Beau Lamarre-Condon asked a friend in Western Australia if he could post her a phone to be thrown into a body of water, and told her he’d been “set up” over the disappearance of two men, a court has heard.

Lamarre-Condon, 31, has been accused of fatally shooting Sydney couple Jesse Baird and Luke Davies with his police service weapon in Baird’s Paddington home on 19 February 2024. He has pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder and one charge of aggravated break and enter.

Lamarre-Condon’s friend Stacey Parker, who lives in WA, told the NSW supreme court on Thursday that she first met the police officer in 2010.

The two were celebrity hunting for American rapper Pitbull outside the Channel 7 studios while Sunrise was being filmed. They exchanged numbers to try to double their chances of encountering the celebrity and continued to speak and meet whenever she travelled to Sydney in the following years.

Asked if they had any shared interests beyond celebrity chasing, Parker said they would speak about the Covid pandemic.

She told the jury she “didn’t agree with the injections and whatnot” and explained she would go to protests.

Knowing Lamarre-Condon was a police officer, she asked him how he could “stand there and push back against people fighting for freedom”.

“He just told me it was devil’s work,” she told the court.

Lamarre-Condon on 12 February 2024 asked if they could switch to messaging on the encrypted messaging app Signal, the court heard. On 20 February 2024, a day after the alleged murders, he called her and asked if she could do him a favour.

“He told me that he’d stolen some police files from the commissioner to do with Covid and he’d wanted me to get rid of a phone,” Parker told the court.

“He wanted me to turn the phone on, turn it off and throw it into some body of water. I was going to do it not knowing what it was.”

Lamarre-Condon specifically asked her to turn it on for about 10 minutes so it could “ping” and then turn it back off before disposing of it 30km to 40km from her home, Parker told the court.

Two days later, he called her again and said police had been searching for him, she told the court on Thursday.

“He’s said that the detectives had been at his mum’s place.

“[He said] he had been set up for two guys missing in Sydney and he used to know one of them. He asked me again what I had to do with the phone so I told him what I was going to do.”

Unlike the earlier call, where the officer seemed “very easy to talk to”, Parker said his tone in the later discussion felt like “he wanted to hear from me that I knew what I had to do”.

Soon after, a friend sent her a news article that said Baird and Davies had disappeared and Lamarre-Condon was wanted for questioning.

“I started reading through the article and it said that Jesse’s phone had sent messages to his friends saying he was going on a road trip to Perth,” she told the court. The friend never received a package from Lamarre-Condon.

Earlier on Thursday, she told the court she had seen the policeman post a photo with socialite Kourtney Kardashian and Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker and hoped Lamarre-Condon could get her close to a country singer she liked.

She sent him a message on 16 February 2024 that stated: “If you can get to Kourt Kardashian, then surely you can get us to Lainey Wilson.”

Prosecutors on Thursday also read out a statement from Baird’s friend and former colleague Jemma Barge about the last messages she received from his phone.

The night before he was killed, Baird sent her a message wishing her well before she began a new job.

“It’s Sunday night, which means one big thing: Jem’s big day tomorrow, ahh,” the text read to the court states. “Good luck bear, you will smash it like you do everything else.”

On Monday, she responded to the message, told him about her first day in the new role and asked if he would be free to catch up the following week, the jury was told.

According to her statement, a message from Baird’s phone – sent the day after he was killed – said: “I’m so happy for you bear, I might be going to Perth but if I don’t end up going, then I’ll definitely let you know.”

Barge later read the news that Baird and Davies were missing. While watching a press conference she couldn’t stop thinking about the last message she received from Baird’s phone, the court was told.

“I was under the impression something had already occurred before this text message had been sent to me,” she said in her statement.

The defence team has claimed Baird and Davies were accidentally shot in two separate struggles with the accused while he acted in “self-defence”.

The trial before Justice Natalie Adams continues.