The story of Tushar Atre’s murder — a crime that stunned Silicon Valley and the cannabis industry alike — has taken on an unsettling new layer inside a Santa Cruz courtroom.

Kaleb Charters, a 25-year-old former National Guard member accused of killing Atre alongside three others, testified last week that the brutal 2019 slaying was the culmination of what he called a “toxic and dehumanizing” work environment at Atre’s cannabis business. Atre, a multimillionaire entrepreneur who made his fortune in tech before moving into legal marijuana cultivation, was kidnapped from his Santa Cruz home and later found dead near one of his mountain grow sites — stabbed, shot, and left in the dirt.

On the stand, Charters described a workplace where humiliation was routine and anger simmered just below the surface. He recalled one incident in which Atre ordered him and his brother-in-law, Stephen Lindsay, to perform hundreds of pushups before they could receive their paychecks. “You guys are in the Army. Do 500 pushups,” Charters said Atre told them after they misplaced keys to a company vehicle. “Tushar was flipping out,” Charters added, saying the boss threatened to cancel their paychecks altogether.

The tension, Charters claimed, wasn’t an isolated event. He testified that he and Lindsay worked ten straight days planting cannabis in the Santa Cruz Mountains, often from dawn until dusk, for $200 a day. “We were exhausted,” he said. “He was always yelling.”

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