Nathan Carman, a 26-year-old Vermont man accused of murdering his mother, died in jail this week, likely from suicide, sources say.
According to the Boston Globe, a New Hampshire Department of Justice spokesperson issued a statement indicating the state medical examiner’s office noted that the autopsy results stated that the death is not regarded as suspicious.
The New Hampshire Office of the Chief Medical Examiner has a policy of not disclosing the cause and manner of deaths, the spokesperson said. All inquiries regarding Carman’s death were redirected to the New Hampshire Department of Justice.
As CrimeOnline previously reported, Carman was the sole occupant of a county jail cell in a facility run by the Cheshire Corrections Department. He was found dead at about 2:30 a.m. Thursday, according to Doug Losue, superintendent of the department.
Carman’s lawyer, David Sullivan, said Carman left a note behind, but as of Friday afternoon, it’s unclear what the note entailed.
“We believe Mr. Carman left us a note that we look forward to receiving to make sense of a very tragic situation,” he said, The Trumbull Times reports.
Carman was accused of enlarging holes in a boat before taking his mother, Linda Carman, on a fishing trip in 2016 from which she never returned.
The Coast Guard rescued Nathan a week later over 100 miles from Martha’s Vineyard, as he floated on a life raft. Linda, an heir to a $44 million fortune, has never been found and is presumed dead.
“Both killings were part of a scheme to obtain money and property from the estate of John Chakalos and related family trusts,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Vermont said in a statement last year.
Investigators suspected Nathan may have engineered the sinking by tampering with the boat and taking his mother further out in the water than she had planned or expected.
The Boston Globe previously reported that the boat’s insurer, National Liability and Fire Insurance Co., asked a court to deny any insurance claim on the boat following an investigation that revealed Nathan compromised it before the accident.
In removing his boat’s trim tabs hours before departing on its final voyage, Carman not only failed to properly seal four thru-hull holes he thereby opened at the transom’s waterline, but two recent depositions establish Carman enlarged those four holes,” the insurer reportedly wrote in the request.
Carman was also the last person to see his grandfather alive before the 87-year-old man was found shot to death.
Carman reportedly purchased a gun that was the same caliber as the weapon that killed his grandfather, a multimillionaire developer. Carman declined to let police know this during questioning. He also declined to take a polygraph test.
“After Nathan Carman killed John Chakalos, and as part of his plan to cover up his involvement in that crime, Nathan Carman discarded his computer hard drive and the GPS unit that had been in his truck the night of the murder,” the indictment read.
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[Feature Photo: FILE – In this Tuesday, Aug. 7, 2018, file photo, Nathan Carman speaks at a hearing in probate court in West Hartford, Conn. A lawyer for Carman, who is accused by relatives of killing his millionaire grandfather and his mother to collect inheritance money, said Tuesday, Sept. 18, 2018, that there is evidence that could exonerate him in the death of his grandfather. (Cloe Poisson/Hartford Courant via AP, Pool, File)]
