When Nathan Carman was found dead in his prison cell in June 2023 from a reported suicide, it appeared his case had reached a tragic yet telling end.

The 29-year-old was awaiting trial for murdering his mom, Linda Carman, at sea in 2016 in what prosecutors claimed was a meticulously planned and elaborately staged boating accident.

He’d also been named as the prime suspect in the murder of his multi-millionaire grandfather, John Chakalos, who was executed in bed as he slept in 2013.

Prosecutors claimed that Nathan had murdered both as part of a twisted scheme to inherit a larger share of his family’s $44 million fortune.

His death, on the surface, appeared to be a silent admission of guilt.

But Nathan’s attorneys claimed something more nefarious was afoot: they said he was not suicidal and was looking forward to clearing his name in court. Meanwhile, a secret harbored by the family's housekeeper threatened to turn the case on its head. 

The saga has since become one of New England’s most notorious murder mysteries.

In search of answers, investigative journalist Casey Sherman has delved head first into the convoluted web encapsulating Nathan Carman in his new book, Blood In The Water, which was released on April 8.

Sherman called the Carman saga the strangest case he’s ever investigated.

‘Normally, there’s a window into whether this person is guilty or innocent,’ Sherman tells the Daily Mail.

‘But in this case, you’ve got facts that point to Nathan’s innocence and to his guilt - which is why I think prosecutors would’ve had an incredibly difficult time trying to convict Nathan had he made it to trial.’

Nathan Carman (right) was accused of killing his mom, Linda Carman (left), at sea in a staged boating accident in 2016

He was also named as the prime suspect in the 2013 shooting death of his millionaire grandfather, John Chakalos (right)

'Shakespearean Tragedy'

Nathan grew up in Connecticut as an only child and was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome at an early age.

He was described by those around him as highly intelligent but unpredictable and seemingly lacking a capacity for empathy.

It was his grandfather, John Chakalos, who took the wayward and lonely boy under his wing.

Chakalos doted on Nathan, paying for his schooling, housing, and lavishing him with gifts. 

He also brought him into the family's real estate business and appeared to be grooming him as his successor.

In Blood In The Water, Sherman writes that Nathan’s close bond with Chakalos raised eyebrows and stoked quiet resentment among the wider family.

‘Chakalos had four daughters and eight other grandchildren, and many questioned why he was elevating Nathan to the lofty position as his eventual successor,’ writes Sherman.

‘While his adult daughters, all but Linda, may have been capable of running the family business, Chakalos was old-fashioned and treated his Greek family as an archaic patriarchy where women did not hold the same value as men.’

Linda, in particular, seemed to detest the attention Chakalos was showing her son.

Nathan Carman (left) shared a difficult relationship with his mom (right). To mend their fractured bond they often embarked on fishing trips together

Author Casey Sherman has written a new book about the Carman family saga

Linda was a gambling addict who struggled to hold down a job.

She was financially dependent on her father, and Chakalos was known to wield his wealth over his daughters, threatening to cut them off for any perceived acts of disobedience.

Sherman likened the family’s chaotic dynamic to a Shakespearean tragedy.

‘I look at John Chakalos’ life like King Lear,’ Sherman tells the Daily Mail.

‘You have his daughters that are all really vying for his love and attention, and how he controlled every member of his family through his wealth. It was all very volatile and sometimes even violent.’

Chakalos and Linda often fought and even came to physical blows in 2011 when Nathan was institutionalized after suffering a mental break.

Linda Carman shared an equally difficult relationship with her dad and totally relied on him financially 

Linda was arrested and charged with assault of an elderly person.

‘My father is worth $300 million,’ she told police. ‘He is not going to cut me off. I need the money.’

The charges were later dropped at Chakalos’ request.

For some time, the pair had been locked in a tug of war over custody of Nathan.

Chakalos disapproved of Linda’s parenting and sought control over the boy's upbringing, but Linda resisted and shared open disdain for Chakalos’ interferences.

But when Nathan turned 18, Linda was forced to relinquish control and Nathan started spending more time with Chakalos.

Two years after the hospital brawl, Nathan was ingrained in his grandfather’s business, frequently attending meetings at Chakalos’ side.

Linda protested the favoritism shown by her father towards Nathan by ‘acting like the troubled teenager she had once been,’ writes Sherman, embarking on a 10-day gambling trip and depleting a trust fund belonging to her son.

On September 16, 2013, she also secretly wrote Nathan out of her will, pledging her $5.7 million share of her father’s inheritance to her sisters.

Within months, the family would be shaken by the death of Chakalos’ wife, Rita, who succumbed to breast cancer.

The stable footing Nathan finally found himself on soon crumbled beneath his feet.

As described by Sherman, Chakalos fell into a deep emotional stupor after Rita’s death and confided in friends that he no longer wished to live.

The couple was beloved in the local community and revered for their philanthropic pursuits.

But all was not what it seemed.

Nathan was diagnosed with Aspergers at a young age and held the nickname 'murder boy' among some in his hometown

A billboard paid for by the family offers a reward for the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for the murder of John Chakalos

Blood In The Water: The Untold Story of a Family Tragedy released on April 8

Family Secrets 

While his wife was on her deathbed, Chakalos had proposed to his housekeeper, Joy Washburn, offering to pay her $10,000 per month if she agreed to wed him when Rita died.

‘He called it a marriage of convenience and said it was the only way he could change the family trusts, by adding me as his wife,’ Washburn told Sherman, adding that Chakalos had shared a desire to cut his 'ungrateful' daughters off for good.

Washburn claimed that Nathan was standing outside the room and overheard the entire conversation.

At Rita’s funeral, Washburn said she was issued another odd proposal, this time from an associate of the family who told her, ‘nobody can stand John anymore.’

‘The person asked me to take John out hunting in New Hampshire and kill him and make it look like an accident. I don’t think this person was joking,’ Washburn shared.

While his family continued to mourn Rita’s loss, Chakalos was spending less time with Nathan and his daughters.

Though to the outside world, Chakalos, 87, appeared to be a loving husband-turned-widower who was left devastated by an insurmountable loss, in reality he had for months been engaged in an illicit affair with a woman six decades his junior.

Weeks after Rita’s death, John spent a weekend away with his young mistress at a casino in Connecticut.

‘Chakalos brought a bag of sex toys up to their hotel room,’ writes Sherman. ‘He asked her to use them on herself while he watched.’

The affair was kept secret from Chakalos family, but the patriarch was becoming more withdrawn from his business, and prioritizing Nathan less as he focused his limited energies on his spritely concubine.

By December 20, tragedy would befall the family again.

Chakalos was found dead at home in bed, having been shot three times in the head and back.

Nathan was the last person to see Chakalos alive. They had dinner together the night before and Nathan had driven Chakalos home.

Earlier that day, Chakalos had visited a sex shop in Hartford and was spotted on a ATM surveillance camera with a young blonde at his side.

‘The girlfriend called Chakalos at 8:36pm, purring on the phone, wanting him to engage in phone sex,’ writes Sherman.

‘The elderly man could not resist such a tantalizing conversation with the young blonde, so he quickly cut his visit with Nathan short and escorted him to the front door while he still had his cell phone to his ear.’

Nathan Carmen is seen in 2016 after being rescued having claimed to have spent eight days adrift in a small inflatable lift raft after his boat sank

Chakalos took two more calls that night: one from Linda and another from Washburn.

Early the next morning, around 2am, a neighbor was awoken by a loud bang. An hour later they heard car tires screeching. 

Chakalos was found dead by his daughter Elaine later that morning.

The killer had been methodical: the shell casings from the three fired shots had been removed from the scene, as had the bag of sex toys Chakalos had purchased the day prior.

Joy Washburn said she was terrified after learning of Chakalos’ murder.

Her mind was immediately cast back to the proposition posed to her at Rita's funeral to kill Chakalos and stage his death as a accident.

‘She had nervously laughed off the cryptic conversation then, but she wasn’t laughing anymore,’ writes Sherman.

A Willing Accomplice?

Nathan quickly came under suspicion and he struggled to establish a concrete alibi for his movements that night.

According to Sherman, Nathan told police he dropped Chakalos off then drove to his apartment in Bloomfield.

He said he stayed home for a few hours and later left to get ice cream. When he returned home he claimed to have stayed up playing online chess.

Nathan was captured on surveillance leaving his apartment complex at 2:57am - an hour after Chakalos’ neighbor reported being awoken by a loud bang.

That morning, Nathan and his mother had plans to meet for an early hours fishing trip.

They were scheduled to meet at 3am, but Nathan didn’t show until 4am.

When asked where he’d been, Nathan told his mother he’d lost track of time playing chess, according to Linda.

While investigators stood over her father’s bloodied body, Linda and Nathan spent the morning fishing off the coast of Rhode Island.

Nathan was the last known person to see his grandfather alive 

Federal agents execute a search warrant at Nathan Carman's Vermont home in May 2022

All of Chakalos' daughters were questioned, but Linda came under particular scrutiny because of her prior arrest for attacking him.

The suspicious timing of Linda and Nathan's fishing trip was also not lost on investigators.

‘Was Linda trying to establish an alibi?’ writes Sherman. ‘She hired an attorney within days of the killing, as did her three sisters.’

All of Chakalos’ daughters agreed to take polygraph tests and passed.

Nathan, meanwhile, refused to cooperate.

Police determined that Chakalos had been killed with a .308-caliber rifle.

Nathan had purchased a .308-caliber rifle - a Sig Sauer Patrol 716 - two weeks before the murder.

When confronted, Nathan said he forgot he owned the rifle and claimed to have since lost it.

Nathan also discarded his computer hard drive and removed the GPS unit from his truck after the killing.

Suspicions were abundant, but Nathan’s aunts stumped up thousands to cover his legal fees.

Police wanted to arrest Nathan for murder but the state attorney’s office refused to sign the warrant because the case - without the murder weapon, or a proverbial smoking gun - was too circumstantial.

In 2015, Connecticut's Cold Case Unit took over the investigation.

The unit began exploring whether Nathan potentially disposed of his missing Sig Sauer rifle on the fishing trip with his mom.

That posed the question: did Linda Carman know more about her father’s death than she was letting on?

Sherman believes there’s a chance that Nathan - if he was the killer - didn’t act alone.

‘Nathan overheard that conversation between his grandfather and [Joy Washburn], about how John was trying to tie up his estate so the children couldn’t gain access to it freely,’ he said.

‘So there’s a theory that potentially Nathan and Linda may have committed this murder as a joint partnership and then gotten rid of the rifle [...] before John could make that decision.

‘But there were other people that had reason to want John Chakalos dead - and Nathan would’ve been easy to frame,' added Sherman.

Cliff-Hanger Mystery

Nathan Carman inherited $550,000 upon his grandfather’s death. 

In 2014, he moved to Vermont where he bought a house and a 31-foot fishing boat named ‘Chicken Pox'.

By 2016, Nathan had blown through his inheritance.

Then on September 17, 2016, he and Linda decided to embark on a fishing trip off the coast of Rhode Island.

Before setting off, Nathan made a series of alterations to the Chicken Pox that investigators claimed were deliberate acts of sabotage.

Nathan removed engine parts and sections of the hull that stabilized the boat.

According to Nathan, he and his mom set off at 11.13pm. They fished for several hours near Block Island, then headed to Block Canyon shortly after dawn.

Nathan's boat, the Chicken Pox, is seen above. He purchased the vessel with money from inheritance after his grandfather was killed

Conditions on the water that morning were calm.

Nathan claimed they dropped their fishing lines and spent hours trolling for tuna before disaster struck.

All of a sudden, he heard a sound coming from under the deck and realized the boat was taking on water - but Nathan never triggered the boat’s emergency alarm system.

He told the Coast Guard he saw his mother standing in the cockpit while he grabbed supplies to take onto the boat's emergency raft.

When he looked back, he claimed his mom had vanished. Then suddenly, the boat ‘dropped out’ from under his feet.

Eight days later, a healthy-looking Nathan was spotted adrift on a life raft by the captain of a commercial bulk carrier 100 miles off the coast of Cape Cod.

The rescue was initially hailed as a miracle but soon took a dark turn. 

Following a six-year investigation, Nathan was charged with murdering his mom 'on the high seas’ by prosecutors in Vermont in 2022.

In the indictment, Nathan was also named the prime suspect in Chakalos’ murder.

Prosecutors claimed he killed Linda so he could obtain his mother’s share of Chakalos’ fortune - unaware he'd been removed from her will. 

But Nathan’s trial would never come to pass: On June 15, 2023, he was found dead in his jail cell.

Nathan Carmen was found dead in his cell June 2023. Authorities said his death was 'not suspicious' but didn't publicy disclose a cause of death

Martin Minnella said he was sure Nathan was going to walk free, claiming the state's case against him was shoddy and thin

An urn carrying Nathan Carmen's ashes is seen being held at his funeral in Waterbury, CT

Officials declined to release Nathan’s cause of death at the request of his family, but said it wasn't suspicious.

Nathan’s attorney Marty Minnella told the Daily Mail that Nathan was hanged with a shoelace noose.

Minnella said Nathan wasn’t suicidal and believes he was murdered.

The attorney said Nathan was excited for trial, certain that he’d walk free because the state’s case was riddled with holes and lacked concrete evidence.

Sherman shares Minnella’s beliefs, stating prosecutors didn’t have ‘anywhere near the amount of evidence’ needed to eradicate reasonable doubt.

The author said there’s also plausible information the sinking of the Chicken Pox could’ve been an accident as Nathan claimed.

If Nathan was almost certain to walk free, then why would he have resorted to taking his own life before trial?

‘What motive did Nathan have to kill himself, unless he was overcome with guilt?’ asked Sherman.

‘Joy Washburn told me that she believed Nathan was murdered by someone who wanted to keep him off the witness stand, and that’s a compelling theory.’

Stranger still, to Sherman, is the fact that after Nathan's remains were cremated, his aunts buried him in their family plot next to Chakalos.

‘Why would you want the person you believe killed your dad to be buried next to his victim for eternity? It doesn’t make sense.

‘I think there’s always going to be a mystery surrounding this case [...] and it makes for a hell of a cliffhanger.’

Blood In The Water: The Untold Story of a Family Tragedy is out now.