SANTA CRUZ, Calif. (KRON) — The second of four men charged in the Tushar Atre murder case was sentenced on Thursday morning to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Kurtis Charters, 27, was handcuffed and dressed in orange inmate clothing when he learned his fate from Santa Cruz County Superior Court Judge Stephen Siegel. “This was a very sad situation, every aspect of it,” the judge said. Charters was immediately remanded into the custody of state prison authorities to begin serving his sentence.
His younger brother, Kaleb Charters, will appear in the same courthouse Thursday afternoon as testimony for his murder trial continues. Kaleb Charters has pleaded not guilty.
Atre, 50, was a millionaire tech executive and cannabis entrepreneur. He previously lived in San Francisco, but he moved to an oceanfront house at Pleasure Point in Santa Cruz because he loved surfing and mountain biking. He was kidnapped and slain in 2019 by a group of home invaders, including two who were the victim’s former employees, prosecutors said. The group believed that Atre kept $1 million in cash inside the home safe, according to court records.
Moments before he was sentenced, Kurtis Charters apologized to Atre’s family and close friends. “I don’t know what to say. I want to do the right thing, whatever that is. I should say sorry, and I am sorry,” Kurtis Charters said.
Atre’s mother died from a “broken heart” last year, the victim’s sister told the judge.
Kurtis Charters said, “His mother passing, the pain she went through, it made me think about my mom. What Tushar’s family went through … it hurts to hear they are hurting.”
Kurtis Charters’ mother sat behind her son in the courtroom and dabbed tears away with tissues.
Atre was sleeping on October 1, 2019 when three home invaders grabbed him out of his bed just before 3 a.m. The trio was Kurtis Charters, his brother-in-law Stephen Lindsay, and their friend Joshua Camps, according to prosecutors.
They bound the victim’s hands with zip-ties, forced him to open a safe at gunpoint, and stole thousands of dollars in cash. Atre bolted down the street screaming and “ran for his life,” Assistant District Attorney Michael Mckinney said. Lindsay tackled Atre before Camps stabbed the victim seven times, Mckinney said.
The group kidnapped the tech CEO, drove him to his cannabis farm in the Santa Cruz Mountains, and Camps shot him to death with an AR-15 rifle at close range. The victim was shot “twice in the jaw, once in the back of the head. It essentially destroys half his face,” Mckinney said.
Kaleb Charters served as the group’s driver to Atre’s house and while fleeing from the farm, the prosecutor said.
Kaleb Charters and Lindsay worked for Atre in August of 2019 when they planted a field of marijuana plants at Atres’s farm. They worked from dawn until dusk, and their boss pushed them to work harder, a witness said.
Their working relationship with Atre turned hostile after they lost keys to a truck on the farm and Atre canceled their paychecks, a witness testified. A heated argument broke out between them, and Atre forced Lindsay and Kaleb Charters to perform hundreds of pushups before he’d give their paychecks back, according to testimony.
Atre withheld $200 from each of their checks when Lindsay and Kaleb Charters were eventually paid, the prosecutor said.
For Thursday’s sentencing hearing, Atre’s sister said their parents immigrated from India, to Germany, and to the U.S. while working hard to achieve “the American dream.” The sister said, “On October 1, that dream turned into an American nightmare,” because of a “gang of hateful, greedy, violent killers. God will have vengeance.”
She said Atre would have lived another 50 years, and she hopes his killers suffer for the rest of their lives in prison.
Atre’s close friend and neighbor told the courtroom about getting a phone call that Atre was missing on October 1, 2019. His body was found the next day.
The friend, who identified herself as Kari, said Atre was a business entrepreneur and surfer driven by an endless curiosity. Atre often told other surfers that “the guy having the most fun in the water is the best surfer,” Kari said. He usually wore knee-high wool socks with a colorful outfit that looked like he had lost a bet, she said.
Legal proceedings for the four men charged with Atre’s murder were separated into four trials. Lindsay was the first defendant convicted of first-degree murder and he is currently serving life in prison without possibility of parole. Trials for Camps and Kaleb Charters are underway.
Kari said she attended the first two trials, and will attend the remaining two trials as well. On Thursday she said, “The trials have been brutal, four of them. If Tushar went through it, we will hear it.” Kurtis Charters looked at Kari while she told him, “You know what you did. Pleading innocence is such a slap in the face. There is nothing innocent here.”
The Charters brothers’ mother was also allowed to speak at the sentencing hearing. She said, “There are two sides to every person. They were very young, they are not bad people, they were not gang members — they were relatives and a friend.”
Lindsay is married to the Charters brothers’ sister, prosecutors said, and Camps was a friend who the group recruited to the plot because he owned guns. Prosecutors said Camps was the gunman who killed Atre, and Lindsay and Kaleb Charters came up with the home invasion plan.
The Charters brothers’ mother said, “Revenge should be left to God. We are all guilty of making bad decisions.”
This breaking news story will be updated.
