Employees Killed Millionaire Tech CEO Over Torturous Work Environment, Pushups for Paychecks: Court

Prosecutors in court said that the defendant, and three accomplices, murdered Tushab Atre at the same location where two of them said they were abused under his employ.

Kaleb Charters, a 25-year-old former U.S. Army National Guard member, was 19 years old when he allegedly dropped three people off in the wealthy oceanfront Pleasure Point neighborhood in Santa Cruz for them to rob and kidnap his boss, Atre.

Charters then drove to the marijuana farm where he had worked to "prepare the crime scene where his former boss would be killed," as Los Gatan reported it -- even if that might not have been the original plan. The other three men kidnapped the victim and arrived later in a stolen vehicle with an already stabbed and bleeding Atre.

Charters' brother Kurtis and brother-in-law Stephen Lindsay, a fellow former National Guard member, were previously convicted of first-degree murder and are serving life sentences. Joshua Camps, who has admitted to stabbing and later shooting Atre in the head, is waiting for his trial to resume, per KRON 4.

Santa Cruz County Assistant District Attorney Michael McKinney told jurors in court, "It's fitting where they chose to take him to." He described the defendants allegedly forcing Atre to "get on the ground! Put your hands behind your back!" at his home and how he was ultimately left "shot four times, stabbed seven" at his cannabis farm.

Both Kaleb Charters and Stephen Lindsay had worked for Atre at this farm, where they claimed their boss withheld $200 from their paychecks and then humiliated them. This was about two months before the fatal kidnapping in the summer of 2019.

In court, Kaleb said "Tushar was flipping out" because after he and Lindsay had planted hundreds of cannabis plants at the farm -- working 10-hour days from dawn until dusk, he claimed -- they had apparently lost the keys to a farm vehicle dubbed the "Monster Truck."

The men were reportedly working for $200 a day, according to Kaleb, but at this point, Atre told them that "he was going to cancel the checks," doing just that.

"You guys are in the army. Do 500 pushups," Kaleb recounted in court of Atre's alleged ultimatum before they he would cut them new checks, as detailed by KRON.

Other employees came forward to talk about the toxic work environment Atre allegedly created, per KRON, with some admitting they'd "joked" behind his back about robbing him or hurting him before someone actually did both.

They said that Atre yelled at employees repeatedly, often withheld or bounced their paychecks and would fire any worker he felt had disrespected him. According to Santa Cruz County Sheriff's Detective Ethan Rumrill's testimony about Kaleb and Lindsay, specifically, "They were humiliated in public.."

When asked if Atre would "invoke fear in his employees [so] people would work for him," another employee said on the stand, "Yes."

The intention behind the kidnapping hadn't necessarily been to kill Atre, but rather to rob his home and make him suffer. Kaleb was designated the driver and his brother Kurtis and Lindsay were tasked with grabbing the million dollars they believed he kept in a home safe, according to McKinney. He said that Camps was a "wannabe cop with a gun fetish" whose role was to bring weapons and make sure Atre didn't escape.

But, according to McKinney's closing argument, things went wrong when Atre did manage to escape at around 3 a.m., running for his life and screaming for help until "Lindsay tackles him in the street."

"Camps ... started stabbing him over and over and over," with surveillance video shown to the jury revealing just that. "Tushar, for a second time, ran for his life. Kurtis grabbed him and threw him in this car." Throughout, he was reportedly showing the jury pictures of an SUV with Atre's blood smeared all over it.

It was after this that they allegedly drove to the cannabis farm with Lindsay reportedly yelling at Atre, "Why are you so mean to people?" This, McKinney said, came from a confession that police say Camps gave after his arrest.

Video of Camps' confession played in court, where he described how Atre was killed. "We zip-tied his hands, shoved a sock in his mouth," he said, per KRON's report. "I told him no one wants to hurt you, we are just here for your stuff. He kept saying, 'Who are you guys?' He didn't know what was going on. … He was covered in blood. He was saying, 'Please let me go.'"

Camps allegedly admitted that when Atre tried to escape, he stabbed him in the neck. He also said he shot him later at the farm with an AR-15 rifle several times in the jaw and the back of the head to put him out of his misery, per the report.

"He wasn't going to last much longer. I knew he was going to die, bleed out," Camps reportedly said on the video, calling it an "execution" style "mercy killing."