‘Homicidal, not suicidal’: Beau Lamarre-Condon allegedly claimed workplace bullying for sympathy, court hears

Beau Lamarre-Condon was “homicidal, not suicidal”, a court has heard, as prosecutors in his double murder trial alleged he used claims of workplace bullying for sympathy.

The former police officer is accused of fatally shooting Baird and his new partner, Luke Davies, with his police service weapon in 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.

Lamarre-Condon has claimed work-related bullying and harassment had fuelled his suicidal ideation and attempts to take his own life in late 2023 and early 2024, telling the court this led him to search online for a gun silencer.

But crown prosecutor Brett Hatfield accused Lamarre-Condon of lying about his suicide attempts.

During cross-examination at the NSW supreme court on Monday, Hatfield pointed to a patient assessment Lamarre-Condon underwent in October 2023, after one of his alleged attempts to take his life.

The document said he did not have suicidal intent nor was he a suicide risk and Hatfield asked the accused: “You weren’t suicidal, you were homicidal, weren’t you?”

Lamarre-Condon responded: “I was not.”

When the prosecutor asked whether Baird’s November 2023 rejection of Lamarre-Condon was on his mind, the former policeman said: “God sees everything, god knows my intentions, that was not one of them.”

He said he did not disclose his suicide attempt during his assessment because he feared doing so would end his career.

Hatfield then suggested Lamarre-Condon’s claims of workplace harassment were irrelevant to the case, telling the court: “Your decision to murder Jesse Baird is unrelated to that bullying.”

“You’re trying to get sympathy with these claims … whether they are true or not,” Hatfield told the accused.

The prosecutor then suggested to Lamarre-Condon: “These claims of suicide are false.”

But Lamarre-Condon said this was not correct.

“This was not just something I was facing, this was something many of my colleagues were facing,” the former officer said.

“This isn’t something for sympathy, this is the real life I was living at the time.”

‘Put your rosary beads down’

Earlier on Monday, Lamarre-Condon said Baird had lunged at him with a knife on the day of the alleged murders.

Lamarre-Condon said he told the other man to drop the knife before aiming his gun at Baird’s shoulder in an attempt to disarm him.

Hatfield asked Lamarre-Condon to stand up and demonstrate, telling the accused: “Put your rosary beads down while you do that.”

The prosecutor described the former officer’s movements as he re-enacted the struggle for the jury.

“[The accused] with his left arm out at shoulder height, demonstrated pushing Jesse Baird’s right hand with the knife away from him, so that the left arm was fully extended,” Hatfield told the jury.

“[Lamarre-Condon] gestured pulling the pistol around the area around his belt … then held it up at around chest or shoulder height and demonstrated with a bent elbow firing a shot towards the right shoulder of Jesse Baird.”

Lamarre-Condon said that was “as clear as I can be”, telling the court: “This happened very, very quick”.

After this shot, Lamarre-Condon’s finger remained on the trigger as both men continued to struggle, the jury heard.

Baird then tripped and the pair fell, which led the officer to pull the trigger again, Lamarre-Condon told the court.

“That was my fault, it was unintentional,” he said.

The shot could have happened either during the fall or as the men impacted the ground, the jury heard.

Lamarre-Condon said he thought the bullet grazed the side of Baird’s head and did not know it had gone through his right temple.

The crown prosecutor Brett Hatfield SC asked whether Lamarre-Condon had “executed” Baird. Lamarre-Condon told the jury: “I never executed Jesse Baird.”

After the shots, the jury heard he laid Baird on his back in the recovery position and did not look towards the shoulder area, instead searching for signs of life in his face.

Hatfield asked in court: “Did you notice there was a massive gun shot wound through [Baird’s] mouth?”

The former officer responded it was “hard to know” due to the amount of blood.

Asked if it was obvious that Baird was dead, Lamarre-Condon said: “No, I knew he was unresponsive, I just didn’t know he was dead at that point.”

Lamarre-Condon told the court he began dialling triple zero and tried to check Baird’s pulse and get him to squeeze his hand.

‘Dissociating and detaching’

The officer had entered Baird’s home dressed as an UberEats driver in a motorcycle helmet and hi-vis jacket to try retrieve his belongings from the TV presenter without anyone in the home noticing him, Lamarre-Condon told the court last week.

Hatfield on Monday asked whether Lamarre-Condon was still wearing his helmet while attempting to help Baird.

Lamarre-Condon said he did not need to take the helmet off as he was not attempting to perform CPR.

Asked if he had ever spoken to someone on the phone while wearing a motorcycle helmet, Lamarre-Condon said he could put the device on speaker phone.

The former officer told the court he then saw Davies standing in front of Baird’s bedroom door holding the firearm. Lamarre-Condon told the jury Davies said: “I’m going to fucking shoot you.”

Lamarre-Condon then got into a struggle with Davies, he told the court, grabbing his left wrist while holding the phone in his other hand as it dialled the emergency hotline.

He said on Monday that he had “trained for close to seven years” with the police to disarm people. He told the court they were taught to push the gun upwards.

“I saw his left index finger pull down on the trigger towards himself,” Lamarre-Condon told the jury.

Hatfield grilled the officer on the aftermath of the alleged murders, when Lamarre-Condon told a friend he had shot Baird.

He told the court he had become accustomed to “dissociating and detaching” during his time as a police officer.

“Just because you see me on camera without a reaction doesn’t mean I wasn’t crying,” Lamarre-Condon told the court.

The trial before Justice Natalie Adams continues.

• In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123. In the US, you can call or text the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org