The Carman Family Deaths: Chakalos, Linda, and the Indictment

The Carman family deaths refer to two killings in a wealthy New England family: the December 2013 shooting of real estate developer John Chakalos in his Connecticut home, and the September 2016 disappearance of his daughter Linda Carman during a fishing trip off Rhode Island. Linda’s son Nathan Carman was the prime suspect in both. He was federally indicted in 2022 on charges of murder on the high seas and fraud, and he died by suicide in a New Hampshire jail in June 2023, months before trial. Neither case reached a verdict.

The Family and the Money at the Center of the Case

John Chakalos was a self-made real estate developer whose fortune came largely from building and leasing nursing homes. He had four daughters: Elaine Chakalos, Linda Carman, Charlene Gallagher, and Valerie Santilli.¹ At his death his estate was valued at more than $43 million, with roughly $20 million distributable after federal estate taxes and expenses.² He had set up a dynasty trust for his daughters. Nathan, his only grandson through Linda, stood to eventually inherit about $7 million through his mother’s share.³

That inheritance structure is the thread running through everything that followed. Investigators, and later Nathan’s own aunts, would argue that the money was the motive for both deaths.

The 2013 Killing of John Chakalos

On the morning of December 20, 2013, Chakalos, 87, was found dead in bed at his home in Windsor, Connecticut. He had been shot multiple times in the back of the head with a semi-automatic rifle.⁴ Windsor police concluded the scene had been staged as a burglary; a glass door had been broken from the inside out.⁵

Nathan, then 19, was the last known person to see Chakalos alive, leaving the house around 8:30 p.m. the night before after having dinner with him.⁵ Weeks before the killing he had bought a Sig Sauer rifle in New Hampshire capable of firing .308 caliber rounds, the same caliber class as fragments recovered from the scene.⁶ He first told police he had never owned a firearm, though records showed otherwise. The rifle was never found, and Nathan invoked the Fifth Amendment when asked about it.⁷

Investigators also determined that Nathan had destroyed his computer’s hard drive and his truck’s GPS around the time of the killing and could not account for about an hour on the early morning of December 20, the estimated time of the shooting.⁵ One piece of evidence cut against the case: a neighbor reported hearing a gunshot around 2 a.m., and surveillance video placed Nathan at his own apartment at that time.⁴

Windsor police submitted a warrant application for Nathan’s arrest, but it was returned for insufficient evidence. He was never charged, and the Chakalos killing remains officially unsolved.⁵

After his grandfather’s death Nathan received $550,000 from the estate, along with a separate trust worth about $270,000 that Chakalos had set up for him in 2011.⁸³

The 2016 Fishing Trip and Linda Carman’s Disappearance

On September 17, 2016, Nathan, then 22, and his 54-year-old mother Linda left a marina in South Kingstown, Rhode Island, for an overnight fishing trip on Nathan’s 31-foot aluminum boat, the Chicken Pox.⁹ When Linda missed a planned check-in the next day, both were reported missing.¹⁰

Eight days after they set out, on September 25, a Chinese freighter, the Orient Lucky, found Nathan alone in a life raft roughly 100 nautical miles south of Martha’s Vineyard.⁵ Linda was never found. The Coast Guard suspended its search citing “zero to minimal chance of survival” because she had no food, water, or life raft.¹⁰

Nathan’s account: about 12 hours out he noticed water in the bilge and moved to address it. He said he told Linda to reel in the fishing lines, and while he was getting emergency gear from the wheelhouse the boat “gave way beneath him.” He said he never saw or heard his mother during the sinking and could not find her when he escaped in the raft. He had sent no mayday and had not activated the boat’s emergency locator beacon.¹¹

Why Investigators Doubted His Story

In the months before the trip Nathan had made several modifications to the Chicken Pox. He cut open two forward bulkheads, which provided structural integrity to the hull, saying he wanted to store fishing rods. He removed the trim tabs from the transom, saying he thought they were making the boat fuel-inefficient. The removals left four half-dollar-sized holes near the waterline in the stern, which he patched with epoxy rather than standard backing materials.¹²¹³

Smaller details compounded the doubts. Nathan had left a bucket of bait eels in his car at the marina, an odd choice for a fishing trip. He had bought an anchor and chain incompatible with his boat. Oceanographer Richard Limeburner produced a 63-page report using data from a scientific buoy in the drift path, concluding that currents that week would have carried the raft westward, contradicting Nathan’s account of drifting east to where the Orient Lucky found him.¹⁴

In March 2016, months before the trip, Nathan had increased the insurance coverage on the boat, adding items including a GPS and a life raft.¹³ After the sinking he filed an $85,000 claim.

The Civil Cases That Came Before Any Criminal Charges

Long before federal prosecutors moved, two civil actions pushed against Nathan.

The Insurance Denial

National Liability & Fire Insurance Company denied Nathan’s $85,000 claim, and in a 2019 federal civil trial in Rhode Island, U.S. District Judge John J. McConnell Jr. ruled for the insurer. He found that the modifications had rendered the boat “unseaworthy” when it left port, writing that “having four holes in the back of a boat lends itself to taking water on” and that the improper repairs “at least indirectly caused water to fill up the bilge, causing the boat to sink.”¹² The court did not decide whether Nathan intentionally sank the boat or killed his mother; unseaworthiness alone voided the policy.¹⁵

The Aunts’ Slayer Petition

In 2017 Nathan’s three aunts, Valerie Santilli, Elaine Chakalos, and Charlene Gallagher, filed a “slayer petition” in New Hampshire probate court to block him from inheriting any share of the Chakalos estate. They alleged he had killed both his grandfather and his mother “out of malice and greed.”¹⁶

The case hinged on which state’s law applied. Connecticut requires a criminal conviction before a slayer can be disinherited. New Hampshire common law does not; a court can bar inheritance on a finding of unjust enrichment.¹⁷ Nathan’s team argued that because Chakalos was domiciled in Connecticut, Connecticut law should govern. In May 2019 Judge David King of the New Hampshire probate court dismissed the case, ruling the aunts lacked standing there because Chakalos was not a legal resident of New Hampshire.¹⁸

The 2022 Federal Indictment

On May 10, 2022, a federal grand jury in Burlington, Vermont, indicted Nathan on eight counts: one count of murder on the high seas in Linda’s death, three counts of mail fraud, and four counts of wire fraud tied to an alleged scheme to obtain money from the Chakalos estate and family trusts.¹⁹ Federal jurisdiction over the killing rested on it having allegedly occurred at sea.

Prosecutors laid out a unified theory: Nathan had killed both his grandfather and his mother as part of a single plan to reach the family fortune, first persuading Linda to designate him as a beneficiary and then sinking the Chicken Pox to kill her.⁸ The indictment alleged that Nathan killed Chakalos, but he could not be separately charged with that killing in federal court because it occurred on land in Connecticut, where state authorities had jurisdiction and had brought no charges.

Nathan pleaded not guilty. The murder count carried a mandatory life sentence on conviction; each fraud count carried up to 30 years.²⁰ Trial was set for October 2023.

Autism and the Defense Nathan Never Got to Present

Nathan was diagnosed with autism around age four, and his diagnosis became central to how his lawyers planned to fight the case. Attorney Elizabeth Kelley, who specializes in representing neurodivergent defendants, argued that his flat affect, stilted speech, and meticulous attention to detail were features of autism, not evidence of a “cold and calculating” personality, and that he should not have been subjected to police interrogation.²¹

Defense expert John Elder Robison, an autism advocate, said Nathan’s carrying a handheld water maker on the raft, which investigators found suspicious, was an example of “systematizing,” a common autistic trait involving planning and structure. Robison said such traits had been “taken out of context to villainize him.”²¹ Nathan’s father, Clark Carman, said his son was an “unfair target” because investigators could not recognize his behavior as autistic, and argued his comfort with solitude likely helped him survive eight days alone at sea.²²

Prosecutors argued the opposite: that the crimes required a degree of executive function and premeditation inconsistent with the defense’s portrayal of Nathan as too impaired to manage complex situations.²³

On the Chakalos killing, defense attorney David Sullivan pointed to the alibi evidence: the neighbor’s 2 a.m. gunshot report and the surveillance footage placing Nathan at his apartment. Co-counsel Martin Minnella went further, suggesting Linda herself may have shot her father. He cited a text message in which Linda had expressed a desire to “blow her father’s f—— head off,” and noted that Chakalos had required family members to sign promissory notes to repay $30 million taken from family trusts, giving Linda a financial motive of her own.²¹ None of these arguments was ever tested at trial.

Nathan Carman’s Death and What Happened to the Cases

On June 15, 2023, Nathan was found unresponsive in his cell at the Cheshire County House of Corrections in Keene, New Hampshire, at about 2:24 a.m. He was the sole occupant of cell D-204. A corrections officer had checked the cell at 1:11 a.m. and returned roughly 73 minutes later. Staff and first responders performed CPR and used a defibrillator for 40 minutes; Nathan was pronounced dead at 3:18 a.m.²⁴ The New Hampshire Department of Justice said the death was “not suspicious” and “likely a suicide.” The method was not released publicly but was shared with his family and lawyers.²⁵

His attorney David Sullivan confirmed Nathan had left a note. Sullivan said the defense team had been in “good spirits” during meetings with Nathan earlier that week.²⁵ Federal prosecutors moved to dismiss all eight charges after his death, and the court granted the dismissal.²⁰

On October 25, 2023, Middletown Probate Court Judge Joseph Marino declared Linda Carman legally dead, setting her date of death as September 17, 2016, the day she vanished. Under Connecticut law, that declaration could be made only after seven years had passed. Because Linda’s legal date of death preceded Nathan’s, Nathan was technically alive when she was deemed to have died. Even so, Linda’s own will, filed with the court, explicitly stated that she “intentionally omitted” her son and his descendants as beneficiaries.²⁶ The broader Chakalos estate had been left “untouched for years” by the family specifically to keep Nathan from reaching it.²⁷

The Chakalos killing is officially unsolved. Linda Carman’s body was never recovered. With Nathan dead and the federal case dismissed, no court has ruled on whether he killed either of them.

1
Hartford Courant. John Chakalos, Windsor, CT
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NBC Connecticut. Attorney Explains Will of Late John Chakalos
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CBS News Boston. Nathan Carman Trust Fund, Family Deaths, Grandfather, Mother
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People. Nathan Carman, Murder, Grandfather John Chakalos
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A&E. Did Nathan Carman Kill His Mother Linda During a 2016 Fishing Trip
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Hartford Courant. Lawyer: Ballistics Report Raises Question About Whether Nathan Carman’s Missing Gun Is Murder Weapon
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KCRA. Man Accused of Killing Wealthy Grandfather, Mother Fights to Collect Inheritance
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NBC News. Vermont Man Accused of Killing Mom, Grandfather in Attempt to Get Millions in Inheritance
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Netflix Tudum. The Carman Family Deaths Release Date News
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ABC News. Son Found Alive Days Lost at Sea, Mother’s Whereabouts Unknown
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ABC News. Nathan Carman, Suspected in Mother’s Murder, Remains Victim or Villain
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Insurance Journal. Nathan Carman Indicted for Murder of Mother at Sea
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WPRI. Carman Testifies in Federal Court at Insurance Trial
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Wired. A Son Is Rescued at Sea, but What Happened to His Mother
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WPRI. Judge Rules in Favor of Insurance Company in Nathan Carman Civil Trial
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Boston Herald. Sinking Fortune: Family Suit Blames Heir for Causing Deaths of Mother, Grandfather
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Probate Trial. Santilli v. Carman: A Double Slayer Rule Case
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Reformer. Judge Dismisses Slayer Petition Making Carman Eligible for Millions of Dollars in Inheritance
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WBAL-TV. Nathan Carman Charged in 2016 Murder, Insurance Fraud
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CNN. Nathan Carman Dies, Charges Dismissed
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People. Inside the True Story of The Carman Family Deaths
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Time. Carman Family Deaths True Story
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Compass Vermont. How Accurate Is Netflix’s The Carman Family Deaths
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WMUR. Nathan Carman Death Report
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CT Insider. Nathan Carman Cause of Death, Note Found in Jail Cell
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CT Post. Nathan Carman, Linda Declared Dead, Middletown CT
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Union Leader. Judge to Declare Nathan Carman’s Mom Dead 7 Years After She Vanished