Tushar Atre was taken from his Santa Cruz home in the predawn hours of Oct. 1, 2019, and was found dead hours later on one of his cannabis properties, authorities said. Court records show Atre suffered stab wounds and a fatal gunshot wound to the back of the head.
Neighbors in the oceanside surf community initially expressed disbelief and fear after the successful tech executive and cannabis entrepreneur disappeared, a local reporter said. Investigators with the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office cast a wide net but had few leads at first, prosecutors and investigators said.
Detectives turned their focus to Atre’s cannabis operation and interviewed employees and associates. Two names repeatedly emerged during those interviews: Stephen Lindsay and Kaleb Charters, former workers at one of Atre’s properties, a former police chief told reporters.
Lindsay and Charters had worked for Atre in August 2019 performing mostly manual labor, including installing fence posts and planting, court records show. Investigators interviewed both men in December 2019 and learned they had been employed for less than two weeks. During that brief period, friction developed: the men said they misplaced a set of Atre’s car keys and later learned Atre had stopped payment on their checks.
Lindsay told investigators he had become so upset he wanted to fight Atre, according to court filings. Investigators also heard accounts that Atre had made the men perform push-ups in front of others, which one former prosecutor and consultant said could have humiliated them.
The missing keys were later recovered and Atre paid the men partially for their work, the interviews showed. Lindsay and Charters told investigators the dispute was resolved and that neither returned to Santa Cruz after their brief employment.
Five months after those interviews, authorities arrested Lindsay and Charters along with Kaleb Charters’ brother, Kurtis Charters, and a friend, Joshua Camps, charging them with kidnapping and murder in Atre’s death. Investigators described the incident as a robbery that went wrong, court records indicate.
A former federal prosecutor advising the investigation said the reports of humiliation and the fact that Lindsay and Kaleb Charters served in the U.S. Army Reserve might have contributed to a motive, noting the military emphasis on respect. A former police chief involved as a consultant also highlighted the repeated appearance of the two names in interviews as a turning point for detectives.
The four defendants were tried separately. Court records show each was found guilty and subsequently sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
The case prompted extensive local coverage and a multi-month investigation, officials said, as detectives pieced together evidence from interviews at Atre’s cannabis operations and other inquiries surrounding his abduction and death.
Leave a Reply