A 34-year-old man from California has been found guilty of brutally murdering his parents and the family housekeeper inside their Newport Beach residence.
Camden Burton Nicholson was convicted on Wednesday by a jury on three counts of first-degree murder, including a special circumstance charge for committing multiple murders. The victims were his parents, Richard Nicholson, aged 64, and Kim Nicholson, aged 61, along with Maria Morse, a 57-year-old housekeeper from Anaheim who had been employed by the family for many years.
The prosecution revealed that the tragic events transpired over a span of two days in February 2019 within the confines of the Nicholsons’ gated community home. The prosecution’s opening statements provided a comprehensive account of the sequence of events leading to the murders.
Senior Deputy District Attorney Dave Porter presented evidence to the jury, highlighting surveillance footage that captured Richard Nicholson arriving home around 12:45 p.m. on the fatal day, as reported by The Orange County Register. Once inside the garage, Camden confronted his father, following his parents’ encouragement for him to address his mental health and addiction problems.
An image captioned with “A California man was found guilty years after murdering his parents and family housekeeper in their Newport Beach home” and attributed to Getty Images and the Orange County District Attorney’s Office was included.
Porter depicted Nicholson as being heavily reliant on his parents, describing how he repeatedly stabbed his father in a frenzy. He then moved the body into a small bathroom, using towels to block the doorway in an attempt 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.
Yachts and other boats are visible in Newport Harbor, Newport Beach, Calif., April 27, 2024. (Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images)
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.
Corona del Mar, an affluent coastal neighborhood of Newport Beach in Orange County, Calif. (halbergman/Getty Images)
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.
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 stepheny.price@fox.com.
