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- [00:03]
Katie Ring
Hi Crime House community. It's Katie looking for another Crime House original podcast to add to your rotation. You will love Clues with Morgan Abshur and Kaylin Moore. Every Wednesday, Morgan and Kaylin dig into the world's most notorious crimes, clue by clue, from serial killers to shocking murders. They follow the trail of clues, break down the evidence and debate the theories. It's like hanging out with your smart and true crime obsessed friends. Listen to clues on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music or wherever you listen to podcasts.
- [00:45]
This is Crime House. Tonight we're delving into the mysterious deaths of three family members over the course of a decade, which authorities still haven't fully pieced together. Let's get into it tonight. A Vermont man facing charges for the murder of his mother in a case that spans over six years. There's several million dollars at stake, but they see it as blood money. They don't want it, but they don't want Carmen to have it either.
- [01:13]
Walton Goggins
Rescued at sea after his mother disappeared.
- [01:16]
Katie Ring
In what seemed to be a freak.
- [01:17]
Walton Goggins
Boating accident, he says he expected sympathy.
- [01:20]
Katie Ring
But what he got was a police investig.
- [01:28]
Hi, welcome to Crime House Daily. I'm your host Katie Ring. Here we follow the cases making headlines now, where justice is still unfolding. Follow us wherever you're listening. And if you want ad free episodes, subscribe to Crime House plus on Apple Podcasts. This episode discusses active criminal cases and breaking news. The information we share is based on what's publicly available at the time of recording and may change as new evidence comes to light. We aim to inform, not to decide guilt or innocence. So everyone mentioned is presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
- [02:09]
Walton Goggins
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- [02:42]
Katie Ring
Our case tonight involves a wealthy New England family who's experienced not one but two tragic deaths that still remain unsolved. Back in 2013, the grandfather of the family, self made millionaire John Chokalos, was gunned down in his home in the middle of the night. Then three years later, his 54 year old daughter Linda was lost at sea and presumed dead. And the person whom the police think may be behind both of these killings is John's grandson and Linda's own son, Nathan Carmen. Nathan was just 29 years old when he took his own life in prison in the middle of court proceedings. So he was never declared guilty. And there are still a lot of questions surrounding this case. This case has seen a resurgence because author Casey Sherman published a book this year titled Blood in the Water. He spent years researching the case and the in depth look he's given the story has sparked a ton of new interest. And just last month, Netflix released a detailed documentary about the case called the Carmen Family Deaths. So let's talk about what happened, starting with the first victim, John Chokalis. John's motto was without family, you've got nothing. Family is everything. Born in 1926, John was from another era. He fought in World War II and married his high school sweetheart, Rita. He was a hard worker and built a real estate empire from the ground up that became worth millions. He and Rita had four daughters, Elaine, Linda, Charlene and Valerie, who they raised in a modest home in Windsor, Connecticut. As John built his fortune, he also had a multi million dollar estate built in Chesterfield, New Hampshire. And the family started splitting their time between both houses. Linda, the second oldest, was the first to give birth to a boy and John was thrilled when she gave birth to her son Nathan in 1994. When Linda and her husband, Clark Carmen, divorced in 1998, John made sure that Nathan wasn't deprived of a strong male role model in his life. Linda raised her son in Middleton, Connecticut, about 4:30 minutes from the Windsor home, and John visited them all the time. Though John could be tough on his own kids, he was softer towards Nathan. Sometimes Linda felt John could overstep, though, especially when it came to Nathan's mental health. As a kid, Nathan was diagnosed with Asperger's, which is sort of an outdated term for people who are high functioning on the autism spectrum. He always made it known how much he hated dealing with his disorder because he felt like it isolated him from other kids. Linda didn't want her son to suffer and she tried extremely hard to find the right care for him. But John thought she was too overbearing towards Nathan about it. Maybe Nathan appreciated that his grandfather didn't treat him like he was different because as Nathan got older, he and John grew closer while he and his mom only became more distant. All these family dynamics reached A boiling point when Nathan's mental health took a hit. In late decades 2010, Nathan struggled with making friends, but he loved animals, so he'd grown up with a pet horse named Cruz that he loved and spent most of his time with. But Cruz died of colic in December of that year and Nathan was devastated. He was only 17 at the time and he stopped taking his meds and started acting out. Things got bad and Linda worried that Nathan might be suffering from paranoid delusions because he'd started calling people he didn't like. Quote Agents of the Devil. In April of 2011, things had gotten so bad that Linda took Nathan to a mental hospital for treatment. And while he was there, he didn't want to see her at all. But he was always happy to see his grandparents. Tensions in the family grew one day in the lobby of the mental hospital when John and Linda started arguing about the fact that Linda's ex husband had turned down a job offer from John. Things escalated and John threatened to cut Linda off financially. And then things turned physical and he pulled Linda's hair. Linda became furious and started yelling and John tried to leave, but she blocked him and physically attacked him, kicking him and punching him in the head. The police were called and Linda was arrested on charges of assault of an elderly person. But 84 year old John had dropped the charges. For the rest of the year, his focus remained on Nathan, who was still grieving the death of his horse. In August, he even ran away from home, taking a bus 600 miles away to Virginia. A police officer found Nathan near an abandoned store, trying to find somewhere to sleep. Nathan had brought with him pictures of himself and his horse, as well as a Ziploc bag with Cruz's hair inside and four grand in cash. He told police he was trying to go to Florida, but instead they took him home. After that incident, Nathan finished school with decent grades, but never got any better with people. That didn't seem to matter to John, who still saw a lot of promise in his grandson and started teaching him the family business by bringing Nathan along to business meetings. When Nathan turned 18, John got him his own apartment. And when he moved out of his childhood home, Linda was extremely upset. She even wrote Nathan out of her will because she claimed he'd taken things of value when he moved out. After a year or so, they reconciled and Linda started making an effort to go fishing with Nathan, which was his favorite hobby. Things calmed down for a time, but then in 2013, tragedy struck. On November 21, John's wife and Linda's Mother Rita lost her battle with cancer and passed away. She and John had been married for 59 years. John was absolutely devastated and the whole family made an effort to spend as much time as possible with him so he wouldn't be alone. So a month later, on December 19, Nathan and John got dinner together. They went to John's house afterwards and late into the night John got a phone call. Nathan overheard the conversation and suspected that his grandfather was talking to a new girlfriend. And he was right. His grandfather had been on the phone with a 25 year old woman who's only been identified in police documents as Mistress Y. Mistress Y had worked at one of the buildings John owned. The two had struck up a cash for sex arrangement. She called that night because they had an argument the previous weekend over sex toys. John reiterated to her that he was still upset about this and they talked for about 20 minutes. Meanwhile, Nathan and Linda had a fishing trip planned for 3am that morning. So according to him, he went to the corner store to pick up some ice cream and batteries and then went back to his apartment. The next day at 8:30am, Elaine, John's oldest daughter, showed up to his house to check on him. They had their own plans that morning, but when Elaine entered the house, she didn't see her dad anywhere. So she went to his bedroom where she found her father lying dead.
- [10:12]
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- [11:22]
Walton Goggins
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- [11:59]
Katie Ring
In December 2013, John Chokolos was found dead in his own home. His daughter Elaine found him lifeless in the bed. There was blood all over the walls and it looked like he'd been shot. Elaine called the police immediately, and when they arrived, they confirmed that John had been shot three times in the head and torso. From there, officers noted several strange things. A glass door had been shattered, but from the inside, plus a ton of cash had been left inside the house. It looked as if someone had staged the scene to look like a break in. Police immediately started questioning John's family members, including Linda and Nathan. But their alibis were a little suspect because they didn't know what time they went fishing or if they went fishing at all. Remember that new book we mentioned at the start of this episode, Blood in the Water? Well, one of the new revelations that the book brought to light just this year was that apparently there were some threats to John's life not long before he was murdered. One incident included an unnamed family friend who jokingly offered one of John's employees $10,000 to kill him and and stage it as a hunting accident. The other threat came from Linda herself. Apparently she texted a family member once that she wanted to, quote, blow her father's head off. Police questioned Linda, Nathan and others in the family numerous times, but nothing stood out enough as a viable lead. Police also looked into and ruled out Mistress Y, though they haven't said what exactly cleared her. Though it might have been some crucial discoveries they made about the murder weapon. Ballistics tests and bullet fragments determined that the gun that killed John was probably a Sig Sauer rifle. Police checked the records of some nearby gun shops and found a purchase form from a shop in New Hampshire dated November 11, just a month before the murder. And the name on the sale was Nathan Carman. Nathan had told police he only had an Air gun. But when police asked him again, he admitted to having a shotgun. Then when they confronted him about the record of the rifle purchase, he finally admitted that he'd bought it, but he said that he'd lost it. The police found this incredibly suspicious, and In July of 2014, they filed an arrest warrant for Nathan, but it was denied by the signing judge. They were granted a search warrant on Nathan's apartment, though. And when police searched Nathan's house, they saw that he had thrown away his computer and his car's gps, which the officers also found highly suspicious. And while they did find a shotgun and ammo, they didn't find the actual murder weapon. And without it, they still didn't have enough to arrest him. After that, the case basically fizzled out. John's family members, however, all got their inheritance money. He'd left his daughters his $44 million estate, and Nathan got $550,000, which he used to buy a house in Vermont. He also bought a boat, a 32 foot aluminum vessel named the Chickenpox, which he and Linda started using for their fishing trips. Pretty soon, they were gearing up for another trip off the coast of Rhode island for September 18, 2016. Linda always made a float plan for their trips, which was a detailed account of where they were going, when they'd be back, and emergency contacts. And on the night of September 17, she sent the plan to her friends. But when she and Nathan didn't come back when they were supposed to the next day, her friends knew something might be wrong. They alerted the Coast Guard, who dispatched helicopters, boats, and planes. Shortly after the search began, the Coast Guard called Valerie, Linda's youngest sister, who wasted no time pointing the finger at Nathan for her disappearance. Valerie told him that Nathan was the, quote, town freak, that he'd killed his grandfather, and that he had a reason to kill Linda. Valerie said Linda was in the process of finalizing her inheritance of a $5 million home that John had owned, A house that would likely go to Nathan if she wasn't in the picture. The Coast Guard immediately got law enforcement involved. They towed Linda and Nathan's car from the marina so Nathan couldn't flee the scene if he came back. If they were in the water, Nathan and Linda could only have survived for a little over a day with the colder fall temperatures. But the Coast Guard kept the search up for five days, just in case and scoured 65,000 square miles. But despite that huge search radius, they didn't find any signs of Linda and Nathan. So on the 23rd, they called off the search and informed Linda and Nathan's family members that they were most likely dead. At the same time, investigators still thought Nathan may have been behind their possible demise. So the next day, police got a warrant to search his apartment for any possible clues. Just like when they searched his home back in 2014, there was no computer in his house. But this time, police also found disturbing records about the boat. Apparently, the chickenpox had problems with its engine and bilge pump, which removes water from the hole. And the fuel lines were acting up, too. No one knew if Nathan had gotten those issues fixed. But if he hadn't, that meant they'd set sail on a pretty dangerous vessel. They also found out in talking to witnesses at the marina that Nathan had done some strange repairs to the boat. And the day before they left, he'd taken the trim tabs off, which are stabilizing flaps on the back. This left four holes right along the water line that Nathan claimed he sealed with marine putty. He said he did this because the tabs were making the boat drag. However, this isn't really the proper way to fix large holes in such a critical part of the boat. Now, it looked like Nathan may have orchestrated the boat's demise, but police barely had time to untangle this mystery before they learned that Nathan was still alive.
- [18:21]
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- [18:53]
As soon as police in Connecticut started looking more closely into Nathan for possibly being responsible for he and his mother's disappearances at sea, they learned that he had been found. On the morning of September 25, about a week after Nathan and Linda went missing. A Chinese freighter, the Orient lucky, was about 100 miles south of Martha's vineyard when sailors spotted someone on a life raft waving them down. It was Nathan, and he was extremely far from shore. But something seemed off. Video footage of the rescue has since been widely shared. And there are a lot of people who don't think Nathan looks like he'd actually been stranded at sea for a week. He was sure footed and not showing any signs of hypothermia While being debriefed by the members of the Coast Guard, Nathan asked him if anyone had found Linda, and they said no. After that, Nathan told authorities his side of the story, and some of the details didn't quite add up. According to Nathan, around midday on September 18, while he and Linda were at sea, he heard the boat engine make a strange noise. Before the boat started taking on water, Nathan said his mother could be more of a, quote, problem than solution. So when he realized something was wrong, he didn't tell her because he didn't think she would be helpful. He also didn't think it was a huge issue, so he simply told his mom to bring in the fishing lines while he tried to fix the problem himself. He apparently didn't radio for help because he didn't want to trigger an emergency response if it wasn't actually that serious. But then, by the time he realized the boat was going under, it was too late. Nathan said Linda was a strong swimmer, but that she must have gotten tangled or hit her head because he didn't hear her yell or see her in the water at all. When the boat went down, he managed to get into the life raft, which had rations and spare clothes, and he drifted for the next week. Finally, Nathan claimed he only saw one other ship before the one that rescued him and that it was very far away. Nothing he said proved he'd killed Linda, though. So for now, the only legal trouble Nathan faced was a civil trial to determine if he'd get an $85,000 insurance payout for the boat or to determine if he was liable for the boat sinking. At the same time, the more Nathan's story circulated, the more suspicions mounted from the public. People even started to wonder if Nathan had killed John all those years ago. Even Nathan's aunts sided against him. They told him outright that they believed he'd killed John and Linda. Then they filed a petition to keep him from inheriting the money that would have gone to Linda. But that civil trial with the boat insurers came first in 2019. In the courtroom, Nathan's lawyers argued that his boat, the chickenpox, had already been in questionable condition when Nathan bought it and that he wasn't aware of how many issues it had. But the insurance company's lawyers pointed to all of the unsafe conditions Nathan had known about based on the alterations he made. They didn't stop there, though. They also pointed out some other sketchy parts of Nathan's story, including the theory that he hadn't actually been lost at sea. They pointed out that he would have had to drift against the current from where he claimed the boat safe sank in order to end up where he was found. One week later, on September 4, 2019, Nathan lost the case. He was declared at fault for the boat sinking and denied the insurance policy. But this chapter of his life wasn't closed just yet. Because after the civil trial wrapped, police kept investigating Nathan for Linda's murder. Authorities haven't revealed what new information they discovered. But years later, In May of 2022, they finally arrested Nathan, who is now 28 years old, for the murder of his mother. The indictment included charges of first degree murder on the high seas and authorities believed Nathan had done it so that he could receive his inheritance sooner. The indictment also accused him of killing his grandfather because John had threatened to cut him off. But Nathan didn't face action actual charges in his grandfather's killing. From there, a trial date was set for October 2023. However, the court would never convene because in June of that year, prison staff made a horrifying discovery. Nathan had hung himself in his jail cell. Now there would never be an official ruling on whether Linda's own son took her life. Her sisters and other loved ones would never get the closure they'd been hoping for. Months later, after Linda had been missing for seven years, she was formally declared dead. But that didn't put an end to the web of theories and speculation surrounding the case. Which brings us to November 19, 2025, when Netflix released the Carmen Family deaths. The documentary has sparked renewed interest in the case and all of the mystery still surrounding it. Many people still wonder if authorities will reveal the full extent of their investigation into Nathan and and what led them to finally arrest him. Rest assured, we'll be bringing you any and all major updates as they come in.
- [24:16]
What did you think of tonight's case? Drop your thoughts and theories in the comments. See you next time. If you haven't already, subscribe to our YouTube channel Rimehouse Daily and follow us on social media Rimehouse20047 for real time updates. Because the pursuit of justice never stops.