‘Turn phone on and off, then throw it in the water’: Celebrity chaser friend tells jury that Beau Lamarre-Condon tried to trick her into disposing a phone for him after alleged murders

Beau Lamarre-Condon asked his former celebrity-chaser friend to get rid of a phone for him, the day after he allegedly killed Jesse Baird and Luke Davies.

A West Australian friend told the court she lives in WA but met Lamarre-Condon in 2010 when they were both trying to get photos with Pitbull in Sydney.

They stayed in touch and saw each other when she went to Sydney to chase celebrities, about twice a year.

Asked whether they were close friends, she said: ‘Close-ish, I thought we were.’

The friend told the court she used to talk to Lamarre-Condon about her concerns about the Covid vaccine. She knew he was a NSW Police officer at the time and believed he shared her opinions.

On February 20, the day after the alleged murders, Lamarre-Condon called the friend and asked if she was available for a phone call.

During that call, he asked if she could ‘do him a favour’.

‘He told me that he’d stolen some police files from the Commissioner and he wanted me to get rid of the phone,’ she told the court.

‘I agreed to do it … I told him I lived 1.5 hours from Perth and he said I needed to be 30km away from my house when I did it … I needed to turn the phone on and off, and then throw it in the water.’

Two days later, he called the friend again. She told the court Lamarre-Condon said that two detectives had been to his mother’s house, looking for him.

‘He said he was going to be set up for two guys that had gone missing and then he went on to ask me what I had to do with the phone, and I told him what I was going to do with the phone so he could hear it.’

The friend told the court that Lamarre-Condon said he was being set up by police. She said his tone appeared ‘normal’.

Days later, she was at her sister’s house when they saw news articles about Jesse Baird and Luke Davies, and Lamarre-Condon.

She told the court there was information in the news articles about how Baird’s friends continued receiving texts from his phone, even after he died.

‘I became very concerned and went to the police,’ she said.

The friend said she approached police near her home in WA.

She never received a package from Lamarre-Condon.