Atkinson

The two men recently arrested in the deaths of Bend couple Ray Atkinson Jr. and Natasha “Tasha” Newby in 2020 made their first court appearance Monday.

Kenneth “Ken” Atkinson of Ely, Nevada, and Nathan Shane Detroit II of Redmond are being held in the Deschutes County jail on suspicion of two counts each of first-degree premeditated murder and two each of conspiracy to commit murder.

Atkinson, 57, and Detroit, 31, were arraigned Monday in Deschutes County Circuit Court on a charging document called a district attorney’s information. Their case is expected to go before a grand jury this week.

David Newby, father of Natasha, said he won’t feel relief until the co-defendants are formally arraigned on an indictment, which is scheduled to occur next week.

“I won’t feel good until the indictment comes down and they’re formally charged,” he said. “I don’t want ’em dead. I want ’em to suffer.”

The men have yet to enter pleas to the charges, though Ken Atkinson has referred to accusations he killed his brother and brother’s fiancee as “innuendo” in earlier court filings.

On Aug. 15, 2020, Ray Atkinson , 34, and Newby, 29, were found dead in the basement of a home on NE 12th Street. Bend Police announced homicide was the cause and said though no suspects were in custody, there was no threat to the Bend community.

For more than a year, the couple’s friends and relatives called on Deschutes County District Attorney John Hummel to arrest Ken Atkinson, whom they believed early on killed the couple out of “Cain and Abel”-style jealousy.

On Friday, Hummel announced the arrests. Newby’s father said he was notified the day before that arrests were likely imminent.

David Newby said he was told by the DA’s office they had evidence to arrest Ken Atkinson, but they had evidence another person was involved and had to wait for the results of DNA testing. The office did not want to arrest one suspect and not the other, David Newby said.

“In the very beginning, the DA told me they had some evidence that implicated a second person, and they were trying to make that go through, and that’s what took so long,” Newby said. “They didn’t want to arrest one and then the second one disappear.”

Ken Atkinson is a former prison guard for the Nevada Department of Corrections and a onetime Bend resident. Detroit is his nephew.

Though separated in age by more than two decades, Ken Atkinson and Ray Atkinson Jr. are the only children of Ray Atkinson Sr., who died in August 2019 at age 82. At the time, Atkinson Jr. and Newby spent considerable time at the older man’s NE 12th Street home, as Atkinson Jr. was said to be close with his father, according to friends of the couple.

When Ray Atkinson Sr. died without a will, probate documents show the sons battled in court for control of his nearly $400,000 estate.

After the couple was killed in the home, documents filed by Ray Atkinson Jr.’s heir stated Ken Atkinson was the main suspect in his brother’s death.

The home on 12th Street sold earlier this year to neighbors who intended to restore the home.

David Newby resides in Mississippi, while Newby’s mother now lives in Texas. Tasha Newby also left behind one sister.

“I miss her deeply,” David Newby said of his daughter.