Man accused of murdering mother at sea in inheritance settlement dies in prison

A Vermont man died in jail Thursday morning awaiting trial on charges of luring his mother on a fishing trip, killing her and sinking the boat in a scheme to inherit his family’s estate said the US Marshals Service.

The Marshals Service, which issued a statement announcing the death, did not say how the man, Nathan Carman, 29, of Vernon, Vt., had died.

Mr. Carman was held at the Cheshire County Jail in Keene, NH, after pleading not guilty last year to first-degree murder and fraud charges in the death of his mother, Linda Carman, during a fishing trip off the coast of Rhode Islands in 2016.

The Marshals Service said the Keene Police Department was investigating. A police spokesman declined to comment.

Prison officials found Mr. Carman “unresponsive overnight” in his cell, where he was the sole occupant, said Douglas L. Iosue, the superintendent of the Cheshire County Department of Corrections, and Christopher C. Coates, the county administrator, in a statement.

Mr Carman was due to go on trial in October.

Martin J. Minnella, a lawyer for Mr. Carman, said prosecutors had told him that Mr. Carman had left a note for him and for his other lawyer, David X. Sullivan, although they had not yet seen it and did not know what it said.

“We had no indication that anything was wrong,” Mr Minnella said. “We wanted to go to court and tell the truth about this boy, because the truth wasn’t there. My mind is blown. It’s a complete surprise.”

Mr Sullivan said there was no indication that Mr Carman was potentially in danger from other prisoners or at risk of suicide.

“I had talked to him for about an hour between 6 and 7 last night, and he was in very good spirits,” Mr Sullivan said, adding, “I am so deeply saddened and distressed by his loss.”

A lawyer for Ms Carman’s three sisters, who sued Mr Carman in 2018 to stop him from inheriting money and accused him of murdering Ms Carman and their father, John Chakalos, released a statement saying that they were “deeply saddened to hear of Nathan’s death.”

“As we process this shocking news and its impact on the tragic events of recent years, we ask for your understanding and respect for our privacy,” the statement read.

In an indictment unveiled in May 2022, federal prosecutors charged Mr. Carman of killing his mother while on a boat trip off the coast of Rhode Island in September 2016 and filing false reports with authorities about what happened.

Federal prosecutors did not specify how they believed Mr. Carman killed his mother, but they said his boat, named Chicken Pox, was deliberately sunk. Mr. Carman spent eight days at sea before the crew of a commercial ship, the Orient Lucky, found him on a life raft.

In 2013, as another part of his plan, Mr. Carman grabbed his Sig Sauer rifle and shot and killed Mr. Chakalos, who had become wealthy building and renting nursing homes and other real estate ventures in Windsor, Conn., according to the charge. . According to the indictment, Mr. Carman was not charged with that murder.

The indictment stated that Mr Carman had “made up cover stories to hide his involvement in those murders”. It didn’t say how much money Mr. Carman could have inherited. This is reported by the AP that, as his mother’s sole heir, he would have received $7 million.

Suspicions about Ms. Carman’s death first arose in September 2016 when the Coast Guard found Mr. Carman on an inflatable life raft without his mother. Her body was never found.

They had left on a fishing trip after 11 p.m. on September 17, 2016 to spend time together on Mr. Carman’s boat. It was Ms. Carman’s “main way of dealing with her son,” according to the indictment.

By this time, Mr. Chakalos had been dead for three years and Mr. Carman had already received $550,000 as a result. Most of the money had been spent in the fall of 2016 because he had been unemployed for a long time, the indictment said.

Federal prosecutors said Mr. Carman planned and prepared for his mother’s murder in several ways: He removed trim tabs — metal plates that help stabilize performance — from the boat and removed his computer from his home to prevent officials from using it. review. while he was gone.

He intended to report the chickenpox sinking and Ms. Carman’s disappearance as “accidents,” the indictment said.

Mr. Carman told The AP in 2016 that “what happened on the boat was a horrible tragedy that I’m still trying to process and come to terms with.”

He added that he didn’t know “what to think about people who are suspicious”, and that he had “enough on his mind”.

Edward Medina reporting contributed.