Victim 'petrified' of armed officer accused in Sydney couple's murder

In the New South Wales Supreme Court, a man sat in the witness box and began to cry as he described the fear his close friend had lived with in the months before his death. Corey-Dean Thorpe, who had been in a long relationship with Jesse Baird and remained deeply connected to him, testified about conversations in which Baird expressed terror of Beau Lamarre-Condon, a 31-year-old armed police officer. Baird, 26, and his partner Luke Davies, 29, were fatally shot at Baird's Paddington home on 19 February 2024. Lamarre-Condon stands accused of their murders and has pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder and one charge of aggravated break and enter.

Thorpe told the court that Baird was not simply worried—he was, in Thorpe's words, "petrified." The fear had a specific source: Lamarre-Condon possessed both a firearm and the authority of a police officer. Baird had confided in Thorpe that he was "extremely scared" and kept repeating the same phrase: "he has a gun." When asked directly whether Baird had said he was afraid to report Lamarre-Condon to police because of his position as an officer, Thorpe confirmed it. Beyond the weapon itself, Baird worried that Lamarre-Condon could manufacture false allegations against him—accusations that would destroy his professional standing. Baird worked as a television presenter on the children's program Totally Wild and served as an AFL umpire, both roles requiring clearance to work with children. A false accusation could end both careers.

The prosecution painted a picture of escalating obsession and control. During their brief relationship, Lamarre-Condon had exhibited compulsive behavior: accessing Baird's phone while he slept, finding other men Baird was communicating with, and blocking their numbers before erasing the conversations. By November 2023, when Baird decided to end the relationship, the conduct had intensified. A man named Damon Wilson, whom Baird had been casually seeing, was suddenly added to Lamarre-Condon's close friends list on Instagram. The officer then posted a photo of flowers to that restricted audience with a caption reading "when he's in Melbourne but still sends you these" accompanied by a heart-eyes emoji—a message designed to suggest intimacy and possession. When Wilson messaged Baird to express confusion about the sudden addition and the implication of their connection, Baird clarified he was not in a relationship with Lamarre-Condon. A week later, Wilson received a lengthy message from Lamarre-Condon warning him about Baird's alleged "gaslighting." "He literally destroyed me," Lamarre-Condon wrote. "It took me so long to recover from all the manipulation. He has tried to make me look like the bad guy."

As Baird sought to disentangle himself, he turned to Thorpe for guidance on how to break up with Lamarre-Condon. The prosecutor noted that Baird's anxiety centered on what would happen once he ended things—specifically because of the gun and because Lamarre-Condon had stalked and controlled him. By early February 2024, Baird had moved forward. On 3 February, one of his closest friends, Matthew Edwards, asked if he had heard from Lamarre-Condon. Baird's response was emphatic: "No, thank fuck, I'm so done with him. Once I move house, this will be the last piece of me that Beau knows." Shortly after, Baird told Edwards about a new relationship. Edwards testified that he had never seen Baird happier. "There was something about Luke that just lit Jesse up," Edwards said. "They were the real deal."

Sixteen days later, on 19 February, Lamarre-Condon entered Baird's home. The defence has argued that he disguised himself as an Uber Eats driver and that a struggle ensued, resulting in the shots that killed both men. The prosecution's case rests on a different narrative: that Lamarre-Condon, unable to accept the end of the relationship and the loss of control, came armed with a police service weapon. The trial before Justice Natalie Adams continues, with the central question remaining whether Lamarre-Condon's actions that day were, as his defence claims, a matter of self-defence, or whether they were, as the prosecution alleges, a calculated act of murder.