A 35-year-old Newport Beach man was sentenced Friday to three consecutive life terms in prison without the possibility of parole for killing his parents and their longtime housekeeper in 2019.
Camden Burton Nicholson was convicted in October of three counts of special-circumstances murder. He had pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, but jurors found him legally sane at the time of the killings. Orange County Superior Court Judge Michael Cassidy handed down the sentence Friday, March 20, and denied a motion for a new trial. Nicholson received credit for 2,593 days already served.
In the weeks before the murders, Richard and Kim Nicholson had grown increasingly worried about their son. They told a private detective they hired to find him that he had been a normal, happy child until he returned from a nine-month Mormon mission at age 19 severely depressed and began acting strangely. By late 2018, he was using drugs and steroids, and his behavior had become erratic…