A New York magazine story goes in depth on Nathan Carman’s family
The Vermont man is mysteriously linked to the deaths of his mother and grandfather, and stands to financially benefit as a result.
The suspicious circumstances surrounding the deaths of Nathan Carman’s mother and grandfather have been widely reported.
But a piece recently published by New York magazine takes a closer look at the Vermont man’s family life, illustrating a web of strenuous and often combative relationships between Carman; his mother, Linda Carman; and his grandfather, John Chakalos.
Linda is presumed dead after she went on a 2016 fishing trip with her son off the coast of Rhode Island and never returned. Nathan was found seven days later on a life raft. John Chakalos, Carman’s millionaire grandfather, was found dead in his house in 2013, shot by the exact assault rifle model Carman had earlier purchased, according to authorities in the New York piece.
Carman is now being sued by his mother’s three sisters in an effort to keep him from inheriting from his grandfather’s estate.
New York reports Carman was diagnosed with Asperger’s and, despite some difficulties growing up, his relationship with his grandfather was quite good. Chakalos bought him a white Irish Sport horse named Cruise.
Carman’s relationship with his mother was less so, according to the report:
But by the time Nathan got to high school, their relationship had become strained. He was prone to tantrums when things didn’t go his way — he once threw a tray of cookies at a wall after Linda burned them. “Soon enough he’s going to slit your throat while you’re sleeping” her boyfriend at the time warned her. On Halloween in 2009, a parent of a trick-or-treater called the police because Nathan had been handing out “tricks”: Ziploc bags filled with fish guts. The following year, when he insisted on moving out of the house, Linda offered a compromise. She allowed him to live in an RV parked in the driveway — far enough to appease Nathan but close enough for her to watch over him.
However, their relationship reportedly further deteriorated when Cruise, Carman’s “only friend” by some accounts, died.
Nathan was despondent. He stopped talking to Linda, communicating with her only through handwritten notes. Plans to scatter Cruise’s ashes had to be put off because Nathan experienced what Linda described on a mental-health message board as a “psychotic episode” at school. Nathan, she wrote, had called the vice-principal “Satan” and his secretary “an agent of the devil” — the sort of behavior, she said, that was “previously reserved for me.” There was something more than autism at work, she feared. Nathan was suddenly having “paranoid delusions” and espousing “religious idiocy.”
Meanwhile, Linda Carman was dealing with her own issues. Despite support from her wealthy father, she reportedly struggled to make ends meet due to chronic unemployment, depression, and a gambling habit. Chakalos was therefore able to administer some control over his daughter using his money, which he also used to forge a closeness with her son.
“So there was some resentment,” Clark Carman, Nathan’s father, told New York.
If the suit to block his inheritance is successful, Carman’s aunts say they will donate the millions he would otherwise inherit to charity.
