Beau Lamarre-Condon allegedly played Taylor Swift’s No Body, No Crime during body disposal, court told

Friend of accused double murderer tells supreme court that van had lemony smell and blue tarp in back before Bunnings stop

Beau Lamarre-Condon played Taylor Swift’s song No Body, No Crime while attempting to dispose of two corpses, a court has heard.

The NSW supreme court has been told he was driving to Bungonia with a friend when the song was played in the van.

Lamarre-Condon, 31, is accused of fatally shooting Jesse Baird and his partner, Luke Davies, with his police service weapon in Baird’s Paddington home on 19 February 2024.

He has pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder and one charge of aggravated break and enter.

A friend of Lamarre-Condon, known to the court under the pseudonym Elizabeth Kennedy, said she thought she and the officer were going out for lunch when he picked her up on 21 February 2024 – two days after the alleged murders.

He arrived at Kennedy’s home in a white van about 3pm that day, she told the court.

Defence lawyer John Stratton SC on Wednesday suggested Lamarre-Condon told her: “I’m not joking, if you don’t want to help me I completely understand and I won’t be mad”.

He claimed Lamarre-Condon lifted a tarpaulin, which had been stored in the back of the van, and showed Baird’s deceased head.

Stratton said the officer had told her Baird was dead and suggested Kennedy said: “this is like a Taylor Swift song, No Body, No Crime” before playing the song in the car.

She denied Stratton’s suggestions and said he didn’t show her Baird’s body, nor did she choose the song.

“He was the one that put that song on in the car … it’s a very niche song,” she told the court.

“I asked him how he knew it and he said it was from the album, evermore.

“I tried to play a few more songs from the album, evermore, and he didn’t know any of them so it was very weird to me he knew that song.”

Kennedy on Wednesday morning offered her own account of events to the court.

She said she noticed a blue tarp in the back of the van and a lemony smell, like it had just been cleaned.

As Lamarre-Condon took the wheel, the drive got longer and longer, she said.

Every time she asked how much further, he would respond, “just 50 more minutes”. It ended up being a two-hour drive to Goulburn and Bungonia, about 150km away, the court heard.

The van’s windows were open the entire trip and the air-conditioning was on full blast and freezing, Kennedy told the jury.

She said that during the drive he seemed “bubbly” and talked about Swift, who was touring Australia at that time, as well as a Europe trip they were planning together.

They eventually stopped at Bunnings Goulburn, the court heard.

In a statement read to the court on Wednesday morning, a Bunnings sales assistant said he had been approached by two customers that day who claimed they were staying at a friend’s farm in nearby Bungonia and had locked themselves out.

As Lamarre-Condon and Kennedy went to the Bunnings checkout, the officer asked her to pay for an angle grinder and padlock because he did not have cash with him, she said.

The two then drove to Cella Farm in Bungonia and Lamarre-Condon explained he knew the people who owned the property.

When they arrived, he asked her to put garbage bags over the van’s number plates, but she refused, so he did it himself, Kennedy said.

He then cut the padlock off the gate, cutting himself in the process and asked Kennedy to wait there and not turn on her phone.

“He left me there and drove out of sight behind the house where the bigger dam was,” she told the court.

Kennedy began having a panic attack and, when Lamarre-Condon returned 30 or 40 minutes later, he told her to shush and asked if she had called anyone or turned on her phone.

As they began the return journey to Sydney, he asked if they could go back to Bungonia but she said she needed to be home.

Lamarre-Condon was “weird and cryptic” on the trip back, the court heard.

Fuente: The Guardian World