RESCUED MAN AT HEART OF MYSTERY
Vermont man lost at sea was a suspect in the unsolved 2013 death of his grandfather
A Vermont man who said his mother was still missing at sea following a boat accident that left him adrift on a raft for seven days was a suspect in the unsolved murder of his wealthy grandfather three years ago, according to media reports.
After Nathan Carman was rescued in the Atlantic on Sunday, authorities searched his home in Vernon, Vt., and removed an Internet modem, a SIM card and a letter he wrote, NECN.com reported.
Carman, 22, told the Associated Press that the suspicions that have surfaced since his rescue are compounding his grief over the apparent drowning of his mother, Linda Carman, 54, of Middletown, Conn.
Carman was plucked from the life raft about 100 miles off the coast of Massachusetts by a passing Chinese freighter after what he said was a week adrift following the sinking of his 31-foot aluminum fishing boat.
He told the AP that he did everything he could to find his mother, who was aboard the boat.
“What happened on the boat was a terrible tragedy that I am still trying to process and that I am still trying to come to terms with,” he said. “I don’t know what to make of people being suspicious, I have enough to deal with.”
The boat sank one day after leaving a marina in South Kingstown, R.I. It went down almost immediately after he heard a “funny noise in the engine compartment,” Carman said in an audio recording released by the Coast Guard.
He told the AP that he saw his mother in the cockpit and grabbed three bags of food, flares and life jackets. But when he looked back, his mother was no longer there, he said.
He said he swam to the boat’s life raft then blew a whistle and called out for her for hours.
“I was yelling, ‘ Mom! Mom!’ ” Carman said, adding, “I loved my mother and my mother loved me.”
In South Kingstown, R.I., detective Lt. Alfred Bucco III wrote in his application for a search warrant of Carman’s home in Vernon that police were looking for documents, maps, GPS devices, computers, handheld electronic devices and books that would provide information about the Carmans’ location or destination, The
Hartford Courant reports. Police were looking for receipts for boat parts or equipment for repairs to Carman’s boat.
“This investigation revealed that Nathan’s boat was in need of mechanical repair and that Nathan had been conducting a portion of these repairs upon his own volition which could have potentially rendered the boat unsafe for operation,” Bucco wrote in the affidavit, the newspaper reported. Police said they believed they could find evidence in the son’s house, including information about where he intended to fish, that would support a charge of “operating so as to endanger, resulting in death,” according to the search warrant.
On Wednesday, The Courant reported that court records show that Carman was a suspect in the unsolved 2013 fatal shooting of his grandfather, John Chakalos, in Windsor, Conn. The wealthy, 87-year-old real estate developer was found shot to death.
A 2014 search warrant obtained by the AP said that Carman was the last person known to have seen Chakalos 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. “All I’m going to say right now is that a terrible tragedy happened,” Carman said Wednesday to The Courant. “I’m lucky to be alive, I lost my mother and very, very difficult people, especially
The Hartford Courant are trying or, raking up the time when I lost my grandfather. (He) was like a father to me and casting that in just a very, very wrong light.”