Suspect scion Carman: Sinking was ‘accidental’
A Vermont man whose mother has not been heard from in two years claims the sinking of the fishing boat from which she vanished and he was cast adrift at sea was “entirely accidental.”
Nathan James Carman, 24, a suspect both in Linda Carman’s 2016 disappearance and the 2013 murder of his real estate tycoon grandfather, John Chakalos, filed the pretrial defense memorandum in the U.S. District Court of Rhode Island on Saturday.
Carman is being sued by the National Liability and Fire Insurance Co., which had insured the 31-foot vessel Chicken Pox for $85,000.
The policy was canceled after Carman allegedly made alterations to the boat the insurance company says put it at risk. In a 2017 complaint, National Liability said Carman, “opened four half dollar sized holes in the hull near the waterline and attempted on his own to fill them, which was not satisfactory.”
Carman’s latest filing states the insurance company will be unable to prove at trial that he purposely scuttled the Chicken Pox because the sinking “was unintentional, unexpected and entirely accidental.”
No trial date has been set.
Meanwhile, the asking price for Carman’s massive 1850 farmhouse in Vernon, Vt., has dropped to $80,000 with no takers since it went on the market in March.
Carman is the sole heir of Linda Carman, 54, who stood to share in her slain father’s $44 million estate. Her three sisters are fighting in 6th Circuit Probate Court in Concord, N.H., to have their nephew declared Chakalos’ killer to stop him from inheriting a share of his grandfather’s fortune.
Carman has acknowledged refusing to take a lie-detector test about how his grandfather was found dead from three bullets in his home in Windsor, Conn., on Dec. 20, 2013, the morning after the two had gone out to dinner. Carman was the last known person to see Chakalos alive.
Linda Carman was last seen Sept. 18, 2016, when she and her son went tuna fishing off Block Island and the Chicken Pox sank.
Nathan Carman was found a week later adrift at sea in a life raft.
Neither Carman nor his attorney could be reached for comment.