Inside The Bizarre Court Testimony Of The Beau Lamarre Condon Trial

High-profile murder trials rarely lack disturbing details, but the ongoing proceedings in the NSW Supreme Court over the deaths of Jesse Baird and Luke Davies have introduced an entirely surreal element. Former police officer Beau Lamarre-Condon stands accused of murdering Baird and Davies with his police-issue firearm in February 2024 before disposing of their bodies. As the trial continues, chilling testimony from a key witness has put a bizarre piece of pop culture right at the center of a homicide investigation.

The court heard that a Taylor Swift track played in a van while human remains were being transported to a remote rural property. It is the kind of detail that sounds like a dark fiction novel, yet it forms part of the sprawling evidence currently laid out before Justice Natalie Adams.

The Van Ride to Bungonia

A witness testifying under the pseudonym Elizabeth Kennedy detailed a horrifying sequence of events that began when Lamarre-Condon picked her up in a white van on February 21, 2024. She thought they were grabbing lunch. Instead, she found herself trapped in a two-hour car journey toward Goulburn and Bungonia, approximately 150 kilometres southwest of Sydney.

Kennedy recalled noticing a distinct, lemony scent inside the vehicle alongside a blue tarp in the back. During the drive, she observed strange behavior from the accused. He kept the windows wide open, ran the air-conditioning on freezing, and maintained an unnervingly upbeat demeanor. Every time she asked how much further they had to go, his response was identical.

"Just 50 more minutes," he told her repeatedly.

The defense offered a drastically different spin on the timeline. Lawyer John Stratton SC claimed that Lamarre-Condon showed Kennedy part of the deceased victim's body in the back of the van and explicitly warned her about the gravity of the situation. According to the defense's version of events, Kennedy was the one who quipped that the situation resembled a Taylor Swift song before playing "No Body, No Crime" through the car audio system.

Kennedy flatly rejected that version under cross-examination. She pointed out that the song is a relatively deep cut from the evermore album, making it highly specific.

"He was the one that put that song on in the car," Kennedy told the jury. She noted that when she tried to play other tracks from the same album to gauge his familiarity with the record, he drew a blank. His immediate recognition of that specific song remained a jarring anomaly to her.

The Stop at Bunnings and Cella Farm

The journey progressed with calculated stops. The pair pulled into a Bunnings warehouse where Lamarre-Condon acquired an angle grinder and a padlock. Because he lacked cash, he asked Kennedy to cover the purchase at the checkout.

They then proceeded to Cella Farm in Bungonia. Upon arrival, Lamarre-Condon attempted to get Kennedy to cover the van's license plates with garbage bags. When she refused, he did it himself. He cut the padlock off a gate—sustaining a minor cut in the process—and instructed Kennedy to stay put and leave her phone turned off.

He drove out of sight toward a larger dam on the property, leaving her alone to experience a mounting panic attack. When he returned thirty or forty minutes later, he demanded silence and checked to see if she had contacted anyone.

The Return Trip and Panic

On the drive back to Sydney, the atmosphere inside the vehicle deteriorated rapidly. Lamarre-Condon grew erratic, nearly striking a bird on the road and shouting out a defensive justification about how he would never hurt an animal. Attempts to reach another police officer friend failed, triggering a visible spiral of stress. He muttered profanities and instructed Kennedy to keep quiet so he could think.

Stopping at a service station for fuel and a peach Lipton iced tea exposed further paranoia. Lamarre-Condon flatly refused to step out and pump the fuel himself, expressing overt frustration about avoiding security cameras. By the time they left that service station, Kennedy noticed that the blue tarp in the back of the van was gone.

The prosecution maintains that Lamarre-Condon methodically murdered Baird and Davies in Baird's Paddington home. The defense has argued that the fatal shootings happened during a struggle under the umbrella of self-defence, attributing the subsequent cleanup and body disposal to extreme panic.

As the trial before Justice Natalie Adams moves forward, the jury must sift through conflicting testimony, physical evidence, and unsettling details from a grim chapter of crime in New South Wales.