This Sept. 27, 2016, file photo shows Nathan Carman arrive to the Coast Guard base in Boston after surviving the sinking of his 32-foot fishing boat near Block Canyon, off New York, in the Atlantic Ocean on Sept. 18. He was picked up in a lifeboat about 100 nautical miles south of Martha’s Vineyard on Sept. 25 by a Chinese freighter. His mother, who was on the “Chicken Pox” with him, was not found.
The man charged with killing his mother at sea during a 2016 fishing trip off the coast of New England is asking for minutes from the grand jury proceeding that led to his indictment, seeking to learn what was disclosed about his grandfather's death three years earlier.
Nathan Carman, 29, of Vernon, Vermont, is accused of plotting to inherit millions of dollars. He pleaded not guilty last year to fraud and first-degree murder in the death of his mother, Linda Carman of Middletown, Connecticut.
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Carman's grandfather, John Chakalos, was shot to death at his home in Windsor, Connecticut, in 2013. In the indictment, Carman is accused of, but not charged with that killing.
Carman's lawyers argue in a court paperwork filed Thursday that their client was never charged, convicted or held civilly responsible for Chakalos' death, but that the indictment "includes matter-of-fact assertions of uncharged and unadjudicated criminal conduct."
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They say Carman is entitled to know what the government presented to the grand jury regarding Chakalos' death because if it was "inaccurate or untrue," then Carman may have grounds to get the indictment dismissed.
Federal prosecutors have until next Monday, Feb. 6, to respond. A court hearing on the matter was scheduled for Thursday but was cancelled, a clerk said.
Carmen inherited about $550,000 after his grandfather was killed.
In September 2016, Carman arranged a fishing trip with his mother, during which prosecutors say he planned to kill her and report that his boat sank and his mother disappeared in the accident. He was found in an inflatable raft eight days after leaving a Rhode Island marina with his mother, who was never found.
Prosecutors allege he altered the boat to make it more likely to sink, which Carman has denied.
In 2019, a federal judge in Rhode Island decided that Carman contributed to sinking the 31-foot fishing boat, ruling in favor of an insurance company that had refused to pay an $85,000 claim for the boat's loss.
