Court hears accused ex-officer played Taylor Swift song during drive to dispose of bodies
A witness has told the NSW Supreme Court in Australia about a drive to Bungonia with police officer Beau Lamarre-Condon, who is charged with two murders. The defence says the men were shot accidentally in self-defence.
A trial is under way in the New South Wales Supreme Court in Australia for Beau Lamarre-Condon, a 31-year-old police officer charged with two counts of murder. The court has heard that Taylor Swift's song "No Body, No Crime" was played in a van while he was driving to Bungonia in an attempt to dispose of two bodies.
Prosecutors allege that on 19 February 2024 he shot Jesse Baird and Baird's partner, Luke Davies, with his police service weapon at Baird's home in Paddington, Sydney. Lamarre-Condon has pleaded not guilty to two murder counts and one charge of aggravated break and enter. The defence says the men were accidentally shot as he acted in self-defence, and that he cleaned the scene and disposed of the bodies because he "panicked considerably".
The witness's account
A friend known in court by the pseudonym Elizabeth Kennedy said she thought they were going to lunch when he collected her on 21 February 2024, two days after the alleged killings. He arrived at about 3pm in a white van. She noticed a blue tarp and a lemony smell, as if the vehicle had just been cleaned. The drive to Goulburn and Bungonia, about 150km away, took two hours, with the windows open and the air-conditioning on full.
Defence lawyer John Stratton SC suggested that Kennedy had chosen the song after being told Baird was dead, and that she had joined the trip to help dispose of the bodies. She denied this, saying she was not shown a body and that he put the song on himself. "It's a very niche song," she said, adding that he told her it was from the album evermore.
They stopped at a Bunnings store in Goulburn, where a sales assistant suggested an angle grinder to two customers who said they were locked out of a friend's farm. Kennedy said he asked her to pay for the grinder and a padlock because he had no cash. At Cella Farm in Bungonia he cut the gate padlock and drove out of sight to a dam, returning after 30 to 40 minutes. On the way back he was "weird and cryptic", and at a service station he said he did not want to be on camera. She later noticed the tarp was gone.
The bodies of Baird and Davies were later found in Bungonia. The trial before Justice Natalie Adams continues.
