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Live: Beau Lamarre-Condon denies being 'obsessed from the start' with Jesse Baird

Live: Beau Lamarre-Condon denies being 'obsessed from the start' with Jesse Baird

Beau Lamarre-Condon is back being cross-examined by the prosecution in his double murder trial.

Cross-examination by the Crown prosecutor is continuing in the NSW Supreme Court.

Former police officer Beau Lamarre-Condon is accused of murdering Jesse Baird and Luke Davies in February 2024. He has pleaded not guilty.

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A message from Lamarre-Condon asking to hang out on January 19, 2023 has been shown.

Baird replies in the morning saying he's heading to Brisbane.

Hatfield asks how he felt about the delayed reply.

"At times I was a bit in my head if it was a slow response ... is it personal, is it not?" Lamarre-Condon says today.

"I've come to learn Jesse is just not good at responding.

He tells the court he was "second guessing myself"; something "normal" at a start of a relationship.

Lamarre-Condon had texted a friend the screenshot expressing relief at the reply.

He says calling each other "crazy" was banter.

"I would always joke with my friends we were 'white girl crazy'", he says today.

A congratulatory message from Baird, who also asks to grab dinner with Lamarre-Condon has been shown to the jury.

"Why did you screenshot a message like that?" Hatfield asks.

"It was because of how nice he was," he says.

"That was in relation to me launching my swimwear line."

Lamarre-Condon has asked for a "pause" as he reads "all the pages" of the transcript now before him.

"Thanks for listening to me even when I sound crazy hahaha," one of the messages read.

"I put to you you were ... fretting over him in early January, weren't you," Hatfield says.

"That's what friends do, they discuss relationships with each other ... I don't agree to that," the accused replies.

He says it was a "romantic relationship".

"We were romantically seeing each other. Was I also speaking to other people? ... Yes, I would have been."

"Is it weird/too soon to say I kinda miss you already?" Lamarre-Condon messaged Baird before December 22, 2022.

"I'm sure everyone in this room has gone through this," Lamarre-Condon says today.

"As you can see from the reply it's very mutual."

Hatfield is asking about him "fretting" over the relationship in early January 2023, referring to a message where he says "I'm calm again".

"You were getting worked up that he hadn't replied to you," Hatfield says.

"I haven't seen these," Lamarre-Condon says of the exhibit.

Hatfield is asking about texts to a friend trying to introduce Baird to his social circle.

A friend asks why he's "pushing so hard" for the meeting, adding she would "love to meet him". This is on NYE 2022.

"Is it the case you were desperate to show off to your friends?" Hatfield asks.

"I was never wanting to show Jesse off," he replies, adding he wanted to introduce him to his friends because he thought Baird was "genuine" at the time.

In January 2023, that friend asks if he was "official".

"We haven't discussed that yet ... I'm with him nearly everyday," he replies to his friend.

He's asked if he was "giddy" to stay the night at Baird's when the relationship became more romantic.

"I'm in love ... fml," he says in a text in December 2022.

"It's a generalised comment in relation to the video he sent me," he says.

"I say I love you to all my friends and people like that all the time."

He says he had a "lot of love for him [Baird]".

Another text read: "It sounds crazy, I love him."

"It's different from saying I'm in love with him," Lamarre-Condon says in court.

"It's not usual to be declaring your love to someone you've been on a couple of dates with?" Hatfield asks.

"No, I don't agree with that," the accused replies.

"You were obsessed with him from the very start," Hatfield says.

"I've said that to a lot of people," Lamarre-Condon replies.

We're looking at texts on December 19, 2022 between Lamarre-Condon and a friend.

He's sent her screenshots of his messages with Baird.

"Hopefully I'll see you for cuddles before Christmas," the text read.

"This is when we went to see Avatar ... in Moore Park," Lamarre-Condon says today.

He's referred to Baird as a text at the time as the "Channel 10 reporter guy".

Baird was a former TV presenter with the station.

"I liked Jesse for who he was as a person," Lamarre-Condon says today, saying he could be a "garbage cleaner" and he'd still like him.

In 2010, he says he got accreditation as a teenager to report on celebrities, including a meet-up with Kourtney Kardashian.

"I reached out to her team," to tee it up, he says.

"You can't just walk up to these people automatically."

Lamarre-Condon says he bought Baird a shirt for Christmas in 2022.

Hatfield is questioning again why some screenshots of messages are blurrier than others.

"When you send screenshots through emails the quality is always less quality", he says.

Lamarre-Condon says he's not an "expert on resolution."

"Have you been able to restore messages or an iCloud backup from some other source to obtain these screenshots?" Hatfield asks.

"No, I believe these are screenshots I've sent ... possibly via Instagram or social media," Lamarre-Condon replies.

"You sent them to her [his friend] at the time ... or some later point in time?"

"... I do recall sending [her] messages at the time as well. I don't want to be guessing.

We're looking at an exhibit of a screenshot of a DM between Baird and Lamarre-Condon dated in December 2022.

He says he asked a friend to "reactivate my Instagram account to screenshot them [the DMs] directly and send them to my lawyers".

"But I also remember taking screenshots at the time."

Hatfield suggests the quality of some of the screenshots are poor, and questions why the profile pictures are different

"If you're trying to insinuate any of these aren't genuine..." Lamarre-Condon says, before the judge implores him to let Hatfield finish the question.

Lamarre-Condon says some of the messages are from iMessage, and others are Instagram DMs.

He says he started going on "romantic dates" in mid-to-late December 2022.

An Instagram message on December 22, 2022 of Baird saying he wished Lamarre-Condon was meeting his family, while on a trip to Melbourne.

"I've screenshotted messages before and sent them to [a friend], and she's sent them to my lawyers," he explains.

"I've sent many friends screenshots of messages between Jesse and I.

"I believed I screenshotted them at the time as well, because I would've sent them to friends."

The accused says he met Baird in October 2022.

Bank records show both Baird and Lamarre-Condon made transactions at LGBT+ club Universal on October 21.

"We didn't start romantically dating until December," he says.

"Meeting up with someone for a sexual encounter is very different from going on a date," he says.

They would meet at his house, and in December they would meet up "often", less so the month before, he says.

"We were definitely seeing each other in December."

It has been at times tense between Lamarre-Condon and Hatfield, as the Crown prosecutor presses him on his version of events.

The accused on Tuesday was argumentative as Hatfield suggested he was lying on certain recollections and influencing a witness.

He rebutted by saying vital people hadn't been brought before the court, and claimed the jury hadn't been shown key moments in evidence.

At other points, Lamarre-Condon would tear up and become emotional as he spoke about suicide attempts and Jesse Baird's death.

Missed out on Monday's cross-examination?

Sydney reporter Phoebe Pin recapped what happened in court here:

We're picking back up cross-examination in the Beau Lamarre-Condon double murder trial.

The accused has been in the witness box since Thursday, and answering questions from Crown prosecutor Brett Hatfield SC for the last day and a half.

  • beau
  • lamarre
  • condon
  • jesse
  • baird
  • start
  • prosecution
  • murder

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