NEWS

Man rescued at sea has mysterious past

Doug Stanglin
USA TODAY
Nathan Carman arrives in a small boat at the U.S. Coast Guard station in Boston, Sept. 27, 2016. Carman spent a week at sea in a life raft before being rescued by a passing freighter.

A 22-year-old Vermont man who said his mother was still missing at sea following a boat accident that left him adrift on a raft in the Atlantic for seven days was a person of interest in the unsolved murder of his wealthy grandfather three years ago, according to media reports.

After Nathan Carman was rescued at sea on Sunday, authorities searched his home in Vernon, Vt., and removed an Internet modem, a SIM card and a letter he wrote, NECN.com reports.

Carman, 22, tells 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 tells the AP that he did everything he could to find his mother, who was aboard the boat when it went down.

“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 says. “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. "I looked and saw a lot of water."

He tells 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 says.

He says he swam to the boat’s life raft — about 15 to 20 feet away — then blew a whistle and called out  for her for hours.

“I was yelling, ‘Mom! Mom!’” Carman says. He adds: “I loved my mother and my mother loved me.”

In South Kingstown, Vt., Det. 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, hand-held electronic devices and books that would provide information about the Carmans' location or destination, The Hartford Courant reports. Police were also 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 reports. 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.

“The investigation has also revealed that Nathan had intended to go fishing further off-shore in a different location than what were his mother’s intentions and understanding,” the warrant said, according to the AP.

It is not the first time that Carman has been at the center of a high-profile death.

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. According to court papers, police submitted an arrest warrant to a prosecutor, but it was returned unsigned with a request for more information.

Chakalos left more than $42 million to his four adult daughters, including Carman's mother.

"All I'm going to say right now to you is that a terrible tragedy happened," Carman said Wednesday in a telephone interview with 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."

Carman's father, Clark Carman, tells The Courant that he was shocked that his son was considered a suspect in Chakalos' death.

"He was a suspect because he was the last one to see my father-in-law alive," he said. "The kid was so devoted to him. There were only two people in his life, his mother and his grandfather. There was no motive. There was nothing to gain with John dying, he had everything to lose. He's not the type of individual who's aggressive. He'd walk away from a situation rather than attack. Really it's not in his mental makeup."