and eating an Easter egg, denies stalking at murder trial

On the fourth day he spent in the witness box, Beau Lamarre-Condon was asked a blunt question by the Crown prosecutor, Brett Hatfield: had he been stalking Jesse Baird, and misusing his authority as a police officer to get CCTV footage of him? Lamarre-Condon said no. The exchange, heard in the NSW Supreme Court on Tuesday, was the sharpest yet in a trial that turns partly on how the jury understands the relationship between the former officer and the television presenter.

Lamarre-Condon is accused of shooting Baird and Baird's new partner, Luke Davies, with his police service weapon at Baird's Paddington home in Sydney on 19 February 2024. He has pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder and one charge of aggravated break and enter.

The CCTV question concerned footage of Baird at the Royal Paddington hotel that was found on Lamarre-Condon's iCloud account. He told the court he was working in the city centre on 19 May 2023 when Baird invited him to the pub. There, he said, he ran into other officers, whose names he did not know, who were investigating a possible assault. He was checking the venue's cameras for a "shoulder charge" when he saw Baird walk in on screen. He filmed the footage from his camera and sent it to Baird with a joking message along the lines of "detective Beau's on the case". Hatfield put it to him that this was a deliberately false explanation. Lamarre-Condon disagreed.

Hatfield also showed him screenshots he had taken of Baird's Instagram story after the couple split in April 2023, and asked whether he had been stalking Baird online and in person in May and June. Lamarre-Condon told the prosecutor that if he wanted to make that accusation he would need to produce phone records showing where he had been on those dates. He said he had only been looking online. He insisted he was the one who ended the relationship and called the first breakup "amicable". The two always followed each other, he said, and being a follower was not stalking. Still, he conceded he missed Baird, both as a sexual partner and as a friend.

He did admit going to Baird's home after the split to collect his belongings. He said he had messaged to ask whether Baird would be there, but that Baird was leaving as he arrived and he did not ask permission. He used a key that had been left out to take his clothes and a Polaroid camera, and he ate an Easter egg he had bought for Baird. He rejected any suggestion of theft, saying he had paid for the camera for the two of them to use. Hatfield pointed to earlier evidence from Lamarre-Condon's friend Georgia Cook, who said he had told her he travelled to Baird's house in his mother's car and watched the 26-year-old before taking the camera and eating the egg. Lamarre-Condon said she had added her own "salt and pepper" to the story.

Earlier on Tuesday he described the start of the relationship. He said he met Baird in October and November 2022 for sexual encounters, and that they began going on romantic dates in December. Asked if he was obsessed from the start, he said Baird could have been a garbage cleaner and he liked him for who he was. For February and March 2023 he accepted "smitten" but not "obsessed".

Hatfield cited messages to friends from that period, including one reading "it sounds crazy, I love him". Lamarre-Condon said he tells all his friends he loves them. He said he used to joke that he and Baird were "white girl crazy", meaning they should stop second-guessing themselves, and that such remarks came when Baird was slow to reply to messages. He also admitted looking through Baird's phone during a short holiday at a cabin in regional NSW and unfollowing two or three people. He called it a breach of privacy and trust, put it down to curiosity, and said he was not making excuses.

Later, as the prosecution went through messages with another friend, Lamarre-Condon told Hatfield he thought the Crown was trying to mislead him. Justice Natalie Adams told him to just answer the question, saying that if the Crown were misleading him, the defence lawyer would object.

The trial continues.