After his father cancelled the credit card he’d been using, the suspect allegedly returned home and committed the murders before heading back out in his parents’ car and spending hundreds of dollars at a marijuana dispensary and on sex toys.
A man from Newport Beach, California is awaiting sentencing after he was found guilty for the stabbing deaths of both of his parents, Richard Nicholson, 64, and Kim Nicholson, 61, and the family’s longtime housekeeper, Maria Morse, 57, in 2019.
In a press release on Wednesday, the Orange County District Attorney’s Office announced the jury verdict against Camden Burton Nicholson, 34. He was found guilty on three counts of first-degree murder with a special circumstance for murdering multiple people.
The next step of Nicholson’s legal trial begins today, per the release, when he begins the sanity phase to determine if he was criminally insane when he committed these murders. His attorneys have argued he should be found not guilty by reason of insanity as he’d been diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder.
The prosecution countered that Camden had actually never been formally diagnosed with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder, but rather had been receiving treatment for autism spectrum disorder.
Now that he has been found guilty, the results of the sanity phase will determine if his sentence will be life in prison without the possibility of parole, or if he will instead be sent to a mental health facility.
Private Investigator
In the weeks before that fatal day in February 2019, Nicholson’s parents had grown concerned about their then-27-year-old son’s increasingly erratic behavior, according to a private detective they hired to look into his life who spoke with KTLA shortly after their deaths.
“They hired me because they wanted to find their son and wanted me to surveil him and build a case for conservatorship,” said Richard Youssef of Blue Systems International at the time. “They felt he’s not acting normal.”
He said the Nicholsons reached out to him after Camden allegedly stole his mother’s car after storming out of the house following an argument on December 13, 2018. After this, they were unable to get in touch with him, with Youssef saying they were afraid he may have committed suicide or be in a hospital somewhere.
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Everything changed for Camden, according to what his parents told Youssef, after he went away on a Mormon mission trip for nine months when he was 19 years old. Before that, they said he had been a normal and happy kid. Afterward, his parents said he became withdrawn, severely depressed, and began acting strange.
According to Youssef, by the time he became involved, Camden was “taking weed, definitely on lots of steroids, watching lots of porn,” and had “made contact with some escort services.”
On the stand, his brother, Cavin Nicholson, said much the same, telling the jury, “In that short time he went from a Boy Scout to using marijuana, steroids, the escorts — everything,” per the Los Angeles Times.
The investigator was able to track Camden to a Marriott hotel where he was racking up tremendous charges on his father’s credit card, with Youssef telling KTLA he “started giving away $1,000 tips, according to the father. In some instances, it was totaling up to $15,000.”
His father’s response was to cancel the credit card, at which point Camden purportedly began sending angry texts to his parents with messages like, “You’re the fakest person I know,” and, “You people are scum, and everyone knows.” In other texts to family members, Camden also claimed his mother was “making sexual advances on him.”
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He also told his parents to not try and contact him, but Youssef said they did anyway. “Mostly they were texting him or emailing him, ‘Where are you? Come home,'” he told KTLA. His parents also purportedly gave him and ultimatum that he check into a mental health and addiction treatment facility, according to KTTV.
On February 11, he came home.
According to the Times, Camden made that trip immediately after he’d been discharged from a 72-hour involuntary psychiatric hold at College Hospital on February 11, 2019 at 4:11 p.m. He reportedly said he was going to go to their house, telling staff not to let his parents know, according to prosecutors in court.
On the stand, Cavin said that his brother suffered an episode in 2012 that also led to a 72-hour psychiatric hold when he found Camden in a parked care wearing soaking wet clothes and threatening suicide. Another came six years later, per the newspaper, while Camden was working for Cavin’s outdoor apparel company. There, he reportedly told medical staff his landlord was trying to kill him by lining his floors with oyster shells that released the nerve gas sarin.
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Three Murders
According to investigators, per KTLA’s coverage of the case, Camden returned home and confronted his father just after 6:51 that same day he was released from College Hospital, February 11, 2019, after sneaking in through a back window at the family’s home.
It was during this altercation that Camden allegedly stabbed his father repeatedly, striking him in the chest, throat, genitals, neck, and 15 times in the back.
Less than two hours later, at around 8:44 p.m., his mother returned home from running errands and Camden allegedly attacked her with a 20-pound metal statue and then proceeded to stab her to death in the garage. She had four stab wounds on the side of her mid-section, per forensic experts.
The Times reports that he left his father’s body in a bathroom and stuffed towels along the bottom of the door to keep blood from seeping out. He reportedly used flour in the garage in an evident attempt to cover up his mother’s death.
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The following morning at around 7:45 a.m. the family’s housekeeper arrived for her normal work shift, only when she did, Camden “stabbed [her] repeatedly and slit her throat,” according to the DA’s office. He then allegedly put her body “in a large plastic bin in the kitchen pantry.”
The defense tried to argue in court that Camden had been in the throes of a psychotic break at the time of the killings, per the LA Times, but prosecutors pushed that he was motivated by greed after his father cut him off.
Deputy District Attorney Dave Porter argued in court that the murder of the housekeeper is proof it was not a psychotic break. “Why else would you do that, unless you knew exactly what you did was wrong and you didn’t want it discovered?”
After the murders, prosecutors in court said that Camden stole his father’s car and went on a shopping spree, spending hundreds of dollars at a marijuana dispensary in Santa Ana, and buying sex toys.
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The day after this spending spree, on February 13, Camden allegedly drove to a local health care facility in his father’s car and called 911. He reported that he’d “killed his parents in self-defense because they were trying to kill him,” according to the DA’s press release.
His attorney, Richard Cheung of the Orange County public defender’s office, said these fears were part of a “recurring delusion symptomatic of a severe mental illness,” per the Times’ reporting.
Officers in Newport Beach conducted a welfare check on the Nicholson home after this where they reported finding the house “in disarray with blood throughout,” per the release, as well as all three victims with “multiple stab wounds” each.
If you or someone you know needs help with mental health text “STRENGTH” to the Crisis Text Line at 741-741. You can also call 988 to be connected to a trained crisis counselor. Both services offer free, confidential 24/7 support for people in distress.
If you or someone you know is dealing with suicidal ideation, call 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. You can also call the network, previously known as the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, at 800-273-8255, text HOME to 741741, or visit SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for additional resources.
