Nathan Carman Upset with Grandfather, 87, for Having 25-Year-Old Mistress Prior to Murder, Says Aunt 

In 2022, a federal indictment filed in Vermont accused Nathan Carman of murdering his mother and alleged that he had previously killed another relative.

According to the indictment, “On December 20, 2013, Nathan Carman murdered his grandfather, John Chakalos, shooting him twice with [a semi-automatic rifle] while Chakalos slept in his Windsor, CT home,” a copy of the document states.

Prosecutors argued the killing was part of a broader effort to gain access to Chakalos’ fortune, estimated at roughly $42 million at the time of his death.

At 19, Nathan did receive immediate access to $450,000 after his grandfather’s death, in addition to the financial support he was already receiving. His credit card, truck and apartment had all been paid for by Chakalos.

Even so, one relative believes that money wasn’t the real driving force.

“I think it really was that Nathan was angry at my dad having an affair,” Nathan’s aunt, Charlene Gallagher, says. “And not only was he cheating on his grandmother, which was a sin, he was also cheating with somebody that was around Nathan’s age.”

That anger, relatives suggest, may have been intensified by the timing: Nathan’s grandmother, Rita, had died a month earlier after a long battle with cancer.

Nathan and his public defenders referenced Chakalos’ mistress in a 2022 motion for pretrial release.

That filing argued there were “plenty of other suspects,” with a footnote naming the mistress as one. Authorities never identified her as a suspect, and she was never charged in connection with the murder.

“Mr. Chakalos had visited an adult erotic store prior to his murder. The weekend prior, he had taken a much younger employee to a casino in Connecticut where he engaged in a sexual relationship, likely for money,” the motion stated.

It further claimed that “Mr. Chakalos had also engaged in relations with this same young employee at his house in New Hampshire,” noted she had a prior arrest, and said investigators had “interviewed her multiple times.”

Around this period, Nathan was described as developing a powerful religious fervor. The Netflix documentary The Carman Family Deaths recounts one instance in which he reportedly stood at his church altar for five hours, asking for forgiveness.

Despite suspicions, he was never arrested for his grandfather’s killing. One key obstacle for investigators was a neighbor’s statement that they heard a gunshot around 2 a.m., while surveillance footage showed Nathan was back at his apartment at that time.

Nathan had returned home after having dinner with his grandfather on the evening of Dec. 19, 2013.

He had driven Chakalos back to his Windsor home after their meal — the same house where one of Chakalos’ four daughters found him murdered the next morning.

In the aftermath, most relatives — with the exception of Nathan’s mother — came to believe Nathan had killed his grandfather.

He was the last known person to see Chakalos alive and had recently purchased a semi-automatic rifle that used the same type of ammunition as the weapon used in the killing.

Investigators were never able to recover the gun. They also discovered that Nathan had removed the GPS device from his truck and gotten rid of his computer’s hard drive, further complicating efforts to build a case.

There were no signs of forced entry at the home, and nothing appeared to have been stolen, according to investigators.

Nathan was never formally charged with his grandfather’s murder, in part because federal prosecutors lacked jurisdiction.

A year after he was indicted in the later case, Nathan died by suicide, hanging himself in his jail cell.