Inset: Camden Burton Nicholson (Orange County Sheriff's Office). Background: Orange County Superior Court (Google Maps).
A 34-year-old man in California may spend the remainder of his days behind bars for killing his parents after they held an intervention demanding he check into a facility to treat his mental health and substance abuse problems nearly six years ago.
The morning after he fatally stabbed his mother and father, a then-27-year-old Camden Burton Nicholson also slit the throat of their housekeeper as she arrived for work. A jury in Orange County on Wednesday found Nicholson guilty on three counts of first-degree murder in the grisly slayings of 64-year-old Richard Nicholson, 61-year-old Kim Nicholson, and 57-year-old Maria Morse, authorities announced. Jurors also convicted him on the special circumstance of committing multiple murders.
Prosecutors said that after killing the three victims, Nicholson stole his parents' car and went on a series of "shopping sprees," which included him "spending hundreds of dollars at a Santa Ana marijuana dispensary and buying sex toys" with their money.
During the trial, prosecutors said Nicholson was "completely dependent on his parents," according to a courtroom report from the Orange County Register. They threatened to cut him off completely if he did not get help for his addiction and mental health problems.
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According to a news release from the Orange County District Attorney's Office, Nicholson on Feb. 11, 2019, confronted his father in the family's Newport Beach home and "stabbed him repeatedly."
He then dragged his father's body into the bathroom and reportedly plugged the bottom of the door to prevent his father's blood from seeping out the bottom and into the hall.
"When Nicholson's mother returned home a few minutes later, he hit her with a metal statue and repeatedly stabbed her, killing her in the garage," prosecutors wrote. "The next morning, Nicholson attacked the family's longtime housekeeper, Maria Morse, when she arrived to clean the house. Nicholson stabbed Morse repeatedly and slit her throat before stuffing her body in a large plastic bin in the kitchen pantry."
The morning after he killed Morse, authorities said Nicholson stole his father's car and drove to a Kaiser Permanente facility in Irvine. He called 911 from the facility and told the emergency dispatcher had killed his parents, claiming he did so in self-defense "because they were trying to kill him."
Officers with the Newport Beach Police Department then conducted a welfare check on the Nicholson home, which they described as being in "disarray" with "blood throughout the house." All three victims were still inside.
The sanity phase of Nicholson's trial, which will determine whether he was criminally insane at the time of the murders, began on Thursday.
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