A Vermont man is facing federal charges of fraud and “murder on the high seas” in a case that attracted national attention after he was rescued on a raft in the ocean and reported that his fishing boat sank with his mother aboard off the coast of Rhode Island in 2016.
Nathan Carman, 28, of Vernon, is due to be arraigned in U.S. District Court in Rutland Wednesday on charges contained in an eight-count indictment that was unsealed Tuesday.
Prosecutors say Nathan Carman killed his mother, Linda Carman, in 2016 during a purported fishing trip in which his boat, a 31-foot vessel named Chicken Pox, sank at sea. Nathan Carman was located in a raft about a week after the Chicken Pox had been reported missing, according to reports.
In the indictment, prosecutors also accused Nathan Carman of shooting and killing his grandfather, John Chakalos, in 2013 at the elder man’s home in Windsor, Connecticut.
According to the indictment, both killings were part of an alleged scheme by Carman to get millions of dollars and property from his grandfather’s estate and related trusts. Carman also allegedly tried to defraud the company that insured his fishing boat, the filing stated.
If convicted on the federal charge of murder on the high seas in his mother’s death, Carman faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison.
He does not face a murder related to the death of his grandfather, according to the indictment. Fabienne Boisvert-DeFazio, a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Burlington, declined to say Tuesday afternoon why no murder charge was brought in the death of Carman’s grandfather. Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul Van de Graaf, the prosecutor in the case, would not take questions, she said.
As a result of his grandfather’s death in 2013, the indictment stated, Carman pocketed $550,000, including $150,000 from a college account and $400,000 from the “beneficiary-on-death” account.
Carman, who moved to Vermont in 2014, spent much of that money between 2014 and 2016 when he was unemployed, and by 2016 he was running out of cash, according to the filing.
Prosecutors alleged he came up with a plan to go on a fishing trip with his mother in September 2016, in which he would kill her, sink the boat and make her disappearance look like an accident.
The indictment accused Carman of killing his mother after leaving the Point Marina in South Kingstown, Rhode Island, at about 11:15 p.m. on Sept. 17, 2016. He eventually sank the boat, according to the document.
He was rescued by a commercial ship, the Orient Lucky, on Sept. 25, in an inflatable life raft, according to the filing, and later lied to authorities about what happened to the boat and to his mother.
Shortly after his rescue, the indictment stated, Carman made an $85,000 insurance claim on the boat, which the insurance company denied, setting off a legal battle eventually won by the insurance company.
The indictment, which was returned by a federal grand jury on May 2, had been ordered sealed until Carman’s arrest. Details of his arrest were not immediately made public Tuesday afternoon, although he was listed as incarcerated at the Marble Valley Regional Correctional Facility in Rutland.
Carman has long denied any role in killing his grandfather or in the disappearance of his mother.
According to the indictment, Linda Carman had a “strained relationship” with her son. One of the main activities she engaged in with her son after 2012 was spending time with him fishing.
Chakalos made tens of millions of dollars in real estate, including building and renting nursing homes, according to court documents.
