After a month-long trial, a North Carolina man has been found guilty of killing his parents — just hours after they allowed him to move in after being evicted from his Charlotte home.
A Mecklenburg County jury found 43-year-old Curtis Atkinson Jr. guilty of all charges in the grisly 2017 shooting and stabbing deaths of his parents, Ruby and Curtis Atkinson Sr., prosecutors said Thursday.
Superior Court Judge Karen Eady-Williams sentenced Atkinson to two consecutive life terms in prison without the possibility for parole, according to a news release by the Mecklenburg County District Attorney’s Office.
Curtis Atkinson’s girlfriend, 32-year-old Nikkia Cooper, previously pleaded guilty in connection with the murders, prosecutors said.
When the Atkinsons were found in their east Charlotte home, they had been dead for days, The Charlotte Observer previously reported.
Atkinson stabbed his father 69 times while forcing his 11-year-old niece to watch, the Observer reported. Prosecutors said Atkinson and Cooper fatally stabbed and shot the parents after an argument.
After killing the couple, Atkinson and Cooper covered the bodies with blankets and old rugs and stepped around them for days, prosecutors said previously.
When Cooper triggered a fire alarm inside the home, the couple drove away with the niece, prompting a nationwide manhunt. The child was found in Washington, D.C., after Atkinson crashed his car near the Washington Monument during a police chase.
Cooper also was in the vehicle and is believed to have called 911 as part of a plan to use the niece to barter food and gasoline, prosecutors said.
In a deal with prosecutors, Cooper pleaded guilty in 2019 to two counts of second-degree murder and is serving a 56-year sentence in Anson Correctional Institution.
In 2022, prosecutors dropped a capital murder charge against Curtis Atkinson, in what at the time was Mecklenburg County’s only death penalty case.
The jury this week found him guilty of two counts of first-degree murder and a count each of first-degree kidnapping, conspiracy to commit first- degree murder, conspiracy to commit first-degree kidnapping and possession of a firearm by a felon.
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