Nicholas Giampa, 24, was found dead on August 22 in his Virginia jail cell after being arrested on suspicion of murdering his girlfriend’s parents.
According to Fairfax County police, Giampa, who had been at the county jail since 2018, was pronounced dead at 2 a.m. Authorities have released no details about the death, but they say they do not suspect foul play. That leads to the possibility that Giampa may have killed himself.
He was arrested in 2017 after police believed he was responsible for the gun murders of 43-year-old Buckely Kuhn-Fricker, and her husband, Scott Fricker, 48, at their home in Virginia. The murders grabbed headlines because of Giampa’s reputation for indulging in neo-Nazi politics. Giampa was a teen at the time, and neighbors said he had gone so far as to mow a swastika into a public field in town.
The case got even more grisly when the dead couple’s daughter and girlfriend of the suspected murderer told authorities that she had made a “suicide pact” with Giampa after her parents tried to stop their relationship. The girl has not been named in the media. Reporting closer to the time of the murders indicates that the Fricker parents were alarmed at the radical and hateful politics of their daughter’s boyfriend. They were also disturbed to learn that Giampa had been charged in juvenile court with possessing child pornography.
When the pair made their suicide agreement, there was also discussion of “wounding” the girl’s parents if they tried to stop the couple.
On the fateful day, the two parents found Giampa in their daughter’s bedroom. The girl had apparently given him the security code for the door locks and asked him to sneak in after her parents went to sleep. When they awakened and found him, Giampa allegedly shot them both dead.
The scene got even more chaotic, according to the teen girl, as Giampa put a handgun to her head as her parents were walking into the room. For some reason, the gun did not fire. After killing her parents, Giampa then shot himself in the head but survived.
During a hearing in 2018, psychologists testified in court that Giampa had damaged his brain with the gunshot wound and was not able to understand his situation enough to participate in a trial.
His trial had been scheduled to start in January, 2025, and he was set to be tried as an adult.
