A 35-year-old Newport Beach man was sentenced Friday to three consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole for the murders of his parents and their longtime housekeeper in 2019, according to the Orange County District Attorney’s Office.
Camden Burton Nicholson was convicted in October on three counts of special-circumstances murder. He had pled not guilty due to insanity, but jurors determined he was legally sane at the time of the killings, authorities said. Orange County Superior Court Judge Michael Cassidy issued the sentence on Friday, March 20, and dismissed a motion for a new trial. Nicholson received credit for 2,593 days previously served.
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According to authorities, Richard and Kim Nicholson became more concerned about their son in the weeks leading up to the murders. They told a private detective they hired to find him that he had been a typical, happy child until he returned from a nine-month Mormon mission at the age of 19, terribly depressed and acting strangely. By late 2018, he was on narcotics and steroids, and his conduct had grown erratic.
According to prosecutors, Nicholson stormed out of a mental health and addiction treatment center in December 2018, took his mother’s car, and fled. He then showed up at a Marriott hotel and spent lavishly on his father’s credit card. When the card was revoked, he started sending angry texts. His folks demanded he return home.
According to court documents, on February 11, 2019, Nicholson attacked his father, 64-year-old Richard Nicholson, in the garage of the family’s house in the gated Bonita Canyon enclave. When his mother, 61-year-old Kim Nicholson, returned home approximately ten minutes later, he stabbed her with a metal statue and killed her. Maria Morse, 57, the family’s housekeeper from Anaheim, arrived at work the next morning. Prosecutors said Nicholson stabbed her multiple times, slit her throat, and stuffed her body in a large plastic bucket in the kitchen pantry.
Following the murders, Nicholson took his parents’ cars to go shopping before driving to a Kaiser Permanente facility in Irvine, where he contacted 911 and claimed he killed his parents in self-defense because they were attempting to kill him, according to prosecutors. Newport Beach police did a welfare check at the home and discovered it covered in blood, with all three victims stabbed to death.
Prosecutors allege that Nicholson attempted to conceal the crimes by disposing of blood-stained clothing and moving Morse’s automobile approximately a mile away from the house.
Nicholson was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder. According to defense attorney Richard Cheung, three mental experts testified that he was mad at the time of the murders and that he truly believed his parents and staff were trying to kill him. A fourth expert, hired by prosecutors, testified that he was malingering—exaggerating his psychological symptoms—but was legally sane.
In a plea for a new trial, Cheung said that one juror told him after the verdict that he had been pressed by fellow panelists to deem Nicholson sane, despite his personal belief otherwise. Cheung further stated that another juror consulted a friend who is studying to be a paralegal, and that a third juror mentioned her own Mormon upbringing as a reason to believe Nicholson, who was also raised Mormon, is legally sane.
Judge Cassidy refused the motion. Prosecutors claimed the juror in question had numerous opportunities to raise concerns with the court during deliberations but never did.
