A courtyard photo, a red stain and the murder trial that followed

A murder trial does not always arrive with theatrical flourishes. Sometimes it begins with a courtyard photo, a patch of red liquid and a housemate assuming the mess was nothing more sinister than rust from outdoor furniture. In Sydney, that small domestic misreading has become part of the case against Beau Lamarre-Condon, the former police officer accused of killing Jesse Baird and Luke Davies in Baird’s Paddington home on 19 February 2024.

Lamarre-Condon, 31, has pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder and one charge of aggravated break and enter. The prosecution says he used his police service weapon. The defence has, predictably enough, placed self-defence at the centre of its case. The trial before Justice Natalie Adams continues, with the jury being asked to assemble a sequence of events that is as grim as it is mundane.

On Thursday, the court heard from Baird’s housemate, identified as Belinda Smith. She said she returned from work on the evening after the shootings and went into the courtyard to check on her washing after a day of heavy rain. There she saw two surfboard bags with a blue tarp over them and red liquid seeping out. Smith took a photo and sent it to the other housemate, Sarah King; the image was shown to the jury.

Asked what she thought the liquid was, Smith said she believed it was rusted water from outdoor furniture. She told the court that Baird had never spoken to her about surfing and that she had never seen a surfboard in the house. When crown prosecutor Brett Hatfield SC asked whether she had any reason to suspect there was anything else in the bags, she answered no. It is a bleak kind of mistake, the sort that only later acquires its full, unbearable meaning.

The house itself had already become awkward before anyone knew what was hidden in the bags. In early 2024, relations had soured after Baird was asked to move out so one of the housemates’ friends could take his place. Baird eventually agreed and told the house group chat that he would be moving out on 20 February. By then, however, he and Davies had already been shot dead on 19 February.

When Smith left for work on the morning of 20 February and saw that Baird’s belongings had not been packed, she messaged King that she was genuinely scared this man was not moving out that day. A message then came from Baird’s phone saying he had hired someone to collect his things and might be doing a road trip to Perth with his mates. Smith replied that she was confused and asked him to have his room emptied because cleaners would be arriving the following day. Another response from Baird’s phone asked what time the cleaners had been booked. After that, several of his items were removed from the room.

By 22 February, Smith said, the surfboards had been cleared and the liquid was gone. Five days after the killings, Baird and Davies’ bodies were found in two surfboard bags on the fence line of a rural monastery in Bungonia. The distance between the Paddington courtyard and that rural fence line gives the case its peculiar, ugly shape: a domestic scene first, a concealment effort second, and only then the discovery of what the bags contained.

In his opening statement, defence lawyer John Stratton SC said Baird and Davies were fatally shot in self-defence after struggles with the policeman. He told the jury that Lamarre-Condon then started cleaning up the scene because he panicked. That is where the case now sits: between a mistaken photograph, a disputed account of violence and the slow work of a court trying to make sense of a crime that was hidden, briefly, in plain sight.

Written by Thorben Thiede thorben.thiede@alpineweekly.com