Man awaiting trial for ‘killing mum at sea for inheritance money’ found dead in jail

A man accused of killing his mother at sea in a plot to receive inheritance money has died while awaiting trial, authorities said.

Nathan Carman, a 29-year-old man from Vernon, Vermont, was found dead in his jail cell around 2.30am on Thursday morning.

Carman was awaiting trial in October for a complex scheme to inherit a fortune from his mother and maternal grandfather.

Federal prosecutors charged Carman with killing his mother, Linda Carman, off the coast of Connecticut after rigging a fishing boat to sink in 2016. They also alleged that Carman shot and killed his grandfather, John Chakalos, in 2013, but did not charge him with the murder.

Carman was in the custody of the US Marshals at the time of his death, and was being detained at the Cheshire County Department of Corrections in Keene, New Hampshire.

Authorities said his death was being investigated by the Keene Police Department. His cause of death has not been released.

Martin Minnella, Carman’s defense attorney, said his client was in ‘good spirits’ when he last spoke to him on Wednesday.

‘The whole situation would have come out in court,’ Minnella said. ‘This young man would have been vindicated.’

In 2022, federal prosecutors unsealed a lengthy indictment against Carman, detailing a scheme he had been allegedly planning since 2013, after failing out of community college and setting himself up as a beneficiary of his grandfather’s estate.

His grandfather, John Chakalos, had amassed a fortune of ‘tens of millions of dollars’ through his real estate business, which primarily built and rented out nursing homes.

Chakalos was killed by gunfire from a rifle while he slept in his home in December 2013.

Prior to his death, Carman legally purchased a Sig Sauer semiautomatic rifle – the same type of weapon Chakalos was murdered with.

Carman’s rifle disappeared after his grandfather’s death, as did his computer and his car’s GPS system. Police drafted an arrest warrant for Carman in 2014, but a state’s attorney in Connecticut declined to sign it, asking for more evidence.

Carman immediately inherited about $550,000 after his grandfather’s death, but prosecutors say he was already low on funds by 2016.

This time, prosecutors alleged that Carman planned to kill his mother and inherit her portion of her grandfather’s fortune.

He allegedly planned the murder to take place on the Chicken Pox, the family boat he used with his mother on fishing trips. According to the indictment, the fishing trips were her ‘principal way of interacting with her son’ after he graduated high school in 2012.

Before Linda Carman cast off for the trip to Block Island on September 18, prosecutors alleged that her son sabotaged the boat by ‘removing two forward bulkheads and removing trim tabs from the transom of the hull.’

Witnesses would later testify against Nathan, saying the watched him remove the stabilizing tabs and conduct ‘improper repairs’ after their removal.

The US Coast Guard began search and rescue efforts for Nathan and Linda after the Chicken Pox failed to return to port. Nathan was eventually found in a life raft by a commercial ship on September 25 near Martha’s Vineyard.

Before his indictment, Nathan was expected to inherit about $7million after his mother’s death.

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