In a development that would be too on-the-nose for a true-crime podcast, the NSW supreme court has heard that Beau Lamarre-Condon played Taylor Swift's *No Body, No Crime* while allegedly attempting to dispose of two corpses. Because nothing says "premeditated cover-up" like a jaunty tune about getting away with murder.
Lamarre-Condon, 31, is accused of fatally shooting Jesse Baird and his partner Luke Davies with his police service weapon at 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. The court heard the song was playing in a white van as he drove to Bungonia with a friend on 21 February 2024.
The friend, known under the pseudonym Elizabeth Kennedy, told the court she thought she and the officer were going out for lunch when he picked her up at about 3pm that day - two days after the alleged murders. Defence lawyer John Stratton SC 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." Stratton claimed the officer lifted a tarpaulin stored in the back of the van and showed Baird's deceased head, and suggested Kennedy said, "this is like a Taylor Swift song, No Body, No Crime" before playing the song in the car.
Kennedy denied those suggestions, saying he didn't show her Baird's body and that she didn't 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." A connoisseur of exactly one track from an album - the one about a missing person. Chilling.
Stratton suggested Kennedy entered the van to help dispose of the bodies, and accused her of attempting to sink Davies' body in a dam, and of giving untruthful evidence to minimise her role. "I didn't know anything. I'm five foot and weigh 55 kilos so I don't think I could carry a body even if I tried," she said.
Kennedy offered her own account on Wednesday morning. 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. 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 van's windows were open the entire trip and the air-conditioning was on full blast and freezing, she told the jury. 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. Because nothing pairs better with an alleged corpse run than a chat about international travel.
They eventually stopped at Bunnings in Goulburn. In a statement read to the court, a Bunnings sales assistant said two customers approached him that day, claiming they were staying at a friend's farm in nearby Bungonia and had locked themselves out. The worker suggested they use an angle grinder. As Lamarre-Condon and Kennedy went to the checkout, the officer asked her to pay for an angle grinder and padlock because he did not have cash, she said.
The two then drove to Cella Farm in Bungonia, where Lamarre-Condon said he knew the owners. When they arrived, he asked her to put garbage bags over the van's number plates, but she refused, so he did it himself. He then cut the padlock off the gate, cutting himself in the process, and asked Kennedy to wait and not turn on her phone as he drove out of sight to a dam on the farm. Kennedy began having a panic attack; when he returned 30 or 40 minutes later, he told her to shush and asked if she had called anyone or turned on her phone.
On 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, she said. "It seemed like something went wrong and he wouldn't tell me about it." He attempted to call another police officer friend during the drive. When the friend didn't pick up, he said "'Fuck fuck fuck' and then he sort of panicked and that's when he started saying, 'if I'm quiet, I'm not angry, I'm just thinking'."
He told Kennedy he would have to return to Bungonia and would be up all night. He then asked if she could buy him a peach Lipton ice tea as he needed caffeine but didn't drink coffee. As she entered the service station, he also asked her to fuel up the van, but she couldn't because she didn't know how to drive or fill up a vehicle. He was "visibly annoyed" before he swore and jumped out of the car. When asked why he did not want to do it, Kennedy told the court he said he did not want to be on camera. As they left, she noticed the blue tarp was no longer in the back of the van. The bodies of Baird and Davies were later found in Bungonia.
The defence team claims Baird and Davies were accidentally shot as the accused acted in "self-defence." Lamarre-Condon cleaned up the scene and disposed of the bodies afterwards because he "panicked considerably," Stratton has said. The trial before Justice Natalie Adams continues. Because if you're going to panic considerably, you might as well have a Taylor Swift playlist.