29-year-old Nathan Carman of Vermont is facing federal charges for allegedly killing his mother on a fishing trip and shooting his grandfather in a plot to defraud his family. Carman’s scheme would have seen him land him hundreds of thousands of dollars from the family trust fund and he was willing to kill his mother and WWII hero grandfather in order to do it. John Chakalos was a World War II paratrooper and self-made multimillionaire and after he was shot to death in 2013, the only thing that stood between Carman and the family fortune was his mother. Allegedly, Carmn took his mother out sea in their boat, killed her, and then sank the boat. The coast picked up Carman alone from the wreck and his mother was found dead, at sea, in an inflatable raft by another boat.
Nathan Carman has only been charged with one count of murder in connection with the death of his mother but the indictment alleges that he also killed his grandfather and “concocted cover stories to conceal his involvement” in both. Carman had failed out of community college with his grandfather covering all of his living expenses and he received about $550,000 in inheritance, according to court filings. Court filings allege that Carman shot him to death with a rifle he’d bought a month earlier.
Three years later, Carman began to run low funds and that is when he took his mother out to sea and killed her. An insurance company is demanding grand jury minutes, most likely to measure where family funds should go, and this is an extremely rare situation. Such proceedings are usually secret and Neama Rahmani, a former federal prosecutor, says, “It is unusual for the defense to request grand jury minutes, because those motions are rarely granted.” “There is a strong presumption that grand jury proceedings are secret, and grand jurors can return indictments on invalid or even inadmissible evidence.” added Rahmani. A federal judge on Monday gave prosecutors a week to respond.
