A man charged with two counts of first-degree murder in the killings of his girlfriend’s parents was found dead Thursday in a Virginia jail, authorities said.
Fairfax County police said Nicholas Giampa, 24, was pronounced dead at about 2 a.m. in his cell at the county jail, where he had been incarcerated since 2018. Police said they are investigating Mr. Giampa’s death but said that preliminarily they do not believe foul play was involved.
Mr. Giampa was arrested in December 2017 in connection with the fatal shootings of Scott Fricker, 48, and Buckley Kuhn-Fricker, 43, in their Virginia home.
The case attracted national attention because of evidence Mr. Giampa espoused neo-Nazi philosophies. Neighbors said the then-teen also mowed a swastika into a community field.
At the time of the killings, Kuhn-Fricker’s 16-year-old daughter told police she and Mr. Giampa had formed a suicide pact after her family forbade their relationship, discussing “wounding her parents if they tried to intervene,” according to court records.
Officials said the Frickers objected to the relationship after learning that Mr. Giampa associated with neo-Nazis online, as well as the fact that he had been charged as a juvenile with possessing child pornography.
Fricker and Kuhn-Fricker were shot after finding Mr. Giampa in their daughter’s bedroom. The daughter told police she had given Mr. Giampa a security code that allowed him to enter the home after her parents had gone to bed.
According to police, Mr. Giampa reached for a handgun and shot Fricker and Kuhn-Fricker after the daughter unlocked her bedroom door. The daughter told police that Mr. Giampa put a gun to her head, but it did not fire. Mr. Giampa, then 17, then shot himself in the forehead. He was hospitalized for weeks but survived the injury.
At a 2018 hearing, psychologists testified that brain damage from the self-inflicted gunshot wound rendered Mr. Giampa unable to understand trial proceedings fully. At least one psychologist testified that Mr. Giampa would eventually be able to recover sufficiently to participate in his defense.
Mr. Giampa’s jury trial was postponed three times and had been scheduled to take place in January, according to online court records.
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