During the Beau Lamarre-Condon trial, the accused denied stalking television presenter Jesse Baird after their first break-up, while acknowledging that he had looked at Baird’s social media and checked whether a man he was seeing had an active Grindr account.
Lamarre-Condon was shown screenshots of Baird’s Instagram stories from May 2023. He told the court their separation had been amicable and rejected the suggestion that his online and in-person interest in Baird during May and June amounted to stalking.
“Jesse and I had an amicable first break-up,” he said. “I may have been looking online … I definitely wasn’t stalking him but I was looking online. That’s not stalking.”
He said he had entered the email address of the man Baird had been seeing into Grindr, explaining that he wanted to establish whether the user already had an active account rather than impersonate him.
“I remember doing something like that to check if [the man] had an active Grindr account,” Lamarre-Condon said. He told the court this could indicate that Baird and the man were not exclusive, adding: “If you’re exclusive with someone you’re not on an app looking for sex.”
Crown prosecutor Brett Hatfield, SC, put to him that someone could have a Grindr account without using it. Lamarre-Condon accepted that was possible, denied stalking the man and rejected the suggestion that he had created a fake Grindr account for Baird.
