Police officer Beau Lamarre-Condon asked colleague about killer getting away with it day before alleged murders

Police officer Beau Lamarre-Condon asked a colleague, a day before he allegedly murdered Jesse Baird and Luke Davies, if a high-profile killer would have “gotten away with it” if he’d not taken his own life, a Sydney court has heard.

Lamarre-Condon, 31, has been accused of fatally shooting the couple 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.

Ben Higginson, who served with the New South Wales police force criminal investigation team in Sydney, told the supreme court trial on Friday about working with Lamarre-Condon the day before Baird and Davies were killed.

The two police officers had been working at a pro-Palestine protest on 18 February 2024 when Lamarre-Condon asked Higginson about work.

Higginson replied that it had been a “bit of a rough time” as he had been investigating the murder of Lilie James.

James, 21, was a water polo coach at St Andrew’s Cathedral school who was killed by Paul Thijssen in October 2023 days after the pair broke up.

CCTV captured Thijssen following James into the school’s gymnasium with a hammer before her body was found. He later killed himself at the Vaucluse cliffs.

Higginson became emotional when discussing the case with Lamarre-Condon, noting the crime had occurred at his old school, so it “hit home a bit more”, the court was told on Friday.

But when Lamarre-Condon asked about James’s murder he seemed “blase”, Higginson told the court.

“He thought Paul was stupid for doing it on CCTV,” the police investigator said.

Higginson told the court that Lamarre-Condon then asked if Thijssen hadn’t committed suicide “would he have gotten away with it?”

The investigator said police didn’t only rely on CCTV when examining a crime.

Higginson brought up the 2007 death of Matthew Leveson and told Lamarre-Condon he “could remember the CCTV of [Leveson’s] partner at Bunnings buying tarp, and he ended up burying him in the national park”.

Both police officers then spoke about how cash was more difficult to trace than bank cards and “what avenues detectives look at for suspicious deaths”, the court heard.

When Lamarre-Condon asked about phones, Higginson said he responded: “If you were to leave your phone at home and commit a murder, the phone would be showing up in the vicinity of your residence.”

Higginson said the two weren’t close, but they would chat at work, and he recalled Lamarre-Condon would tell him about his “side-hustles”.

“Apparently he goes to France to buy Hermes bags and resell them here,” he told the court.

The defence lawyer John Stratton SC said during his opening statement that Baird and Davies were fatally shot in “self-defence” after struggles with the policeman.

Lamarre-Condon immediately began cleaning up the scene because he “panicked”, the jury was told.

The trial before justice Natalie Adams continues.