Mystery Shrouds Death of North Laguna Man

Hotel Laguna catering manager Damon Nicholson at a recent event. Photo courtesy of Michelle Wheeler Friends expressed bafflement this week over the brutal killing of Damon Nicholson, a hotel manager and student photographer, discovered dead in a North Laguna duplex by a co-worker wondering about his unexpected absence.

Nicholson’s bludgeoning death in the early hours of Friday, Oct. 23, is the first homicide in Laguna Beach since the double shooting deaths of a couple at the Montage resort in 2007. Investigators are seeking the public’s help for tips about anything they observed out of the ordinary near Nicholson’s Dolphin Way home last Friday between 1 and 5 a.m., established by the coroner as the estimated time of his death, according to police Lt. Jason Kravetz.

Investigators are pursuing some leads and recovered several items from the home, though Kravetz declined to describe the sort of evidence collected and the direction of the inquiry. Nor would he say whether there were signs of forced entry or whether the murder weapon was recovered. Nicholson died of blunt force trauma to the head, Kravetz said.

Deputy Public Administrator Robert Mull this past Tuesday seals the home of Damon Nicholson, who died violently in a North Laguna duplex last week. Police, however, told some unnerved neighbors Nicholson’s killer was not a random intruder. “They’re treating it as someone he knew,” said Gabe Sullivan, a fiveyear resident in the neighborhood above the Boat Canyon shopping center. He and his wife arrived home last Friday about 10 p.m. and received a knock on the door from investigators almost immediately. “I couldn’t believe it,” said Sullivan, who was questioned about what he knew of his neighbor. “It’s so creepy,” he said. “This probably happened while we were home.”

Friends and co-workers at Hotel Laguna, where Nicholson worked for 14 years, this week set up a memorial with flowers and candles in the entry to the split-level house where he lived alone for the past two years. General manager Michelle Wheeler also set up a memorial website for Nicholson’s friends at www.legacy.com. “I lost a very good friend and a very good employee,” said Wheeler, who saw him last Thursday, when Nicholson stopped by the hotel on his day off. “He loved that hotel. He loved Laguna,” she said.

“He spent his life devoted to others,” added Sue Pons, a friend and hotel patron. “He made such beautiful memories for so many people, we are all thankful for it.”

As law enforcement authorities have yet to release Nicholson’s body to his family, a service is not expected before next week and will likely take place at BC Space Gallery, said Nicholson friend, gallery owner Mark Chamberlain.

“I can’t imagine someone would do something like this to him,” said another friend, Max Brown, who described Nicholson’s no-nonsense demeanor as masking a terrific wit and a talent for improvisation. In various patriotic costumes, Nicholson hosted numerous July 4th parties over the years that served up side-splitting laughter for guests lucky enough for a spot on the Cliff Drive balcony of his former home, Brown recalled.

Professionally, Nicholson worked as a caterer, meeting requests of meeting organizers, hosts of private parties, and brides, as well as getting to know loyal cusushering tomers, said hotel owner Claes Andersen, who knew of no workrelated issue that could be a motive in Nicholson’s death.

“He knew how to do a wedding; he was very good at getting bride’s mothers to relax,” said Andersen, who also intends to hold a memorial service for Nicholson at an unspecified date. Nicholson’s parents and 11 siblings all live in Arizona, Wheeler said.

Personally, Nicholson was devoted to photography. Though he considered art school, according to Brown, Nicholson instead studied by taking workshops out of the area and enrolling in community college classes with the late Jerry Burchfield, who taught at Cypress College and was a co-founder of the Laguna Beach gallery, BC Space.

Like his mentor, Nicholson was inventive with photographic processes and a ready contributor to gallery exhibits or projects, such as making the Guinness-recorded largest photograph in history with Burchfield at the closed El Toro marine base, Chamberlain said. Nicholson’s own recent projects included a self-published historical book on Hotel Laguna and a remote camera set up for the Orange County Fair.

“It’s a shame to see that talent cut so short just as the application of his experimental photography was beginning to pay off,” Chamberlain said.

Police ask anyone with information regarding the homicide to contact Detective Debra Kelso at (949) 497-0371.