A triple-zero call made the morning Luke Davies and his partner Jesse Baird were allegedly murdered has been played to the court as photos of surfboard bags containing their bodies were released.
The recording was aired in the New South Wales supreme court on Friday during the double murder trial of former Sydney police officer Beau Lamarre-Condon.
Lamarre-Condon, 31, has been accused of fatally shooting Davies and Baird 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.
Audio of emergency call
Crown prosecutor Brett Hatfield SC told the court a call had been made to the emergency line from Davies’ phone at 9.50am on Friday 19 February 2024. In the recording, movement can be heard before a muffled voice says “fuck off”. The call then drops out.
An attempt to call back goes straight to voicemail where Davies says: “Hi, you’ve reached Luke, please leave a message and I’ll get back to you.” The Davies family cried in court as the audio played. Police were sent to patrol the vicinity but were unable to pinpoint the exact address where the call originated.
Officer’s conversation about murder investigation
Earlier on Friday, Ben Higginson, who served with the NSW police force criminal investigation team in Sydney, told the court about working with Lamarre-Condon the day before Davies and Baird 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 Andrews 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.
Questions about evidence and surveillance
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.”
Defence and evidence of surfboard bags
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.
CCTV played to the court on Thursday showed Lamarre-Condon buying a second surfboard bag. In the footage, the officer walks straight to the surfboard section of the Decathlon in Miranda Westfield, picks up a cover and pays in cash.
Baird’s housemate, known to the court under the pseudonym Sarah King, told the jury on Friday about returning home from work on the night of the alleged murders. Their other housemate had sent a photo of red liquid, that she believed to be rusted water, underneath surfboard bags and tarp in their back courtyard and sent a photo to King. King later looked at them, took a photo, and poked one of the bags. Asked by the prosecution what it felt like, she said: “it just sounded like a tarp”.
Davies and Bairds’ bodies would be found days later in two surfboard covers near the fence line of a monastery in Bungonia. The trial before justice Natalie Adams continues.
