Joshua Camps, the last defendant to face trial in the 2019 kidnapping and murder of tech and cannabis entrepreneur Tushar Atre, was sentenced Monday after being convicted in March.
Camps, 29, was, like the other three other defendants in the case, tried separately and faced a lengthy jury trial, after he made a chilling confession to investigators that he was the one who both stabbed and fatally shot Atre. On Monday, as KRON4 reports, he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, which is the same sentence as the other three men.
Defense attorneys for the other three men characterized this as a robbery gone wrong, with Camps taking matters into his own hands in the murder. However it became clear in the other three trials that the group had likely wished some violence on Atre, for whom two of them worked at his cannabis farm — and Camps, who did not know Atre, was brought in as the "muscle" because he owned guns.
The murder took place on October 1, 2019, with the four men descending on Atre's Santa Cruz home with the intention of robbing him of cash he kept on hand.
Kaleb Charters, then 19, and Stephen Lindsay, then 22, were brothers-in-law and worked for Atre at his cannabis business, Interstitial Systems. At Charters's trial last fall, a witness who worked closely with Atre described him as a demanding and bullying boss, who routinely withheld paychecks from employees when he was unsatisfied with their work — and forced them to do humiliating things, like pushups, in order to get paid.
It was after one such incident involving paychecks that bounced after Atre accused Charters and Lindsay of stealing keys to a farm vehicle, that an angry Charters reportedly told the witness he wanted to rob Atre, and the plot appears to have evolved from there. Charters's brother, Kurtis Charters, also joined in the scheme, and things appear to have gone awry when they attempted the home-invasion robbery, and instead of subduing Atre, he ran screaming for help down his quiet residential street.
It was after this that Camps said he mortally wounded Atre, and believing he would likely bleed out, he then shot him in the head in what he described as a mercy killing.
In a jailhouse letter written to a friend that would later surface as evidence, Camps wrote, "Coming clean to the cops I'm sure sealed my fate but I feel better tbh. Like I said, honestly I think I could have lied and been out free but I knew the Lord wouldn't bless me for that."
Camps was convicted on March 13 of kidnapping, burglary and first-degree murder.
"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 said Ashley Keehn, public information officer for the Santa Cruz County Sheriff's Office, in a statement after the conviction.
All men will serve life sentences without the possibility of parole, with Kaleb Charters sentenced to an additional term of five years to life.
