Family Lies?

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Speaker 2 One family.

Speaker 3 Oh my God.

Speaker 2 Two horrible tragedies.

Speaker 6 That's

Speaker 2 pretty dark stuff.

Speaker 2 At sea

Speaker 2 and on land.

Speaker 3 My father, he is in bed and someone shot him in the head.

Speaker 2 Do you remember what you noticed?

Speaker 8 First thing I thought is this crime scene is staged.

Speaker 9 Linda always felt that she deserved more than what she was getting because she and my dad were always biting heads.

Speaker 11 We've got no weapons, we've got no enemies that we know of.

Speaker 6 That we know of.

Speaker 2 And no more details because she disappears.

Speaker 12 I told her.

Speaker 8 not to go on that boat.

Speaker 2 So she went out of the way to give them information in case something happened.

Speaker 5 Yes, indeed. It's just getting wilder and wilder because in the middle of the ocean, nobody can hear you scream.

Speaker 2 Every fisherman has a story about the one that got away.

Speaker 2 And this is Nathan Carmens. The 22-year-old was set to meet up with his mom, Linda, for a late-night fishing trip out here off the coast of Rhode Island.

Speaker 2 But for Linda, the trip was less about catching bass and more about bonding with her son.

Speaker 13 Fishing was one of the things that brought them together, and that was Linda really giving herself to the experience because Linda hated fishing.

Speaker 13 Linda didn't eat fish, but she thought this is the only thing that made Nathan happy and she wanted to connect with her son in any way possible.

Speaker 14 That was a common occurrence. They used to go either weekly or sometimes bi-weekly.

Speaker 6 Nathan and his mother, they'd taken a a boating course.

Speaker 5 They had some fundamental knowledge, but they stuck pretty close to land and were fishing for stripers and blues.

Speaker 18 Nathan's experience was, I would characterize him as a recreational fisherman.

Speaker 2 Mom and son plan to cruise toward Block Island in this boat which Nathan recently bought. one that just passed inspection by the Coast Guard a month earlier.

Speaker 2 That's comforting to Linda, who has a better to be safe than sorry approach when it comes to boating.

Speaker 13 So she begins to tell her friends about this fishing trip and shares information as to where they're going to be at specific times during that trip.

Speaker 2 Linda is so cautious. She even texts photos of the boat and its registration number to her friends so it could be easily spotted if the boat breaks down.

Speaker 5 You're relying on your engine, you're relying on

Speaker 5 electronics to get you there.

Speaker 2 On a starless night with calm seas, the two depart Rampoint Marina in Rhode Island at about 11 p.m.

Speaker 2 Linda texts her friends that the journey is underway.

Speaker 2 The boat is never seen or heard from again.

Speaker 9 One of my sisters had called me and said Linda and Nathan are missing.

Speaker 9 And

Speaker 9 I kind of freaked out.

Speaker 13 Linda's friends begin to worry on Sunday of that weekend because Linda had claimed that she was going to come back and text them when she arrived.

Speaker 9 Linda always did a float log.

Speaker 9 And, you know, when Linda got back, she'd call her friend Sharon. And Sharon never received the phone call.

Speaker 13 That's when two of her best friends reach out to authorities and say, something has happened. There are two missing boaters off the coast of Rhode Island.
We need your help.

Speaker 14 It started out as a typical missing persons investigation, which is not criminal in nature.

Speaker 14 Our first order of business is naturally to find the missing people, gather the facts and circumstances to try to determine how they potentially went missing.

Speaker 14 Oftentimes people are not missing, they're just overdue.

Speaker 2 The U.S. Coast Guard quickly begins a search over the Atlantic.

Speaker 13 The United States Coast Guard really deployed every available resource that they had to find this missing boat.

Speaker 13 They deployed fixed-wing aircraft, reconnaissance planes, Coast Guard cutters.

Speaker 17 Given the nature of the success rate that the Coast Guard has with search and rescue, I was very, very shocked that they were not finding anything.

Speaker 14 We deferred to the Coast Guard for search and rescue efforts in that respect. They were really scouring the ocean, and the search efforts came up unsuccessful.

Speaker 17 I think it was day six. The Coast Guard made a decision to call off any additional search.

Speaker 18 And at that point, they had covered 64,000 square nautical miles, which is a massive, massive search area.

Speaker 13 So the Orient Lucky, which is a Chinese cargo ship, they were out around 115 miles south of Martha's Vineyard as they were shifting ballast in their ship.

Speaker 2 The Orient Lucky routinely travels the high seas picking up cargo, but this time it will make headlines for picking up something else. Lucky, indeed.

Speaker 13 They saw what they believed was an orange ball popping out of the ocean about one square nautical mile from where the cargo ship was positioned at the time.

Speaker 13 And when they got a little closer, they realized it was a life raft. And inside that life raft was a figure, a young man standing and waving a flag in distress.

Speaker 13 Getting this large freighter close enough to not kill Nathan Carmen, but save Nathan Carmen, was a challenge.

Speaker 13 And I think the captain made a certain maneuver that allowed them to get a little closer to Nathan where they could deploy a life ring.

Speaker 13 And the life ring landed several feet away from where the life raft was. So Nathan then had to jump out of the life raft and swim.

Speaker 2 The stunned crew members document the rescue with a series of photos and videos.

Speaker 2 Once he's on board, Nathan is offered hot soup, water, and dry clothes.

Speaker 18 I got a call from my supervisor saying that Nathan had been recovered by a passing ship.

Speaker 19 I was shocked and I was thankful.

Speaker 17 There was a survivor.

Speaker 2 The rescue, a kind of needle in a haystack, becomes international news.

Speaker 25 And a man lost at sea with his mother for eight days has been found alive in good condition.

Speaker 5 There were pictures of Nathan that were on the front page of newspapers all over the world because everybody thought that this was a wild story.

Speaker 26 Next shoot tonight hear the family mystery at sea, more than 100 miles from land, the discovery, and authorities asking what happened. Nathan, this is United States Coast Guard, Boston.

Speaker 6 Over.

Speaker 27 Mom and I, two people, myself and my mom, were fishing

Speaker 27 and there was a funny noise in the engine compartment. I looked and saw a lot of water.
The boat just dropped out from under my feet.

Speaker 27 When I saw the life raft, I did not see my

Speaker 27 Have you found her?

Speaker 26 No, we haven't been able to find her yet.

Speaker 29 Nathan Carmen is still on that freighter. He's expected to arrive in Boston tomorrow night.

Speaker 18 So now we can start to maybe get some insight as to what transpired and why it transpired.

Speaker 19 But it was also concerning because

Speaker 18 Linda hadn't been recovered.

Speaker 2 Happy to be back on land, but exhausted by his ordeal, Nathan heads home and asks for privacy.

Speaker 32 I would just like to thank the public for their prayers and for their concern for both my mother and for myself.

Speaker 2 It's not the first time this family has dealt with drama and tragedy.

Speaker 3 Oh my God!

Speaker 6 Oh my God.

Speaker 18 This is a nautical map.

Speaker 17 The area that Nathan departed from is

Speaker 30 right up here.

Speaker 30 His transit would have taken him down this body of water here.

Speaker 30 That is the point in which one of the individuals traveling inbound observed Nathan and Linda on the boat. And that was the last time that anyone saw the boat.

Speaker 2 In the days and weeks after his dramatic sea rescue, Nathan finds himself just as alone on land as he was at sea. And he feels like the media has gotten his story wrong.

Speaker 2 So he agrees to an interview with ABC News.

Speaker 16 It would be great to have people embracing you, saying, we're glad you're home, we're glad you're alive.

Speaker 20 It hasn't been that.

Speaker 2 Loneliness seems to be Nathan's constant companion. He grew up an only child.
His His parents divorced when he was little. Kids made fun of him at school.

Speaker 37 I heard people trying to imitate him or try to make fun of his, the way he spoke. And I've definitely seen people mock the way he ran down the hallway.

Speaker 39 I got the impression that a lot of people didn't try to talk to him. And maybe that kind of contributed to his loneliness or feeling isolated and uncomfortable being in crowds and with other people.

Speaker 2 His best friend in the world was one who wouldn't judge him, a horse named Cruz.

Speaker 41 Yes, I was very fortunate in that regard and I was able to really form a strong bond emotionally.

Speaker 9 Cruz and Nathan had a very tight bond.

Speaker 9 It was definitely his best friend, his confidant.

Speaker 9 I went to the stable once with Linda and Nathan.

Speaker 9 We were ready to leave the stable. I said, well, where's Nathan? Go on in and get Nathan.
She's like, no, Nathan loves to spend time with Cruz alone before we leave.

Speaker 9 And he was there for probably a good half hour, if not longer, just spending time with Cruz in his stall.

Speaker 2 But when Nathan is 17, that bond shatters. Cruz dies.
Devastated, Nathan runs away from his Connecticut home. Nathan doesn't stop running until he reaches Virginia, 600 miles away.

Speaker 2 That's where a sheriff's deputy finds him.

Speaker 41 Running away from home was something that I felt that I had to do at the time. I don't fully understand or

Speaker 41 comprehend

Speaker 40 that sitting here now.

Speaker 13 A couple of interesting things Nathan had on him, on his possession, when he was found in Virginia. He had $4,000 in cash.

Speaker 13 That money had been given to him by his grandfather, but he also had a couple of photos of his horse cruise. And he had a Ziploc bag with some of the horse's hair in it.

Speaker 2 His parents drive all night to Virginia to bring Nathan home.

Speaker 13 Clark Carmen told me that Nathan had fled to a horse farm, or that's where he was supposed to be going in Florida because Nathan had told his father that that was a place that he could feel normal.

Speaker 2 Nathan is diagnosed with Asperger's, which we now know as autism spectrum disorder. Social interactions and communication skills can be challenging.

Speaker 7 I'm not someone who understands relationships

Speaker 8 or who's good about talking about emotions.

Speaker 2 But Nathan does share a close relationship with his grandfather, John Chocolos, a wealthy real estate developer who made his fortune in the nursing home business.

Speaker 9 My dad had five sisters and four daughters, and then he had his first grandchild.

Speaker 9 And I think Linda was really excited that she had a boy to bring into my dad's life.

Speaker 2 And then Nathan comes along and he's your uncle's first grandchild.

Speaker 2 He doted on him. Right.
How excited was he to have a grandson?

Speaker 24 I mean,

Speaker 42 there's not really even words for it. He had such great hopes for that kid.

Speaker 2 Tell me about the daughters in the family.

Speaker 42 I think they were all different, different individuals. Elaine was the oldest.

Speaker 42 The next one down was Linda.

Speaker 42 She was more like John personality, wise.

Speaker 42 Charlene is the next one down.

Speaker 42 Valerie's the youngest. I think she was kind of like the apple of John's eye.

Speaker 31 My grandfather was the closest person

Speaker 7 to me.

Speaker 32 He was like like a father to me

Speaker 32 and I know I was like a son to him.

Speaker 2 When it comes to business, Nathan, a teenager, has a pretty unusual role at his grandfather's company, one that requires him to look and listen closely.

Speaker 13 John Chaklis brought Nathan to all of his business dealings because John Chaklis was hard of hearing. And Nathan was his both eyes and ears at every business meeting.

Speaker 13 They would consult each other after the business meetings were completed. So I think that, you know, John Chocolas was grooming Nathan to take over the family business.

Speaker 43 I got the feeling that John had a very good relationship with him and was trying to cultivate that.

Speaker 43 Nathan was as introverted as John was extroverted, I think.

Speaker 2 What was his relationship like as Nathan is growing up? You said there weren't enough words.

Speaker 42 He kind of treated him the same way that he treated me when I was a kid. You know, I mean,

Speaker 42 he couldn't do enough for him.

Speaker 42 The only problem with it is that

Speaker 42 John always looked at a problem. If there's a problem, if you throw enough money at it, it's going to solve it.

Speaker 13 John Chocolos doted on Nathan, gave him anything he wanted, whether it was a credit card or a new truck or a new apartment.

Speaker 13 There was nothing that Nathan needed because John was always there with his checkbook or his credit card to give Nathan anything he wanted.

Speaker 2 With a support system like his granddad, Nathan's future could be limitless until one phone call changes everything.

Speaker 44 Oh my God!

Speaker 44 Oh my god!

Speaker 44 The front door was locked! Oh my god!

Speaker 4 Possibly 45.

Speaker 3 Oh my god, I don't even know what to do! I don't even know where to look.

Speaker 45 Windsor, Connecticut, a typical small town.

Speaker 13 Pretty nice community.

Speaker 9 You know, not a lot of crime.

Speaker 45 Murders in Windsor are very rare.

Speaker 2 Not rare enough for the man living on Overlook Drive. John Chocolos was a self-made man here in Windsor, Connecticut, running his multi-million dollar real estate business out of his modest home.

Speaker 2 That is, until the morning of December 20th, 2013. Police arrive here after getting an urgent 911 call.

Speaker 2 Okay, what's your personal?

Speaker 44 I came to check on my father to pick him up for an activity. He is in bed, and someone shot him in the head.

Speaker 5 Is he still alive?

Speaker 44 I don't think so.

Speaker 44 I walked into the bedroom, and there's blood all over the back wall.

Speaker 9 When I saw the news

Speaker 9 and my dad being brought out, you know, in a body bag and them saying it was a murder and

Speaker 9 I lost it. I lost it.
I fell to the floor and I'm crying hysterically.

Speaker 45 My name is Scott McGregor.

Speaker 45 In 2013, I was a detective for the Windsor Police Department. Mr.
Chocolas was found in a bedroom on the upper part of the house, in his bed. We found him that he had been shot three times.

Speaker 2 The scene says a lot to the detective, not for what's in the house, but for what isn't.

Speaker 45 You obviously start looking for evidence and when you can't find spent shell casings, once again you go back to whoever did this, you know, took the time to retrieve those casings

Speaker 45 and not leave evidence behind.

Speaker 45 That kind of tells us that the person playing this out knew to cover their steps, which ultimately makes our investigation harder.

Speaker 2 Sergeant Chris McKee also gets the call to head to Overlook Drive, a quiet street with a quiet resident who wasn't exactly well known around town.

Speaker 2 How did he fit into the community in terms of how he had accumulated his wealth? Was he kind of like a little local success story?

Speaker 33 I gotta say, he ran in his circles and his business circles.

Speaker 5 He wasn't known in Windsor, you know, and I was very active in community roles in the department.

Speaker 33 And like I said, I wasn't aware of him until this investigation.

Speaker 2 McKee walks into a bloody scene. After looking around the room, do you remember what you noticed?

Speaker 16 A little further down from Mr. Chocolose's bedroom, there was a glass door, or a door with glass panes that led into the backyard.
The officer and I observed that there was broken glass.

Speaker 6 A break-in?

Speaker 16 Well, it looked like it was meant to be a break-in, but looking at it, it was very clear that the glass had been punched from the wrong side, and it was very suspicious.

Speaker 16 First thing I thought is this crime scene is staged.

Speaker 2 The recently widowed victim was known to keep cash in his house, but after the shots were fired, the gunman left. The money still there.
Was there any sense that it had been ransacked or robbed?

Speaker 16 There had been large sums of money in the house and other valuables, and honestly, nothing appeared touched.

Speaker 23 It told me that this was personal.

Speaker 2 The devastated family speaks out on local news, hoping to catch a killer.

Speaker 47 My father, while he lived a small life, he was a very large man. And to know him, you could never forget him.

Speaker 45 Anything, anyone could have done this.

Speaker 47 This person killed at least once that we know of. This person's gotten away with murder and chances are it will happen again.

Speaker 45 When we start any murder investigation we want to do a timeline.

Speaker 45 We want to start trying to find out who was with John.

Speaker 48 My father, we were trying to, my mother passed November 21st.

Speaker 48 My father for two weeks was staying with one of us or Linda was staying at my father's house.

Speaker 2 Another curious thing about the home, it doesn't exactly look like a millionaire lives there. One of the victim's daughters explains why.

Speaker 49 My father has an elaborate estate.

Speaker 49 I mean, the man's worth at least $40 to $50 million.

Speaker 49 I mean, it's huge. You wouldn't know what going into the house.
That's the only reason why I'm bringing up my father's financial work.

Speaker 49 It's because looking at this house, you would not know that he has a 25,000 square foot house in New Hampshire.

Speaker 2 You find out that this is a prominent businessman, a wealthy businessman. What does that say to you initially about this?

Speaker 33 Kind of starts to focus investigators in on was this financially motivated.

Speaker 16 Did someone have, this gentleman had a lot of money, a lot of properties, you know, did someone have something to gain financially from his death?

Speaker 2 The videos of the Windsor Police interviewing various family members have never been broadcast before.

Speaker 49 Nathan and I went fishing. We went out of Point Judith, Rhode Island.
So we went on a cod trip that left at six in the morning, got back into port at four o'clock in the afternoon.

Speaker 6 A long day.

Speaker 45 We learned that John the day before, the last person to see him was his grandson, Nathan Carmen.

Speaker 43 We learned that through talking to Nathan, talking to family.

Speaker 52 Hey Nathan, what's your last name?

Speaker 53 My last name is spelled C-A-R-M-A-N.

Speaker 45 We have to treat everyone as a possible suspect. Family, associates, people who worked in the office, neighbors, anything, anyone could have done this.

Speaker 54 Investigators asked Nathan about employees at Chocolosis' company, and the grandson mentions one who, he says, complains about being overworked and underpaid.

Speaker 12 Just I'm underpaid, also the stress load.

Speaker 8 I have 101 things to do.

Speaker 6 I have to get all these papers and now you're asking me to do this and the other thing.

Speaker 8 So he would bitch and run about that.

Speaker 54 The bookkeeper is in fact stealing from the trocolosis company.

Speaker 45 So obviously he's someone we want to talk to.

Speaker 2 Nathan begins outlining his final evening with his grandfather to investigators. It begins with dinner.
He was going to come here and eat that night with Nathan.

Speaker 42 That was the plan, and he wanted me to come too.

Speaker 42 And you know I said look you know you guys go do it. If I only knew what I knew you know now.

Speaker 2 After their meal Nathan and his grandfather return to the Windsor home. At some point John Chocolos gets a phone call and puts it on speaker.

Speaker 6 I think that there's a real possibility that the person who called him may have been a mistress. I don't like saying that my grandfather was a woman,

Speaker 6 but I think there's that real possibility. It wasn't one of your aunts.

Speaker 32 No, it was not one of my aunts.

Speaker 52 It was not one of my aunts, known in the family.

Speaker 36 Very young.

Speaker 6 I was 23.

Speaker 52 And he

Speaker 6 then told that female voice to just wait.

Speaker 31 Hold on a second.

Speaker 15 He showed me to the door.

Speaker 54 Nathan Corman is correct. There is a young woman Trocalos has been talking to.

Speaker 45 And she became a suspect.

Speaker 5 Did you go anywhere else that night or anything like that?

Speaker 33 Or did you just stay home?

Speaker 55 No, I was,

Speaker 6 I didn't sleep because I was where I had to be at. I was supposed to be at the meeting my mom at three o'clock.
When I fell asleep, I have difficulty waking up.

Speaker 55 So I tried to stay awake.

Speaker 6 I did run out to a stopping shop and I got some ice cream for myself. I picked up a few AAA batteries because I was out of them.
And then I headed home.

Speaker 6 Then I stayed until I went back out to meet my mom.

Speaker 2 Investigators don't have much to go on, with the exception of some security camera footage, which they use to retrace the last days of John Chopalos's life.

Speaker 2 Like this casino video, where the 87-year-old is seen with a much younger woman, will it provide investigators with answers?

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Speaker 2 The Windsor Police Department may not know who killed John Chocolos yet, but they are beginning to understand who did not.

Speaker 2 Remember the woman Nathan heard on the phone and the woman at the casino? They are one and the same.

Speaker 13 So John Chocolos struck up a relationship with a 25-year-old woman over the course of a year.

Speaker 45 She was an acquaintance of John who was going to the casino staying overnight.

Speaker 45 The night of that homicide, she confirmed that she had talked to John, but she was kind of quickly dismissed as being involved.

Speaker 2 Investigators have also tracked down that bookkeeper Nathan mentioned. His name is William Sati, and he too is cleared.

Speaker 45 He had had an alibi that night and was confirmed. I think he was actually out of the state at the time.
I think we found him in Rhode Island.

Speaker 54 While cleared as a suspect in the murder, Sati was later convicted of stealing some $400,000 from Chocolate's company.

Speaker 2 But that's small change compared to the money the patriarch was handing over to family members every year.

Speaker 13 One of the problem children was Linda. Linda was taking John's allowances and going off on spending sprees at casinos or going skiing skiing or taking these lavish trips around the world.

Speaker 9 Linda always felt that she deserved more

Speaker 9 than what she was getting. I don't know why she felt that way.
I don't know, because she and my dad were always butting heads.

Speaker 2 Father and daughter also butt heads over the way Nathan is being raised.

Speaker 13 The relationship between John and Linda was always volatile. But one day, it turned violent.
And that was over Nathan's care.

Speaker 13 Nathan was put into a psychiatric hospital shortly after his horse Cruz had died. And the accusations begin to fly.
Linda accuses John of smothering her son with all sorts of riches.

Speaker 13 And John is yelling at Linda, saying that she is a bad mother and that Nathan is normal and that Nathan should be treated as such.

Speaker 13 And at one point, John reaches across the table and grabs Linda by the hair and starts to pull it. So Linda swings and she starts to fight back at her father.

Speaker 13 And it's a combustible moment that probably lasted a minute plus. And they're swinging at each other.
They're fighting each other.

Speaker 13 And the orderlies are summoned as well as the local police and Linda is arrested right on the spot.

Speaker 2 Linda chalks it up as two people cut from the same cloth.

Speaker 51 I don't back down for my father.

Speaker 16 Yeah.

Speaker 6 And that's just his personality not to back down.

Speaker 49 Yeah, and it's not his personality back down either. So if anyone would have fought with him,

Speaker 49 you know, it would have been me.

Speaker 2 Linda has spent many more years fighting to protect her son from those who might treat him unkindly.

Speaker 9 I know he led a very lonely life.

Speaker 9 You know, it was at the age where kids were being invited to birthday parties and, you know, having play dates.

Speaker 9 And nobody was calling for Nathan to go to the birthday party. And, you know, it was sad.
And she hated that for her child. You know, any mother would hate it if her child wasn't included in anything.

Speaker 9 But yeah, it must have been hard for Linda not being able to fix that. Linda was a fixer.
Linda had to fix things and, or at least try to fix things. And she just could not fix that.

Speaker 13 Linda and Nathan had a very unique and conflicted relationship.

Speaker 13 Nathan saw his mother as somebody who was incredibly domineering, and Linda was always trying to get him the therapy that she thought he needed.

Speaker 13 And I think Nathan wanted to get as far away from his mother as possible because Nathan didn't want to feel different from anybody else.

Speaker 2 And with his grandfather, Nathan feels like a success. He learns about business.
He's a confidant to John Chocolos.

Speaker 2 His college tuition is paid for, and so is the rent on his apartment and his credit card bills. Linda couldn't compete with that.

Speaker 49 I think what it comes down to is Nathan's always felt torn between me and my father.

Speaker 49 Picking sides.

Speaker 49 Like he had to pick a side.

Speaker 14 How's it about your relationship in general to your mother?

Speaker 6 I did move out of her house and when we were not

Speaker 55 on good terms, but I since got

Speaker 6 started speaking to her again.

Speaker 6 I believe her having turned out.

Speaker 2 Did that concern you at all in terms of looking at him as a suspect that maybe he might exhibit behavior that you wouldn't normally see, but he does have a disorder?

Speaker 16 That was a concern of many of us:

Speaker 16 are the behaviors we're seeing, are the answers he's giving in that one interview that he did grant, are these more aligned with behaviors perhaps of someone who is on the autism spectrum?

Speaker 16 Or can we look at these for what we would normally would kind of think, this is kind of sketchy, a little suspicious?

Speaker 5 We want to delve more into this was your grandpa involved during that time

Speaker 2 yes my grandpa he facilitated financially my ability to go off on her so for linda the recent fishing trips are a way of pulling her son back into her life but now there's the murder of her father to deal with and lots of money at stake everybody is under the microscope

Speaker 11 you own any weapons? No. Anybody else in the family own any weapons?

Speaker 10 No.

Speaker 11 Anybody have access to any weapons?

Speaker 14 Anybody that knows anybody that knows anybody that has weapons?

Speaker 6 Nothing at all.

Speaker 41 So we've got no weapons.

Speaker 11 We've got no enemies.

Speaker 6 We know of.

Speaker 6 We know of.

Speaker 6 Do you own any firearms?

Speaker 52 I do have an air gun.

Speaker 6 I'm not sure if that counts as the firearm, but...

Speaker 6 Is it the owner?

Speaker 40 Yes, it is.

Speaker 2 But after speaking with a long line of friends, family, and business associates, investigators are about to realize they've been lied to.

Speaker 2 In the wake of 87-year-old John Chocolos's brutal murder, investigators have few leads, with one notable exception, fragments of the bullets fired at the victim.

Speaker 2 There's hope that they they could be traced back to a possible murder weapon. What kind of weapon was used to kill him?

Speaker 16 It was believed to be a rifle because it was a 308 cartridge, you know, a certain type of bullet.

Speaker 2 And a ballistics test concludes the gun used was most likely a Sig Sauer rifle like this one.

Speaker 54 But in the wake of the Newtown massacre, these types of weapons were illegal to own in Connecticut where Chocolos was murdered.

Speaker 13 The detectives focused a lot of their attention on New Hampshire. They scoured gun dealers, I think well over 600 gun dealers, looking for that six-hour rifle.

Speaker 2 Eventually, investigators make their way to a place called Shooter's Outpost and speak with salesman Jed Warner about recent purchases. He remembers an interaction with a customer just weeks earlier.

Speaker 7 He definitely stood out because

Speaker 63 He looked like he came off like a construction site. His pants were dirty.
He was wearing like a pair of like dirty boots, like a construction feel about him.

Speaker 63 We started talking about rifles and targeting. He said, actually, I'm very interested in the Sigsauer 716.

Speaker 54 It's an expensive rifle retailing for almost $2,000. Jed says he suggested other options that were more economical for target shooting, but the buyer knows what he wants.

Speaker 63 We do all the paperwork, do the background.

Speaker 14 He passes.

Speaker 63 He just kind of walks straight out, and that was the last we saw.

Speaker 22 him.

Speaker 63 Two officers from the Windsor area were there and then a local, like a Connecticut ATF agent. We had to go through all the stuff, try to figure out the whole thing of the day of sale.

Speaker 2 And there they find it, a bill of sale for a six-sauer rifle. The name of the purchaser, Nathan Carmen.

Speaker 13 And that became an incredible aha moment for investigators and potentially the smoking gun in this case.

Speaker 54 After the discovery at Shooter's Outpost, Nathan is asked again about owning any guns.

Speaker 52 And since, because I just wasn't feeling safe at home,

Speaker 64 I did buy a shotgun.

Speaker 13 You did buy a shotgun? That's correct.

Speaker 20 Any other purchases of a firearm at any time?

Speaker 65 No.

Speaker 16 And that wasn't ever volunteered or brought up until investigators found this out-of-state bill of sale and then confronted Nathan with it.

Speaker 2 And how did he respond?

Speaker 16 Well, he acknowledged that he had bought this weapon. When asked about it, he said he lost it and he didn't know where the gun was.

Speaker 2 That had to be really a red flag for you all.

Speaker 53 It was.

Speaker 63 Most people don't lose those firearms or any firearm. But yeah, you don't normally hear, I don't know where it is.

Speaker 16 And there was no report of him, you know, making a report that it was stolen, lost, etc.

Speaker 2 So what are you thinking at this point? You've been kind of connecting these dots.

Speaker 16 Well, it gets better. There was an hour of, at least least one hour of unaccounted time during which Mr.
Chocolose was shot that Nathan couldn't account for his time.

Speaker 2 Linda arrives at this Home Depot parking lot at 3 a.m. where she and Nathan are set to meet up to go fishing.
But Nathan is nowhere to be found.

Speaker 16 You left your house

Speaker 6 on about three

Speaker 10 and we know you got to Glasbury Bayson, your own words, on about four.

Speaker 10 Why would it take an hour to travel, and I'm guessing 20-something miles at the rate of 65 miles an hour is just mathematically not possible.

Speaker 6 On or around three.

Speaker 6 Okay. About three.

Speaker 6 So perhaps, perhaps.

Speaker 49 After.

Speaker 2 But this security footage taken outside Nathan's apartment complex shows him leaving at 2.57 a.m. Linda tries calling her son three times, but his phone appears to be turned off.

Speaker 2 He finally calls her back at 4.01 a.m. Did you think you were closing in on an arrest?

Speaker 13 I thought so.

Speaker 6 Yes. I have to ask you straight up, were you involved in your grandfather's death? Did you? Absolutely not.
No.

Speaker 2 But that potential smoking gun, the Sig Sauer rifle, is still missing.

Speaker 2 Despite a months-long, extensive search of Nathan's apartment, the Chocolos Estate, and surrounding areas for that crucial piece of evidence, it's nowhere to be found.

Speaker 13 And I think that's exactly what they were pinning their entire case on was that murder weapon. Had they found it and connected it to Nathan, then Nathan would have been in handcuffs.

Speaker 16 And so law enforcement was directed to keep working to try to build the case.

Speaker 2 This had to be frustrating.

Speaker 16 It just tears at you because, you know, you think you've got it. The family had put up a huge billboard on Interstate 91, you know, and coming and going to work every day, I would see that.

Speaker 7 I would see Mr. Chocolos's face.

Speaker 16 I would see, you know, reward money for information.

Speaker 13 Even though Nathan is under a cloud of suspicion, he's still a free man, but feels like he's an outcast in his own community now.

Speaker 13 So he takes a portion of his inheritance that had been given to him by his grandfather and he leaves the state.

Speaker 13 He travels to Vermont and he buys an historic farmhouse and he also bought a boat.

Speaker 2 Nathan buys a 31-foot fishing boat formerly called the Chicken Pox. He plans another fishing outing with his mom Linda who has stood by him throughout all the accusations.

Speaker 13 And Linda is very excited about that opportunity but also very concerned because she knows that her son is not an experienced fisherman or an experienced boater.

Speaker 2 Linda tells friends that the plan was to fish off the coast of Block Island and head back the next morning.

Speaker 5 She was so concerned that she had a text message conversation with people ashore. And that's a smart thing to do to let people know what your plans are.

Speaker 2 So she went out of the way to give them information in case something happened.

Speaker 5 Yes, indeed.

Speaker 54 When Linda fails to check in, her friends start to worry.

Speaker 13 Two of her best friends reach out to authorities and say, Something has happened. We need your help.

Speaker 14 At first, we were like, Okay, hopefully, it's just they're overdue and they're going to come back to short.

Speaker 54 But after several days elapse, authorities search Nathan's home and vehicle and find some alarming items.

Speaker 14 We start thinking that he may have intent to either harm himself and his mother or both of them.

Speaker 15 How did you get word that something had gone wrong with that?

Speaker 42 My cousin Charlene called me and told me that they were missing. And I said, I told her not to go on that boat.

Speaker 13 Here is Nathan in a 31-foot aluminum boat with his mother, who's got no experience boating, and he thinks that he's the master fisherman or the master boat.

Speaker 13 Or does he think this is the perfect place to kill his mother?

Speaker 7 Because in the middle of the ocean nobody can hear you scream

Speaker 2 but what really happened on that boat

Speaker 2 nathan carmen answers tough questions under oath how often did you lie to the windsor police department there was one inaccurate uh-uh

Speaker 6 uh-uh

Speaker 13 staring out at that open water probably wondering what happened to my mother or thinking, did I just get away with murder?

Speaker 26 His mother is still missing and feared dead.

Speaker 2 And the question becomes, what happened? Everybody wants to know what happened.

Speaker 31 I didn't know if she had been dragged down with the ship.

Speaker 35 Neither of us had been wearing life vests.

Speaker 15 The media coverage was huge.

Speaker 29 I'm just asking you to defend yourself against these people who are saying that you did something to your boat that would make it sink.

Speaker 31 Yeah, we're done for this evening period.

Speaker 5 He was shooting himself in the foot on national TV.

Speaker 41 It is absolutely unfair for the police to use the tragedy that happened to my mother and I as an opportunity to try to nail me for a murder that I didn't commit.

Speaker 13 Nathan's grandfather, John Chocolas, had been shot to death three years prior to the disappearance of Linda Carmen. And once those connections were made, the story amplified.

Speaker 2 You were convinced that Nathan had killed his grandfather.

Speaker 13 Correct.

Speaker 2 And now you're convinced that he killed his his own mother?

Speaker 38 It's a story about greed and heartless brutality.

Speaker 45 Mr. Chocolas was found in a bedroom on the upper part of the house in his bed.
shot several times in the head. We have to treat everyone as a possible suspect.
Anyone could have done this.

Speaker 9 But my sisters had told me they suspected Nathan

Speaker 9 and that just totally blew me out of the water.

Speaker 13 The daughters of John Troclos got very angry that there was really nothing happening with the case. They couldn't find the murder weapon.
They hadn't arrested Nathan Carmen.

Speaker 5 And it's just getting wilder and wilder.

Speaker 17 Could a family be this burdened to have a second catastrophic event?

Speaker 18 I didn't know this is slowly starting to move from a missing person's case to something other than a missing person's case.

Speaker 2 It's been three years since John Chocolos's murder, with no charges ever filed.

Speaker 2 Now the family is facing yet another tragedy as Chocolos' grandson Nathan Carmen's boat sinks on a fishing trip, with Nathan's mom, Linda, missing and presumed drowned.

Speaker 2 We're going to head out on a ride on the open water to get a better idea of what happened out here.

Speaker 2 I met up with Dave Farrell, a maritime lawyer for Nathan's Boat Insurers.

Speaker 2 So, let's pick up with when the Coast Guard gets involved in this.

Speaker 5 They had a lot of vessels out here, they had a lot of aerial searches, and they were really crisscrossing an area that eventually was 64,000 square miles.

Speaker 2 That's a big coverage area.

Speaker 5 Yeah, state of Georgia.

Speaker 2 And then two days later,

Speaker 2 there's a big shock.

Speaker 5 The Orient Lucky finds a life raft 106 miles south of Monthus Vineyard, and in it is Nathan Carmen alone.

Speaker 54 With his crew already snapping pictures and recording video, the ship's captain is alerted to a life raft in the water.

Speaker 4 After spotting Nathan Carmen and his life raft at sea, I sounded the alarm for our crew to prepare for the rescue efforts and we were ready to rescue him.

Speaker 5 They threw him a life ring and he grabbed it with his hands. He got dragged up toward the hull of the ship.

Speaker 5 He was able to push off the side of the ship with his outstretched hand and he was able to climb up the gangway.

Speaker 4 He got onto the ladder. We pulled the ladder up on board.

Speaker 13 When Nathan gets aboard the Orient Lucky, the kid looked like Aquaman. There was no physical distress in his well-being.
He wasn't dehydrated. He was not hypothermic.

Speaker 5 The captain of the Orient Lucky doesn't see anything wrong with him.

Speaker 47 This is astounding.

Speaker 18 I got the call from my supervisor that he'd been located and recovered.

Speaker 19 I was shocked and I was thankful.

Speaker 17 I was happy that there was a survivor.

Speaker 18 But it was also concerning because Linda hadn't been recovered.

Speaker 9 When I found out that, you know, Linda was lost at sea and I knew she wasn't coming back,

Speaker 9 it was just,

Speaker 9 you know, I just had flashbacks of us growing up and just,

Speaker 9 you know, the good times that we did have.

Speaker 9 And

Speaker 9 then, of course,

Speaker 9 the guilt and the regret that I had of how I treated her in the end.

Speaker 9 You just don't think that you're going to lose somebody so suddenly like that.

Speaker 14 We receive a call from the Coast Guard that Nathan was picked up by a merchant vessel in the shipping lanes in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. First thing you say is, okay,

Speaker 14 where's Linda? Linda's not with him, just Nathan.

Speaker 2 Back on land with his lawyer present, Nathan's interviewed by Alfred Bucco, an investigator with the South Kingston, Rhode Island Police Department. This audio's never been broadcast before.

Speaker 14 I just went in there and said, Nathan, tell me what happened.

Speaker 64 We went out to Block Canyon. It was light, but the sun wasn't over the horizon yet.

Speaker 64 And we started trolling.

Speaker 64 And

Speaker 64 I heard a strange noise coming from the engine compartment.

Speaker 64 So I opened up the hatch in front of the pilot house and I saw that there was a lot of water in the bill.

Speaker 5 He went and shut down the engine and moved aft to where his mother was.

Speaker 2 He said he told his mom to reel in the lines. How did he describe what was happening with the commotion?

Speaker 5 He said to his mother only one thing during this calamity and it was reel in the lines. And she said only one thing in return.
Okay, I will.

Speaker 5 At that point, he went up into the wheelhouse wheelhouse and he says that he started moving emergency gear up to the bow. He wasn't quite ready to abandon ship, but he wanted to be ready.

Speaker 15 I didn't realize we were sinking.

Speaker 64 I knew there was water in the bilge. I knew there was a lot of water because it was already up to that level, which is why I wanted to bring safety stuff as a precaution.

Speaker 64 But I thought I was going to find the problem and fix it.

Speaker 5 The third time that he's been in the wheelhouse and failed to radio, he's walking forward to the bow and all of a sudden, in a split second, the boat sinks.

Speaker 2 Boats don't sink that. No.

Speaker 5 And it sank quickly, like immediately it was out of sight. And that's how he says he never saw his mother again.

Speaker 14 He calls for his mother throughout the rest of the day.

Speaker 14 And he said upon nightfall, you know, he gave up trying to search for her and he went to sleep and then drifted through the Atlantic Ocean until he was located.

Speaker 14 So let's get back to your mother.

Speaker 14 You talk to her you know all the time, you know you go out fishing twice a week.

Speaker 14 How would you describe your relationship with her? Is it good?

Speaker 62 I don't see the relevance to this particular incident here. Yeah, I pull her.

Speaker 40 And the interview is over.

Speaker 64 Thank you though.

Speaker 14 After the interview is over, from our perspective, we're like, okay, this isn't just a missing persons investigation. We may be dealing with maybe a homicide.

Speaker 13 Captain Heng Dong observed Nathan walking the deck of the Orient Lucky for hours at a time by himself, staring out at that open water, probably wondering what happened to my mother or thinking, did I just get away with murder?

Speaker 2 And soon, the whole world will hear from Nathan Carmen in his own words.

Speaker 35 She'd always been kind of reluctant about safety.

Speaker 38 I guess she had good reason to be.

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Speaker 26 New developments in that mystery at sea. Rescued after eight days in a life wrap.
Searchers had given up.

Speaker 25 Nathan Carmen and his mother went fishing last week. He survived the ordeal, but his mother mother didn't make it.

Speaker 2 Now authorities are trying to figure out what happened.

Speaker 15 The media coverage was huge.

Speaker 13 This was a story that made headlines around the country.

Speaker 2 Initially, Nathan avoids the media, but eventually agrees to an interview with then-ABC News correspondent Lindsey Janice in 2017. At his suggestion, they meet at a park near his home.

Speaker 29 So take me through that evening. You met at the marina in Rhode Island, and then what?

Speaker 35 Oh, we met at the marina in Rhode Island, and had a bait which we got on board and as we were heading out into the harbor had asked her a couple times in the past

Speaker 35 will you go to the canyons with me and she'd always been kind of reluctant about safety and I guess that's

Speaker 38 I guess she had good reason to be.

Speaker 2 While Nathan and Linda were still missing and the Coast Guard scouring the Atlantic, investigators back on land began searching through their vehicles here at this marina looking for clues that might help in the search.

Speaker 14 It looked like he had been somewhat almost living out of his truck or sleeping in his truck. We found some receipts from different marine stores.

Speaker 65 Items purchased at area marinas in the hours before the fateful voyage included a rock type anchor that would never have worked for

Speaker 65 Nathan's boat

Speaker 65 and then some lengths of chain.

Speaker 65 They were curious purchases.

Speaker 17 But there was also a bucket of eels that was in Nathan's truck. That stood out to me because eels are often used as bait when fishing for striped bass.

Speaker 17 And if you left the dock and didn't take your bait,

Speaker 18 what are you using for bait if you're going fishing?

Speaker 2 Nathan tells us the same story he told police that his mom had been concerned about safety ahead of the boat trip.

Speaker 35 And I want to stress that it wasn't an argument, because I want to stress that.

Speaker 32 It was not an argument.

Speaker 35 She had always been kind of skittish.

Speaker 31 We're stopping right here with that question.

Speaker 6 Oh, okay.

Speaker 54 But why not reach out for help? The Coast Guard said there was no May Day call.

Speaker 31 They had a radio and there was also an EPIRB, which is an emergency position indicating radio beacon.

Speaker 35 on the boat, like someone needs to be mede-vaced, or when you know you're sinking.

Speaker 36 But I didn't know that we were sinking until we sank.

Speaker 2 Nathan said that there was a lot of commotion going on and the water was being taken on in here. So where would his mom have been when all of this is happening? Right where you are.

Speaker 2 So she would have been right back in this area. Yes.
But they're not speaking? I mean, and she doesn't know that they're going down?

Speaker 5 Nathan has excellent line of sight on her the whole time, and yet he says he never saw her afterwards.

Speaker 31 At that point, I didn't know if she had been dragged down with the ship because neither of us had been wearing life vests.

Speaker 32 I assume that if she had been on the surface, that she would have been calling out to me and I would have been able to find her.

Speaker 2 According to Nathan, days go by and he huddles on the life raft, keeping a lookout for rescuers.

Speaker 5 I was

Speaker 20 looking out at the horizon for other ships or for helicopters when conditions were good.

Speaker 36 When the waves were high, because they got to like 13 feet and they were breaking waves at a few points, a few days.

Speaker 29 It must have been terrifying.

Speaker 6 Yes.

Speaker 2 But to some, Nathan's claim of drifting for over a week in rough seas before being rescued defies belief.

Speaker 5 The initial videos showing this guy walking up the gangway of the ship without any great problem, he seemed to be just fine.

Speaker 18 You would be in dire straits after, you know, five or six days.

Speaker 42 If you laid on that couch for eight days and you got up to go to the bathroom, your legs would be wobbly because you haven't used them.

Speaker 54 At the same time that Nathan and Linda's vehicles were searched at the docks, police in Vermont were conducting a search of Nathan's house, which was under construction.

Speaker 13 The investigators find, you know, modems, SIM cards, a few other things. The one thing they don't find is a computer.
Whatever computer he was using to conduct his online purchases has disappeared.

Speaker 65 Another item that was seized during the search was a lengthy letter that Nathan had written to an unknown priest

Speaker 65 that described his relationship and his view of his mother.

Speaker 14 My mother's bullying, calling me a quitter, a stuck-up snob who thinks he is a king, and a piece of s ⁇ basically characterized my childhood.

Speaker 14 One night though, I went to bed imagining myself as essentially a master of my own hell, joying and inflicting grave bodily suffering on other people.

Speaker 14 So, yeah.

Speaker 54 After his interview with Alfred Bucco, Nathan has all but stopped talking to the police and is never questioned about the letter or his missing computer.

Speaker 54 Reporter Lindsey Janice is one of the few people he he is willing to talk to.

Speaker 12 I know I wasn't responsible for anything that resulted from the boat sinking. I know I wasn't responsible for my mom's death.

Speaker 2 You were convinced that Nathan had killed his grandfather.

Speaker 13 Correct.

Speaker 2 And now you're convinced that he killed his own mother?

Speaker 42 Yes.

Speaker 2 That's pretty dark stuff.

Speaker 2 If the interview hadn't already made Nathan's story seem a little fishy, the follow-up was even more eye-opening.

Speaker 40 I did not cause my mother's death, we're done here this evening.

Speaker 29 If you have nothing to hide, there's no, there shouldn't be a problem answering the questions.

Speaker 6 I'm Dave.

Speaker 2 Oh, hi, Dave. Nice to meet you.

Speaker 21 Hi, how are you?

Speaker 6 I'm Matt. Nice to meet you.

Speaker 2 Matt, nice to meet you, Matt. Thanks so much for taking us out.

Speaker 2 Initially, when everybody else was scratching their heads and wondering, wow, this poor guy, what happened to his mom, for the average person out there who's looking at this and taking it at face value, folks who know the water, like you do, had your doubts.

Speaker 41 Absolutely.

Speaker 5 People had doubts about this story from the beginning.

Speaker 54 With Linda Carmen, presumed lost at sea, her reportedly tumultuous relationship with her son Nathan was under renewed scrutiny.

Speaker 54 He sits down with 2020 for a second interview, which now holds new significance.

Speaker 29 If someone said that you did not get along with your mother, that you did not like her, is there any truth to that at all?

Speaker 41 No, there's not any truth to that. Our relationship had grown from where it had been.

Speaker 41 We did have a challenging relationship at one point in my life, but she was the closest person in the world to me after my grandfather passed.

Speaker 29 Will you inherit all of what your mother had?

Speaker 41 That's something that I can't comment on at this time.

Speaker 2 But unbeknownst to Nathan, his mom has decided not to leave him any inheritance. She even records a video message obtained exclusively by 2020, explaining that he won't be getting her house.

Speaker 48 Hey, big guy, I guess if you're watching this, you're watching this.

Speaker 48 I want to explain why I did what I did

Speaker 51 and why my will is stated the way it is.

Speaker 48 I feel that when you moved out, you took everything that was of value to you and everything you wanted. That's my feeling.

Speaker 2 And in her written last will and testament dated three years before she disappeared, Linda explicitly excludes Nathan as a beneficiary.

Speaker 54 By now, more details of John Chocolos' death and the subsequent investigation have risen to the surface.

Speaker 13 Initially, the media was unaware that Nathan's grandfather, John Chocolos, had been shot to death in his bed three years prior to the disappearance of Linda Carmen.

Speaker 13 And once those connections were made, the story amplified. It wasn't a bittersweet rescue story anymore.
It was something potentially much more devious.

Speaker 29 So

Speaker 29 at what point in your life would you say that you became really close with your grandfather?

Speaker 41 Here's where I have a

Speaker 40 bit of an issue. My understanding was we were going to be sitting down and you were going to be, we were going to be talking about.

Speaker 29 Yeah, the raft is my next bit, but we did explain that we need to hear about your whole life leading up to this incident.

Speaker 29 How can people know who Nathan is if we don't tell them? What was your relationship like with your grandfather?

Speaker 41 I'm not talking about my relationship with my grandfather or with

Speaker 20 if we want to ask any more questions.

Speaker 29 can you tell me more about what your grandfather did? He was a big figure in this part of the country.

Speaker 40 That's not what this interview is about.

Speaker 5 He gets really defensive if people pry a little bit too much. And the way that he shut her off on so many questions and wouldn't cooperate, he was shooting himself in the foot on national TV.

Speaker 29 Since we spoke a week ago, there's been a lot of speculation. People are suspicious of you.
What do you want to say to those people who are saying something about his story that just isn't adding up?

Speaker 40 I'm not aware that those people exist.

Speaker 29 There are suspicions about the boat trip.

Speaker 29 Since we last got together a week ago,

Speaker 29 I'm just asking you to defend yourself against these people who are saying that you did something to your boat that would make it sink.

Speaker 12 That's not true.

Speaker 13 Nathan had never been interviewed at length by a network or by a reporter. So this was something new to Nathan.

Speaker 13 And I think Nathan thought it was going to go one way when it certainly went another way.

Speaker 29 Was there an issue with the boat that needed to be fixed?

Speaker 20 No, there were.

Speaker 6 I...

Speaker 20 The...

Speaker 40 We're done.

Speaker 29 Nathan, I'm trying to give you an opportunity to speak out against these allegations that have been made.

Speaker 40 The only way that I can speak out against them is to say what actually happened, and that's what I've been trying to do.

Speaker 29 Another thing that's happened since we last got together, police searched your mom's home.

Speaker 20 Yeah, what was...

Speaker 29 Did you know anything about that?

Speaker 31 We're done for this evening, period.

Speaker 2 We're done here.

Speaker 29 We're not trying to make you uncomfortable. We're trying to give you an opportunity to answer some of these allegations.

Speaker 40 We're done here this evening.

Speaker 29 If you have nothing to hide, there shouldn't be a problem answering the questions.

Speaker 54 He walked out.

Speaker 5 He walked out of the interview.

Speaker 5 Only to come back.

Speaker 29 Police never arrested you for the murder of your grandfather. Do you think it is unfair that people are bringing that up and talking about that now?

Speaker 36 But it is absolutely unfair for the police to use the tragedy that happened to my mother and I as an opportunity to try to nail me for a murder that I didn't commit.

Speaker 29 Can you understand when people see that you were the last person to see two people alive?

Speaker 29 They see that and they say you are either the most unlucky man alive or you had something to do with those two deaths.

Speaker 29 What do you say to that?

Speaker 36 I say that there's no relationship.

Speaker 2 Later that month, Nathan holds a memorial service for his mom. It's sparsely attended by some of her friends.
Linda's sisters are notably absent.

Speaker 13 Now, Linda hasn't even been declared dead yet. Nobody in his family is willing to go because many of us in his family believe that Nathan is truly the culprit.

Speaker 53 I'm very grateful to the friends and family who attended in memory of my mom.

Speaker 2 Nathan, you've been through so much.

Speaker 54 How have you been these last several weeks?

Speaker 43 It's been very difficult.

Speaker 65 We had no boat. We had no body.
But as in any investigation, there's always evidence that can be recovered. It's just a matter of making sure that you know where to look.

Speaker 14 There's all hands on deck at that point to try to uncover the truth.

Speaker 54 As with the death of John Chocolos, according to investigators, there isn't enough evidence to charge Nathan with a crime.

Speaker 54 But in a twist of fate, a seemingly innocuous insurance claim for the sunken boat is about to take the saga of Nathan Carmen in an unexpected direction.

Speaker 2 Some of these strange occurrences maybe could be chalked up to an inexperienced fisherman, a guy who's panicking.

Speaker 5 You know, I spent a lot of time with Nathan. I think he was cold, calculating, and had this whole story planned out to explain the disappearance of his mother and the sinking of the vessel.

Speaker 2 The idea that he drifted for a week in that life raft just didn't hold water for you.

Speaker 5 Not even for a second.

Speaker 13 The Nathan Carmen case was incredibly explosive.

Speaker 13 A young man is plucked out of the ocean.

Speaker 13 That just conjures up all of these images of, say, Tom Hanks and Castaway.

Speaker 2 Author Casey Sherman has spent the last two and a half years researching the case for his new book, Blood in the Water.

Speaker 13 The story is so complex and it has so many layers to it. Not only do you have one potential murder, but it's the story about a family and how wealth can corrupt.

Speaker 2 As investigators continue digging into Nathan Carmen's story of being lost at sea, he takes action, filing an insurance claim for $85,000 to recoup the loss of his boat, the chickenpox.

Speaker 5 It happened very promptly, and that indicated to me that this guy's really serious.

Speaker 13 The insurance company is not going to pay Nathan. In fact, they are going to take Nathan to court.
Nathan also didn't back down.

Speaker 5 We filed our suit to deny insurance coverage. We were in for a fight.
We came away with the distinct impression that almost everything he said to us was a lie.

Speaker 34 There were holes in every aspect of his story.

Speaker 2 Holes in his story and his boat. Here at this marina where Nathan's Odyssey began, fellow boaters noticed odd behavior in him the day before that fateful trip.

Speaker 15 It kind of caught my eye when I saw him leaning over the back and drilling two holes in the transom of the boat. I asked him, What are you doing?

Speaker 15 That's why he told me he says he's taking the trim tabs off.

Speaker 2 Trim tabs are stabilization devices that help lift the boat up higher on the water. Nathan admits to removing them, leaving holes in his boat, but says he patched them up with a marine putty.

Speaker 38 I patched the holes, they seemed to be well patched.

Speaker 41 And at the time with my mom and I went out,

Speaker 40 I felt that

Speaker 41 those that one I knew those holes were above the waterline and two I felt that they were securely patched.

Speaker 2 The idea that he was patching up those holes,

Speaker 2 that putty, the patching didn't work?

Speaker 5 It wouldn't work. My theory is that he was trying to make it look like he was deliberately altering the boat in a dangerous fashion.

Speaker 2 So that maybe it looked like he made a mistake. He

Speaker 5 very calculating. He wanted people to be able to point to, oh, no wonder the boat sank.

Speaker 2 Attorney Dave Farrell represented Nathan's boat insurance companies and has looked into Nathan's account of what happened for years.

Speaker 2 Nathan's story is that his boat started taking on water, but he failed to put out a distress call because he didn't think the boat was sinking.

Speaker 2 One would think then maybe he would call out for help, the May Day situation, right? Did he do that?

Speaker 5 No, and he had ample opportunity because each of the times that he went into the wheelhouse to carry gear forward, he was within arm's length of the microphone for his VHF radio, a good one.

Speaker 2 This is where the emergency equipment is, right?

Speaker 5 Here? Yeah, right, right here. A microphone within arm's reach.
And he came in here three times to get survival gear and bring it up to the bow. So he was within an arm's length three times.

Speaker 5 He could could have picked it up.

Speaker 2 All of these things sound pretty odd.

Speaker 2 Maybe you can chalk them up to panic and inexperienced fishermen, but you would have to have hard evidence to really show that he wasn't where he should have been.

Speaker 5 I got an oceanographer to assess whether it was possible for him to drift in a life raft to where the Orient Lucky picked him up seven days later.

Speaker 2 And was it?

Speaker 5 Absolutely impossible. Physically impossible.

Speaker 46 I looked at drifting buoys, I I looked at historical data, I looked at thermal images of the Gulf Stream rings.

Speaker 46 All these different systems showed the currents going westward. And Nathan claimed he drifted eastward.

Speaker 15 And that did not make any sense.

Speaker 2 And Nathan's aunts aren't buying his alleged fishtails either.

Speaker 51 New twists in the story-making national headlines involving Nathan Carmen.

Speaker 54 They file what is known as a slayer petition, which prevents a person from inheriting property from someone they murdered.

Speaker 29 Nathan Carmen's aunts do not want him to inherit that money, and they say essentially profit off of two deaths they believe he caused.

Speaker 13 When Nathan walks into court, he's actually got a suit and he's cleaned up, he's shaven. Good afternoon, Your Honor.

Speaker 8 Nathan Carmen is caring on my own behalf.

Speaker 13 He looks like a young, aspiring law student.

Speaker 32 The loss of my mom has been extremely difficult for me, so I can sympathize with petitioners in that respect.

Speaker 54 He ended up taking depositions. He ended up going into court and arguing motions.

Speaker 5 I'll say that some of the petitioners had an awfully substantial motion,

Speaker 55 and I had very, very little.

Speaker 54 He ended up putting up his own defense.

Speaker 2 He saw him start to tell the truth the whole time. But in this deposition obtained by 2020, it's Nathan in the hot seat.

Speaker 38 This is the deposition of Nathan Carmen.

Speaker 46 Did you have a close relationship with your mother, Linda Carmen?

Speaker 53 I would say that I did, yes.

Speaker 2 When asked to respond to claims that he lied to police during their interviews with him in 2013, Nathan clams up.

Speaker 66 How often did you lie to the Windsor Police Department?

Speaker 36 There was one inaccurate.

Speaker 36 I'm pleading the fifth.

Speaker 66 Pleading the fifth as to lying to the Windsor Police Department after your grandfather is dead.

Speaker 6 Is that correct? Okay.

Speaker 54 Nathan pleads the fifth 81 times during this deposition. I plead the fifth,

Speaker 36 and I plead the fifth.

Speaker 54 Meaning he declines to answer questions to avoid potentially incriminating himself.

Speaker 52 I plead the fifth.

Speaker 13 That's damaging to Nathan, I think, in the public's mind. Who takes the fifth? You know, mobsters take the fifth.
Gang lords take the fifth. Not somebody that's completely innocent.

Speaker 51 Nathan Carmen caught a legal break today after a judge tossed out the lawsuit his aunts had filed to keep him from collecting millions of dollars from his grandfather's estate.

Speaker 54 The judge dismisses the case after he rules John Chocolos wasn't a resident of New Hampshire.

Speaker 5 The newspapers reported it as a tremendous win for Nathan. I wasn't too troubled by it.

Speaker 2 Nathan is off the hook for his family lawsuit, but his insurance case is looming. And investigators have him in their sight.

Speaker 65 Pieces of the puzzle had started to come together.

Speaker 38 There were too many inconsistencies.

Speaker 65 There's no such thing as a perfect crime.

Speaker 65 Two rings surrounded by a steel cage.

Speaker 65 Oh my god, are you kidding me? This is gonna

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Speaker 2 Nathan Carmen and his insurer head to court in Providence, Rhode Island, battling it out in what would be Nathan's biggest legal challenge yet.

Speaker 54 Was Nathan at fault for the sinking of his boat, or was he owed a payday?

Speaker 50 Nathan Carmen and his lawyer saying absolutely nothing heading to Providence Federal Court this morning for the first day of the civil trial against Carmen.

Speaker 13 He's got everything to lose here. If the court determines that he is negligent in his mother's death, that can open up the potential for criminal charges.

Speaker 13 Nathan at times was very agitated during the trial, but he was also very active, always leaning over and having conversations with his attorney. And he was right in the thick of things.

Speaker 2 He takes the stand, sticking to his story of what happened on that boat.

Speaker 2 What was he like on the stand?

Speaker 5 He is very articulate when he wants to be, very exacting,

Speaker 5 but also very evasive.

Speaker 13 Nathan had no emotion. when he testified.

Speaker 13 That may be because he is on the autism spectrum. And he talked about his mother in a way that she was more of a nuisance than she was a help to him while that boat was going down.

Speaker 5 The judge asked him, what's going on with your mother during all this time? And Nathan's peculiar answer was, my mother was part of the problem rather than the solution

Speaker 29 to a sinking boat.

Speaker 2 With With the case now in the judge's hands, Nathan talks to the media outside the courthouse.

Speaker 32 This isn't about money.

Speaker 53 It's an $85,000 claim. I almost feel like I have a responsibility to my mom to make sure that the truth comes out.

Speaker 13 At the end of the trial, the judge rules that Nathan was negligent with regard to the sinking of the chickenpox.

Speaker 9 That was a small victory for me because at least a little bit of justice was prevailing through it all.

Speaker 13 The civil case acted as the de facto criminal case.

Speaker 13 FBI investigators, Coast Guard investigators, attorneys, prosecutors, they all had front row seats.

Speaker 14 Now it transitioned into this house a little more.

Speaker 65 Pieces of the puzzle had started to come together and had started to paint a picture for us that this was in fact a criminal act.

Speaker 38 There were too many inconsistencies, there were too many things that just didn't add up.

Speaker 65 It became very, very clear that Nathan had committed a crime on the high seas.

Speaker 7 We don't have a body, we don't have a boat, so it's a very, very difficult case to try to prove.

Speaker 19 The grand jurors have to decide is there enough evidence to proceed and indict.

Speaker 43 It took several years, but Nathan Carmen is now charged with killing his mother.

Speaker 2 Nathan agrees to meet with investigators, but has no clue what's about to happen.

Speaker 17 Nathan was surprised when he was advised that he was under arrest for the murder of Linda Carmen.

Speaker 13 It was like something out of the golden age of piracy.

Speaker 13 Nathan was charged with murder on the high seas.

Speaker 2 According to an indictment, Carmen devised a scheme to defraud his grandfather's estate and to obtain money from the trust. And the murders were part of this scheme.

Speaker 54 However, the indictment doesn't charge Nathan with the murder of John Chocolose.

Speaker 12 Medical records, school records.

Speaker 2 Nathan hires defense attorney Marty Manella.

Speaker 13 Marty Mannella is a longtime, very bulldogged litigator. And when he met Nathan, he not only found a client, but he found a son.

Speaker 69 He had literally no support. That was probably the hardest thing that Nathan had to endure, the fact that he had no one.
But he had us. He really had us.

Speaker 69 And I had never in 50 years of practicing law had that kind of relationship with a client. Never.

Speaker 2 As he's escorted into federal court for arraignment, cameras catch Nathan defiantly proclaiming his innocence.

Speaker 2 Before pleading not guilty to the court as well.

Speaker 13 During Nathan's detention hearing, his aunts wrote a letter to the judge saying that if you let him go, they would be in fear for their life.

Speaker 9 I was very relieved. that Nathan was going to be put behind bars.
If Nathan was not arrested and not contained, I really think he would have gone on a murder spree.

Speaker 69 For years, Nathan had lived in solitude in Vermont. He had never threatened anyone.
So to me, it was unusual that they were in fear of what?

Speaker 54 The court sides with his aunts and denies Nathan's bail, setting a trial date for October 2nd, 2023.

Speaker 54 Marty and his team get to work.

Speaker 69 It was a huge undertaking, and it was a daily seven-day-a-week thing. It really became part of our lives.

Speaker 13 Nathan was incredibly active in his defense. Every waking hour, when he wasn't in his jail cell, he was at the prison library poring over legal books.

Speaker 69 His case was his whole life. He wanted his day in court.
He wanted to clear his name.

Speaker 13 The day of June 15th, 2023, came as a shock. They were just a few months away from trial.

Speaker 2 We've learned Nathan Carmen has died while awaiting a trial for his mother's death.

Speaker 9 I got a call in the morning. Nathan was gone.
And he hung himself.

Speaker 9 And I just cried.

Speaker 69 Nathan took his own life.

Speaker 69 He wasn't depressed. He wasn't despondent.
We were all looking forward to that October date so that we could have this trial.

Speaker 2 Despite all the family court battles and accusations, Nathan's aunts come to pay their respects at his funeral.

Speaker 9 I attended Nathan's funeral.

Speaker 9 Myself and my sisters were there.

Speaker 9 I was very sad.

Speaker 13 Nathan's attorney paid for the funeral, paid for his cremation, and then gave his eulogy.

Speaker 69 It was probably the toughest thing I ever did because it was like losing a family member. May sound crazy.
You lose cases, you lose clients.

Speaker 69 But you don't have that kind of contact that we had with this person.

Speaker 13 I think he is both a victim and a villain in his own story.

Speaker 13 Nathan Carmen remains an enigma.

Speaker 54 The criminal charges against Nathan were dismissed. So in the eyes of the law, Nathan is an innocent man still today.

Speaker 2 Months after Nathan Carmen's funeral, A Connecticut judge officially declares his mom, Linda, deceased seven years after she disappeared at sea.

Speaker 2 The Windsor Police Department tells 2020 that John Chocolos' murder case is still active.

Speaker 9 What I'd like people to remember about my dad,

Speaker 9 he was kind, he was loving. He'd give you a hard time,

Speaker 9 but he always did it out of love.

Speaker 9 Linda is so kind and generous to her friends and the people around her.

Speaker 9 And I remember all the good times that Linda and I had.

Speaker 2 What do you want people to know and remember about your uncle, John?

Speaker 15 He's a guy

Speaker 5 that did it himself.

Speaker 42 I mean, I loved that guy, you know, and he loved me.

Speaker 2 How much do you miss him all these years, Later?

Speaker 33 Every day.

Speaker 67 Yep.

Speaker 42 We went to the cemetery today.

Speaker 42 Nathan's got a stone there next to my uncle. Why is he buried there? There's no stone there for my cousin Linda.
Where's her stone?

Speaker 9 Nathan should be remembered as a troubled soul. I'm happy, I'm relieved that Nathan was buried in the family plot next to my dad.

Speaker 9 Nathan, the child, belongs where he is.

Speaker 9 He needs to rest.

Speaker 2 That's our program for tonight. Thanks for watching.
I'm Deborah Roberts.

Speaker 26 And I'm David Muir from All of Us Here at 2020 in ABC News.

Speaker 6 Good night.

Speaker 6 911, what is the address to your emergency?

Speaker 61 This 911 call began an investigation that would turn the town of Ashland, Ohio, into a crime scene. We've got something big going on here.
The first thing you hit my mind is a monster.

Speaker 61 A new series from ABC Audio in 2020, The Hand in the Window.

Speaker 61 Out now, wherever you listen to podcasts.

Speaker 1 This is Deborah Roberts. To hear the backstory to this episode, join me for the 2020 After Show.

Speaker 1 Every Monday, I'm going to talk with correspondents, producers, some of those folks behind the scenes who bring you these stories.

Speaker 1 And you're going to hear bonus tape that's not necessarily included in the episode. That's 2020, The After Show, Mondays in Your 2020 podcast feed.