A California man killed his parents and their housekeeper inside their $6 million home during a multi-day rampage culminating in him blowing hundreds of dollars on sex toys and drugs — all because they gave him an ultimatum to check into a mental health and addiction facility.
Camden Burton Nicholson, 34, was found guilty of three counts of first-degree murder in the 2019 slayings of Richard and Kim Nicholson and their housekeeper, Maria Morse, inside the Newport Beach gated community, the Orange County District Attorney’s Office said.
Nicholson, 34, grew up a happy and normal kid until he returned home from a nine-month Mormon mission at 19, severely depressed and acting strangely.
Nicholson’s parents grew concerned for their son, accusing him of acting erratically, using illegal drugs, steroids, watching a lot of pornography and contacting escort services, according to KTLA.
“In that short time, he went from a Boy Scout to using marijuana, steroids, the escorts – everything,” Nicholson’s brother, Cavin Nicholson, testified in court, according to the Los Angeles Times.
In defense of his kin, Cavin Nicholson said his mother was verbally abusive, diagnosed with borderline personality disorder and said things “a mentally ill person should not hear,” — potentially setting off his brother.
The parents hired a private detective to find Camden Nicholson after he lashed out against them and disappeared by stealing his mother’s car in December 2018.
“They feared he might have committed suicide or was in the hospital somewhere,” the private detective told KTLA.
Nicholson reappeared at a Marriott hotel when he began spending lavishly with his father’s credit card. The card was subsequently denied and Nicholson’s parents urged for him to return home and seek help.
Nicholson was admitted into a hospital on Feb. 5, 2019 on a 72-hour involuntary psychiatric hold where he told doctors his parents were “satanic” and would “try to find me and classify me as insane,” according to the LA Times.
Doctors were afraid to discharge him, but Nicholson was released at 4:11 p.m. on Feb. 11 and returned home to carry out the brutal killings.
The madman first confronted his 64-year-old father at the home at around 7 p.m., stabbing him repeatedly, officials said.
“At some point, Richard had to have realized it was Camden,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Dave Porter said in court. “He had to have known it was his own son who was killing him.”
Nicholson’s mother returned home at around 8:44 p.m., when he attacked the 61-year-old woman, striking her with a 20-pound silver statue before stabbing her multiple times and leaving her to die on the garage floor.
Morse, 57, arrived at the house the next morning for her cleaning shift but was attacked by the knife-wielding maniac, who stabbed her repeatedly and slit her throat before stuffing her body into a large plastic bin in the pantry, officials found.
“Why else would you do that, unless you knew exactly what you did was wrong and you didn’t want it discovered?” Porter asked. “There are actions by this defendant that aren’t consistent with a psychotic break.”
The then-27-year-old took his father’s car that night and went on a shopping spree around Santa Ana, spending hundreds at a marijuana dispensary and buying sex toys.
Using his father’s car, Nicholson drove to a medical center in Irvine and called 911, saying he killed his parents in self-defense because they were trying to kill him.
Police discovered the gruesome scene at the home while conducting a welfare check on the couple and found the three victims fatally stabbed with blood throughout the home.
On Wednesday, an Orange County jury found Nicholson guilty of the special circumstance of committing multiple murders along with the three first-degree murder charges.
The case entered a sanity phase on Thursday, as officials will determine if Nicholson was criminally insane during the triple murders.
Porter didn’t deny Nicholson may have suffered from mental illnesses but he was never diagnosed with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder. He had received treatment for autism spectrum disorder, the LA Times reported.
Nicholson will either be sentenced to life in prison without parole or be sent to a mental facility depending on the results of the sanity phase.
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