A call to a police friend a month after his arrest: court testimony in the Sydney double-murder trial

A court hearing the trial over a double murder in Sydney, Australia, has been told that about a month after his arrest, the accused former police officer Beau Lamarre-Condon telephoned a police friend to say he loved her and that not everything reported in the news was true.

Lamarre-Condon, 31, is accused of shooting Jesse Baird and Luke Davies dead with his police service weapon at Baird's Paddington home on February 19, 2024. He has pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder and one charge of aggravated break and enter.

Dayna Schagen, an officer with the New South Wales police and a friend of Lamarre-Condon, told the trial on Monday about a call she received in late March 2024 — roughly a month after the alleged murders.

Schagen said that when the call came at about 9 pm from a number she did not recognise, she did not pick up at first, believing it rude to call after dinner time on a weeknight. But when the number rang a second time, she answered and immediately recognised Lamarre-Condon's voice.

According to her police statement, which was read to the court, Lamarre-Condon identified himself, and Schagen demanded to know why he was calling her. He then said he only wanted to tell her that he loved her and that, before she did anything, she needed to know that not everything in the news was true, and that it would all come out in court.

The court heard that Schagen then cut him off, saying he had killed two people and asking why she would ever want to speak to him again. She afterwards told her boss about the call and gave police a statement about the incident. As an officer, she had no role in the police investigation into the double murders.

Earlier on Monday, Schagen told the jury that during 2023 Lamarre-Condon had been seeing Baird on and off and had hoped to turn it into a relationship. When Baird made clear he was not interested and the two broke up in April 2023, Lamarre-Condon remained deeply invested in him, Schagen said; she believed he missed Baird, still very much wanted to be in a relationship, and that it was a sore point for the accused.

The court also heard that Baird ended things with Lamarre-Condon in November 2023. The accused had allegedly told Schagen that he had messed up, after Baird discovered he had gone through Baird's phone without his knowledge and blocked a man Baird had been sleeping with.

Schagen told the court that on hearing this she told the accused she was mortified that he had done something so foolish while they were not in a relationship, and that he had no grounds to be angry about who Baird was sleeping with, because they were not together.

Days before the alleged murders, on February 14, 2024, Lamarre-Condon also put a 'hypothetical question' about work to Schagen, the testimony said. He asked what the police response would be if a job about gunshots fired was broadcast over the radio and someone came on the radio to say a member of the public had flagged that children were letting off fireworks. She told him police would disregard it and move on because of the sheer volume of jobs they received. The prosecution clarified to the jury that anyone with a police radio can hear jobs being broadcast.

After seeing news of the disappearance of Baird and Davies, Schagen messaged Lamarre-Condon on February 22, 2024, asking whether he was all right, whether he had spoken to Baird and what was going on. She received no reply, and she told the court that by that point she believed she had an indication that Lamarre-Condon was potentially involved. A day later she saw he had been active on Facebook's messaging service and asked again where he was and what all of this in the media was; he opened the message but did not respond, the court heard.

Schagen confirmed that the conversation about how police respond to reports of gunshots had been on her mind, and that this was why she eventually approached police. The defence team, by contrast, has claimed that Baird and Davies were accidentally shot in two separate struggles while the accused acted in self-defence. The trial, before Justice Natalie Adams, continues.