December 3, 2025
by Carla Hay
Directed by Yon Motskin
Culture Representation: The documentary film “The Carman Family Deaths” features a predominantly white group of people (with one African American) who discuss their connections to the case of Nathan Carman, who was charged with several crimes related to the 2016 death of his mother and the 2013 death of his grandfather.
Culture Clash: The mystery of these deaths caused controversy among Nathan Carman’s family and in the general public, with many people strongly believing that he is guilty (with the suspected motive being murder for inheritance and insurance money) or not guilty.
Culture Audience: “The Carman Family Deaths” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in true crime documentaries about family turmoil over inheritances and murder cases that are technically unsolved but named a suspect who is widely believed to be the perpetrator.
“The Carman Family Deaths” documentary gives a fair balance to both sides of this controversial case about a young man suspected of murdering his mother and wealthy grandfather. Some details are omitted, but the interviews are well-rounded. The case has gotten a lot of media attention, but there still remains a contentious divide among those who think Nathan Carman is guilty or not guilty of the crimes (including murder) that he was about to go on trial for in October 2023. At the age of 29, Carman committed suicide in his jail cell in June 2023.
Directed by Yon Motskin, “The Carman Family Deaths” gives a clear and concise retelling of the facts while also including conflicting opinions by people who are connected to the case in some way. It’s the type of documentary that will either make viewers doubt that Nathan Carman was guilty or convince viewers that he was guilty. The film is edited like a back-and-forth of contradictory viewpoints. There is often an interview clip of someone saying one thing, followed immediately by a separate interview clip of someone else saying something that is the opposite.
Here are the basic facts of this case: Nathan Carman was born in 1994. He was the only child of Clark Carman (who is interviewed in the documentary) and Linda Carman, whose maiden name was Linda Chakalos. When Nathan was about 4 or 5 years old, Nathan was diagnosed with having autism. His father describes Nathan as a lifelong loner. When Nathan was 10, his parents got divorced, and he lived primarily with his mother, even after he became an adult.
According to Clark, Nathan’s best friend in Nathan’s childhood was Nathan’s pet horse. The horse died of natural causes when Nathan was in his early teens. Clark says in the documentary that after the horse died, Nathan’s mental health went on a downward spiral. Nathan went into a deep depression where he became a recluse.
This mental breakdown led his parents to send him first to a boot camp for troubled teens. When that didn’t work, Nathan was placed involuntarily in a psychiatric facility for a certain period of time. After Nathan was discharged from the facility, he lived in a camper next to Linda’s house in Connecticut. The camper was on Linda’s property. According to Nathan’s father Clark, Nathan (who was unemployed) would dismantle and reassemble things inside the camper and refused to take prescribed medication or go to therapy.
One of the rare outside activities that Nathan enjoyed was fishing. His mother had a small boat named Chicken Pox. Linda didn’t particularly care about fishing, but she would go on fishing excursions with Nathan as a way to please Nathan. Linda is described as a doting and concerned mother who didn’t know how to properly handle Nathan’s mental health issues.
Nothing is told about Clark’s side of the family, but there’s a lot of information about Linda’s side of the family. The wealth of Linda’s father John Chakalos is widely believed to be the catalyst for the crimes that Nathan was accused of committing. John was a multimillionaire real-estate developer who got rich mainly from building retirement homes.
John is described by several people in the documentary as being physically and emotionally abusive and controlling to his wife Rita and his four children (all daughters) but completely loving (almost to a fault) to Nathan. John and Rita raised their daughters in Connecticut and in New Hampshire. Linda was the second-eldest daughter of the couple. The third-eldest daughter is Charlene Gallagher, who is two years younger than Linda and is interviewed in the documentary. The other daughters were Elaine (the eldest) and Valerie (the youngest), who are not interviewed in the documentary.
According to people interviewed in the documentary, Linda was the most rebellious and most stubborn of the four sisters and was therefore the sister who clashed the most with John. Linda moved to California against her father’s wishes, which led Linda and John to be estranged from each other for a certain period of time. Linda spent time serving in the U.S. National Guard and is described as being “tough” and skilled at athletic activities, such as swimming. Linda and Clark got married and lived in California early on in their marriage, but Clark says that John convinced the newlyweds to move back to Linda’s home state of Connecticut because John promised that he would set the couple up with a Dunkin’ Donuts franchise shop to operate as a business.
In the documentary, Clark says John “reneged” on this promise, and Linda ended up working for her father. Elsewhere in the documentary, it’s mentioned that even though John was the family patriarch, he caused a lot of anger and resentment among several family members because of his violent and manipulative ways. People who believe Nathan was not guilty have speculated that other family members could’ve had a motive to murder John, even though Nathan was the only one who was under the most suspicion for committing the crime.
In the early-morning hours of December 20, 2013, 87-year-old John (who lived in Windsor, Connecticut) was brutally murdered by being shot in his bed. Nathan and other members of the family were questioned. Nathan did not have a solid alibi and vehemently denied that he had anything to do with the murder. Nathan told investigators that Nathan was home alone at the time that John was believed to have been murdered. No one could verify Nathan’s alibi. Tragically, John was murdered less than one month after his wife Rita Chakalos died of cancer.
John left behind a fortune worth about $42 million that he wanted split equally among his four daughters. Originally, Linda was going to leave her house to Nathan in her will. But she changed her will in a video statement (which is shown in the documentary) saying that she was leaving her house to someone named Michael (whose last name is not mentioned) instead of Nathan inheriting the house, but Nathan would still get an unspecified amount of inheritance money from her. (The documentary does not reveal or explain who Michael is.)
At the time of John’s murder, Nathan was getting an allowance of about $100,000 a month from John. However, John (who spoiled Nathan for Nathan’s entire life) threatened to cut off Nathan from this allowance unless Nathan got a job or went to college. Nathan refused, so his relationship with his grandfather was rocky at the time that John was murdered.
Adding to the suspicion about Nathan, investigators later discovered that he had purchased a Sig Sauer 716 patrol rifle from outside of Connecticut and with an out-of-state photo ID. The bullets found at the murder scene could have been used in this type of gun. Nathan had not told investigators that he bought this gun. The murder weapon was never found. There was also no sign of an intruder break-in or anything stolen from the house.
Law enforcement investigators say it was suspicious that when Nathan was first questioned by police, Nathan knew that John died from being shot in the head, even though that information had not yet released to the public. However, John’s eldest daughter Elaine found his body. Is it possible that Elaine told people in the family how John died because of the obvious gunshot wounds she saw on John’s head? The documentary isn’t clear on these details.
More information was needed in the documentary about the investigation of John’s murder. How many hours or days after the murder did it take for Nathan to be first questioned by investigators? Was he questioned soon enough after the murder to be tested for traces of gunpowder? Were all other family members, friends or colleagues who had grudges against John ruled out as suspects because they had verified alibis? Those questions aren’t really answered in the documentary, although it’s mentioned that Linda was cleared because she had an alibi. The documentary also quickly mentions that a theory was floated (and later dismissed) by investigators that the murder could have been done by an unknown hired assassin.
Nathan was the beneficiary of about $219,000 from an insurance policy that John had, plus more inherited money from John through other resources, bringing Nathan’s inheritance from John to a total amount that was reportedly a little more than $400,000. There was evidence that Nathan knew about the amount he would get from if John died. According to the documentary, Nathan also researched how much money he would inherit from John’s estate if Nathan’s mother Linda died. People who think Nathan is guilty believe greed is the main reason why Nathan allegedly plotted to murder John and Linda.
Nathan had a more volatile relationship with Linda than with John. According to people interviewed in the documentary, Nathan had a lot of resentment toward Linda, whom he felt was being too overprotective of Nathan. Nathan also placed a lot of blame on Linda for the decision to put him in a psychiatric facility when Nathan was a teenager. John was very much against putting Nathan in any type of psychiatric facility, due to bad memories that John had of John’s twin sister Kiki being put in a psychiatric institution during a time when mental health care was much more barbaric than it is now.
Nathan was never arrested or named an official suspect in John’s murder, which is still officially an unsolved case. However, some of the fraud charges against Nathan had to do with insurance fraud related to John’s death. The people who believe that Nathan was not guilty of John’s murder say that there is no physical evidence to link him to the crime.
What put Nathan in the international news spotlight was his dramatic “rescued at sea” story after his mother Linda went missing on a fishing trip that they took together off the coast of Rhode Island on September 18, 2016. They set sail from South Kingstown, Rhode Island. Linda (who was 52 at the time) and Nathan (who was 22) both went missing for eight days, but only Nathan was found. A freight ship rescued him after he was seen on an inflatable life raft about 100 miles off of the coast of Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts.
Nathan’s story was that the Chicken Pox boat inexplicably capsized, and he couldn’t save Linda. The documentary includes video clips of deposition statements that Nathan gave while being interrogated. In these statements, he says he doesn’t remember seeing or hearing his mother fall into the sea. Linda was officially declared dead in October 2023, the month that Nathan would’ve gone on trial for her murder.
An extensive search took place for six days after Nathan and Linda were reported missing. Linda’s body was never found, and neither was the Chicken Pox boat. The life raft, which sunk as soon as Nathan was rescued, was also never found. People who believe Nathan was guilty of killing Linda have speculated that Nathan (who had a knife in his possession when he was found at sea) could have used the knife on the life raft, knowing the raft would seek in the deep sea, in order to prevent incriminating evidence from being found.
Nathan said he was in the life raft for seven consecutive days and survived by using a portable machine that converted salt water to fresh water and by having some packaged food that he said he was able to get from the Chicken Pox boat before the boat sank. But curiously, Nathan (who was dressed in regular clothes that were not adequate protection from the weather) showed no signs of being sunburned from the hot daylight sun, no signs of major fatigue, and no signs of hypothermia, which typically happens if an inadequately clothed person is lost at sea on a raft for several consecutive days and nights. People who think that Nathan is guilty have speculated that he knew the area well enough to hide in the boat somewhere, keep track of the news to find out when the search was called off, sink the boat, and then make his way onto the sea by the life raft.
Needless to say, Nathan denied doing all of this scheming and maintained his story that he believed that his mother drowned by accident when the boat capsized. There is no way to prove or disprove Nathan’s story since there were no witnesses (except Nathan) who saw the boat sink and no witnesses who saw Nathan during the time that there was an extensive search for Nathan and Linda. And with the life raft never being found, it couldn’t be proven if Nathan’s story was true that he was on a life raft at sea for the number of days he said he was on the life raft.
However, a witness named Mike Iozzi (who is not interviewed in the documentary, which uses archival footage of Iozzi) says he saw Nathan remove the trim tabs from the Chicken Pox boat and saw Nathan drilling on the boat on the day that Nathan and Linda took that fateful trip. Nathan’s defenders say that these boat adjustments could have been repairs, not tampering. Because the boat was never found, nothing can be proven either way. Not surprisingly, Nathan denied tampering with the boat and said he was making minor repairs.
Nathan filed an $85,000 insurance claim because he alleged that the Chicken Pox boat was faulty and the main reason why the boat capsized. The insurance company for the boat investigated this claim and uncovered evidence that law enforcement didn’t find, but the insurance company handed over this evidence to federal law enforcement officials. This evidence led to Nathan being charged in 2022 with the murder of Linda, three counts of mail fraud and four counts of wire fraud. At the time of his arrest, Nathan had been living in Vernon, Vermont, on property that he bought with some of his inheritance money.
In the documentary, the people who think that Nathan was guilty of causing the deaths of his mother Linda and his grandfather John are Linda’s sister Charlene Gallagher; Linda’s cousin Charles “Chuck” LaPenna (whose mother was John’s twin sister Kiki); Eric Gempp, Coast Guard investigator; Liam O’Connell, maritime investigator; Alfred Bucco, deputy chief of the South Kingstown Police Department; Lisa Tutt, retired FBI agent; Mark Francis, retired lieutenant of the Windsor Police Department; and Evan Lubofsky, writer for Wired magazine. LaPenna says the last time he talked to Linda, he warned her not to go on a boat trip at sea with just Nathan and Linda on the boat, because LaPenna strongly believed that Nathan would kill her that way and dispose of her body in the deep sea.
The people interviewed in the documentary who are defenders/supporters of Nathan include his father Clark; Linda’s friends Linda Gam and Sharon Hartstein; Nathan’s defense attorneys Martin Minnella and David Sullivan; and Elizabeth Kelley, an autism specialist attorney. Mike Sarraille (a retired Navy SEAL) and John Elder Robison (an autism expert) were expected to be testify for the defense if Nathan’s trial had happened. Sarraille and Robinson are seen in the documentary doing apparently staged meetings with Minnella and Sullivan. The staging of these meetings was unnecessary. The information from Sarraille and Robison would’ve been better presented as interviews conducted by the documentary’s filmmakers.
Many of Nathan’s defenders raise questions about whether or not Nathan was treated unfairly or experienced damaging prejudice in this case because he had autism. Nathan’s detractors say that Nathan used his autism to manipulate people into thinking that Nathan wasn’t capable of planning these alleged crimes, or for people to feel extra sympathy for Nathan. “The Carman Family Deaths” has enough arguments on both sides so viewers can make up their own minds. What sadly remains is a family that has been torn apart by these tragic deaths.
Netflix premiered “The Carman Family Deaths” on November 19, 2025.