EYED IN GRAMPS MURDER
Suspicious past of sea-rescue son
BOSTON — A 22-year-old man rescued from a life raft after a fishing trip that left his mother missing and presumed dead had been a suspect in the 2013 slaying of his rich grandfather, according to court documents that add to the many questions swirling around him and what happened at sea.
Nathan Carman was picked up by a freighter 100 miles off the Massachusetts coast Sunday after what he said was a week adrift that began when his 31-foot aluminum fishing boat inexplicably sank during a mother-and-son outing.
Coast Guard officials interviewed Carman and police searched his home in Vermont as part of the investigation into the ill-fated trip. Carman has not been charged with anything, and his attorney said his mother’s death was a “tragic accident.”
Court documents indicate Carman had a history of violence as a child and came under suspicion in the killing nearly three years ago of his maternal grandfather, 87year-old John Chakalos, a real-estate developer found shot in his home in Windsor, Conn.
A 2014 search warrant obtained by The Associated Press said Carman had dinner with his grandfather the night before and was the last person known to have seen him alive; that Carman had bought a rifle consistent with the one used in the crime; and that he discarded his hard drive and GPS unit used around the time of the shooting.
Carman was never charged in the slaying. According to court papers, police submitted an arrest warrant to a prosecutor, but it was returned unsigned with a request for more information.
In his will, Chakalos left an estate worth more than $42 million to his four adult daughters, including Carman’s mother.
Windsor police Capt. Thomas LePore said Wednesday that the case is still open and that Carman remains a “person of interest.”
In the course of investigating the killing, authorities said in court papers that they found Carman’s handwritten notes on making explosives, seized a shotgun and other weaponry from his Middletown, Conn., apartment, and learned from family members that he once held another child “hostage” with a knife. Authorities would not discuss the investigation into the boating trip.
Mother and son set off from a marina in South Kingstown, RI, on Sept. 17, authorities said. Carman told the Coast Guard their boat sank the next day after he heard a “funny noise” in the engine.
He said he lost sight of his mother, Linda, 54, before he made it into his four-person life raft with food and water.