Reportedly took his own life

by Mike Donoghue, Vermont News First

BURLINGTON — Nathan Carman of Vernon, who has been facing charges of murder of his mother on the high seas and multiple swindles, is dead.

Chief Federal Judge Geoffrey W. Crawford granted a motion this morning from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Vermont to dismiss all charges against Carman after prosecutors learned today that the defendant was dead.

The one paragraph filing said the office had been notified by the U.S. Marshals Service that Carman was dead. It did not elaborate.

Vermont News First learned that Carman, 29, reportedly had taken his own life. An investigation is underway.

He has been held at the Cheshire County Jail in Keene, N.H.

A spokesperson for U.S. Attorney Nikolas “Kolo” Kerest said the office would have nothing to add to the motion that asked the presiding judge to dismiss the indictment.

Carman had been facing three counts of mail fraud, three counts of wire fraud, and one count of fraud for falsely claiming the sinking of his boat the “Chicken Pox.”

He is charged with killing Linda Carman, his mother, on Sept. 17 and 18, 2016 “willfully, deliberately, maliciously, and with premeditation.” The homicide happened “within the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States,” the indictment said.

The murder charge carried a possible life sentence in prison. Each fraud charge carries up to 10 years.

The indictment also maintains Nathan Carman killed his grandfather, John Chakalos, as he slept at his home in Windsor, Conn. on Dec. 20, 2013 as part of a scheme to obtain money and property from his estate. He was shot twice and nobody has been charged with the homicide.

Nathan Carman bought a Sig Sauer rifle at Shooter’s Outpost in Hookset, N.H. on Nov. 11, 2013 and that it was used as part of inheritance scam that covered nearly a decade, prosecutors and the indictment spell out.

After Chakalos’ death, Carman received $550,000 as a beneficiary from two bank accounts that his grandfather had set up – payable upon his death.

Carman moved to Vernon in 2014 from an apartment in Bloomfield, Conn. He was unemployed much of the time. Carman became low on funds by the fall of 2016, according to prosecutors.

That is when authorities said a death plan was developed to take his mother fishing near Block Island, R.I. and manipulated the boat, the Chicken Pox, so he could get it to sink. Carman was found a adrift in an inflatable raft 8 days later. The body of his mother was never recovered.

Carman was arrested May 10, 2022 at his Windham County home and arraigned the next day in U. S. District Court in Rutland. He pleaded not guilty to the 8-count federal indictment.

Crawford later ordered Carman detained pending trial.