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A 34-year-old California man was convicted of killing his parents and the family’s housekeeper in a violent attack inside their Newport Beach home.
On Wednesday, a jury found Camden Burton Nicholson guilty of three counts of first-degree murder and the special circumstance of multiple murders for the deaths of his parents, Richard Nicholson, 64, and Kim Nicholson, 61, and the family’s housekeeper, Maria Morse, 57, of Anaheim, who had worked for the family for years.
According to prosecutors, the killings unfolded over two days in February 2019 inside the Nicholsons’ home in their gated community. Prosecutors laid out a detailed sequence during their opening statements.
Senior Deputy District Attorney Dave Porter told jurors that surveillance video showed Richard Nicholson returning home around 12:45 p.m. on the day of his death, according to The Orange County Register. Inside the garage, Camden Nicholson confronted his father after his parents had urged him to seek treatment for mental health and addiction issues.
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Nicholson, described as “completely dependent on his parents,” stabbed his father “over and over again,” Porter said. He then moved his father’s body into a small bathroom and blocked the doorway with towels to contain the blood.
When his mother returned home a short time later, Nicholson struck her with a metal statue and stabbed her multiple times, killing her in the garage.
“There was so much blood, the defendant tried to soak it up with a bag of flour,” Porter told jurors. Investigators also found clumps of Kim Nicholson’s hair, suggesting she fought for her life.
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The next morning, when Morse arrived for work, Nicholson stabbed her repeatedly and slit her throat before placing her body inside a large plastic bin in the kitchen pantry, according to the Orange County District Attorney’s Office.
Prosecutors said Nicholson took his parents’ car and went on a spending spree after the murders, purchasing hundreds of dollars in items at a Santa Ana marijuana dispensary and buying sex toys.
The following night, around 8:30 p.m. Feb. 13, 2019, Nicholson drove to a Kaiser Permanente site in Irvine, where he called 911 and claimed he had killed his parents in self-defense because he believed they were trying to kill him.
When Newport Beach police officers arrived at the home for a welfare check, they found the house in disarray with blood throughout and all three victims suffering from multiple stab wounds.
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Nicholson’s defense attorneys argued he had been diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder and should be found not guilty by reason of insanity.
Defense attorney Richard Cheung said Nicholson’s mental health struggles began around 2012 during a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Florida, when he was hospitalized on a psychiatric hold and treated with antipsychotic medication, the Register reported.
Nicholson lived independently in Colorado in 2017, where he began hormone therapy, stopped taking his medication and again experienced visions and voices, the defense said.
In December 2018 and early February 2019, Nicholson was admitted to mental health centers, which his attorneys said showed he was delusional and unreachable by his family leading up to the killings.
The sanity phase of his trial began Thursday to determine whether Nicholson was legally insane at the time of the murders. The outcome will decide whether he spends life in prison without parole or is committed to a state mental hospital.
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Fox News Digital reached out to the Orange County District Attorney’s Office and Nicholson’s legal team for comment.
Stepheny Price covers crime, including missing persons, homicides and migrant crime. Send story tips to [email protected].
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