carman was found in an inflatable raft eight days after leaving a Rhode Island marina to go fishing with his mother, Linda Carman, who was never found.
Carman, 28, of Vernon, Vermont, was arrested Tuesday. He is due to appear in federal court Wednesday in Rutland, Vermont. His attorney did not return a call seeking comment.
William Michael, an attorney for Carman’s mother’s sisters, said Tuesday that the family had no immediate comment.
The indictment, which was issued May 2 but made public after Carman’s arrest, outlines what prosecutors said was a scheme to defraud Chakalos’s estate.
“As a central part of the scheme, Nathan Carman murdered John Chakalos and Linda Carman,” the indictment says.
Authorities allege in the indictment that on Nov. 11, 2013, Carman used his New Hampshire driver’s license to purchase a rifle that he used on Dec. 20, 2013, to shoot Chakalos in his sleep.
After Chakalos’ death, Carman received $550,000 from different accounts. He moved to Vermont in 2014, where he was unemployed and by the fall of 2016 he was low on funds.
In September 2016, Carman arranged to go fishing with his mother on their boat called “Chicken Pox”.
“Nathan Carman planned to kill his mother on the trip,” the indictment says. “He also planned how he would report the sinking of the ‘Chicken Pox’ and the disappearance of his mother at sea as accidents.”
Seven of the eight counts in the indictment relate to what prosecutors say were fraudulent efforts to obtain money from her grandfather’s estate or from insurance companies.
The other charge alleges that Carman killed his mother. If he is convicted of the murder charge, he faces life in prison.
In 2019, a federal judge in Rhode Island decided that Carman contributed to the sinking of the ship.
US District Judge John McConnell issued a written decision for an insurance company that he had refused to pay an $85,000 claim to Carman for the loss of his 31-foot fishing boat.
Carman denied doing anything to intentionally make the ship unseaworthy. He told the Coast Guard that when the boat rapidly filled with water, he swam to the lifeboat and called her mother, but he never saw her again.
The judge found, among other things, that shortly before the fishing trip with his mother, Carman made improper repairs to the boat. Witnesses testified that he removed two stabilizer moldings from the stern, near the boat’s waterline, leaving holes that he tried to seal with an epoxy stick.
The crew of a freighter found him floating on the raft off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard, an island in Massachusetts, eight days after the ship was reported missing.
Chakalos, who was a real estate developer, left behind an inheritance worth nearly $29 million, which was to be divided among his four daughters. Carman is in line to get about $7 million from the estate, as the sole heir to his mother.
Chakalos’s three surviving daughters sued Carman in New Hampshire probate court, seeking to bar him from receiving money from the Chakalos estate. A judge dismissed the case in 2019, saying Chakalos was not a New Hampshire resident. The probate case was refiled in Connecticut, where it remains pending.
This story has been corrected to show that Carman is scheduled to appear in court Wednesday in Rutland, not Burlington.
AP reporters Kathy McCormack in Concord, New Hampshire, Lisa Rathke in Montpelier, Vermont, and Dave Collins in Hartford, Connecticut, contributed to this report.
Reference-www.washingtonpost.com