Former New South Wales police officer Beau Lamarre-Condon allegedly asked a Western Australian friend to turn on a mobile phone for ten minutes, let it ping, and throw it into a body of water the day after the February 2024 killings of Jesse Baird and Luke Davies, the NSW Supreme Court heard.
The Bottom Line
- Stacey Parker testified that Lamarre-Condon contacted her via the encrypted app Signal on February 20, 2024, asking her to dispose of a phone and claiming he had stolen police files.
- The 31-year-old former constable has pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder and one charge of aggravated break and enter over the deaths of Baird and Davies.
- Defence attorneys maintain that the two victims were shot accidentally during separate struggles while the accused acted in self-defence.
The Encrypted Request and the Celebrity Chasing Connection
Stacey Parker told the NSW Supreme Court on Thursday that her friendship with Lamarre-Condon dated back to 2010, when the pair met outside Channel 7 studios while celebrity hunting for American rapper Pitbull, theguardian.com reported. The connection endured through occasional meetings in Sydney when Parker travelled from Western Australia. The witness recounted sharing discussions with Lamarre-Condon regarding the COVID-19 pandemic, noting her opposition to mandates and her participation in protests. Knowing he served as a police officer, she questioned how he could push back against freedom fighters, to which she stated he replied that it was “devil’s work,” according to theguardian.com testimony.
The communication shifted on February 12, 2024, when Lamarre-Condon asked to move their conversations to the encrypted messaging app Signal. Following the alleged February 19 shootings inside Baird’s Paddington terrace, Parker received a phone call on February 20 where the former officer asked for a favor. As dailymail.com reported, Parker testified that Lamarre-Condon told her he had stolen police files from the commissioner concerning COVID-19 and needed her to get rid of a phone. He instructed her to turn the device on and off, and then dispose of it in a body of water approximately 30 to 40 kilometers away from her Western Australia home, after letting it sit turned on for roughly ten minutes to register a network ping.
The Shift in Tone and Discovery of the Missing Persons Report
Two days after the initial disposal request, Lamarre-Condon called Parker again to inform her that detectives had visited his mother’s house looking for him. The witness stated that during this second conversation, he claimed he was being “set up” over two missing men in Sydney whom he used to know. While his tone during the first call had felt easy to talk to, Parker told the court that this second discussion carried an insistent quality where he wanted confirmation that she understood what she was supposed to do with the device.
Before any package arrived at her home, Parker learned of the unfolding investigation through a news article sent by a friend. The report detailed the disappearance of television presenter Jesse Baird and Luke Davies, and noted that Baird’s phone had continued sending messages about a road trip to Perth after his death. Recognizing the alarming parallels, Parker approached police near her home in Western Australia. Meanwhile, statements read in court from Baird’s former colleague revealed final outgoing messages sent from Baird’s phone wishing friends well on a road trip to Perth just before and after the killings took place, leaving witnesses deeply unsettled upon realizing the timeline of events.
Surfboard Bags and Earlier Hypotheses Presented to Court
The trial also examined physical evidence recovered from the Paddington terrace where the killings occurred. Detective Senior Constable Alistair Wright gave evidence regarding housemates discovering two surfboard bags containing the bodies of Baird and Davies in the courtyard on February 21, 2024, 7NEWS reported. Housemate Sarah King alerted authorities after noticing a pool of red liquid leaking from the bags, noting to investigators that neither Baird nor Belinda, another resident, owned surfboards or ever discussed surfing. Lamarre-Condon allegedly moved the bags later that night, eventually attempting to sink them in a dam before placing them at a rural Greek monastery.
Additional testimony introduced a prior hypothetical conversation alleged to have taken place months before the killings. Another former acquaintance, Georgia Cook, told the jury that Lamarre-Condon had once discussed a hypothetical scenario involving body disposal, stating he would take belongings to a dumpster and bodies to bushland where no one would find them, 7NEWS reported. The defence team has contested that this conversation occurred, maintaining instead that Baird and Davies died from gunshot wounds during two separate violent struggles when the former senior constable acted in self-defence.
