Nathan Carman Was the Last Person to See His Grandfather Alive

Being a member of a wealthy family isn't always all it's cracked up to be. Oftentimes, you face public pressure and family turmoil, since money has a way of adding urgency and emotion to any situation.

For the Chakalos and Carman families, their wealth likely added to the friction that existed in the family. But for the most part, they avoided headlines. That is, until Nathan Carman was the last person to see his wealthy grandfather, John Chakalos, alive.

A few years later, Nathan and his mother, Linda Carman, were lost at sea when officials believe he took her life.

In a 2025 Netflix documentary called The Carman Family Deaths, the world took another look at the series of tragedies that befell the Carman family, and how Chakalos's net worth may have played in the drama that consumed them.

In 2013, Chakalos was killed in what police initially suspected was a break-in. Years later, true crime author Casey Sherman wrote a book about the Carman family called Blood in the Water: The Untold Story of a Family Tragedy.

Casey told People that family members “immediately pointed the finger" at Nathan.

“I think they hated him because John doted on him. Whereas they were vying for John’s love, attention, and his money, Nathan was showered with affection and love and wealth by John, who didn't treat him as someone on the Autism Spectrum."

Casey added, "He overlooked any mental challenges that Nathan may have had and treated Nathan as an equal," calling him the "golden child" of the family.

In the book, the author talks about an interview with Joy Washburn, former caretaker of Chakalos's massive New Hampshire estate. In the interview, Joy said that an associate, not Nathan, "contacted her and said, ‘Well, the entire family hates John. Can you take John out to the woods, shoot him, kill him, make it look like a hunting accident, and we'll pay you $10,000?’"

Weeks later, Chakalos was dead. According to Us Weekly, Chakalos had a volatile temper and often lashed out at his daughters, including Nathan's mother, Linda. The night before he died, Chakalos reportedly tried to attack Linda over a disagreement about mental health treatment for Nathan.

Nathan was the last one to see his grandfather alive, but the puzzle pieces didn't start to fall into place for nearly another decade.

In 2016, Linda and Nathan went out boating in Nathan's boat, called The Chickenpox. They failed to return, and a friend of the family reported them missing.

But only Nathan was recovered alive.

Us Weekly notes that a number of suspicious discoveries led authorities to charge Nathan with his mother's disappearance in 2022, and he was indicted for both her murder and the murder of his grandfather that same year.

Prosecutors would allege that Nathan's desire to get his hands on the family fortune led to the series of tragedies that saw the two dead.

But exactly how much was John Chakalos worth? According to Express, his estimated net worth was between $44 million and $50 million.

However, questions about a possible motive and why Nathan would allegedly take their lives never got answered, and Nathan maintained his innocence until he committed suicide in jail in 2023.

The Carman family tragedies are a bizarre sequence of events with more questions than answers. And Nathan's death only adds to the tragedy surrounding these deaths, because now the only person who knew the truth is beyond the reach of either justice or exoneration.