Son brutally killed parents, housekeeper in 2019, CA officials say. He’s convicted
A man fatally stabbed his parents, then killed the housekeeper when she arrived at work the next day at their upscale Southern California home, prosecutors say.
Camden Burton Nicholson, 34, was convicted of three counts of special circumstance murder in connection with the 2019 triple homicide, the Orange County District Attorney’s Office said in an Oct. 22 news release.
McClatchy News was not immediately able to reach a lawyer representing Nicholson on Oct. 23.
Nicholson’s lawyers argued “he had been diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder and should be found not guilty by reason of insanity,” prosecutors said.
A second phase of Nicholson’s trial was scheduled to begin Thursday, Oct. 23, to determine if he “was criminally insane at the time of the murders,” the district attorney’s office said.
‘House in disarray’
Nicholson is accused of stabbing his 64-year-old father repeatedly after approaching him in their Newport Beach home on Feb. 11, 2019, prosecutors said.
Minutes later, Nicholson’s 61-year-old mother returned home, and “he hit her with a metal statue and repeatedly stabbed her, killing her in the garage,” according to prosecutors.
The slayings followed an ultimatum from Nicholson’s parents, who asked that he admit himself into a mental health and addiction treatment facility, prosecutors said.
When the “family’s long-time housekeeper” came to the home for work the next day, prosecutors said Nicholson slit her throat.
Nicholson stuffed the 57-year-old’s “body in a large plastic bin in the kitchen pantry,” the district attorney’s office said.
Nicholson drove his parents’ car as he went on “shopping sprees, including spending hundreds of dollars at a Santa Ana marijuana dispensary and buying sex toys,” prosecutors said.
The day after his housekeeper’s slaying, Nicholson drove to an Irvine medical facility and called 911, telling dispatchers, “he had killed his parents in self-defense because they were trying to kill him,” according to prosecutors.
When Newport police officers searched the couple’s home, they “found the house in disarray with blood throughout the house and the three victims with multiple stab wounds,” prosecutors said.
‘Severe mental illness’
Nicholson’s attorney, Richard Cheung with the Orange County public defender’s office, argued during the trial that fear created by “a recurring delusion symptomatic of a severe mental illness” led to the killings, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Cheung said Nicholson’s mental health struggles began in 2012, progressively worsening over the years and culminating into multiple hospital stays, City News Service reported.
Nicholson was admitted into a Newport Beach hospital three days after Christmas in 2018, Cheung said, the outlet reported.
Though Nicholson’s family tried to visit him, he refused to see them, telling hospital staff his father was “insane,” Cheung reportedly said.
Nicholson stayed at the hospital until he demanded to be released against doctors’ advice on Feb. 11, 2019, the day of his parents’ slayings, Cheung said, City News Service reported.
In addition to finding Nicholson guilty of first-degree murder, jurors “also found him guilty of the special circumstance of committing multiple murders,” prosecutors said.
Verdicts reached during the second half of Nicholson’s trial will determine whether he “is sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole or if he will be sent to a mental health facility,” prosecutors said.
