Back in September 2016, Nathan Carman, a 22-year-old, together with his mother Linda, embarked on an overnight fishing trip from Rhode Island. Their primary goal was to try to repair their strained relationship.
Prior to their departure, Linda, aged 54, followed her usual safety routine by sending a ‘float plan’ to a family friend. This float plan included details of their trip on Nathan’s boat named the ‘Chicken Pox’. Linda informed the friend that they planned to return the next morning and asked to be contacted at noon if they hadn’t returned.
The mother and son departed from Ram Point Marina in South Kingstown, late on Sept. 17, setting sail toward Block Island.
The events that unfolded on the Chicken Pox remain a mystery between Nathan and Linda. However, only one of them would have the opportunity to recount their side of the story.
A frantic search was launched by the U.S. Coast Guard on Sept. 18 after Linda failed to make contact as promised.
No trace of the 31-foot vessel could be found; the Chicken Pox and its two passengers had seemingly vanished from the face of the Earth.
Eight days would pass before a remarkable discovery was made 100 miles off the coast of Cape Cod: Nathan Carman was found floating on an inflatable life raft by a Chinese commercial bulk carrier aptly named The Orient Lucky. He was alive and surprisingly well nourished.
Nathan’s rescue was initially hailed as a miracle but soon dawned the birth of one of New England’s most notorious murder mysteries.
Six years later, Nathan would be charged with killing his mother at sea. He would also be named as a prime suspect in the 2013 shooting death of multi-millionaire grandfather, John Chakalos.
Nathan denied the charges, but before he could get his day in court he was found dead in his prison cell in June 2023, having seemingly taken his own life.
His attorney, Martin Minnella, remains convinced of Nathan’s innocence and told DailyMail.com he believes his client’s death was not a suicide but instead a murder.
‘Nathan was not suicidal,’ claimed Minella. ‘We’d spoken to him the night before and he was absolutely fine.
‘He was looking forward to his trial and clearing his name […] now he’ll never get the chance.’
Nathan Carmen is seen in 2016 after being rescued having claimed to have spent eight days adrift in a small inflatable lift raft after his boat sank
Nathan Carmen (left) was accused of murdering his mom Linda Carmen (right) during an ill-fated off the coast of Rhode Island
He was also named as the prime suspect in the 2013 shooting death of his millionaire grandfather, John Chakalos
‘Murder Boy’
Nathan Carman grew up in Connecticut as an only child and was diagnosed with Asperger’s, a high-functioning form of autism, at an early age.
He struggled to forge connections with other children and underwent years of psychiatric analysis and pharmaceutical treatment.
Those around him described Nathan as highly intelligent but socially isolated; an angry, wayward, and unpredictable individual who appeared without empathy.
Neighbors would later tell police he was a ticking time bomb ‘waiting to go off’. Some referred to him by the nickname ‘murder boy’.
Nathan’s relationship with his mother was tenuous and at times turbulent. Frequent fights and fallouts meant there were often rifts to be mended, and it was embarking on fishing trips together where the pair sought solace.
But the dysfunctional relationship shared between Nathan and Linda provided only part of the wider chaos prevalent among their extended family.
At the center of the web of discord was Linda’s father, John Chakalos, a self-made real estate developer who amassed a fortune estimated to have been upwards of $44 million.
Chakalos was known to dote on his grandchildren and lived by the motto, ‘Without family, you’ve got nothing.’
But Chakalos was also known to wield his wealth over Linda and her three sisters like a weapon, fueling resentment and manipulation among the familial ranks.
Linda struggled to hold down a job. She also suffered from depression and a gambling addiction, and was virtually entirely financially dependent on her father, which came at the cost of her independence.
Nathan was diagnosed with Aspergers at a young age and held the nickname ‘murder boy’ among some in his hometown
Nathan, meanwhile, held his grandfather in reverence, Minnella said.
After finishing high school in 2012, Nathan enrolled in community college but flunked out of most of his courses.
Chakalos, 87, took Nathan – his first-born grandson – under his wing after he started showing an interest in his grandfather’s business.
He brought him to several meetings in 2012 and 2013, and appeared to be grooming him to take over as his successor.
Chakalos also began furnishing Nathan with lavish gifts: a pick-up truck, an apartment, and a joint account with a balance of $400,000.
Linda, meanwhile, was struggling to stay afloat and growing increasingly resentful of the favoritism her father was showing her son, according to a 2018 report in New York Magazine.
According to a source close to Chakalos, the successful businessman could never understand why Linda was consistently broke, considering the significant financial support he gave her.
The source said Linda had drained at least one the trust funds that her father had set up for Nathan, and to prevent it from happening again, Chakalos created a new trust fund and put one of Linda’s younger sisters in charge.
For years, Nathan had been in the middle of a deeply bitter struggle between his mom and grandfather.
Chakalos saw Linda’s lifestyle as erratic and irresponsible. He believed her to be an unfit mother and sought custody of Nathan, much to Linda’s fury.
In a post on a mental-health message board when Nathan was institutionalized after a mental break in 2011, Linda wrote: ‘His grandfather has insisted for 17 years that my son belongs to HIM and all his problems are the result of me, his mother.
‘This man [his grandfather] is allowed to sit with him in his room, behind closed doors, unmonitored for 5 hours at a time.’
Linda Carmen would regularly go fishing with her son to connect and overcome differences
Two days later, Chakalos and his family were gathered in the hospital waiting room when Linda and her father came to physical blows.
Linda claimed the altercation started when Chakalos pushed her. Chakalos, in turn, accused Linda of punching, scratching, and kicking him when he tried to leave the room.
Two people told New York Magazine that Linda grabbed her father by the testicles.
‘My father is worth $300 million, and I want my share,’ Linda told police after the incident.
‘He is not going to cut me off. I need the money.’
Linda was arrested for assault on an elderly person, but the charges were dropped a few months later at Chakalos’ request.
Heir to the throne
After Nathan was discharged from the psych ward, he exhibited more erratic and unpredictable behavior and was eventually sent away to a behavioral correction camp.
The drastic measure appeared to have a positive effect on him, and by 2013 he was firmly ingrained in his grandfather’s business.
But that fall, the relatively stable ground Nathan found himself finally standing on crumbled beneath his feet.
His grandmother, and Chakalos’ wife of 50 years, Rita, died of cancer aged 84, and Chakalos slipped into a deep depression, confiding in friends that he no longer wished to live.
Chakalos’ ostensible wish was callously granted in December 2013 when he was fatally shot three times in the head and back as he slept.
There were no signs of forced entry and nothing was stolen. Authorities suggested that certain items may have been deliberately moved by the killer to make it look like a professional hit.
Nathan was the last known person to see his grandfather alive
A billboard paid for by the family offers a reward for the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for the murder of John Chakalos
Nathan was the last person to have seen his grandfather alive.
The pair had dinner together the night before Chakalos’ body was discovered and Nathan was unable to establish a concrete alibi for his movements later that same evening.
Linda told police she and Nathan had been scheduled to drive to Rhode Island for a fishing trip at 3am. She had waited for him in Glastonbury but he never showed up.
He then called her at 4am and said he was in Glastonbury waiting for her. The pair met up and, while police cased her father’s home for clues, Linda and Nathan spent the morning fishing.
The ensuing investigation uncovered a complex family drama.
Linda was immediately considered a suspect in her father’s murder because of her earlier assault charge against Chakalos, in addition to her gambling problem, and the fact that she and her three siblings stood to inherit millions from his death.
All of Chakalos’ daughters took polygraph tests and passed.
Nathan, meanwhile, refused to cooperate with investigators.
Police determined that Chakalos had been killed with a .308-caliber-rifle.
Weeks before his death, Nathan had purchased a Sig Sauer Patrol 716 assault rifle, which was the same caliber firearm as the murder weapon.
When confronted why he hadn’t told police about the rifle, Nathan said he forgot he owned it and claimed to have recently lost it.
Nathan had also discarded his computer harddrive and removed the GPS unit from his truck around the time of the murder.
Suspicions were abound, but Nathan’s aunts offered to pay his legal fees.
After an extensive investigation, prosecutors eventually decided that, in absence of the murder weapon and other key evidence, they didn’t have enough to charge Nathan with murder and the Chakalos case soon went cold.
Nathan’s boat, the Chicken Pox, is seen above. He purchased the vessel with money from inheritance after his grandfather was killed
A death at sea
Nathan inherited $550,000 after his grandfather’s death and, in 2014, moved to Vernon, Vermont, where he purchased a large home and later bought the Chicken Pox.
By 2016, Nathan’s finances had dwindled considerably.
It was on September 17 when he and Linda decided to embark on another fishing trip together to once again attempt to reconnect.
Linda Carmen’s remains were never found. Authorities accused Nathan of killing her and sinking his boat in a premeditated plot
Before setting off on the ill-fated trip, Nathan made a series of last-minute alterations to the Chicken Pox that investigators would later claim were unnecessary and possibly a deliberate act of sabotage.
He removed parts of the engine and a part of the hull that stabilized the boat.
Per Nathan’s version of events, he and his mom set off at 11.13pm. They fished for several hours near Block Island, then around 3am, headed to Block Canyon shortly after dawn.
Conditions on the water that morning were calm.
Nathan claimed they dropped their fishing lines and spent the next five hours trolling for tuna before disaster struck.
He claims he heard a sound coming from under the deck and soon realized the boat was rapidly taking on water.
Nathan said he told his mom to reel in the fishing lines and started making preparations to abandon ship.
Crucially, Nathan never triggered the boat’s emergency alarm system.
He told the Coast Guard he saw his mother in the cockpit, grabbed three bags containing food, flares and life-jackets to take onto the emergency raft.
When he looked back, he claimed his mom was no longer there. Then suddenly, the boat ‘dropped out’ from under his feet.
Nathan said he blew on his emergency whistle and called out his mother’s name but received no response.
He never dived beneath the water to look for her, and told investigators he gave up by nightfall, having concluded she’d likely become tangled in the fishing nets and dragged to the bottom of the ocean.
Eight days later, Nathan was spotted adrift in his life raft by the captain of the Orient Lucky.
The captain of the ship told gathered media Nathan seemed downcast after the rescue, as if he was trying to make sense of what had happened.
However, excitement for his miraculous rescue soon gave way to suspicion.
Martin Minnella said he was sure Nathan was going to walk free, claiming the state’s case against him was shoddy and thin
Federal agents execute a search warrant at Nathan Carman’s Vermont home in May 2022
Nathan claimed he’d spent the entire time bound to the raft, at the mercy of the ocean but he bore none of the typical hallmarks of someone stranded at sea for nearly eight days
He wasn’t tan or sunburnt, his lips weren’t blistered, he wasn’t malnourished, and he was still strong enough to swim and hold on to a life-ring.
Nathan was also found in the search area where the Coast Guard had been hunting for him and Linda for days, 35 miles from where he claimed the Chicken Pox went down.
But scientists claimed Nathan, if the location of the Chicken Pox’s sinking was to be believed, should have drifted in the opposite direction to where he was ultimately found.
Nathan had disposed of his computer before setting off on the trip with his mother.
Like her father’s murder before, Linda’s suspected death left in its wake a trail of unanswered questions.
Family fallout
Three years later, in 2019, Chakalos’ three surviving daughters filed a lawsuit in New Hampshire seeking to block Nathan from receiving any more of his grandfather’s inheritance.
In the filing, they publicly accused him of orchestrating his mother’s death.
The case was dismissed after a judge ruled that Chakalos was not a New Hampshire resident. It was later refiled in Connecticut and was still pending at the time of his death.
Then, in May 2022, Nathan was charged with ‘murder on the high seas’ by prosecutors in Vermont.
In the indictment, Nathan was also listed as the prime suspect in Chakalos’ murder, though wasn’t charged.
They claim he killed Linda so he could obtain his mother’s one-fourth share of Chakalos’ $44 million fortune.
He was also charged with insurance fraud for attempting to claim $85,000 for the sinking of the Chicken Pox.
Nathan pleaded not guilty and retained Martin Minnella to represent him, along with David Sullivan.
In a career first, Minnella told DailyMail.com he was extensively interviewed by Nathan before he hired him.
‘He knew everything about me, he knew every case I’d won,’ said Minnella.
‘I have a god child with [Aspergers], he’s very bright and Nathan reminded me a lot of him.’
Nathan Carmen was found dead in his cell June 2023. Authorities said his death was ‘not suspicious’ but didn’t publicy disclose a cause of death
In his interactions with Nathan, Minnella said Nathan’s intelligence was abundantly clear, as was the admiration and love he had for his grandfather.
He called the indictment filed against Nathan ‘incredulous’, adding the mere mention of his grandfather’s death, which he wasn’t being charged in connection with, is highly unusual.
Minnella said prosecutors lacked any concrete evidence against his client and he’s confident he and Sullivan would’ve blown the state’s case ‘out of the water.’
‘The state told grand jurors that Nathan killed his grandfather, which is an out and out lie.
‘He was investigated by local police for months. He was investigated by the federal authorities and they didn’t have enough evidence to even get an arrest warrant.
‘They built their case against him like a house on quicksand; it was quickly going to fall apart.
‘We knew that, and Nathan knew that […] and he wanted his trial. He wanted his day in court, and he wanted the world to see who it really was and what this case was really about.’
Suicide suspicion
Nathan’s trial would never come to pass.
On June 15, 2023, he was found dead in his cell aged 29.
The U.S. Marshals Service in Vermont declined to release Nathan’s cause of death at the request of his family, but said his death was not suspicious.
Reports also surfaced that Nathan had left behind a ‘suicide note’.
Minella claims he was told that six-foot-three Nathan had ‘hung himself with a shoelace.’
Local authorities have not returned a request for comment to verify the claim.
An urn carrying Nathan Carmen’s ashes is seen being held at his funeral in Waterbury, CT
Minnella (right) paid for Nathan’s funeral out of his own pocket
Minnella said he doesn’t believe Nathan would kill himself, insisting he’d never exhibited any signs of suicidal ideation.
He believes Nathan was murdered, and cryptically shared he has his own theories as for who might be responsible.
Minnella also said the note Nathan left behind was not a suicide note, but instead pages of notes from a legal session he and Sullivan had hosted with Nathan the night before his death.
‘I couldn’t believe it,’ said Minnella, who later paid for Nathan’s funeral out of his own pocket.
‘We’d spoken to him at 8pm the night before and there was no indications whatsoever. We were talking about the trial.
‘Had there been, we’d have alerted the jail right away and had him placed on suicide watch.’
Of his murder theory, Minnella added: ‘A lot of people benefitted from him not making it into the courtroom.’
Minnella is certain Nathan would’ve walked free from trial.
The seasoned attorney said the prosecution’s case was riddled with holes and they lacked concrete evidence to dispel reasonable doubt, at the very least.
‘We had compiled a panel of experts who would’ve picked apart their case brick by brick; we’d have blown more holes in that case than Swiss cheese.
‘We identified five other people who could have committed John Chakalos’ murder […] and there was enough evidence to suggest Linda’s death was a tragic accident.
‘He did not kill his mother on that boat.’
