Man Charged With Killing Mother at Sea in Inheritance Scheme Dies in Jail

A Vermont man died in jail on Thursday morning while awaiting trial on federal charges that he had lured his mother on a fishing trip, killed her and sank the boat in a scheme to inherit his family’s estate, the U.S. Marshals Service said.

The Marshals Service, which announced the death in a statement, did not say how the man, Nathan Carman, 29, of Vernon, Vt., had died.

Mr. Carman was being held at the Cheshire County Jail in Keene, N.H., after he pleaded not guilty last year to charges of first-degree murder and fraud in the death of his mother, Linda Carman, on a fishing trip off the coast of Rhode Island in 2016.

The Marshals Service said that the Keene Police Department was investigating. A police spokesman declined to comment.

Jail officers found Mr. Carman “unresponsive overnight” in his cell, where he was the sole occupant, Douglas L. Iosue, the superintendent of the Cheshire County Department of Corrections, and Christopher C. Coates, the county administrator, said in a statement.

Mr. Carman was to go on trial in October.

Martin J. Minnella, a lawyer for Mr. Carman, said that prosecutors told him that Mr. Carman had left a note for him and for his other lawyer, David X. Sullivan, although they had not yet seen it and did not know what it said.

“We had no indication there was anything wrong,” Mr. Minnella said. “We had wanted to go to court and let the truth be known about this kid because the truth wasn’t out there. My mind is blown. It’s a complete surprise.”

Mr. Sullivan said there had been no indication that Mr. Carman might have been in danger from other inmates or at risk of suicide.

“I had spoken with him last evening for about an hour between 6 and 7, and he was in very good spirits,” Mr. Sullivan said, adding, “I am so deeply saddened and troubled by his loss.”

A lawyer for Ms. Carman’s three sisters, who sued Mr. Carman in 2018 to block him from inheriting money and had accused him of killing Ms. Carman and their father, John Chakalos, released a statement saying that they were “deeply saddened to hear of Nathan’s death.”

“While we process this shocking news and its impact on the tragic events surrounding the last several years, we ask for your understanding and respect relative to our privacy,” the statement said.

In an indictment unsealed in May 2022, federal prosecutors accused Mr. Carman of murdering his mother while boating off the coast of Rhode Island in September 2016 and making false reports to the authorities about what had happened.

Federal prosecutors did not specify how they believed Mr. Carman had killed his mother, but they said his boat, named Chicken Pox, was deliberately sunk. Mr. Carman spent eight days adrift at sea before the crew of a commercial ship, the Orient Lucky, found him floating on a life raft.

In 2013, as another part of his scheme, Mr. Carman grabbed his Sig Sauer rifle and shot and killed Mr. Chakalos, who had become wealthy by building and renting nursing homes and other real estate ventures in Windsor, Conn., the indictment stated. Mr. Carman was not charged in that killing, according to the indictment.

The indictment stated that Mr. Carman had “concocted cover stories to conceal his involvement in those killings.” It did not state how much money Mr. Carman could have inherited. The A.P. reported that, as his mother’s only heir, he would have received $7 million.

Suspicions about Ms. Carman’s death first arose in September 2016 when he was found on the life raft without his mother. Her body was never recovered.

They had set out on a fishing trip after 11 p.m. on Sept. 17, 2016, to spend time together on Mr. Carman’s boat. It was Ms. Carman’s “principal way of interacting with her son,” the indictment stated.

By that time, Mr. Chakalos had been dead for three years, and Mr. Carman had already received $550,000 as a result. The money had been mostly spent by the fall of 2016 because he had been unemployed for long stretches, the indictment stated.

Federal prosecutors said that Mr. Carman had planned and prepared for the killing of his mother in several ways: He removed trim tabs — metal plates that help to stabilize performance — from the boat and removed his computer from his home to prevent officials from reviewing it while he was away.

He planned to report the sinking of the Chicken Pox and Ms. Carman’s disappearance as “accidents,” the indictment stated.

Mr. Carman told The A.P. in 2016 that “what happened on the boat was a terrible tragedy that I am still trying to process and that I am still trying to come to terms with.”

He added that he did not know “what to make of people being suspicious,” and that he had “enough to deal with.”

Eduardo Medina contributed reporting.