Pod Insights The Case Of 16 Jesse & Luke | Accused admits giving 'inaccurate' evidence About this episode Beau Lamarre-Condon has been questioned about his access to Jesse Baird's mobile phone, as part of a series of events the prosecution says show he was stalking the victim.
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0:46 Speaker 04 As Bowlem Arcondon gives evidence, the prosecution has challenged the depth of his relationship with Jessie Baird, leading the defendant to admissions of inaccurate evidence. I'm Stephen Stockwell, welcome to episode 16 of the case of Jessie and Luke.
1:01 Speaker 05 He's accused of shooting Jessie Baird and Luke Davies with his service firearm.
1:06 Speaker 03 Police now allege Constable Bowlem Arcondon murdered the couple at a home in Paddington.
1:11 Speaker 06 This is just a terrible incident that's occurred here, the loss of these two young men.
1:18 Speaker 07 Now this is Mardi Gras time and yet it's a community in mourning. 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.
1:29 Speaker 04 I have never seen a witness correct their story in the way that I have seen it happen in the last few days. And this has come as the Crown has received denials from Bowlem Arcondon when asking him whether or not he has been stalking Jessie Baird. There in court throughout all of this is the ABC's Legal Affairs reporter, Jamie McKinnon. Welcome, Jamie.
1:48 Speaker 05 Hello, Stocky.
1:49 Speaker 04 Plenty of corrections and clarifications from Bowlem Arcondon over the last couple of days.
1:54 Speaker 05 Yeah, there have been, but he's also been saying that he's trying to remember things that happened years ago. And he's trying to remember them based on text message or social media communication that he had with Jessie Baird. So he's insisted that sometimes he's not sure about the exact date of something in the timeline, but he is trying his best to remember.
2:12 Speaker 04 Hmm. Yeah, we'll kind of run through a few of those examples in this episode today. Can you quickly take us through the last couple of days?
2:19 Speaker 05 Yeah, sure. So Bowlem Arcondon has denied under cross-examination that he was obsessed with Jessie Baird. He says that he was smitten but not obsessed. And he insists that their first breakup was amicable and they stayed in contact before a sexual relationship was restarted around the middle or towards the end of 2023. He has denied that he was stalking Jessie Baird, including by using Snapchat location services to monitor his live location and engineering chance encounters and had tried to get himself back into Jessie's life despite a message from Jessie in the middle of the year that the Crown has described as a humiliating blow or rejection of his advances.
3:02 Speaker 05 The Crown has been spending a lot of time revisiting text messages and social media messages between both Mr Baird and Mr Arcondon and the accused and his friends or confidants to explore exactly what was this connection between them at different times in the relevant events. He's said several times that he can't be completely sure about some dates and admitted that he has previously given inaccurate evidence about something, but he says it was an honest mistake. He's also received a few more reminders from the judge, not only to answer the Crown's specific question, but also to not tell the Crown what to do and not say what the Crown must be thinking.
3:47 Speaker 04 Thank you, Jamie. Appreciate the wrap up. I do want to spend a bit of time talking about the relationship between Bowlem Arcondon and Jessie Baird. That's been the focus of the last few days. Bowlem Arcondon says, you know, these two men were hanging out quite a lot through the kind of the start of 2023, four to five times a week on his evidence. And he was taken to a number of times where there was a key left out, if he had a key, how he was accessing the house. And on his evidence, it didn't seem, you know, on the evidence that was presented, rather I should say, it didn't seem as though there were really that many opportunities for Bowlem Arcondon and Jessie Baird to be spending time together. What did we learn about how much they were seeing of each other?
4:27 Speaker 05 Well, we've heard that they met at Universal, which is a club on Oxford Street in Sydney. It was in October 2022. He says that they met up a couple of times as sexual encounters, but they didn't start romantically dating until sometime in December 2022. He says they'd met up in October and November, but that's when it sort of turned into going on romantic dates. He was telling friends in messages that are before the court, things like, it sounds crazy, I love him. And in court, when he was testifying, he said he meant that I have a lot of love for him. He says in his evidence that by January 2023, it was the beginning of a relationship with Jessie Baird.
5:08 Speaker 05 And Brett Hatfield, SE, the Crown prosecutor, put to the accused, you're obsessed with Jessie Baird right from the start. And he rejected that. He said he was smitten, not obsessed. We heard that Jessie Baird went to Europe for most of the month of February and a little bit of March. We went back to that farm stay video that the jury has previously seen. And that's an edited video that Mr. Arcondon made of him and Jessie Baird on a sort of glamping getaway. He agrees that happened on the 11th to the 13th of March 2023. And the Crown said this video was sort of suggesting inaccurately that it was some kind of idyllic relationship.
5:48 Speaker 05 Mr. Arcondon agreed that it could possibly suggest that, but he said it was a romantic, although non-exclusive relationship at that point. But during this trip, the farm stay trip, he admits that he invaded Jessie Baird's privacy by going through his phone and unfollowing what he says were two or three people from his social media. He says that happened while Jessie was in the shower. So he was asked a lot of questions about that. He said, I wouldn't say it was a breach of trust because he gave me his phone on that night, but I do agree it was wrong. He said that curiosity just got the best of me. And then we heard that after these different meetings in that initial period, things ended between them on the 17th of April
6:32 Speaker 05 because Jessie wasn't ready for a relationship, although the accused is insisting that he was the one who cut things off that first time.
6:40 Speaker 04 Jamie, I want to talk about the moment around April where Bowlem Arcondon and Jessie Baird split sort of for the first time. And so this comes on Bowlem Arcondon's evidence after a dinner he has with a friend. So he says that him and Jessie Baird go out to dinner with a friend of Bowlem Arcondon's. She goes off to the football with her partner, Jessie Baird and Bowlem Arcondon go to an escape room, spend the evening there. And then they return to Jessie Baird's home later that night. And Bowlem Arcondon says while Jessie's having a shower, he has given him his phone to go through and make a video. So Bowlem Arcondon is on Jessie Baird's phone, he says, editing a video from them at the escape room.
7:22 Speaker 04 And he sees an Instagram message pop up and he just clicks on the notification at the top of the screen, according to the evidence he gave, and scrolls through and sees a message from someone that appears to be in a relationship with Jessie Baird. And Bowlem Arcondon, we've seen this in evidence, he has taken a photo of this message with his phone. So I have Jessie Baird's phone in his hand and he has sent that to a number of his friends. And there's something in that photo that the Crown pointed to, to challenge the story of Bowlem Arcondon. What was that?
7:54 Speaker 05 Well, it was the time on Jessie Baird's phone, as it was shown in this photo. The time in the top corner of the phone said 5.16pm. So the Crown was asking him questions about that. That must have been before dinner. And after that time in the photo was pointed out, Bowlem Arcondon replied, okay, that wasn't an intentional lie. I just remember I was on the phone. And Mr. Hatfield then accused him of blatantly lying to the jury. And he then said, maybe he had the phone to book the escape room rather than edit the video after the visit to the escape room. He insisted that it wasn't a lie, that he had just remembered having the phone for some reason.
8:34 Speaker 05 And he said that Jessie Baird had given him the phone with consent, but he just didn't know that Mr. Arcondon was going to go through it. He sent that photo, as you said, Stocky, of the message to multiple friends who he was sort of getting advice off about the situation because in it, the other man who was messaging Jessie was asking him, what's the situation? And then Jessie Baird had referred to what was going on between him and the accused as something casual. And this is at a point where in the cross-examination, Bowlem Arcondon concedes that he himself was also messaging other people. He wasn't sure if it was from a dating app that he was messaging those other people, but he insists they were not just casually seeing each other from time to time, as the Crown put it.
9:20 Speaker 04 Yep. Okay. And so that's the moment that led to the first breakup. Bowlem Arcondon saying he sees this message, he's, you know, uncomfortable and leaves Jessie Baird's house that night after going to dinner in the escape room. They stopped seeing each other after that point and the Crown challenged Bola Marcondon on whether, you know, following that breakup, he was stalking Jesse Baird. What, what moments and things were they pointing to?
9:46 Speaker 05 Well, one of the things they've used to suggest that that was the case was the evidence of a friend at the time of Bola Marcondon, Georgia Cook. So in 2023, they were kind of close. Ms. Cook has told the court that Mr. Marcondon told her, there was a time where the accused told her that he had seen Jesse Baird while watching over his back fence, taking photos of other people with a Polaroid camera that Mr. Marcondon had previously bought so that they could use it on their adventures together. According to Georgia Cook, he had kept watching, saw Mr. Baird leave his key somewhere and then broken into the house, stolen the camera and also ate an Easter egg of Mr. Baird's. On Bola Marcondon's
10:29 Speaker 05 evidence, there was a time where he went into Mr. Baird's home, but he says it was to retrieve some possessions and it was because Jesse Baird had said, swing by any time to come and get your stuff. He says that this, there was an occasion where he went back to retrieve the camera that he saw as his, having paid for it. He also admitted that he did eat an Easter egg that was in the house, but he says that Jesse had given him permission to come and get his belongings, which included clothing. He was asked under cross-examination, what clothing are you talking about? And he said it was just clothing that he must have left there because he was staying at Jesse's house prior to that. He said this occasion where he retrieved those things was somewhere in late April or early
11:13 Speaker 05 May. And he has denied a couple of things that Georgia Cook told the court. She told the court that she was told he'd gone into Jesse's home more than once. He's denied that. He's also denied her account that she was told he drove his mum's car on these occasions so that he wouldn't be recognised. He's also denied her account that he was wearing a black hoodie when he did this and he told her that. He's denied all of those things that Georgia Cook said in her own evidence.
11:46 Speaker 04 Yeah. There's another, you know, piece of evidence that we've heard previously in the trial that Bola Marcondon watched Jesse Baird having sex with other men through his window. Now, that is something that Bola Marcondon has denied. He said that did happen on one occasion. It's when he was trying to go back to the house to collect the belongings that he left there around the time of that April split. And he says he saw someone, you know, through the window, it shocked him and then he left quickly after that. But on the, you know, the version of him going back to collect items from Jesse Baird's house, he said at one point, there are, you know, I had some clothes there. I was planning on spending the weekend with him as I had done before. This was something else that the Crown challenged him on though. How did they do that?
12:30 Speaker 05 Well, Mr. Hatfield suggested to him that wasn't Jesse Baird flying to Adelaide the next day for an AFL match. And Mr. Marcondon agreed that that was around the time that that flight was organised. But he still insisted that he had clothing with him because he was intending to stay. And he said that clothing would have included things like gym gear because they had a plan to go running in the morning. So the Crown put to him that he would have had no reason to leave anything there at Mr. Baird's house. And he insisted that that was incorrect.
13:03 Speaker 04 Hmm. Yeah. There's another moment that Bola Marcondon admitted to giving, you know, inaccurate evidence or correcting the evidence that he had given previously in the trial. And this was on when the sexual relationship with Jesse Baird resumed following this split in April. Now, we heard in evidence from Bola Marcondon last week that they started having sex again around, I think it was June 2023, following Bola Marcondon's birthday. What did Bola Marcondon change that to?
13:35 Speaker 05 Well, he sort of went back on that a little bit and said that they actually started having more sexual encounters from later in the year 2023. And it was around late August or September, according to what he's revised his evidence to. So that's when he says, again, they had been in communication, but it started to become more. He says his previous evidence that, that it happened after his birthday in June was inaccurate and that they were just friends, but it was not sexual. He said, I wasn't accurate with the dates, but it did still occur after my birthday. And he told the court, it was just an honest mistake. It's very hard to count how many times you've had sex with
14:16 Speaker 05 someone and when that stopped and started. So after that change to his evidence, the Crown put to him, well, the date you resumed a sexual relationship with someone is not something you would make a mistake about if you were giving truthful evidence. Do you agree or disagree? And he disagreed with that and has insisted that this was just an honest mistake and it wasn't any attempt to give false evidence deliberately.
14:39 Speaker 04 Yeah. Jamie, I found the way that the exhibits have been presented is really interesting. You know, during this cross-examination, you have the Crown asking Bola Marcondon, basically, you know, what happened in your version of the story, what's unfolded here. And then they'll be presenting exhibits. And so they'll be referring to exhibits that have intended previously or in some instances, new exhibits that they're bringing up the first time. And one of the moments that stuck out to me was around the August alleged break and enter that Bola Marcondon is also charged with in this trial. And Bola Marcondon is saying that he was invited around to Jesse Baird's house that evening. Jesse Baird was, you know, watching some videos, reviewing some AFL tapes and said, look, come over later if you're free. I'll leave a key in the letterbox for you. What did we see presented around this?
15:24 Speaker 05 Well, the jury has already been shown messages between Jesse Baird and Mr. Marcondon before the alleged break in, where he asked for a catch up with Jesse Baird and Jesse Baird replied with something along the lines of, good to see you too. Glad you had fun in Euro. And that's the message that the Crown has characterised as a humiliating blow and a strong rejection of his advance, his request for a proper catch up. Bola Marcondon didn't agree that it was humiliating. He insists there was a later invitation for him to come over. But on Wednesday this week, the Crown tendered more evidence that showed
16:04 Speaker 05 the other part of that conversation that followed Jesse Baird's reply where he said, you know, good to see you too, but didn't seem to respond to the request for a catch up. And that next reply was from Mr. Marcondon. And in that message, he said, I'll take that as a no to doing a catch up then. So the Crown put to him, well, that shows there was no invitation at all, was there, Mr. Lamar? But he then insisted, no, there was. And he said, what this newly tendered material does not show is other forms of communication. He said, a lot of the time they had FaceTime calls or social media messages between them.
16:46 Speaker 05 This was evidence of iMessages or text messages. But he insisted there was an invitation, but it must have been made through some other form of communication.
16:55 Speaker 04 Yeah. Okay. I mean, speaking of different mediums on the phone, Jamie, we've heard previously in this trial that Bola Marcondon, when accessing Jesse Baird's phone, had turned on his Snapchat location and used that to track him effectively, was the evidence that we'd heard from previous witnesses. How's Bola Marcondon responded to that suggestion and questions about that from the Crown?
17:20 Speaker 05 Well, he's denied every time that's been put to him that he was using Snapchat to live monitor Jesse Baird's location. But one of the times that Crown has been pointing to this was again, in the lead up to that August 17 alleged break and enter, in relation to messages from the woman known as Elizabeth Kennedy in these proceedings. So we've heard that Bola Marcondon did end up running into Jesse Baird on the 15th of August, so a couple of days before the alleged break in. He said to Elizabeth Kennedy, on the morning of what ended up being the day he bumped into Jesse Baird, I'm going to run into old mate today. So the Crown put to him, well, you didn't say you hoped to run into him.
18:00 Speaker 05 You say you were going to run into him. And Bola Marcondon, in his evidence, said, well, that was just wishful thinking in that, that sort of phrasing of the message. Later in the day, when Jesse Baird and Bola Marcondon had sort of run into each other, Elizabeth Kennedy messaged again and asked him, how was it? Was it sus at all? Or did you make it look like a complete coincidence? And the accused replied to her, not sus at all. So in court, he was asked, well, why would you say something like that? And he replied, just in relation to when you run into someone, you're not going to make it obvious that you wanted to see them. The Crown put to him that this reflects that you were stalking him and monitoring his location. And that was one of the times where Mr. Marcondon
18:45 Speaker 05 disagreed with that and said he wasn't stalking Jesse Baird.
18:50 Speaker 04 The way that we're kind of seeing so much of this come through is in screenshots of text messages or text message receipts, Jamie, or like, yeah, kind of spreadsheets with messages between people in them that have been kind of tendered as exhibits. Something, though, that's been happening, as Bo Lamar Condon was giving evidence, certainly in his evidence in chief, was that the defence was tendering exhibits of screenshots that, you know, sometimes showed an Instagram message, sometimes showed a text message, and, you know, these were being used by Bo Lamar Condon and his barrister to show the relationship between Jessie Baird and Bo Lamar Condon. The Crown has been asking a lot of questions about them, kind of asking Bo Lamar Condon, where do these come from, who took these screenshots, when were these screenshots taken? Are they kind of trying to work out if Bo Lamar Condon, while in custody, has access
19:35 Speaker 04 to his phone or his messages somehow?
19:38 Speaker 05 Yeah, he did get a few questions along those lines, and he has told the court that there was a friend or a relative who helped send on screenshots to his defence team. So this is after he has been arrested and he's in custody. He was asked, after your arrest, do you still have access to a phone or iCloud account, which means that you can take those kind of screenshots, or someone can take them for you? And he said that, at one point, I did get my family members to go through my iCloud and send photos to my legal team, but we've now been completely locked out. So on that evidence, it sounds like there was a point where there was some level of access that ended up making its way to the defence team, and some of those messages
20:23 Speaker 05 have been tendered by the defence team. And the Crown is now asking questions about how much access was there and where have these come from?
20:31 Speaker 04 All of the evidence we've been hearing over the last couple of days, all this cross-examination about the relationship between Jessie Baird and Bo Lamar Condon, has kind of taken us to August 2023, around the point where Bo Lamar Condon says this relationship resumed for a second time. We yet to get to any kind of questions about the second breakup that occurred in, that occurred later in 2023, though, aren't we?
20:51 Speaker 05 Yeah, so it seems like the Crown has been going through sort of chronologically now the timeline of different relevant events, but we've, we've sort of got up to the August period, and then it seems logical that they will continue down that sort of chronological line of questioning about different things along the timeline.
21:10 Speaker 04 Yeah. You know, we talked in our last episode about the manner of Bo Lamar Condon giving this evidence. He is continuing to receive sort of reminders from Her Honour Natalie Adams about how he should be answering the questions he's being asked.
21:24 Speaker 05 Yeah, he has. There have been multiple reminders to focus on the specific question. A few times in his evidence, though, while we're going through these things like screenshots or messages or social media communication, he has been saying things in response along the lines of, well, the full context needs to be shown here, a message thread should be, you know, shown before, or he wants to read the messages that happened before for the context. And so this happened at one point this week, when the Crown was taking him through a particular message, and he was, you know, trying to gather the context around it. And the judge said, Mr Lamar Condon, everyone can see what a particular message says.
22:07 Speaker 05 She assured him that you're not going to be tricked here. And she also said, please don't tell Mr Crown what to do, he's conducting the cross-examination. At another point, this was on Wednesday this week, he was being asked about the timeline of something broadly to do with when he gave Jessie a shirt for Christmas and how that shirt appeared in Jessie Baird's profile or avatar on a message thread. And Bo Lamar Condon began his answers to one of those questions by saying, you seem to be a bit confused, to the Crown prosecutor. And again, Justice Adams stepped in and said, Mr Lamar, please don't comment about what the Crown must be thinking or doing, just answer the question.
22:48 Speaker 05 So he is receiving reminders along those lines where it seems like the judge feels that's appropriate.
22:54 Speaker 04 Yeah. Bo Lamar Condon's now been giving evidence for, I think, three or four days, I think four days would have been yesterday, in the, in the witness box. I did notice that he appeared to be wearing the same thing for the first three of those days, but yesterday, a different shirt, a black or a dark blue with vertical white stripes. Is it the same jacket and tie, though?
23:15 Speaker 05 I think it may be the same jacket and tie, but yeah, you're right, there is, there's a different shirt that's sort of vertical white stripes, and it seems like the same jacket, but there has been a change of shirt.
23:27 Speaker 04 Yeah, thank you, Jamie. And, you know, we kind of got through a bit of evidence yesterday morning, but a lot of yesterday was taken up with legal argument.
23:34 Speaker 05 Yeah, so the jury was basically told by the judge that an issue had arisen unexpectedly. She told them that sometimes these things happen in trials, and that it was going to take more time to resolve than anticipated. So the jurors are aware that there's some legal argument happening, but beyond that, we can't really explain what else is going on.
23:57 Speaker 04 Yeah, okay. Thank you, Jamie. I want to spend a bit of time diving into some questions being sent through to thecaseofatabc.net.au. Really appreciate hearing from you, and there's some wonderful questions coming through, Jamie. I'd like to start with one here from Rochelle. Rochelle's wondering why Bo Lamar Condon, or wondering about Bo Lamar Condon saying he wore a helmet in the house when he was at 60 Brown Street. Did he give any reason to why he didn't take it off at any point while calling 000 or checking for a pulse?
24:24 Speaker 05 He did get some questions along those lines in the cross-examination. So I remember Mr Hatfield was putting to him at one point, why didn't you just flick the visor of the helmet up and show him who you were? And his answers to those were along the lines of that the struggle happened extremely quickly, he spoke about it being a matter of seconds, and that his focus was on things like the knife and his concern about potentially being stabbed in the neck, and then his focus was on, on the gun at different points. So he has given evidence that this happened extremely quickly and that it was, it was something that his focus was, was elsewhere, basically.
25:04 Speaker 04 Thank you, Jamie, and thank you, Rochelle, for that email. One here from Sally, Jamie, she's wondering about the items that Bo Lamar Condon says he went to 60 Brown Street to recover, a ring and some shirts. Have these been recovered at all?
25:17 Speaker 05 No, we heard that he didn't end up finding them, and there's been no mention of whether they have been found anywhere in the evidence. He didn't find the ring or the clothing, and in relation to the surfboard, we heard that he thought it would be in Jessie Baird's ute tray, but he couldn't see Jessie's vehicle while he was sort of waiting around in Paddington to make sure that the house would be empty. He says that that's the reason why he bought a surfboard cover before going to Paddington, because he knew the surfboard would be in Jessie's ute tray, he had an old bag that was a bit torn up or damaged, and he wanted to go and retrieve his surfboard.
25:58 Speaker 04 Thank you, Jamie. Thank you, Sally, for that question as well. And one here quickly from Matt, Jamie, he was actually in court the other day, and noticed Mr Crown, Mr Hatfield, calling Bo Lamar Condon Mr Lamar. And Matt was wondering, is that just to shorten the name, or has Bo Lamar Condon changed his name?
26:16 Speaker 05 Well, he said at the start of his evidence that his whole life he's gone by Bo Lamar. So even though we've been calling him Bo Lamar Condon, and that may be his full name, it sounds like Bo Lamar is something that he just goes by as a shortened version.
26:30 Speaker 04 Yeah, I've noticed Justice Natalie Adams using Mr Lamar as well when asking him to answer the question that he's being asked as well. So for now, we will remain with Bo Lamar Condon as is the, the name that's on the charge sheet associated with this as well, and the, the full name of, of the accused. Really appreciate you taking us through all this, Jamie.
26:49 Speaker 05 No worries.
26:50 Speaker 04 If you have a question you would like Jamie or I to try and answer for you, please get in touch, thecaseofatabc.net.au is where you can reach us. For now, in the trial of Bo Lamar Condon, his cross-examination is continuing. Legal argument hasn't delayed us for too long, so everything there is carrying on, and the jury is continuing to hear from Bo Lamar Condon as he is cross-examined. We will be back in your feed with another episode of The Case of Jessie and Luke on Tuesday next week, but I'll be in your feed tomorrow with a Case of Alan Jones episode, getting Isabel Roe back to update us. There is plenty that's gone on in the last little while, it's been some time between drinks, so plenty to talk about in that. Make sure you get yourself around the ABC Listen app, it is the best place to listen
27:32 Speaker 04 to The Case of, our episodes appear there slightly before they rock up anywhere else, so you can be at the front of the queue. And if you find yourself listening on a different podcast platform, just give us a rating or review, because it helps other people discover The Case of. The Case of Jessie and Luke is produced by ABC Audio Studios and ABC News. This episode was reported by Jamie McKinnon and presented by me, Stephen Stockwell. Our supervising producer is Greg Muller, and our executive producer is Claire Rollinson. A very big thank you to video producer Dylan Bean, to senior lawyer Jasmine Sims, our legal queen for her legal advice, to the New South Wales newsroom, and also to audio studios manager, Eric George. This episode was produced on the land of the Gadigal, and we're on jury people.
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