Beau Lamarre-Condon played Taylor Swift’s song No Body, No Crime while attempting to dispose of two corpses, a court has heard.
The NSW supreme court has been told he was driving to Bungonia with a friend when the song was played in the van.
Lamarre-Condon, 31, is accused of fatally shooting Jesse Baird and his partner, Luke Davies, with his police service weapon in Baird’s Paddington home on 19 February 2024.
He has pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder and one charge of aggravated break and enter.
A friend of Lamarre-Condon, known to the court under the pseudonym Elizabeth Kennedy, said she thought she and the officer were going out for lunch when he picked her up on 21 February 2024 – two days after the alleged murders.
He arrived at Kennedy’s home in a white van about 3pm that day, she told the court.
Defence lawyer John Stratton SC on Wednesday suggested Lamarre-Condon told her: “I’m not joking, if you don’t want to help me I completely understand and I won’t be mad”.
He claimed Lamarre-Condon lifted a tarpaulin, which had been stored in the back of the van, and showed Baird’s deceased head.
Stratton said the officer had told her Baird was dead and suggested Kennedy said: “this is like a Taylor Swift song, No Body, No Crime” before playing the song in the car.
She denied Stratton’s suggestions and said he didn’t show her Baird’s body, nor did she choose the song.
“He was the one that put that song on in the car … it’s a very niche song,” she told the court.
“I asked him how he knew it and he said it was from the album, evermore.
“I tried to play a few more songs from the album, evermore, and he didn’t know any of them so it was very weird to me he knew that song.”
Stratton suggested Kennedy entered the van to help Lamarre-Condon dispose of the bodies, and accused her of attempting to sink Davies’ body in a dam.
He then suggested she had given untruthful evidence to minimise her role.
But she said Stratton was wrong.
“I didn’t know anything. I’m five foot and weigh 55 kilos so I don’t think I could carry a body even if I tried,” she said.
Kennedy on Wednesday morning offered her own account of events to the court.
She said she noticed a blue tarp in the back of the van and a lemony smell, like it had just been cleaned.
As Lamarre-Condon took the wheel, the drive got longer and longer, she said.
Every time she asked how much further, he would respond, “just 50 more minutes”. It ended up being a two-hour drive to Goulburn and Bungonia, about 150km away, the court heard.
The van’s windows were open the entire trip and the air-conditioning was on full blast and freezing, Kennedy told the jury.
She said that during the drive he seemed “bubbly” and talked about Swift, who was touring Australia at that time, as well as a Europe trip they were planning together.
They eventually stopped at Bunnings Goulburn, the court heard.
In a statement read to the court on Wednesday morning, a Bunnings sales assistant said he had been approached by two customers that day who claimed they were staying at a friend’s farm in nearby Bungonia and had locked themselves out.
The worker suggested they use an angle grinder.
As Lamarre-Condon and Kennedy went to the Bunnings checkout, the officer asked her to pay for an angle grinder and padlock because he did not have cash with him, she said.
The two then drove to Cella Farm in Bungonia and Lamarre-Condon explained he knew the people who owned the property.
When they arrived, he asked her to put garbage bags over the van’s number plates, but she refused, so he did it himself, Kennedy said.
He then cut the padlock off the gate, cutting himself in the process, and asked Kennedy to wait there and not turn on her phone, as he drove out of sight to a dam on the farm.
Kennedy began having a panic attack and, when Lamarre-Condon returned 30 or 40 minutes later, he told her to shush and asked if she had called anyone or turned on her phone.
As they began the return journey to Sydney, he asked if they could go back to Bungonia but she said she needed to be home.
Lamarre-Condon was “weird and cryptic” on the trip back, the court heard.
“It seemed like something went wrong and he wouldn’t tell me about it,” Kennedy told the court.
Lamarre-Condon attempted to call another police officer friend during the drive.
When the friend didn’t pick up, he said: “‘Fuck fuck fuck’ and then he sort of panicked and that’s when he started saying, ‘if I’m quiet, I’m not angry, I’m just thinking’,” the court heard.
He told Kennedy he would have to return to Bungonia and that he would be up all night.
He then asked if she could buy him a peach Lipton ice tea as he needed caffeine but didn’t drink coffee.
As she entered the service station to buy the beverage, he also asked her to fuel up the van, but she couldn’t do it because she didn’t know how to drive or fill up a vehicle.
He was “visibly annoyed” before he swore and jumped out of the car. When asked why he did not want to do it, Kennedy told the court he said he did not want to be on camera.
As they left, she noticed the blue tarp was no longer in the back of the van.
The bodies of Baird and Davies were later found in Bungonia.
The defence team claims Baird and Davies were accidentally shot as the accused acted in “self-defence”.
Lamarre-Condon cleaned up the scene and disposed of the bodies afterwards because he “panicked considerably”, Stratton SC has said.
The trial before Justice Natalie Adams continues.
