Jury delivers final conviction in gruesome murder of California tech CEO |
FILE: Santa Cruz tech CEO Tushar Atre was murdered in 2019. The last man charged in his killing has been convicted nearly six years later.
The final man charged in the 2019 killing of California tech CEO Tushar Atre has been convicted of murder, nearly six years after a botched robbery ended the executive’s life.
On Wednesday, jurors at the Santa Cruz County courthouse found Joshua Camps, 29, guilty of kidnapping, burglary and first-degree murder, according to KRON-TV. Atre, who was the founder and CEO of AtreNet, a corporate marketing firm, died at the age of 50.
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“We are proud of the work that has been done in this case and hope this verdict brings a sense of closure to Mr. Atre’s loved ones,” Ashley Keehn, a public information officer at the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office, told SFGATE. The Santa Cruz District Attorney’s Office did not comment by the time of publication.
Camps, who was 23 at the time of the murder, was arrested in May 2020 along with his co-conspirators, Stephen Lindsay and brothers Kurtis Charters and Kaleb Charters, who were ages 19 to 22 at the time. Lindsay and Kaleb Charters had worked for Atre at his cannabis company, Interstitial Systems. All four men were charged with murder, robbery and kidnapping.
Following the 2020 arrests, Brian Cleveland, a chief deputy at the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office, called the 2019 murder a “heinous and senseless crime” in a news conference and said the assailants “wanted monetary gain and took advantage of the situation.”
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Camps is due to be sentenced on March 19, according to KRON-TV. The verdict comes after the Charters brothers and Lindsay were found guilty of first-degree murder in three separate trials last year, the outlet reported. They were given life sentences without parole.
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Last year, former Interstitial Systems employee Sam Borghese testified that Atre created a toxic work environment for employees, which was considered a possible motive for his murder. Borghese said that Atre would yell at employees, withhold paychecks and even fire staff if he felt disrespected, KRON-TV reported. Borghese testified that employees often joked about robbing Atre out of frustration for his demanding nature, according to the outlet.
Frustrations at work apparently led the men to steal from Atre’s residence in the wealthy Santa Cruz neighborhood of Pleasure Point.
On Oct. 1, 2019, Kaleb Charters dropped off Camps, Kurtis Charters and Lindsay at Atre’s multimillion-dollar home to steal cash from his safe, according to KRON-TV. When they discovered that Atre was home sleeping, the men woke him up and demanded that he open his safe. They zip-tied Atre’s hands and shoved a sock in his mouth, according to Camps’ confession.
“He kept saying, ‘Who are you guys?’ He didn’t know what was going on. He tried to run,” Camps said during the 2020 video-recorded interrogation that was played before jurors last fall.
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Camps said that the men grabbed thousands of dollars and stuffed the money into bags. During the robbery, Camps became preoccupied while he tried to talk Kurtis Charters out of stealing a guitar. The distraction gave Atre a chance to escape and yell for help. Camps confessed that he stabbed Atre in the neck, fearing that Atre would wake his neighbors, KRON-TV reported. Atre was then shoved into a BMW, which belonged to Atre’s girlfriend, and taken to his cannabis farm in the Santa Cruz Mountains. There, he was shot twice in the jaw and once on the back of the head with an AR-15 rifle. Camps confessed that he shot Atre so that he wouldn’t “suffer,” KRON-TV reported. Atre’s body was found later that morning.
“He wasn’t going to last much longer,” Camps said. “I knew he was going to die.”
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