15 Jesse & Luke | Accused murderer faces cross-examination

The accused has taken to the witness box, giving his detailed version of how he says Jesse Baird and Luke Davies died, and facing an extensive cross-examination. Beau Lamarre-Condon told the court he went to Jesse Baird's home with the intention of retrieving his belongings, including an expensive Cartier ring, clothing and a surfboard. Sydney reporter Jamie McKinnell recaps his evidence, including that he fired his gun at Jesse Baird's shoulder, claiming he "110 per cent" stands by the first shot he took and was intending to disarm him, not kill him. If you have questions you'd like Jamie and Stocky to answer in future episodes, please email [email protected] mailto:[email protected]? Family and domestic violence support: If you need help, contact 1800 Respect national helpline on 1800 737 732. The Case Of is the follow-up to the hit podcast Mushroom Case Daily, and all episodes of that show will remain available in the back catalogue of The Case Of.

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• 0:45Stephen Stockwell?

  For nearly seven weeks prosecutors have told the jury what they say happened to Jesse and Luke. Now, the accused murderer has aired his version of what happened in the house. I'm Stephen Stockwell. Just a heads up in this episode, there is some discussion of suicide and some strong language. This is episode 15 with the case of Jesse and Luke.

• 1:05Speaker 05

  He's accused of shooting Jesse Baird and Luke Davies with his service firearm. Police now allege Constable Beau Lamar Condon murdered the couple at a home in Paddington.

• 1:15Speaker 06

  This is just a terrible incident that's occurred here, the loss of these two young men.

• 1:22Speaker 01

  Now this is Mardi Gras time and yet it's a community in mourning.

• 1:25Speaker 03

  The pain is ongoing. We don't have a lot of answers that we would love to have, just to help bring closure, to bring peace.

• 1:33Stephen Stockwell?

  On Thursday last week, the man accused of murdering Jesse Baird and Luke Davies stepped into the witness box to give his evidence. It's a dramatically different version of the story to the one that has been spelt out by the prosecution and already he has faced questions about it. There in court as Beau Lamar Condon has given evidence is ABC Legal Affairs reporter Jamie McKinnell. Welcome Jamie.

• 1:55Speaker 05

  Hi Stocky.

• 1:56Stephen Stockwell?

  Beau Lamar Condon does not have to give evidence in his murder trial, but he has decided to step into the witness box.

• 2:03Speaker 05

  Yeah, he has. And as we said last episode, Stocky, the onus of proof rests with the Crown. So he didn't have to do that, but he has.

• 2:11Stephen Stockwell?

  And now we have his version of what has unfolded in 60 Brown Street in February 2024. Can you wrap up the last few days for us?

• 2:19Speaker 05

  Yeah, sure. So the jury is hearing directly from Beau Lamar Condon as he explains his account of what happened in Jesse Baird's Brown Street terrace on the day that Mr Baird and Luke Davies died. He has testified that he wanted to retrieve possessions, including a surfboard from Jesse. He admits that he wore a helmet and an Uber Eats outfit and he says Mr Baird was holding a knife during a struggle and that he fired the first gunshot from his police pistol to disarm him of that knife. He's testified that a second gunshot that ended up hitting Mr Baird in the head was fired accidentally. As was, according to his evidence, another gunshot that was fired in a separate struggle with Luke Davies shortly after that first struggle.

• 3:04Speaker 05

  His evidence has been at times teary and emotional, but also very fast paced and quite detailed. And he's been given repeated reminders to slow down. We've recently been observing how he responds to being cross examined. There have been some tense moments between him and the prosecutor who's challenging this account. But Beau Lamar Condon has insisted that he never had any intentions to harm anyone that day and that he acted in self defence and he has denied suggestions put to him by the Crown that he executed Jesse Baird. And that he's now giving false evidence about being bullied in the police force and becoming suicidal to gain sympathy.

• 3:49Stephen Stockwell?

  Thank you, Jamie. There is so much to unpack in this episode. I want to spend a bit of time talking about the questions that Beau Lamar Condon is being asked by the Crown prosecutor Brett Hutfield as his cross examination continues. But before we get there, I want to start with his version of what happened in 60 Brown Street. We have heard that he was there to collect some belongings that he left at Jesse Baird's place. We know that he dressed as an Uber Eats rider, wearing a helmet and a jacket going into that house. But what was new in his evidence was that we discovered that on his version, the door was open to the house when he walked past. He spent some time deciding if he was going to go in and try and gather these belongings. And so he told the court, he walked up to this open door, knocked three times, shouted hello very loudly.

• 4:34Stephen Stockwell?

  He doesn't hear anyone. There's no response. So he goes in. What happens then, Jamie?

• 4:39Speaker 05

  Well, he's told the court that he had a look in Jesse's ground floor bedroom and then he noticed some cardboard storage or moving boxes in the hallway. And so he started going through those looking for his belongings. And he's explained those belongings included a pretty expensive Cartier ring, some clothing. And he also claims he had been looking for a surfboard, his surfboard that would have been, he thought, in Jesse's ute tray. But he couldn't see Jesse's vehicle in the area before he went into the house. So he goes through these boxes. He says he then goes further towards the kitchen and he hears movement from a back door, a sort of near the kitchen area. And so he remembers running up the stairs to hide.

• 5:21Speaker 05

  He says he heard someone downstairs that sounded like they might have been calling the police. And then when he thought that person was leaving, he went back down the stairs. At this point, he says he's still wearing the motorcycle helmet and on his version, as he's coming back down the stairs, he sees Jesse Baird to his right. He says Mr Baird was holding a knife and masking tape and was sealing up another moving box that was sitting in the kitchen. And he claims in his evidence that Jesse saw him, didn't realise who it was because of the helmet and yelled three times, we're getting robbed.

• 5:58Speaker 05

  And then lunged at him with the knife. Beau Lamar Condon remembers yelling to him through the helmet, it's me, it's Beau, calm down.

• 6:07Stephen Stockwell?

  Okay. And so this is kind of in the kitchen of Jesse Baird's house on Beau Lamar Condon's evidence. There is a struggle with, you know, kind of a knife as Jesse Baird is lunging at Beau Lamar Condon, according to his evidence. Does he get kind of slashed by this knife?

• 6:24Speaker 05

  Yeah. So he's described at one point in this struggle being pinned up against a wall and he was shown a photograph of the kitchen. And he identified the area that he was pinned as being sort of near the doorway where the wall meets the counter of the kitchen. But he says that at one point his top, his shirt that he was wearing was slashed out and ended up being sort of cut open across the front. He says at another point, the knife ended up being quite close to his neck, which wasn't covered by the helmet. And he started thinking, if I don't do something, I'm going to be stabbed in the neck. So he remembers yelling a number of times, drop the knife, drop the knife. He claims that this struggle was very quick, but he says in the moment it felt like eternity.

• 7:08Speaker 05

  And then eventually he says he entered what he calls police mode. He got his police pistol out. He started saying again, drop the knife or I'll shoot. Eventually he says that he tried to push Jesse away from him and he says that he aimed for Mr Baird's shoulder in an attempt to disarm him. He said he was going for the right shoulder to make him drop the knife in the right hand. And he says that after that point, he aimed for the shoulder, he shot. He says Jesse was then using all his might after being shot to pull the gun towards himself. And this struggle seems to have continued according to his evidence.

• 7:51Speaker 05

  And he claims that Jesse Baird somehow lost his footing and fell to the floor. And both of them, he says, were sort of falling to the floor. That's when, according to his evidence, the gun was accidentally fired a second time and ended up injuring Jesse Baird in the head. He says that during that process of Jesse trying to yank the gun away from him, it was flung or went flying somehow into the lounge room area. And so this account that he has given Stocky is the reason why he says that he accepts responsibility for Jesse Baird's manslaughter. He says that he intentionally fired the first shot in self defence and the second one was an accident. And for that reason, he says this death was not caused intentionally.

• 8:37Speaker 05

  He says during this struggle, it was really a matter of his, his police training or police mode sort of kicking in.

• 8:43Stephen Stockwell?

  Hmm. And the way that Beau Lamar Condon has talked about kind of what happened after this struggle, you know, kind of being on the ground, basically with Jesse Baird. He doesn't seem to think it's actually that serious. He, you know, he sees a kind of blood on Jesse Baird's head, but he's thinking that, you know, maybe the bullet's just grazed him. How does he try and help?

• 9:06Speaker 05

  Well, he's told the court that he was feeling for a pulse. He says that he put Jesse Bed into the recovery position and was trying to get a response out of him and saying, you know, squeeze my hand if you can hear me or things like that. In court, he became quite emotional when he was talking about this part of what he says was the struggle. He was reaching for tissues in the witness box and looked like he was crying. And he says that there was a phone on the kitchen bench. And so he grabbed that, he started calling triple zero to get help. But then he remembers thinking that Paddington is actually quite close to a hospital. So he then thinks, maybe I can flag an ambulance down from the street. He heads towards the front door, according to his evidence.

• 9:48Speaker 05

  And that's the point that he told the court, that he then came across someone who he now knows that was Luke Davies. He says Luke Davies was holding the gun and must have picked it up from the living room area. He says that at this point, he still had the helmet on. And he says Luke Davies said something like, I'm going to effing shoot you. Again, Bola Marcondon says at this point, his police training sort of kicked in. And his memory of this is that before that happened, he was sort of lowering himself to show that he wasn't a threat. He remembers saying something like, don't shoot me. I'm not here to hurt you. You can take the gun and leave. Get out.

• 10:28Speaker 05

  Now, the wording of his evidence here is pretty important, Stocky, particularly that phrase, get out. He says that Luke Davies then said something else. And just a language wording ahead of this, he claims that Luke Davies was the one who said, fuck off. He says that Luke Davies' finger was on the trigger and he could see this. And he says that his police training kicked in. He says he went for a pivot point on Luke Davies' wrist to sort of turn the gun away. And in another struggle, he claims that Mr Davies shot himself in the head accidentally. He says the bullet exited out Mr Davies at the back of his head. And then it ended up getting lodged in the bedroom door behind.

• 11:11Speaker 05

  So he's saying that this happened in the hallway of the terrace. And he's also said in his evidence that during this struggle, somewhere the phone that he was trying to use to call triple zero dropped on the floor. And then afterwards, he noticed that it was smashed.

• 11:25Stephen Stockwell?

  Hmm. The version that Bola Marcondon has told is very different from the version that the Crown prosecutors have been telling throughout this trial. And we'll come to the questions that they asked Bola Marcondon later in this episode. I want to come to what happened after this shooting though, Jamie, because that's the shooting that you've just described there. Afterwards, Bola Marcondon says that he moved everything into the front bedroom so that the housemates of Jesse Bed wouldn't see it. So he moved Jesse Bed and Luke Davies' body into Jesse's bedroom. He moved all of the kind of belongings, cleaned the house up as best he could. But we also know that he, you know, took Jesse Bed and Luke Davies' bodies away from this house. He said he tried to sink them in a dam and eventually left them outside a Greek monastery, kind of two hours from Sydney.

• 12:09Stephen Stockwell?

  How does he explain all of those decisions and why he did that?

• 12:13Speaker 05

  Well, he was asked a number of times, why didn't you just go to police? And he said that in the subsequent days, he was having what he said felt like a moral dilemma, where he knew that it would be the right thing to do to go to police and tell them what happened. But he has also described a fear of being killed in prison because of him being a police officer. He said that he thought that might have happened, not because of who I am as a person, but because of the uniform I wear. And so even a couple of days into that week, he was saying, at the point where he had put Jesse and Luke's bodies into the surfboard bags and had them in the back of the white hire van, he was still driving around and still thinking

• 12:55Speaker 05

  that he should go to police and that was still something that he was considering doing. But he's described this as being this kind of moral dilemma. And he was also talking about in the aftermath, not being sure that this was real and wanting to sort of contact friends and make sure that this was actually a real situation. While he was in the house, he's also described some kind of out of body experience where he felt like he was watching what was happening as a third person, sort of from above. And so he was talking in those terms about sort of this out of body experience. But the main concerns in his evidence seem to be that if he went to prison

• 13:38Speaker 05

  and he was guilty of manslaughter, knowing that he was responsible for Jesse Bed's death, that he would be hurt or killed in prison. And so he described the idea of going to police as potentially being a death wish and said this question of do I go and hand myself in was very conflicting for him.

• 13:56Stephen Stockwell?

  Hmm. Interesting hearing, yeah, the way he has described that, all of the things that he was kind of thinking through. He says in the days following the deaths of Jesse Bed and Luke Davies. He was also quite emotional when talking about the second shot that was fired in the kitchen at Jesse Bed, going through his head and, you know, talking about how he was accepting responsibility for that and had tried to plead guilty for manslaughter, Jamie, as you mentioned. You know, we've talked on this podcast about what happened before the shooting in Brown Street. You know, the amount of time that Bola Marcondon spent outside that house. We know that he arrived quite early in the morning, kind of around six AM or so. And we know the shooting wasn't until, you know, kind of almost 10 AM that morning.

• 14:39Stephen Stockwell?

  And we heard from Bola Marcondon what he was doing in that time. And one of the things he said he was doing was that he was deciding if he was going to go into the house. He went to go get a coffee at one point. We have seen him dressed as an Uber Eats rider with the reflective jacket, the helmet, all of that. Is his story that he picked this up from kind of down the street while thinking about whether or not he was going to enter Jesse Bed's house?

• 15:03Speaker 05

  Yeah, so according to his evidence, he had been waiting outside the house. He saw the housemates leave, but he still wasn't sure whether Jesse Bed was inside the house. And so he went down to this nearby area, Five Ways in Paddington. He was going to go and get a coffee from there. But he says that's the point where he came across an unattended delivery, a food delivery motorbike with a helmet and a bag and some Hy-Vee's clothing and other clothing sort of with it. And it was either somebody who was making a delivery, he thought, or somebody who lived in the area who worked as a food delivery rider. And so he says that he wishes he didn't do this, but at the time, he decided to put that outfit on, including the helmet,

• 15:46Speaker 05

  because his intention was to go back to the house. And if Jesse Bed was home and answered the door, he would be able to just say, sorry, wrong address in a different voice. And that would avoid any kind of potential confrontation. His thinking, according to his evidence, was that Jesse Bed had told him he didn't want any further contact. There had been this breakup. And so he was concerned about an allegation of harassment from Mr Bed, having, you know, if he rocked up on his doorstep unannounced. He spoke about the potential for an AVO against him as well in those circumstances. And he said that he knows from his police work that DV and harassment is taken very seriously by police.

• 16:31Speaker 05

  And it doesn't really make a difference if it's an accusation even against a police officer. It's taken quite seriously. And so his concern, one of the main ones, was a potential AVO against him.

• 16:43Stephen Stockwell?

  Hmm. Is that also the reason that he said he wasn't comfortable kind of reaching out to Jesse Bed through kind of more traditional means, like a message or something like that, to ask to have these belongings back?

• 16:53Speaker 05

  Yeah, he did also bring that up when he was asked, why didn't you just get a friend or somebody else to approach Jesse or contact Jesse and help? And he said again, it was that issue of that might be seen as harassment, even if it was through a third party. But he also, in answering that question, said that he didn't know a lot of people who were friends with Jesse Bed. The Crown prosecutor, when he was cross-examining Mr Lamar Condon, went through a couple of friends and said, you could have used this person or that person. And he said, well, none of these people had spent any time with Jesse Bed and didn't know him.

• 17:28Stephen Stockwell?

  Hmm. Bola Marcondon, at times, very emotional, giving his evidence. He was talking about the impact that policing had had on his mental health, about bullying in the police force, and also about how he had made attempts on his own life previously. He talked a lot about suicidal thoughts that he was having around this time. Is this why he says he had his gun?

• 17:51Speaker 05

  He says that he had his gun on him because he was transferring it between stations. And we've heard evidence too, Stocky, about these user pays shifts, these optional shifts that police can take on above their normal duties. And they have certain ways that they are meant to sort of transfer the pistols between the home station and a station that might be closer to where they live. But he also did talk about what he says were previous suicide attempts. And he said that this visit to the national park that we've heard about in around early February with the friend, he said that he was firing his gun there as a way to see if anyone

• 18:33Speaker 05

  would hear the gunshots from a nearby suburb if he was to go there and die by suicide with his police gun. He's claimed that this was also something that was on his mind during his Bali holiday over the New Year's period. We've heard that he made searches during that trip for a silencer. And he says that that was because he was thinking about shooting himself in Uluwatu. And another thing on his mind was the trauma that can be inflicted on another person if they happen to find someone who has died by suicide. He's spoken about colleagues who have died by suicide before and knowing how that deeply impacted him. And so he's mentioned a number of times in his evidence

• 19:14Speaker 05

  that he didn't want someone to find him if he did end up dying by suicide. He's also said that the night before he went to the Brown Street terrace, he spoke with his mother about his mental health and how much it had deteriorated and these steps he was taking towards planning to die by suicide. And his plan was, according to his evidence, to go there to Mr Bed's house to get his stuff and then go to work and put in a form to go on stress leave. He says he wanted to also go for a surf because that is something that he finds quite calming and going in the ocean sort of helps his mental health. He says that's why he wanted to go there and get his surfboard.

• 19:57Speaker 05

  And when he was talking about his plans for this day and, you know, going to Jesse's house to get his stuff and then putting the form in to go on leave and fixing his mental health, he said it was just going to be a normal day.

• 20:11Stephen Stockwell?

  Jamie, we've had a different version of the alleged break in in August 2023. This is another charge that Bola Markcondon is facing in this trial that he broken entered into Jesse Baird's house in in August 2023. On his account, as he was giving evidence, Jesse Baird was expecting him that night.

• 20:32Speaker 05

  Yeah, so he's told the court that this was at a point after their initial parting of ways, when Jesse said that he wasn't ready for a relationship. But things seemed to have started back up somewhat by August of 2023. And so they were in contact, Jesse said, you know, if you want to come over, I'll leave a key in the letterbox. Their plan, according to him, was to go for an early morning run the next morning, like they used to. So according to Bola Markcondon, he went there, but he wanted to see whether Jesse Baird was in a relationship with anybody else before he potentially started a sexual relationship with him. And so he says he used the key from the letterbox to get in. He admitted that he did also jam a bobby pin in the lock of the door,

• 21:16Speaker 05

  but he denied that that was to make it look like a break in if police ended up investigating. So his intention, according to his evidence, was to go through Jesse's phone and check that there was no other relationship. He says he went into the bedroom, he picked up Jesse's wallet and phone, but he dropped a charger. And according to him, that's when Jesse Baird woke up. And just a language warning again here, he claims that Mr Baird, when he woke up, said, let's go cunt, you're lucky I don't have a bat or a knife with me, and then chased him out of the terrace. Mr Lamarcondon says, while he was being chased, he sort of threw the wallet and the phone back

• 21:59Speaker 05

  towards Mr Baird, and he claims that the phone went down a drain. But according to his evidence, Jesse Baird didn't realise who it was that night.

• 22:09Stephen Stockwell?

  We're getting quite a bit of detail, I've noticed, from Bola Markcondon as he is talking through all of this as well. Often answering questions he wasn't asked, talking very, very quickly. And that's something that's earned him a few words from Justice Natalie Adams, the judge overseeing this trial. What did she say?

• 22:28Speaker 05

  Well, there was a couple of points during his first full day of cross examination where Justice Adams stepped in in front of the jury and gave him a reminder that he was required to confine his answers to the specific questions that the Crown has been asking. And she did that on my count three different times on Monday. And she said on one of those occasions that actually a lot of your answers are submission points. And no doubt, your defence counsel will be making those kind of points to the jury during the closing addresses. Also, apart from the reminders about sticking to the specific question, he's received multiple reminders about just slowing down as he's giving evidence.

• 23:11Speaker 05

  There was, on his first day giving evidence, there were eight or nine reminders by my count for him to slow down. The majority of those came from his own barrister, John Stratton S C. But there was also one from the actual court transcriber, who is keeping a transcript and making sure every word is on the record. That person at one point said, please slow down. There are a couple more of those reminders on Friday, again, as he was giving evidence and then being cross examined. And when he's given those reminders about slowing down, his answer in some of them is along the lines of, sorry, I don't realise how quickly I'm talking.

• 23:51Stephen Stockwell?

  Yeah, it's certainly been a busy few days for our hands, Jamie. So we've been trying to capture every moment of this evidence. I will say the prevalence of little red squiggly lines, as I've not spelt a word correctly, has increased dramatically. So I'm trying to capture all of the evidence in my notes. I want to spend a bit of time talking about the cross examination by the Crown barrister. This started with the Crown barrister kind of talking through or asking Bola Markcondon quite specifically how long he spent kind of moving through the house on his way to the kitchen, how long he spent upstairs, how long he spent in the hallway, all of those things. And then talking about how Jesse Baird was shot by Bola Markcondon. Because on the Crown case, Jesse Baird was shot through the back and the bullet came out through his jaw, through his mouth.

• 24:35Stephen Stockwell?

  What did Bola Markcondon say about where he shot Jesse Baird?

• 24:40Speaker 05

  Well, in his evidence, he claims that it was front on. He said he saw his shoulder go back. And he says that he was aiming for the right shoulder because he didn't want to kill Jesse Baird. And that would be instead of, as per his training, they're trained to go for what Bola Markcondon called the centre body mass. But he wanted to disarm Jesse and not kill him. And when he was talking about his state of mind at this time, he said, I was of clear mind. I will say right now, the first shot into Jesse's right shoulder was the right move and I stand by it. So he's quite adamant that he made the right decision there. He says, all I wanted to do was get Jesse to drop the knife, I made the right call.

• 25:23Speaker 05

  And he actually said, Stocky, if I didn't make that call, Mr Crown, you'd be sitting here today interrogating Mr Baird. So he's spoken a number of times about this risk, as he saw it, of being stabbed with the knife that he says Jesse Baird was holding and the potential for things to have panned out quite differently. He was asked by the Crown prosecutor, Brett Hatfield S C, are you sure you didn't shoot him in the back? And he replied, I did not shoot Jesse Baird in the back, that's not accurate, that's not the truth. So he's quite firmly rejected the Crown's version of what happened inside Brown Street.

• 26:00Stephen Stockwell?

  On Bola Markcondon's version, you know, Jesse Baird ends up on his back on the ground, I think, in the kitchen. Bola Markcondon doesn't notice any injury to his face at that time?

• 26:11Speaker 05

  No, he says he didn't. And when he was answering that question, he said this was again in seconds, again, talking about how quickly the struggle seems to have happened on his evidence. He said that I wasn't looking at his face, I was worried about the firearm. I was not observing anything in detail about Jesse's face or his body. So again, he's talked about how quickly this whole thing seems to have unfolded in a matter of seconds.

• 26:36Stephen Stockwell?

  The Crown has challenged his account, though, very different to the version that the Crown is putting forward in their case. Crown barrister suggesting that Bola Markcondon intentionally shot Jesse Baird from close range, executing him, in their words. How did Bola Markcondon respond to that?

• 26:52Speaker 05

  He said that he never executed Jesse Baird. And he also said that he didn't intentionally discharge the weapon the second time. So again, the Crown version has been put squarely to him and he has insisted that his evidence is what happened.

• 27:07Stephen Stockwell?

  Okay. Another key difference in Bola Markcondon's version to the Crown case is that, you know, on the Crown case, Bola Markcondon shot Luke Davies through Jesse Baird's bedroom door. On Bola Markcondon's version, there's a struggle in the hallway and the bullet is lodged in the door after Luke Davies accidentally shoots himself. What questions did the Crown have about Bola Markcondon's version there?

• 27:33Speaker 05

  Well, a lot of them seem to centre around the triple zero call that we've heard. We've had audio of this pretty brief call to emergency services. And now on the Crown's case, it was Luke Davies who made that phone call from his own mobile. And the Crown says that he was in the bedroom at the time, trying to call for help, when he was allegedly shot through the door from the other side of the door, the hallway.

• 27:54Stephen Stockwell?

  And Jamie, I want to play that audio, but I do also want to warn people before we do. This is the audio of the triple zero call. And if you don't want to hear this, just jump ahead 10, 15 seconds and you'll be past it.

• 28:28Speaker 05

  So that's the triple zero call. And that sort of may explain to people why he got so many questions about the audio and that call in particular. The Crown has pointed to the stippling marks on the hallway side of the door to support the allegation that the bullet went from one side of the door through the other and fatally injured Mr Davies. Now, the Crown has said that it was Luke Davies who, in that very brief emergency phone call, and just a language warning again here, they've said that it was Luke Davies who said the phrase, get out, fuck off. And this is where the phrases that I was explaining before, Stocky, became quite important. That call was played a couple more times during the cross examination.

• 29:11Speaker 05

  And the accused has insisted that he was the one who said, get out, in the context of saying, you can take the gun, just take it and leave, get out. And then it was Luke Davies who said, fuck off. So that's a key difference in their evidence. And that's why that phone call was played a few more times, so the jury could hear, you know, the volume of those two different phrases and decide, is it the same person? Do they think, or is it possibly a different person? Bola Markcondon was also asked about the stippling marks on the door. And he said that he didn't notice them at the time. He said he cleaned blood from the floor, including in the hallway, and that he had to retrieve the bullet, which he says was lodged in the bedroom door.

• 29:56Speaker 05

  He says he used a screwdriver to sort of get that out.

• 30:01Stephen Stockwell?

  It's interesting, yeah, the way that these questions have been asked and also how Bola Marcondon has been answering them. Jamie, you mentioned earlier, the kind of, I mean, it's the way that it was described by Justice Natalie Adams was the submissions that Bola Marcondon was making, these kind of, you know, points highlighting parts that, bits of evidence, I guess, that he says the Crown wasn't presenting, you know, you didn't call this person, you should have presented this, I noticed you didn't play this thing here, as you've highlighted that. And did the Crown kind of call him on that and say that he can call up his own witnesses?

• 30:31Speaker 05

  Yeah, he did. Mr Hatfield actually said, you can call whatever witnesses in the defence case that you want. But this was kind of the point where things started to get a bit more tense between the accused and the prosecutor. There was one point where he was getting a couple of questions about what he says was his plan to die by suicide in the lead up to these deaths. And something he told his friend who visited him while he was in custody in December, he spoke about his, his mental health in that meeting. And he says something about having a million dollar mortgage and questioning, what was I meant to do? Or what would I do if I had no money? So Mr Hatfield was really querying

• 31:12Speaker 05

  this evidence. And the accused was also claiming in his evidence that he was hearing rumours about a sergeant that he'd previously had issues with potentially returning to work with him at youth command. Mr Hatfield was querying that account and saying, you know, you've, you've given this false story about your plans to die by suicide. And you've made up these bullying allegations to get sympathy. And that was sort of the lead up when Bola Marcondon started almost having a go back at the Crown and saying, well, you've got witnesses who could speak to these kind of things, but you've hidden these weaknesses from the jury. And that's when Mr Hatfield stepped back in and said, well, you can call

• 31:55Speaker 05

  whatever witnesses you want in your defence case. There were other points where things got a little bit tense. There was one moment, I remember where Mr Lamar Condon accused Mr Hatfield of putting words in his mouth. He's accused them of, at one point, he said they, they hadn't run a fair investigation and there were more steps they could have done to do with, for example, his mother's vehicle and the issue of whether or not it was in for servicing. He's pointed out steps that they should have taken. For example, he says they should have looked at the phone location data from his mother's phone or done a subpoena to, to that effect. So there's certainly been points where he has sort of criticised the Crown investigation and the Crown's case quite strongly.

• 32:41Stephen Stockwell?

  What's Bola Marcondon been wearing?

• 32:44Speaker 05

  So each day he's wearing a grey jacket, a white shirt and a black tie. And he's just sitting there, sort of sometimes swiveling on his chair, sometimes reaching for tissues and things like that.

• 32:55Stephen Stockwell?

  I noticed a kind of clear G-Shock style watch on his right wrist. And also, he's been at times holding something in his right hand. It looked like a kind of string of rosary beads. Is that what it looked like to you?

• 33:09Speaker 05

  Yeah, they are rosary beads. And these were actually referred to in the cross examination. So when he was asked by Mr Hatfield to stand up and demonstrate what he says was this struggle with Jesse Baird and the position of, you know, one person's arm compared to the other person's arm, Mr Hatfield actually said to him, just put your rosary beads down while you do that. So he has also made mention at times, Stocky, of his faith or of God in his answers. For example, in relation to the, the decision that he took to eventually hand himself into police, he said he just had to trust in God and do the right thing. And also at another point, when it was put to him by the Crown

• 33:52Speaker 05

  that you weren't suicidal, you were homicidal, he denied that. He denied that what was on his mind was Jesse Baird's rejection of him. And he replied to that line of questioning, I never had a thought or intention to kill Jesse Baird. God sees everything. God knows my intentions. And that was not one of them.

• 34:11Stephen Stockwell?

  We are getting so many questions sent through to [email protected]. I really enjoy hearing from you, all of your emails, questions, insights and all of that. Been taking up plenty of my time, but it is a very enjoyable way to spend some time. I want to start with one from Catherine, Jamie. Catherine's emailed and she's wondering why the bullets in Bola Marcondon's gun were changed from the standard issue police ones?

• 34:35Speaker 05

  So in his evidence, he says that he took training rounds from Miranda Police Station. He's denied that he stole them from the police training shoots that we know that he did in January 2024. He says he took them from Miranda Police Station and he put them in the gun ahead of his trip to the Royal National Park, which he says was part of these steps he was taking to plan to die by suicide and wanting to go there to make sure that if he did fire a gun in that park area, that no one from a nearby suburb would hear. It was put to him pretty squarely that he stole the training bullets from that training shoot. And he denied that. And he actually said, if you

• 35:16Speaker 05

  were going to murder someone, you would use operational rounds and not training rounds.

• 35:21Stephen Stockwell?

  Yeah. Thank you, Jamie. Thank you, Catherine, for sending that email through to [email protected]. Couple of people have asked Jamie, Ainsley and Amanda, they're both wondering whether Bola Marcondon has any family or people supporting him in court?

• 35:37Speaker 05

  Yeah, he does. And he actually pointed this out in his evidence in chief. He mentioned quite specifically a friend called Jodie. And he pointed out that she's sitting there in the public gallery, wearing a blue top. So have there, there have been previous mentions, I went back and had a look through my notes, Stocky, there have been previous mentions of a friend called Jodie. But they have been somewhat passing mentions, for example, in that recorded visit where his friend visited him in custody, they mentioned one of his friends called Jodie at that point. So I'm not 100% on the, the connection there or how Jodie might come into it. But he does have some people in court supporting him.

• 36:20Stephen Stockwell?

  Yeah. Thank you, Jamie. Thank you, Ainsley and Amanda, for getting in touch with that question. Lovely to hear from you. And final one here, Jamie, from Colin in South Australia. Have there been any reactions from Jesse and Luke's family in the gallery to the evidence of Bola Marcondon?

• 36:35Speaker 05

  Well, they're sort of sitting in the centre part of the public gallery and they're facing forward. So I haven't really noticed a lot of obvious reactions because I'm sort of more behind them. But they've certainly been attending most days when, or almost all days when Mr Lamar Condon's been in the box. We've seen Luke's mum and Jesse's mum and dad, and I think Jesse's sister there as well. So they are still going to court to watch this unfold.

• 37:01Stephen Stockwell?

  Thank you, Jamie. And thank you, Colin in South Australia, for sending that email through to [email protected]. If there's anything that we can answer for you, please send us an email. [email protected] is where you can reach us. We do read all of them, really enjoy getting all your emails. And if there's any questions you've got that, you know, stopping you engaging with this trial in the way that you would like to, please get in touch. Any reflections as well or thoughts? If we can't answer it in, in this period of the trial, we'll be answering it at the end of the trial. So please do get in touch. Jamie, what's happening in court next?

• 37:35Speaker 05

  Well, Mr Lamar Condon will face another day of cross examination. It's going to be his, his second full day of cross examination. And as we've talked about, Stocky, there have already been some moments between the Crown and the accused that seem to be getting a bit tense. He's saying things in his answers sometimes, like, I'd like to remind you, Mr Crown, of this or that. So things are going to be interesting as they keep progressing. And he keeps being cross examined.

• 38:03Stephen Stockwell?

  Yeah. Plenty to talk about in our episode on Thursday this week, Jamie. Thank you so much for, for joining us for this one.

• 38:09Speaker 05

  No worries.

• 38:10Stephen Stockwell?

  We'll be back in your feed on Thursday. Make sure you get yourself around the ABC Listener. It's the best place to listen to episodes of The Case Of. You can also watch them there as well. If you are following us on a different platform, something like YouTube, a third party podcast platform, just follow us there, leave us a rating or a review, because those little actions make it much easier for people to find us.

• 38:34Stephen Stockwell?

  The Case of Jesse and Luke is produced by ABC Audio Studios and ABC News. This episode was reported by Jamie McKinnell and presented by me, Stephen Stockwell. Our supervising producer is Greg Muller and our executive producer is Claire Rollinson. This episode was produced on the land of the Gadigal and we're Ura people.