HARTFORD, Conn. _ As authorities continued on Tuesday to gather information in the case of Nathan Carman, a former Middletown man who spent eight days on a raft at sea, court records in Connecticut show police suspected him in the unsolved 2013 slaying of his grandfather in Windsor.
Windsor police submitted to a prosecutor an arrest warrant for Nathan Carman, 22, on a murder charge in July 2014, but the warrant was returned unsigned the next day, according to a search warrant that police used to search Carman's apartment in Middletown.
The search warrant indicates the arrest warrant was returned with a "request for further information." Carman was not charged in the episode.
Nathan Carman's lawyer, Hubert Santos, had no comment Tuesday on the Windsor investigation. He said his client cooperated with the Coast Guard in Boston and left with his father.
South Kingstown, R.I., police searched Nathan Carman's Vernon, Vt., home Monday night. South Kingstown police did not return a phone call for comment. Carman and his mother left on their fishing trip from Point Judith in Rhode Island.
Detective Lt. Alfred Bucco III wrote in his application for the warrant to search the Vermont house that police were seeking documents, maps, global positioning devices, computers, hand-held electronic devices and books that would provide coordinates, locations or positioning information about the location or destination of the fishing trip he and his mother embarked upon on Sept. 17. Police were also seeking receipts for purchases of boat parts or equipment for repairs to Carman's boat.
In a brief conversation after being rescued, Nathan Carman told the Coast Guard that he escaped from his 31-foot aluminum boat, called The Chicken Pox, in a life raft Sept. 18 as the vessel was taking on water in deep ocean off the coast of New York.
Nathan Carman arrived in Boston Tuesday morning after being rescued by a freighter near Martha's Vineyard.
The details of John Chakalos' slaying are contained in the search warrant application. No arrest warrant was ever obtained in the Chakalos slaying. The chief state's attorney's cold case unit is assisting Windsor police on the case, authorities said. The state has posted a billboard on Interstate 91 that says the family is offering a $250,000 reward for any information on the death.
Police searched Nathan Carman's Middletown apartment on George Street on July 18, 2014, and found a Remington tactical shotgun, a rifle scope and several boxes of ammunition, the search warrant states. The rifle did not match the caliber of the gun used to kill Chakalos, the search warrant says.
The warrant also says that Nathan Carman was the last known person to see John Chakalos alive on Dec. 20, 2013, as the two were having dinner at Chakalos' home.
The next morning one of Chakalos' daughters found 87-year-old John Chakalos dead in his home _ shot three times in the head and torso.
The search warrant states that Carman, who was then 20, became a suspect after police interviewed his mother, Linda Carman, who told them that her son was supposed to meet her in Glastonbury at 3 a.m. that morning to drive to Rhode Island but didn't show up.
Linda Carman is now missing and presumed dead by Coast Guard officials. She and her son left Point Judith in the boat on Sept. 17.
They were reported missing the next day and a massive search proved fruitless until eight days later, when a freighter found Nathan Carman floating in a raft 100 nautical miles off Martha's Vineyard.
Nathan Carman told Coast Guard officials that their boat sank near Block Canyon and he got into the raft but was unable to locate his mother.
Probate records show that Chakalos' estate was worth about $40 million and that his four daughters, including Linda Carman, were the beneficiaries of $21 million.
