Episode 201: Nathan Carman
John Chakalos and Linda Carman
Nathan Carman was born in Connecticut, and his mom Linda and his dad Clark divorced when he was still pretty young. His parents, teachers and classmates noticed that Nathan had a hard time making friends and interacting with peers, and as he got older he got a diagnosis of Asperger’s. Young Nathan wanted for naught as he lived a cushy, comfortable life in a beautiful area of Connecticut with great schools and resources. His grandfather was a man named John Chakalos who was a well known, wealthy real estate developer who built nursing homes and similar healthcare facilities across New England.
John had four daughters that he adored, but he treated Nathan like the son he never had. When Nathan was admitted into a psychiatric facility, John visited him every day without fail. He paid for Nathan to go to great schools, his housing as he got older and he even bought him a horse. This relationship only grew stronger when Nathan began showing interest in John’s work and the business, and John, thrilled at the idea of Nathan one day following in his footsteps, took him to meetings and brought him to work.
On December 20th, 2013, 87-year-old John Chakalos was found dead in his Windsor, Connecticut home. He had been shot in the head. He had been found by his oldest daughter Elaine when she stopped by to visit him for breakfast and ensure that he was taking his heart medication. When she entered the home at 8:15 a.m. and John wasn’t sitting up at his desk, Elaine feared the worst as she made her way to her father’s bedroom. She never could have imagined she would find him in bed in a pool of blood. When police arrived, they noticed that nothing had been stolen from the home, not even the stacks of cash John kept as an emergency fund. It was discovered that John had been shot three times, twice in the head and once in the chest, with a Sig Sauer rifle from the foot of his bed as he slept.
Nathan’s aunt and one of John’s daughters Valerie was immediately suspicious of Nathan. Police also grew suspicious of him as Nathan told them he didn’t own any guns, but investigators found he had purchased a Sig Sauer rifle in New Hampshire just weeks before the murder. When confronted about this, Nathan said that he lost the gun and didn’t know where it was. The gun has never been found. Nathan was also likely the last person to see his grandfather before the murder as they had dinner together the previous night.
Nathan claims that he had no involvement in the murder as he had left at 3:00 a.m. to go on a fishing trip with his mom Linda that they went on regularly. Despite this being rather routine, Nathan claims he got lost while en route to the marina and an hour of the early morning until 4:01 a.m. is unaccounted for. He destroyed the GPS from the truck he drove that John purchased for him and he also disposed of the hard drive from his computer. When authorities obtained a search warrant for his house and truck, they found other guns and notes Nathan had written that had specific, intricate details all about sniper rifles and self-propelled improvised explosive devices. Detectives were growing increasingly concerned about Nathan’s involvement in the murder of his grandfather and sought an arrest warrant. He was also deemed a flight risk and a threat to himself as police felt it was likely he could kill himself as authorities closed in to arrest him. The warrant came back unsigned due to lack of evidence. No one has ever been charged with the murder of John Chakalos.
Nathan’s relationship with his family, specifically with his aunts and extended family, became further strained when he got a large sum of inheritance money from his grandfather’s murder that he used to buy a house in Vermont and his own fishing boat, “The Chicken Pox.”
On Saturday, September 17th, 2016, Nathan left his house in Vernon, Vermont, and drove the 146 miles south to Ram Point Marina in South Kingstown, Rhode Island, for a fishing trip with his mom. While en route, he got rid of his computer. His mom did not like fish and did not like the ocean as it scared her. What scared her even more was the idea of her son going out on the open ocean alone, so she took the opportunity for bonding time with Nathan and enjoyed spending time with him. While Linda was on her way to the marina to meet Nathan, he caught the eye of an older, more skilled boater.
Mike Iozzi was at the marina with some friends and began watching Nathan make “repairs” to his boat. Mike watched, alarmed, as he saw Nathan taking an electric power drill to make 1.5 and 2-inch holes in the side of the aluminum fishing boat. Nathan then used the drill to remove three screws at the top of the vessel’s trim tabs, which are used to raise the windward side of the boat to block the spray that blows over it to keep the driver as dry as possible. The trim tabs also keep the boat steady and balanced on each side. Mike, baffled at what he was seeing, approached Nathan and asked him what he was doing. Nathan calmly told him that he was removing the boat’s trim tabs and that they weren’t necessary. Mike sternly warned him that these modifications could cause the boat to sink, but Nathan brushed him off. Mike was even more alarmed to learn that Nathan was going night fishing, especially as he didn’t see any fishing gear in the boat.
When Linda arrived, she said to Nathan several times that she was nervous about getting on the boat and taking it out so far in the ocean to go fishing. Nathan assured her that it would be fine and that they would stay around Block Island, about 24 nautical miles from Ram Point Marina. Still, Linda wisely sent text messages detailing her and Nathan’s plans out on the water to three trusted people, one of whom was her best friend Sharon Hartstein. The message stated, “Heading out toward Striper Rock, Southeast of the windmills. Back by 9am. Call me 12 noon if you don’t hear from me.” Surveillance cameras at Ram Point Marina showed Nathan and his mother preparing to board the boat, and then they left at around 11:00 p.m.
When the night went on and turned to morning, Linda’s friends began waiting for her text updates about her return. Afternoon came and quickly went, and by this time, Sharon grew panicked and called the Coast Guard. The Coast Guard wasted no time in gathering more information and starting a search after they determined hours had gone by and Nathan and Linda had not returned or made contact with anyone. Linda’s phone was last used at 12:45 a.m. on the south side of Block Island, and this is where the Coast Guard based their search off of. Within several hours, two planes were sent over the area for a bird’s eye view, and the Coast Guard sent out a boat as well. Even though the determined search area covered 1,282 square nautical miles from Rhode Island Sound all the way to the northern tip of Long Island, the Coast Guard was baffled as it seemed like Nathan, Linda and the boat itself had all vanished. There were no sign of them, the boat, or even debris or an oil slick if the boat had capsized.
On land, police found a bucket of eels commonly used as striped bass bait in his truck unused. U.S. Coast Guard Special Agent Eric Gempp stated, “If you left the dock and didn't take your bait, then what are you using for bait if you're going fishing?" It was also found that Nathan had recently purchased an anchor and several lengths of chain, both of which were an odd purchase as they weren’t compatible with the type of boat he had.
The Coast Guard officially suspended the search on September 24th, 2016, after one of the largest search operations in Coast Guard history. Richard Arsenault and his team were all genuinely baffled at how they hadn’t found Nathan and Linda. When the Coast Guard broke the news to Linda’s family, they were caught up to speed about the dynamics surrounding the murder of John Chakalos. Valerie told the Coast Guard all about Nathan, saying he murdered John and probably murdered Linda because she was right about to inherit John’s mansion in New Hampshire as the probate court settlement meeting was scheduled for the following week. Next in line to the home, if Linda was unable or unwilling to accept it as inheritance, was Nathan. Rhode Island police were immediately notified of this and the search took on an entirely new angle. Both Nathan and Linda’s vehicles were impounded in case Nathan came back for them, and Linda’s credit card activity was closely monitored.
Two days after the search was called off, the Chinese cargo ship named “Orient Lucky” left Providence, Rhode Island to Boston to refuel when they spotted something about 100 miles off of Martha’s Vineyard. A raft was bobbing in the waves, and on it was a single person. The cargo ship began performing a rescue, and they safely hoisted the raft’s sole occupant, Nathan Carman, aboard. He was given food, water, a shower and an extra crew uniform to wear. The Coast Guard was notified and were absolutely shocked by this. By their meticulous calculations, Nathan drifted in the complete opposite direction. His location did not make any sense.
What also baffled the Coast Guard and the doctor aboard the ship was Nathan’s condition. He was not at all disoriented, dehydrated or with any damage to his skin from the sun and salt exposure, which is never the case with survivors rescued out at sea. When questioned, Nathan was almost casual rather than traumatized from the near death experience. He said that he and his mom were out fishing for tuna, and this raised red flags as the original story was that he and his mom were going out to fish for striped bass. When the ship docked in Boston, Nathan was taken in and questioned for several hours by the Coast Guard. Coast Guard Captain W. Russell Webster, who had overseen thousands of search-and-rescue missions, stated, “If he had been in that life raft during that length of time, we would have found him. There’s no possible way, with the technology we had, including forward-looking radar, that a person who wanted to be found could slip through our nets… He showed up 35 miles east of where he should have been. In that general area, the currents flow from east to west. In his retelling, the currents somehow pushed him west to east, which is not at all possible.”
Nathan’s account of events was that he and his mom rode to Block Island to fish for stripers for about an hour, but at 1:00 a.m., Nathan urged Linda to go even farther out to fish for tuna as the conditions were good. Linda had plans to meet a friend to go hiking the next morning, and she loved her new job working with special needs children in their homes and simply could not let them down by cancelling last minute. Linda was also scared to go the 75 nautical miles out in the middle of the night with her son, who was not experienced with night fishing. After some back-and-forth, Nathan got his way and they got to the fishing area right as the sun was starting to rise. He claims that the conditions were so perfect that neither of them were wearing their life jackets. Suddenly, Nathan heard a noise in the engine and knew the boat was taking on water.
Rather than activate the boat’s alert system to call for help, he grabbed “ditch bags,” or bags filled with survival essentials and then claims the 31-foot-boat all of a sudden dropped out from under him and he fell into the ocean. When he opened his eyes, he was in the water holding a ditch bag full of all of the essentials he needed to survive out there for days. He reached the surface of the water and didn’t see his mom, but saw that the boat’s life raft had inflated automatically and was within a short swimming distance. Nathan claims he called out for his mother but never saw her, telling Coast Guard officials “I don’t know if she got hit on the head. I don’t know if she got tangled in the fishing lines. I assumed that if she had been on the surface and conscious that she would have been calling out, and I would have been able to find her. But I didn’t know why that hadn’t happened.”
Despite the Coast Guard finding no debris and no oil slick, Nathan said he saw both of those things on the surface of the water. When asked how he remained hydrated during all those days on the open ocean, Nathan explained that the ditch bag he grabbed had water packs, and he also purchased a desalinator, or a device that turns saltwater into freshwater, just several weeks before that he was able to grab before the boat sank. The ditch bag also had smoke flares, but strangely none of these were ever used.
Within hours of his return to Vernon, Vermont, the story of his survival and bravery crumbled when police searched Nathan’s house for anything in connection to Linda’s suspicious disappearance. Nathan faced additional scrutiny when he almost immediately sat down and filed an $85,000 insurance claim for his lost boat. Insurance denied the claim as Nathan had made several faulty repairs that likely caused the boat to sink. A hired oceanographer also determined that the raft should have drifted west but Nathan said that he went east, and the oceanographer backed up the Coast Guard with determining Nathan’s story was false.
On May 10th, 2022, Nathan was criminally indicted in the murder of his mother on the high seas as well as fraud. Between his grandfather’s inheritance and his mom’s, Nathan was looking at receiving almost $50 million dollars. He pleaded not guilty.
Before the case could even go to trial, Nathan’s body was found in his jail cell on June 15th, 2023. He was 28-years-old and had hung himself in his cell. The murder of his grandfather is still considered unsolved and the charges against him were posthumously dropped.
Image sources:
the-independent.com - “A ‘miracle’ rescue, two family murder cases and a jail cell death: Nathan Carman’s saga of greed and lies”
nymag.com - “Dead Wake”