Beau Lamarre-Condon trial live updates: Alleged double murderer denies plan to ‘assassinate Jesse Baird’, quizzed over CCTV footage as cross-examination continues

Crown prosecutor Brett Hatfield, SC, asks Lamarre-Condon again whether he was “obsessed with Mr Baird” in early 2023 when the TV presenter was in Europe.

“Smitten, yes. Obsessed, no,” the accused replied.

The court has heard that Baird went to Europe from February 1, 2023, to March 5 that year.

Crown prosecutor Brett Hatfield, SC, put to the accused that he talked about Baird “effusively” to friends while he was away.

The accused disagreed and said he was in constant communication with Baird on social media while he was away, and had FaceTime calls.

“I suggest to you that that’s not the case at all,” Hatfield said.

“I disagree,” Lamarre-Condon said.

Crown prosecutor Brett Hatfield, SC, shows Lamarre-Condon messages he sent to another friend in early 2023, after the accused met Baird in late 2022.

“I’m just in my head and I’m crazy haha,” he said in one text to his friend.

Hatfield suggests Lamarre-Condon was “very insecure” about his relationship with Baird and how much the then TV presenter liked him.

“Yes, I did get in my head,” the accused said. “That’s natural.” He said he had done this with people other than Baird, and his female friends were similar.

Lamarre-Condon has asked about a screenshot he took of a message in which Baird congratulates him and offers to buy him dinner to celebrate.

“That is in relation to me launching my swimwear line,” the accused said.

The accused referred to this business in his evidence yesterday, when he was asked about his salary as a police officer and a $25,000 Cartier ring he said he was looking for at Baird’s home on the day the former TV presenter and his boyfriend Luke Davies died.

Lamarre-Condon is shown texts he sent friends about Baird in late 2022, and Crown prosecutor Brett Hatfield, SC, puts to him that he was “obsessed with him from the start”.

“No, Mr Crown,” the accused replied.

In one message, the court hears, Lamarre-Condon wrote: “I’m in love. FML [f--- my life] hahaha.”

He said that this was in relation to a video Baird sent him, and it should be shown to the court for “full context”. It did not mean he loved Baird, he said.

“I say I love you to all my friends,” he said.

Lamarre-Condon is taken to a text message he sent a friend in December 2022, forwarding screenshots of his messages with Baird, as well as to his interest in “celebrity chasing”.

“This is the channel 10 reporter guy,” Lamarre-Condon texted his friend on December 19, 2022. “Had a great second date with him.”

Crown prosecutor Brett Hatfield, SC, asked the accused if it appealed to him that Baird was a TV presenter.

“Jesse Baird could have been a garbage cleaner,” he said. “I wasn’t really interested in that, to be honest.”

Hatfield is showing Lamarre-Condon some screenshots tendered in court that the defence has said record messages between the accused and Baird in December 2022.

The prosecutor asked the accused about the quality of the screenshots, which appear quite blurry.

“If you’re trying to insinuate any of these are not genuine, we’ve got videos,” the accused said.

Asked about the difference in “avatars” of Baird that appear at the top of the messages, the accused said they are “different forms of messaging”, namely Instagram direct messages and text messages.

“Why is the quality of that really poor?” Hatfield asks of one screenshot.

Lamarre-Condon said that emailing the screenshots means the resolution is low and it “always happens”.

“These messages are all genuine,” the accused said.

Lamarre-Condon has returned to the witness box and is being cross-examined by Crown prosecutor Brett Hatfield, SC, about the nature of his relationship with Jesse Baird.

He told the court last week that he met Baird at Universal nightclub on Sydney’s Oxford Street in October 2022. Hatfield takes him to bank records that suggest they were making purchases at the club on October 22 that year.

“That would be about right,” the accused said.

Lamarre-Condon said they “did start talking and seeing each other from October” but did not start “romantically dating until December”. He told the court that going on a date is “very different from just a sexual encounter”.

Hatfield asked whether these encounters took place “at your mum’s house or his house or where?”

The NSW Supreme Court heard earlier in the trial that police had obtained more than 14,000 hours of CCTV footage from 200 locations as part of the investigation into Lamarre-Condon.

This includes CCTV in the hours and days after Baird and Davies died, showing the accused at a McDonald’s drive-through at Sutton Forest and inside shopping centres and Bunnings across Sydney. There is also footage from a bus showing Lamarre-Condon driving behind.

Crown prosecutor Brett Hatfield, SC, asked the accused about some of the footage on Monday, including the vision above showing him shopping for a second surfboard cover about three hours after the men died.

Hatfield put to him that he looked relaxed in the footage at Westfield Miranda, a suggestion the accused rejected. Lamarre-Condon told the court:

You need to remember that as a police officer … I can’t panic, I can’t react, I have to be the person members of the community look at for direction.

Just because you see me on camera with no reaction doesn’t mean I wasn’t crying five minutes before in the whole car ride there.

Crown prosecutor Brett Hatfield, SC, referred during his cross-examination on Monday to Lamarre-Condon’s evidence that he walked up the street towards Five Ways in Paddington, a junction of streets with a number of cafes, before he went into Baird’s share house.

The accused told the court last week that his thinking at the time was that he was going to leave and not try to retrieve his belongings, until he saw a motorcycle nearby with a helmet dangling off the handlebars, Uber Eats bags and other items that he eventually used to disguise himself.

“I wasn’t intending on stealing it, I was intending on putting it straight back,” Lamarre-Condon said of the Uber Eats gear. “I know the offences of larceny and that’s intention to permanently deprive someone of their belongings, and that was not my intention at the time.”

He said that if the rider of the bike had come back he would “just probably explain myself and laugh about it”.