Inside the Twisty True Story of The Carman Family Deaths By Jessica Sager

Nathan Carman was suspected of murdering his mother and grandfather, but maintained his innocence until his 2023 death by suicide.

The Netflix documentary The Carman Family Deaths, which premiered on Nov. 19, examines Nathan, the Carman family dynamics and the deaths in more depth, offering new insights into what may or may not have happened in each case.

Nathan’s 87-year-old grandfather, John Chakalos, died in December 2013 after he was shot at close range in his Windsor, Conn., home. In September 2016, Nathan and his mother, Linda Carman, were on his boat, Chicken Pox, when it allegedly sank. Linda’s body was never found, while Nathan was rescued from a life raft eight days later.

It wasn’t until nearly six years after Linda’s disappearance and presumed death that Nathan was charged with her murder. Prosecutors alleged that he killed Linda and John, a wealthy real estate developer worth an estimated $42 million, to get his inheritance money early, per NBC News.

Nathan, who had been diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, vehemently denied the allegations but admitted he still felt somewhat responsible for his mother’s death, telling ABC News, “If I hadn’t asked my mom to go fishing with me that weekend, she would still be alive with me today.”

He told the Associated Press of John, “My grandfather was like a father to me, and I was like a son to him. He was the closest person in the world to me, and I loved him and he loved me, and I had absolutely nothing to do with his death.”

Here, find out what really happened to Nathan Carman’s grandfather and mother.

Nathan struggled with his mental health for years

Nathan’s dad, Clark, said in The Carman Family Deaths that Nathan was diagnosed with autism when he was around 4 years old (Asperger’s is a form of Autism Spectrum Disorder). When Nathan’s beloved horse Cruise died when he was a teenager, he began staying in the family’s camper and allegedly refused to come out.

Clark and Linda sent Nathan to a camp in Utah in an effort to help his mental health, but Clark said that Nathan had a “breakdown” when he returned home and was placed in a psychiatric hold. Once released, Nathan returned to the camper and isolated himself from his loved ones.

Linda’s best friend, Linda Gam, and sister Charlene Gallagher both alleged that John wouldn’t accept that Nathan was mentally ill, even though mental illness ran in their family.

Gam said that John didn’t understand Nathan’s autism and would argue with Linda and Clark, asking why Nathan needed to go to appointments or get treatment. “She didn’t want him [John] to have that much influence over Nathan,” Gam said of Linda. “But as time went on, that’s exactly what happened.”

Nathan bought a gun before his grandfather was shot to death

In an April 2025 episode of 20/20, former Windsor Police Lieutenant Christopher McKee said that ballistics tests determined John’s killer most likely used a SIG Sauer rifle.

When police first asked Nathan if he owned a gun, he said he only had an air gun. It was later discovered that Nathan bought a SIG Sauer rifle in New Hampshire just weeks before John’s murder.

When detectives asked Nathan about the purchase, he said he “lost” the gun and didn’t know where it was. The firearm has never been found.

According to the Hartford Courant, police also alleged that Nathan threw away both his hard drive and the GPS from his vehicle the morning after John died.

Nathan may have had an alibi for his grandfather’s murder

John was murdered on Dec. 20, 2013, and police told 20/20 that Nathan couldn’t account for the one-hour timeframe, 3 a.m. to 4 a.m., in which they claim the elderly man was shot.

Nathan said that he was scheduled to meet Linda at 3 a.m. for a fishing trip, but that he hadn’t left until after that time and made several navigational mistakes on his way to her home and had to turn around several times. No one heard from Nathan until 4:01 a.m.

However, a witness alleged that the murder may have occurred at 2 a.m., when Nathan was still home in his apartment.

David Sullivan, Nathan’s defense attorney, said that John’s neighbor claimed to have heard gunshots at 2 a.m. “We can account for Nathan at 2:00 in the morning,” Sullivan claimed, “meaning Nathan Carman did not kill John Chakalos.”

In The Carman Family Deaths, Wired journalist Evan Lubofsky noted Nathan’s alibi was corroborated by surveillance video. “If the loud bang that the neighbor heard was, in fact, a gunshot, and she didn’t get the time wrong, then Nathan has an alibi,” he said.

Nathan’s lawyer suggested that Linda may have murdered her father

In Casey Sherman’s 2025 book Blood in the Water, one of Nathan’s attorneys, Martin Minnella, claimed that he found a text Linda sent before John’s murder saying she wanted to “blow her father’s f—— head off.”

Apparently, no one took Linda’s words as a serious threat, but she may have had a motive: Minnella claimed in the book, “Before John was killed, he made his family all sign promissory notes to pay back at least $30 million dollars they had taken out of family trusts.”

Experts didn’t believe Nathan’s story about the boat sinking

When Nathan was rescued from a life raft eight days after he and his mother set sail on a fishing trip, the deputy chief of the South Kingstown Police Department, Alfred Bucco III, was the first officer to interview him, per ABC News.

Bucco said that Nathan told him that he and Linda loaded a cooler of bait from his truck onto the boat before departing on what would be their last fishing trip.

The Chief alleged, however, that Nathan left the bait in the truck, which he found suspicious. Nathan also confirmed that he and Linda originally planned to sail to Block Island, but changed plans to go to Block Canyons instead.

According to Coast Guard investigator Eric Gempp, Block Canyons was an additional 60 to 70 miles offshore and not typically a safe destination for “an inexperienced boater.”

“It’s not something that you do without a tremendous amount of preparation,” Gempp said.

When the boat began sinking, Nathan said, he tried to keep his mother distracted by bringing in fishing lines while he attempted to fix the problem so she wouldn’t panic. He said he didn’t call for help because he noticed the problem too late and didn’t think he was in range for the Coast Guard or any other boats to hear him.

Nathan claimed that the boat gave way under him and Linda and that he didn’t see her in the water, noting that the boat had been drifting eastward. Oceanographer Richard Limeburner claimed on 20/20 that Nathan’s boat would have drifted in the opposite direction based on the conditions and currents at the time.

Some experts doubted that Nathan was stranded on the lifeboat for as long as he claimed

Eight days after Nathan and Linda set sail on their fishing trip, he was found on a life raft. Coast Guard investigator Gempp said he doubted that Nathan was in the life raft for the full week before his rescue, citing his seemingly fine health at the time of his rescue.

Gempp said it was practically unheard of for someone to float alone for a week near the continental shelf without showing signs of hypothermia or dehydration. He added that he was surprised that Nathan was able to relatively easily kick his legs, swim and grip life preservers and ladders tightly while getting to safety.

However, an expert witness for the defense, retired Navy SEAL Mike Sarraille, said that Nathan’s adrenaline at the time may have helped him power through the rescue.

An insurance claim made Nathan a target for the police

Within weeks of his rescue, Nathan filed an $85,000 insurance claim for his lost boat, and the company later sued him over the claim.

Maritime investigator Liam O’Connell said that filing the claim is what led investigators to look at Nathan more closely. Then, a witness came forward, claiming to see Nathan drilling holes in the back of the boat and removing the boat’s trim tabs at the Ram Point Marina before setting sail.

Nathan’s insurance claim was denied, with a judge ruling that the boat sank because of Nathan’s faulty repairs (but this case did not determine whether he did them deliberately).

The insurance company then shared its evidence and documentation with federal agents, which led to Nathan being arrested and charged with murder in May 2022. FBI agent Lisa Tutty alleged that Nathan engaged in a years-long scheme to ensure he would be John’s sole beneficiary and killed John and Linda to claim his inheritance early.

Nathan’s attorney, Minnella, denied the allegation and maintains Nathan’s innocence.

Nathan didn’t cooperate with investigators

In The Carman Family Deaths, Bucco said that authorities found a handwritten essay titled “Why I Am Reluctant to Cooperate With Police” in Nathan’s vehicle. In it, he allegedly wrote, “Emotionally, I am not sure that I can bear another interview. Philosophically, the idea of proving one’s innocence repels me. Generally, the police are a corrupt and often criminal organization. Additionally, I have been advised by a lawyer to remain silent. I believe that is standard and generally accepted advice.”

It wasn’t the first time he opted not to cooperate with investigators.

Nathan refused to take a polygraph test that the rest of John’s family members did after his murder, per CBS News. When Nathan did speak to the police, now-retired Deputy Lieutenant Mark Francis alleged that he mentioned a detail about the murder that hadn’t yet been made public.

“He blurts out, ‘How can I calm down when I just found out my grandfather got his head blown off?’ ” Francis claimed, adding that Nathan was sobbing uncontrollably. “That statement kind of struck me because … no one ever let that out.”

Nathan’s neurodivergence may have made him more suspicious to authorities

Francis said in The Carman Family Deaths that when Nathan began specifically describing John’s wealth, he became more suspicious to the police.

However, Elizabeth Kelley, an autism specialist attorney, said Nathan should have never been subjected to an interrogation at all because neurodivergent people’s affects are often misinterpreted as “cold and calculated” due to their sometimes stilted and robotic speech patterns and attention to detail.

Nathan’s dad, Clark, also believed that his son’s neurodivergence made him an unfair target in the criminal investigation into Linda’s disappearance.

“Him being a suspect, most of that is due to their inability to discern his demeanor as autistic,” Clark said.

One example of this layer in action was allegations surrounding Nathan having a handheld water maker, which turns salt water into fresh water, when he was found on the life raft. Investigators called this suspicious, but the defense’s autism expert, John Elder Robison, said that this was likely another manifestation of Nathan’s neurodivergence being taken out of context to villainize him.

“On the one hand, you had Nathan systemitizing, that trait of autism, to have structure and planning. That was on display in the fact that Nathan thought through everything he would need in a survival raft,” Robison explained. “Those traits, to have structure and planning, are part of our autism.”

Nathan’s father agreed with Robison, noting that his son being autistic likely helped him survive when he was stranded by himself at sea.

“Because of his autism, because of his ability to be alone, Nathan, of any individual that I know,  would have coped with being lost at sea,” Clark explained. “I’m sure he used all of his ingenuity in those eight days.”

Not everyone thinks Nathan was a killer

True crime author Sherman, who wrote Blood in the Water, told PEOPLE that he doesn’t believe Nathan killed John.

“If I were on the jury, I would vote to acquit,” Sherman said in 2025, claiming that the only two people Nathan ever loved were his mother and grandfather.

“He was accused of murdering both, allegedly to get his hands on this $50 million family fortune which he was going to be getting a big chunk of anyway,” Sherman explained.

According to the author, Linda’s sisters were allegedly the ones to point the finger at Nathan, who was reportedly the wealthy patriarch’s favorite grandchild.

In his investigation, Sherman spoke with the longtime caretaker of John’s New Hampshire property Joy Washburn, who claimed that an associate of the Chakalos family approached her in 2013 and allegedly said, “Well, the entire family hates John. Can you take John out to the woods, shoot him, kill him, make it look like a hunting accident and we’ll pay you $10,000?”

Washburn reportedly wrote the comment off at the time as the person merely venting, but John was allegedly killed two weeks later.

Sherman said that the FBI and Coast Guard investigators confirmed that someone reported the same story to them. “They deemed her incredibly credible,” Sherman said. “That story elevated itself to a 302 report in the FBI, which meant it would’ve been brought up in this criminal trial.”

Nathan died by suicide before going to trial

Eventually, Nathan was arrested in May 2022 and pleaded not guilty to fraud charges and a murder charge related to his mother’s presumed death, per CNN. His first trial date was scheduled for October of that year.

But, Nathan died by suicide in his jail cell during the early morning hours of June 15, 2023, CT Insider reported. He was 29 years old.

Nathan’s murder charge for allegedly killing Linda was dropped after his death. John’s murder case is still open.