Nathan Carman said Wednesday that his grandfather was “like a father to me” and he criticized The Courant for reporting that he was a suspect in the man’s 2013 shooting death.
“He loved me very dearly,” Nathan Carman said of John Chakalos. “I was like a son to him; he was like a father to me.”
Nathan Carman was found floating on a raft in the Atlantic Ocean Sunday by a passing freighter, more than a week after he and his mother, Linda Carman, 54, of Middletown set off on a fishing trip in a 31-foot aluminum boat named The Chicken Pox from Point Judith, R.I.
He told U.S. Coast Guard officials that the boat sank on Sept. 18. His mother is presumed dead.
On Wednesday, The Courant reported that court records show that Carman, 22, was a suspect in the unsolved 2013 fatal shooting of his grandfather in Windsor.
In July 2014, Windsor police submitted an arrest warrant for Carman on a murder charge, but the warrant was returned by the prosecutor unsigned the next day, according to a warrant that police used to search Carman’s apartment in Middletown, where he lived at the time.
The search warrant indicates the arrest warrant was returned with a “request for further information.” Carman was not charged. The chief state’s attorney’s cold case unit is assisting Windsor police in the investigation, but no arrests have been made in the murder, authorities said.
On Wednesday, he declined to talk about what happened to his grandfather. But Carman spoke of the time at sea.
“All I’m going to say right now to you is that a terrible tragedy happened,” Carman, who has a home in Vernon, Vt., said Wednesday in a telephone interview. “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.”
Clark Carman, Nathan’s father, was in Middletown on Wednesday at Linda Carman’s house. He said Nathan, who is physically well but “shaken up,” needed some time to himself to unwind. Clark Carman lives in California but is retired and will stay in the area for the foreseeable future, he said.
He said when Nathan was rescued after drifting in the Atlantic Ocean for eight days, crew members aboard the freighter Orient Lucky spotted the life raft as they were walking on the ship’s deck during the day.
“The ship was passing by and two crew members were walking from the stern to the bow, and all of a sudden one spotted him and they alerted the captain and stopped the ship and turned around,” he said. “It was just a miracle he was found. He said the whole time he was out there, he saw one other ship and it was very distant.”
Clark Carman said he was shocked that his son was considered a suspect in the death of his grandfather.
“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.”
An attorney who once represented Linda Carman, Gerald Klein, said she told him Nathan Carman would not have hurt Chakalos.
“She was absolutely convinced that Nathan was innocent,” Klein said.
A neighbor said Nathan Carman had moved into the Vermont house about two-and-a-half years ago. The neighbor said he kept to himself and was often seen working on the house by himself. Newly installed windows still had Andersen stickers on them, many were open without screens. The front door has no a doorknob. Building debris was strewn across the lawn.
On Monday, South Kingstown, R.I., police searched the home, located not far from the Massachusetts border. Carman and his mother had left on their fishing trip from Ram Point Marina in Wakefield, R.I.
Police obtained the search warrant as part of the missing person investigation.
A neighbor said at least eight law enforcement cruisers, including the local sheriffs department and state troopers, were at Carman’s house Monday night, and authorities with flashlights went through each level of the four-story home from 6:45 to about 9:45 p.m.
South Kingstown Det. Lt. Alfred Bucco III wrote in his application for the warrant that police were seeking documents, maps, global positioning devices, computers, hand-held electronic devices and books that would provide information about the Carmans’ location or destination. Police were also seeking receipts for purchases of 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. Police said they believed they could find evidence in Carman’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 warrant.
The search warrant indicates that police removed a modem, a GPS device SIM card and a letter written by Carman from the house. There is no indication whom the letter was written to. Police did not find a computer, the records show.
2013 Slaying
The details of the slaying of Carman’s grandfather, John Chakalos, at his home on Overlook Drive in Windsor, are contained in the warrant application to search Carman’s apartment in 2014.
The search warrant says Carman was the last known person to see Chakalos alive on Dec. 20, 2013, as the two were having dinner. The next morning, one of Chakalos’ daughters found 87-year-old Chakalos dead in his home — shot three times in the head and torso.
The search warrant states that Carman, who was then 20, became a suspect after police interviewed his mother, Linda Carman, who told them that her son was supposed to meet her in Glastonbury at 3 that morning to drive to Rhode Island but didn’t show up.
Police searched Nathan’s Middletown apartment on George Street on July 18, 2014, and found a Remington tactical shotgun, a rifle scope and several boxes of ammunition, the search warrant states. The rifle did not match the caliber of the gun used to kill Chakalos, the search warrant says.
Carman told police he had experience shooting guns at shooting ranges. He also led police to a “cubby hole” in his grandfather’s house where John Chakalos kept vintage World War II guns that no other family members knew about, the search warrant states.
The Chakalos case remains open, and the family has posted a billboard on I-91 that says it is offering a $250,000 reward for information.
Records show Chakalos’ estate was worth about $40 million, and his four daughters, including Linda Carman, were beneficiaries of about $21 million.
Audio Of Call Released
An audio recording released by the Coast Guard on Tuesday offers the most detailed description so far of the events leading to the sinking of the Carmans’ boat about midday Sept. 18.
In the recording of Carman’s brief conversation with the Coast Guard via radio from the freighter, he told authorities that engine noises first signaled a problem that eventually sank the vessel, leaving him adrift in a life raft and his mother missing.
“There was a funny noise in the engine compartment. I looked and saw a lot of water. … I brought the safety stuff forward … the boat just dropped out from under my feet,” he said in the ship-to-shore conversation soon after he was rescued by the freighter.
“When I saw the life raft, I did not see my mom,” Carman said.
Then he asked, “Have you found her?” A Coast Guard official told him they had not.
“I got to the life raft after I got my bearings, and I was whistling and calling and looking around, and I didn’t see her,” he said.
No distress call was made from vessel, the Coast Guard has said.
Coast Guard Petty Officer Nicole Groll said Wednesday that Nathan Carman did not see any of their planes or ships that searched for six days, including the area where he said the boat went down and where he was found.
“Why he didn’t see us and we didn’t see him is still unclear,” Groll said. “We did everything we could to find Nathan Carman.”
Groll said that Carman fired a flare when he saw the freighter the Orient Lucky as he floated in a raft about 100 nautical miles from Martha’s Vineyard.
The Coast Guard at this point doesn’t plan on interviewing Nathan Carman again. There also are no plans to reopen a search for Linda Carman.
“Nathan did not give us any information that would warrant reopening a search for her,” Groll said.
In the warrant used to search his home in Vermont, South Kingstown police said a friend of Linda Carman told police that she had refused to fishany farther than Block Island and that she believed their destination was Striper Rock near Block Island.
A woman whose boat was docked next to Carman’s told police that he told her he intended to fish at the “Canyons,” about 100 miles offshore, according to the warrant. Carman told the Coast Guard the boat sank at Block Canyon.
Another witness told police that Carman removed the trim tabs from his boat and patched the holes with a marine sealant, the warrant said. He also told police he did not see any fishing equipment. Trim tabs provide lift to help keep a boat on a straight plane.
A witness at Point Judith Marina told police there were “many issues” with Carman’s boat, including a newly installed motor and air getting into the fuel lines. The witness also said there was a problem with the boat’s bilge pump. He said he was unsure whether the pump or motor issues were resolved before the fishing trip.
United With Father
Clark Carman drove his son from the base shortly before 3 p.m. on Tuesday, the Coast Guard said.
When the freighter arrived in Boston Harbor, a crew of four aboard a 45-foot Coast Guard response boat met the ship and brought Carman to the base. The Coast Guard planned to conduct a face-to-face survivor debriefing, which Chief Petty Officer Luke Pinneo said is “protocol anytime we have a boat sinking at sea.”
Coast Guard officials did not plan to ask pointed questions about the disappearance of Linda Carman.
“That’s really outside our point of focus,” he said. “Our main focus here is that he gets back safely and is reunited with his family.”
Groll, the petty officer, said Carman was “talking to Coast Guard officials” just before 10 a.m. “We all want to know what happened out there,” she said.
Officials Friday afternoon gave no details about their conversations with Carman.
When he arrived, Carman, who had a beard, was wearing an orange Coast Guard life vest over a white jumpsuit that had apparently been given to him aboard the freighter. A row of photographers snapped Carman’s picture as he walked to a waiting car.
State records show that both Carmans renewed their fishing licenses in the spring.
Courant staff writer Christine Dempsey contributed to this story.
This story was changed after its initial posting to correct the location of Ram Point Marina.
