HARTFORD, Conn. _ As authorities continued to gather information in the case of rescued boater Nathan Carman, speaking with him in Boston and searching his home in Vermont, court records in Connecticut show police suspected him in the unsolved 2013 slaying of his grandfather in Windsor.
In July 2014, Windsor police submitted to a prosecutor an arrest warrant for Carman on a murder charge, but the warrant was returned unsigned the next day, according to a warrant that police used to search Carman's apartment in Middletown, where he lived at the time.
The search warrant indicates the arrest warrant was returned with a "request for further information." Carman was not charged in the episode.
No arrest warrant was ever obtained in the slaying. The chief state's attorney's cold case unit is assisting Windsor police on the case, authorities said.
Nathan Carman's lawyer, Hubert Santos, had no comment Tuesday on the Windsor investigation. He said his client cooperated with the U.S. Coast Guard when he was brought in to Boston Harbor on Tuesday morning.
Carman, 22, left Point Judith, R.I., with his mother, Linda Carman, 54, of Middletown, on Sept. 17. When he was found Sunday, eight days later, by a passing freighter, he was alone and told Coast Guard officials his mother never made it to the life raft. She is presumed dead.
As the freighter was bringing Carman to Boston on Monday night, South Kingstown, R.I., police searched his home in Vernon, Vt., just north of the Massachusetts border. Carman and his mother had left on their fishing trip from Ram Point Marina in Point Judith, also in Rhode Island.
Police had obtained the search warrant as part of a missing person investigation.
A neighbor said at least eight law enforcement cruisers, including the local sheriffs' department and state troopers, came to the house Monday night, and authorities with flashlights went through each level of the four-story house from 6:45 to about 9:45 p.m.
South Kingstown Detective Lt. Alfred Bucco III wrote in his application for the warrant 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 on Sept. 17. Police were also seeking receipts for purchases of boat parts or equipment for repairs to Carman's boat.
"This investigation revealed that Nathan's boat was in need of mechanical repair and that Nathan had been conducting a portion of these repairs upon his own volition which could have potentially rendered the boat unsafe for operation," Bucco wrote in the affidavit. Police said they believed they could find evidence in Carman's house, including information about where he intended to fish, that would support a charge of "operating so as to endanger, resulting in death," according to the warrant.
The search warrant return indicates police removed from the house a modem, a GPS device SIM card and a letter written by Carman. There is no indication who the letter was written to. Police did not find a computer, the records show.
The details of the slaying of Nathan's grandfather, John Chakalos, at his home on Overlook Drive in Windsor, are contained in the warrant application to search Nathan's apartment in 2014.
The search warrant says Nathan was the last known person to see Chakalos alive on Dec. 20, 2013, as the two were having dinner. 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.
Police searched Nathan'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 Chakalos case remains open, and the state has posted a billboard on I- 91, which says the family is offering a $250,000 reward for any information on the death.
An audio recording released by the Coast Guard on Tuesday offers the most detailed description made public so far of the events leading to the sinking of the Carmans' boat 31-foot aluminum boat, the Chicken Pox, on Sept. 18.
In the recording, Carman communicated with the Coast Guard from the freighter, authorities that "a funny noise in the engine compartment" signaled a problem that eventually sank the vessel, leaving him adrift in a life raft and his mother missing.
"There was a funny noise in the engine compartment. I looked and saw a lot of water. ... I brought the safety stuff forward ... the boat just dropped out from under my feet," he said in the ship-to-shore conversation soon after he was discovered by the freighter Sunday.
"When I saw the life raft, I did not see my Mom," Carman said.
Then he asked, "Have you found her?" A Coast Guard official told him they had not.
"I got to the life raft after I got my bearings, and I was whistling and calling and looking around, and I didn't see her," he said.
Nathan Carman said the sinking occurred about midday on Sept. 18, a Sunday, which was a day after he and his mother, Linda Carman, left Point Judith, R.I.
No distress call was made from vessel, the Coast Guard has said.
In the warrant used to search his home in Vermont, South Kingstown police said a friend of Carman's mother told police that Linda Carman refused to go fishing any further than Block Island and that she believed their destination was Striper Rock near Block Island, according to the search warrant.
A woman whose boat was docked next to Carman's told police that he told her that he intended to go fishing at the "Canyons," about 100 miles off-shore, according to the warrant. Nathan Carman on Sunday told the Coast Guard that the boat sank at Block Canyon.
Another witness told police that Carman removed the trim tabs from his boat and patched the holes with a marine sealant, the warrant said. He also told police he did not see any fishing equipment.
A witness at Point Judith Marina told police there were "many issues" with Carman's boat, including a newly installed motor and air getting into the fuel lines. The witness also said there was a problem with the boat's bilge pump. He said he was unsure whether the pump or motor issues had been resolved prior to the fishing trip.
After being interviewed by Coast Guard officials Tuesday morning, Carman left the base accompanied by his father Tuesday afternoon, authorities said. The father, Clark Carman, who had arrived from California, drove his son from the base shortly before 3 p.m., the Coast Guard said. There was no information on where they were headed.
When the freighter arrived in Boston Harbor, a 45-foot Coast Guard "response boat" met the ship and brought Carman to the base. The Coast Guard planned to conduct a face-to-face "survivor debriefing," which Chief Petty Officer Luke Pinneo said is "protocol anytime we have a boat sinking at sea."
Coast Guard officials did not plan to ask pointed questions about the disappearance of his mother, Linda Carman, 54, who had been with him on a fishing trip that left Point Judith, R.I., on Sept. 17, Pinneo said.
"That's really outside our point of focus," he said. "Our main focus here is that he gets back safely and is reunited with his family."
Petty Officer 3rd Class Nicole Groll said Carman was "talking to Coast Guard officials" just before 10 a.m. "We all want to know what happened out there," she said.
Officials Friday afternoon gave no details about their conversation or on what new information they might have learned.
Carman, who had a beard, was wearing an orange Coast Guard life vest and was accompanied by at least four Coast Guard officers on the boat bringing him back to shore. He was wearing a white jumpsuit that had apparently been supplied to him by the crew of the freighter that found him floating on a life raft in the Atlantic on Sunday.
Carman was met by a row of photographers snapping his picture as he walked to a waiting car. He did not say anything to any of the officers escorting him.
State records show the Carmans both renewed their fishing licenses with the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection this spring. Nathan Carman purchased a nonresident all waters fishing license on May 22, records show.
Linda Carman renewed her license April 15. Nathan Carman has had a fishing license in Connecticut since at least 2011, records show.
