Beau Lamarre-Condon rehearsed how to hide two bodies nine months before the killings.
That is the prosecution’s case in its most damaging form. It is also the point at which the case must become more precise, not less.
Georgia Cook told the NSW Supreme Court that, during a dinner in May 2023, Lamarre-Condon asked her what she would do if he told her he had killed someone. He then described taking the victims’ belongings to a dumpster and carrying the bodies into bushland where nobody would find them. Nine months later, on February 19, 2024, Jesse Baird and Luke Davies were allegedly shot with a police service weapon at Baird’s Paddington home.
The disposal method Cook described matches the method the Crown has presented at trial. Baird’s bloodied belongings and furniture went into a skip bin in Cronulla, in Sydney’s south. The bodies were found on a fence line near a Greek Orthodox monastery in remote bushland near Bungonia, about 200 kilometres from Paddington. The hypothetical has now been answered. The answer is the prosecution’s opening statement.
That is not a detail the defense can wish away. It is the prosecution’s strongest bridge from alleged planning to alleged conduct. Surveillance, the watching of Baird’s home, the alleged disguise as an UberEats rider to gain entry, and the earlier testimony about a faked cancer diagnosis all form part of the Crown’s account of preparation. The trial has been tracked since it opened in the Sydney Supreme Court and from the moment Lamarre-Condon first stood trial.
Self-defense presumes a sudden encounter. The Crown’s case describes a sequence that was watched, dressed up, entered, and then concealed. Self-defense does not explain why a man would allegedly arrive at a victim’s home in a delivery disguise after months of surveillance. It does not explain why a friend would hear, nine months earlier, a description of dumpsters and bushland that later resembles the actual disposal route. The defense must ask the jury to treat those facts as panic and improvisation rather than as the fulfillment of a script.
That is the strongest version of the prosecution’s argument. It deserves to be heard in full before it is audited.
The audit begins with Georgia Cook.
Cook described herself as a close friend of a 31-year-old man who, she now says, frightened her with what he said in May 2023. She told the jury that the conversation felt “very surreal,” and that hearing a man with power inside the police force speak that way left her afraid and with nowhere to go. That fear matters. It may explain why the memory remained significant. It does not, by itself, establish every word spoken at the dinner.
A close friend who heard a frightening hypothetical then remained in Lamarre-Condon’s orbit for another nine months. A close friend who did not immediately report the conversation. A close friend whose recollection emerged after the investigation and now sits inside a courtroom where two deaths require explanation. The prosecution may say that delay reflects fear or confusion. The defense may say it reflects memory reconstructed under pressure. The jury must decide which account the evidence supports.
Cook’s phrase, “very surreal,” cuts both ways. It can describe the shock of hearing a future murderer reveal his method. It can also describe theatrical speculation at dinner—an ugly, dramatic conversation offered to see how a friend would react. The prosecution wants the jury to hear a rehearsal. The evidence does not permit the word “rehearsal” to substitute for the jury’s work.
The Crown is asking the jury to infer planning from the match between the alleged conversation and the later disposal. That inference may be powerful. It is still an inference. Matching an alleged method to a crime scene does not prove that the method was pre-planned. It proves that the two accounts resemble each other. The nine-month gap remains. The jury must decide whether that gap contains a continuing plan, an extraordinary coincidence, or a memory now carrying more certainty than it carried at the dinner itself.
The prosecution does not need Lamarre-Condon to have said, “I am going to kill Jesse Baird and Luke Davies.” Cook’s account need not be a formal confession to matter. It can be evidence of preparation, knowledge, or a particular disposition toward concealment. But “not a confession” does not make it “worse than a confession.” A confession is an admission. This is testimony about a conversation, and its force depends on Cook’s credibility, the exact words spoken, the circumstances of the dinner, and the significance of the later match.
Lamarre-Condon has pleaded not guilty. The defense says the encounter at Baird’s Paddington home was self-defense that went wrong. The Crown says the encounter was planned. Both accounts occupy the same physical world: the home, the weapon, the alleged disguise, the skip bin, the bushland, the bodies. The question is not which story sounds more complete. The question is which story the proven facts require.
The dinner conversation, the dramatic quote, the Cronulla skip bin, and the Bungonia monastery make compelling headlines. They are not, standing alone, proof of what happened inside Baird’s home on February 19, 2024. The prosecution has placed its most vivid piece of evidence before the jury. The jury still has to decide whether it is a blueprint, a coincidence, or a memory made to carry the weight of two deaths.
The rehearsal meets the record here. The record—not the headline—must decide whether the self-defense story is finished.