Beau Lamarre-Condon’s cop friend broke down in tears while telling the court about the moment he allegedly turned up at her house, grabbed a bucket and started cleaning blood from a rental van.
The former senior constable, known for legal reasons as Fiona Rosso, told the court she was diagnosed with chronic depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, and alcoholism due to her job with NSW Police.
Ms Rosso told the court Lamarre-Condon was aware of her mental health struggles when he allegedly went to her house to ‘say goodbye’ on February 22, 2024 – three days after the alleged murders.
She said he scared her because he turned up in the dark and started crying, telling her that he wanted to see her because he was saying goodbye to his loved ones.
Thinking he was going to take his own life, she invited him inside and was surprised when his demeanour changed.
‘He said, “I’ve done something bad, I don’t want to tell you, I don’t want to incriminate you”,’ she told the court.
Lamarre-Condon asked if she’d been watching the news, but she hadn’t due to her work-related depression. He asked her to search Jesse Baird’s name online.
Ms Rosso told the court she saw a number of articles about the disappearance of Baird and his new partner, Luke Davies (pictured together).
‘And he’s asking, “Can you look up schizophrenia? What’s the definition?” so I typed it in and I guess I read out the definition and he said, “Can someone with schizophrenia be charged?”,’ she said.
‘And I’m like, “I don’t know, man”, and he started talking about an out-of-body experience and having no control … He kept going on about this out-of-body experience.’
Ms Rosso told the court she tried to keep calm because she didn’t know what had happened.
When he asked to clean his car, she said no. When her partner phoned her at about 9.30pm, she told the court Lamarre-Condon filled a bucket with water and went outside.
She told the court that she didn’t want to tell her partner there was anything wrong while Lamarre-Condon was there.
Ms Rosso told the court that she followed him outside and saw a white van parked near her house. She said the boot door was up so she couldn’t see the number plate.
At that point during her court testimony, Ms Rosso was crying so much she struggled to keep calm.
‘I walked out there with my drink and sat on the gutter and he scrubbed and I sat there in the gutter,’ she told the court.
‘And I don’t know if it was on the other side that he saw a bit of blood to scrub off and he couldn’t get it off so he’d have to paint it.’
Ms Rosso said she didn’t look inside the van, and struggled to keep calm when a neighbour came outside to see what was going on.
She told the court that she said to the neighbour, ‘my mate’s just cleaning his van,’ to keep herself safe.
Once she went back inside, she started looking up Baird’s name again and saw that a police officer was a suspect.
‘When reading the articles I saw [the number for] Crime Stoppers and I just wanted to scream, “He’s here! He’s here!”,’ she told the court.
Ms Rosso told the court Lamarre-Condon was using her phone to make calls because his own phone was in flight mode and had no reception.
She said Lamarre-Condon allegedly told her that he drove 2.5 hours to a farm with ‘a girl’ to dispose of the bodies.
‘They tried to get rid of the bodies and sink them, he said they wouldn’t sink and [the girl] said, “I can’t do this, take me back”, so they drove 2.5 hours back,’ she told the court.
Ms Rosso said Lamarre-Condon told her about one occasion when he was at Baird’s house, showing him his police-issued gun.
‘Jesse accidentally let off a round, it went into the wall, they both tried to get the bullet out, or he had to go back and patch it out, and I was like, “Oh my God, you’re basically telling me you’ve just killed Jesse”,’ she told the court.
She said Lamarre-Condon ended up sleeping on one end of her couch while she slept on the other.
The following morning, she had a medical assessment and her alarm went off at 4.30am.
When the alarm went off, Lamarre-Condon woke up, had a shower, called his aunt and uncle, and ran out the door.
