As of yet, officials have not released what motivated this man to murder his mother and father and their housekeeper.
Calif. Man Allegedly Killed Parents, Housekeeper in Upscale Home Before Going to E.R.
“Something about the 27-year-old man who showed up Wednesday night in the emergency room at Irvine Medical Center in California led the staff to alert police.
Whether it was something they observed or overheard him say, police aren’t saying. But after Irvine officers spoke with the man, Camden Burton Nicholson, they called their peers in neighboring Newport Beach about 9 p.m. and sent them to a home in the gated Bonita Canyon community for a welfare check.
Inside the Newport Beach residence at 36 Palazzo, police found three bodies, they said in a news release.
Dead were Nicholson’s father, Richard, 64, and mother Kim, 61, and a woman later identified as the couple’s housekeeper, Maria Morse, 57, the Orange County Sheriff’s Office confirmed.”
Mrs. Morse’s husband also goes on to state that Kim Nicholson had given his wife a letter that was to be delivered to her attorney wherein she states that she is fearful of her son, whether that letter was ever delivered is anyone’s guess.
This is exactly why the title of my previous post is Mental Illness Is NOT Taken Seriously In America! Here is yet another testament as to the veracity of that statement. A mother was so terrified of her son that she tried to, surreptitiously, get a message out to her attorney in the hopes that he would take her fears seriously and act upon them. And yet, this is another case of “too little, too late.”
What must happen before mental illness receives the attention it deserves? How many loved ones or caregivers of the mentally ill must die before something is done about the fact that mentally ill people are left untreated and unsupervised by mental health care professionals while their care falls on their family members and others within their sphere who are ill-equipped to deal with these individuals? I have already stated this before and I shall do so again, so long as the mentally ill individual murders their immediate family or commits suicide, nothing will be done and quite frankly, nothing is done even when they make headlines for having murdered a bunch of strangers.
Those of us who take care of the mentally ill live in constant fear for our lives and mental health care professionals are completely aware of this and yet, nothing is done. There are so many horror stories that mimic what happened to Richard and Kim Nicholson and their housekeeper, Maria Morse while we sit back and read each story as they come down the pike and stories of the like will continue. Those people did not have to die. They did not have a terminal illness and so were given six months to live and yet in all actuality, they were consigned to their fate by a system that is set up to make sure that this particular outcome, continues. A mother, a father and their housekeeper are dead because no one in the mental health care field gave a damn about the fact that their son’s mental illness was spiraling out-of-control and his immediate caregivers couldn’t do a thing but wait for what they knew was inevitable; their ultimate demise at the hands of their mentally ill son, hence the reason for the letter that Kim Nicholson was trying to get her housekeeper to hand over to her attorney so that he/she would know she lived in fear of her mentally ill son.
People like Kim Nicholson and her husband and their housekeeper were not able to wait around for Mental Health Awareness Month in the hopes of being interviewed simply because May has been designated the month to recognize those who live with mental illness. What about those who die from mental illness because mental illness does indeed, kill? Doing nothing about mental illness kills. Ignoring mental illness kills.
The Nicholsons’ son took himself to the E.R. after having killed his mother, father and their housekeeper and upon seeing that something wasn’t right about him, hospital personnel alerted the police who then went to the Nicholsons’ home and found them along with their housekeeper, dead. They never made headline news in trying to obtain help to deal with their mentally ill son, but they sure as hell are headline news now.
I live in fear just as Kim Nicholson lived in fear and look what happened to her. I have begged and pleaded with my mentally ill cousin’s mental health care providers to do something about his condition and about the fact that I live in constant fear of his mental condition and yet, nothing is done. This is indeed, indicative of just how futile it is to look for help from his so-called mental health care providers. If you have not read the post preceding this one, my cousin just engaged in a 15-hour standoff with police/SWAT because he wanted to commit suicide by train…AGAIN and so took himself and multiple knives to some train tracks, placed himself on the tracks to await a train, whereas he was observed by a passerby and the police were alerted to a possible mentally ill individual attempting suicide. When the police/SWAT arrived at the scene, he threatened to stab himself if they did not allow the train to run over him. Unbeknownst to me, he had taken several knives and left our home earlier that morning with every intention of never returning to it. He had seen his psychiatrist a mere twelve days prior to this suicide attempt. The 15-hour standoff came to a conclusion only because my cousin was shot with bean bags and pellets that hurt so bad, he had no choice but to surrender his knives. After a five day stint in the psych ward, he was sent right back home for me to deal with. He had previously attempted suicide multiple times. He had already drank bleach twice, drank furniture polish remover, drank Borax, slit his wrist, jumped in front of a train, taken knives and walked around Baltimore and was promptly shot by the cops and now this latest suicide attempt on January 22nd.
By now, I don’t know why I have not attempted suicide because I have no support. I have no group to go to and air my grievances over the fact that there is no support and I have tried to get my story told before it is a part of my obituary resulting from my death at the hands of my mentally ill cousin. And I am sure that what will not be included is the extent to which I have gone to get my story told and to get some help not only for my mentally ill cousin, but for myself as well.
As I type this, my cousin is on his way to attend an appointment with a new psychiatrist, or so I hope, since I could not drive him because the roads are bad thanks to this latest winter storm. Each day, I live with a sword hanging over my head. Is he going to take his meds? Are they going to continue to be effective? Is he going to change personalities again? Will he give up hope and try and end it? Will his psychosis return and make him forget who I am? All of that has happened. He has been in the throes of psychosis and come at me with knives and I now know how I would react in a horrifying situation, I’d freeze because that is what I did. When he came at me with knives, I merely said, “So, are you going to stab me now?” He looked at me for a moment and then backed away and, coincidentally, I was on the phone, on hold waiting for help from ‘The Crisis Line’ who eventually told me to call back at 9:00a.m. I was on the phone with them at 4:00a.m. Even our emergencies must occur between the hours of 9:00a.m. to 5:00p.m. despite the fact that “The Crisis Line” is open 24/7. That, apparently, is a lie.
And so for those of you who are going through what I am going through, I wish that I could offer you hope, but I don’t have any. Kim Nicholson, her husband and their housekeeper had no hope. But maybe if we are still around in May, someone will tell our story. Someone will write about our pain and anguish over trying to navigate through a mental health care system that is so broken, it is useless. Maybe we just need to make it to May and then we’ll be taken seriously. And yeah, maybe there will be world peace by then as well, I’m that delusional.
shelbycourtland 