34-year-old Man Convicted of Special Circumstances Murders of His Parents, Housekeeper after Ultimatum from Parents to Check into Mental Health and Addiction Treatment

34-year-old Man Convicted of Special Circumstances Murders of His Parents,
Housekeeper
after Ultimatum from Parents to Check into Mental Health and Addiction
Treatment

Santa Ana - A 34-year-old man has been convicted by a jury of three counts of special circumstance murder for stabbing his parents to death in their Newport Beach home following an ultimatum by his parents to check into a mental health and addiction treatment facility and then slitting the throat of their housekeeper when she showed up for work the next day

In addition to finding Camden Burton Nicholson guilty of three counts of first-degree murder, a jury also found him guilty of the special circumstance of committing multiple murders.

After killing his parents and their housekeeper, Camden Nicholson used his parents' car to go on shopping sprees, including spending hundreds of dollars at a Santa Ana marijuana dispensary and buying sex toys.

Lawyers for Camden Nicholson, 34, have argued that he had been diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder and should be found not guilty by reason of insanity for killing his parents, 64-year-old Richard Nicholson, and Kim Nicholson, 61, along with 57-year-old Maria Morse of Anaheim. The sanity phase of the trial is scheduled to begin on Thursday, October 23, 2025, to determine whether Nicholson was criminally insane at the time of the murders.

Those verdicts will determine whether Nicholson is sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole or if he will be sent to a mental health facility.

On February 11, 2019, Nicholson confronted his father in their Newport Beach home and stabbed him repeatedly. When Nicholson's mother returned home a few minutes later, he hit her with a metal statue and repeatedly stabbed her, killing her in the garage.

The next morning, Nicholson attacked the family's longtime housekeeper, Maria Morse, when she arrived to clean the house. Nicholson stabbed Morse repeatedly and slit her throat before stuffing her body in a large plastic bin in the kitchen pantry.

At about 8:30 p.m. on Feb 13, 2019, a day after he killed his family's housekeeper, Nicholson drove his father's car to a Kaiser Permanente facility in Irvine where he dialed 911 and reported that he had killed his parents in self-defense because they were trying to kill him.

Newport Beach police officers conducting a welfare check on the home of Nicholson's parents found the house in disarray with blood throughout the house and the three victims with multiple stab wounds.

Senior Deputy District Attorney Dave Porter of the Homicide Unit is prosecuting this case.

Click here for full press release.

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