The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
The fight against secrecy
1st Amendment advocates request release of records in Carman case
MIDDLETOWN — A First Amendment advocacy group is fighting a New Hampshire court order that sealed records in a suit filed by Nathan Carman’s aunts to prevent him from collecting his mother’s share of his multimillionaire grandfather’s estate.
The New England First Amendment Coalition, which defends, promotes and expands public access to government and the work it does, is requesting the court provide an opportunity for an oral argument in support of unsealing the documents.
The court last month ordered all files in the case sealed, according to Attorney Justin Silverman, executive director of the Massachusetts-based NEFAC. A reporter from the Union Leader newspaper in Manchester, N.H., objected to the order and filed a motion to unseal the documents March 29.
NEFAC supported the motion in an April 10 legal memorandum submitted to the court.
A probate appeal was filed last July by Valerie C. Santilli, executrix of Carman’s grandfather, John C. Chakalos, and her sisters Elaine Chakalos and Charlene Gallagher. The suit asks the court to declare the 24-year-old former Middletown man their father’s killer.
Carman now lives in Vernon, Vt. He is under investigation by state and federal authorities in the disappearance of his mother Linda, 54, in September 2016 after a boating accident that left him adrift at sea. After eight days, he was rescued off the coast of Massachusetts by a passing freightliner. His mother, who lived in Middletown, was never found and no charges have been filed in connection with her disappearance.
The Coast Guard said Linda Carman is presumed dead.
Police have also deemed him a person of interest in the murder of his wealthy grandfather, 87, who was shot to death at his Windsor home in December 2013, a month after his wife of 59 years died of cancer. He had gunshot wounds in his head and back, police said.
“We don’t live in a country where there are secret trials.”
Attorney Justin Silverman
Family members have said Nathan Carman is on the autism spectrum.
Chakalos’ daughters filed a “slayer” action complaint in New Hampshire Probate Court last July, petitioning the judge under an inheritance law provision that prohibits a person who kills someone to reap monetary gain from the deceased.
An accounting of Chakalos’ finances filed in New Hampshire probate court last summer by attorneys for the executor of his estate indicated it has a balance of nearly $29 million. Carman stands to inherit $7 million, according to court documents.
“Courts are presumptively open,” Silverman said. “We don’t live in a country where there are secret trials. This is a probate court we’re dealing with. Generally speaking, we don’t operate within secrecy in courts.”
Audrey Young, the Chakalos family’s spokeswoman, said the family had no comment on the filing.
Nathan Carman was unable to be reached for comment on Friday.
After considering NEFAC’s arguments, Silverman hopes the court will side with the public’s right to know.
“There’s public interest in the case that’s extremely high, and there’s a lot at stake,” he said. “The law is on our side, but it will be up to the judge.”
“The courts of New Hampshire have always considered their records to be public, absent some overriding consideration or special circumstance,” attorney Gregory V. Sullivan said in a prepared statement on behalf of the coalition and Union Leader. He’s a member of NEFAC’s Board of Directors.
“These documents aren’t open to the public and should be,” Silverman said.
Privacy is not a sufficient reason to keep the records secret because the documents pertain to Carman’s grandfather, who is deceased, Sullivan wrote. There is also no evidence that releasing the documents would interfere with the federal and state investigations into the grandfather’s death, he added.
During an April 3 court hearing in Concord, N.H., Carman represented himself after firing his attorneys some time in February.
Lawyers for Carman’s family hoped to force him to turn over documents about a semi-automatic rifle he bought which was similar to one used in the death of his grandfather, according to the Associated Press.
Carman has granted very few media interviews but has sat down with ABC News on a few occasions. In the television program, “20/ 20 Lost at Sea: The Story of Nathan Carman,” which aired last February, he denied sabotaging his boat.
“All I can say is what happened,” Carman told ABC News Correspondent Linzie Janis, who was looking for a reaction to allegations he purposely sunk the boat. “The only way that I can speak out against them is to say what actually happened and that’s what we’ve been trying to do.”
In a subsequent interview, Carman tells Janis he received no emotional support once he arrived home from his ordeal at sea.
“I was lost at sea, my mom died. It would be great to see people embracing you, saying, ‘We’re glad you’re home, we’re glad you’re alive,’ and also helping me to deal with my mom’s death. It hasn’t been that.
“She was a good person, a warm person,” he said of Linda Carman. “We did have a challenging relationship at one point in my life, but she was the only family I had.”
Carman also expressed love for his grandfather, who had been “like a father” to him. His parents divorced while he was young and his father traveled from California to Middletown when Carman and his mother went missing.
“There is no relation between my having been the last person, other than the killer, to see my grandfather alive and my having been on the boat with my mother when it sank,” Carman told Janis.