Hatfield asks whether Lamarre-Condon created the email himself
Beau Lamarre-Condon testified Wednesday in the New South Wales Supreme Court that he did not create or operate a fake Grindr account for Jesse Baird, rejecting a friend’s evidence that he had made fake profiles of his former partner.
Lamarre-Condon, a former police officer, has pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder and one charge of aggravated break and enter. He is accused of fatally shooting Baird and Baird’s new partner, Luke Davies, with his police service weapon in Baird’s Paddington home in Sydney on 19 February 2024.
The testimony came during Lamarre-Condon’s fifth day in the witness box. Earlier in the double murder trial, a friend gave evidence that Lamarre-Condon had made fake profiles of Baird on apps like Grindr. Crown prosecutor Brett Hatfield SC asked Lamarre-Condon whether he had told a friend he made a fake Grindr account involving Baird.
Under cross-examination Wednesday, Lamarre-Condon said that had “never happened”.
Lamarre-Condon told the court that, after his breakup with Baird, he tried to create a fake account for a man Baird had been seeing. “I attempted to create a fake account with an email I believed was from him to see if it was active … to see if he was in an exclusive relationship with Jesse or not,” he said.
He added: “But I didn’t make an account or operate it as him.” Lamarre-Condon claimed he was only seeing whether the address was available on the app, which would indicate whether the man was using the service.
Hatfield suggested that the email Lamarre-Condon entered was not the other man’s address and asked whether Lamarre-Condon had created it himself. Lamarre-Condon replied: “I can’t confirm if this is 100% [his] email or not, this is something I had seen on social media.”
The trial before Justice Natalie Adams continues.