New England man charged with killing his mother on the high seas over inheritance money
A young man rescued from a life raft in 2016 was charged with killing his mother on the ill-fated fishing trip off the coast of Rhode Island.
Nathan Carman, now 28, was charged with murder on the high seas and several other crimes, the Justice Department announced Tuesday in a press release.
The feds said Carman did it all for money that originally belonged to his grandfather. Though the charging documents say Carman also killed his grandfather, John Chakalos, in 2013, he was not formally charged with the crime.
Carman mysteriously returned from the fishing trip in 2016 without his mother, 54-year-old Linda Carman. He claimed that he made a beeline for the lifeboat when their vessel began taking on water, and when he turned around his mom had simply disappeared.
The Coast Guard searched several days for the Carmans but came up empty. Nathan was found by a commercial vessel off the coast of Rhode Island two days after the Coast Guard gave up.
The feds said Carman intentionally made his family fishing boat, the Chicken Pox, unseaworthy prior the trip. They cited his removal of two forward bulkheads and two trim tabs at the stern, according to the Boston Globe. Investigators said Carman “tried” to fill the holes with an epoxy stick.
The exact nature of Linda Carman’s death remains unknown because her body was never found. In a 2018 court appearance, Nathan Carman said “even if you were to believe” that he left his mother behind, “that’s not a crime.”
Carman filed an $85,000 insurance claim on the boat, but in 2019 a judge sided with the insurance company that denied the payout. On Tuesday, Carman was charged with insurance fraud.
Family members have also said for years that Carman killed Chakalos in 2013 at Chakalos’ home in Windsor, Conn. Carman was the last person to see Chakalos before he was shot dead.
Police said Carman bought a firearm matching the one used in the killing, the Connecticut Post reported. They also said he threw out his computer hard drive and the GPS in his vehicle to avoid any digital trail.
Upon Chakalos’ death, $550,000 ended up in Carman’s hands. Carman then moved to Vermont in 2014, apparently without his mother. He’d previously run away from home in 2011 but was tracked down after four days.
Police said that when he returned to Middletown, Conn., to meet his mother in 2016, he was running out of money and was hoping to obtain the remaining $7 million inheritance that his mother received upon Chakalos’ death, according to the Connecticut Post. Those circumstances led to the tragic fishing trip, the feds said.
Carman once again moved to Vermont after his mother died, and he was arrested in the tiny town of Vernon in the state’s southeast corner, the Justice Department said. His arraignment is scheduled for Wednesday.
With News Wire Services
