The Carman Family Deaths: The True Story Behind Netflix’s New Documentary
- Elizabeth Sanate
- 6 days ago
- 3 min read
Some stories arrive like a quiet knock at the door, which is gentle at first, and then suddenly they’re everywhere, echoing through your mind long after you think you’ve moved on. The Carman Family Deaths is one of those stories. And with Netflix releasing its new true-crime documentary, the world is about to step back into a mystery that has haunted a family for nearly a decade.
It’s a tragedy wrapped in questions, and even now, nobody can say for certain where the truth begins or ends.
The Carman Family Deaths: A mother-son trip that turned into a nightmare
It was supposed to be simply a late-summer fishing trip between a mother and her only son. Linda Carman and 22-year-old Nathan left Rhode Island one calm evening in September 2016, heading out on Linda’s small boat, the Chicken Pox. They packed snacks, gear, and the kind of quiet hopes families bring on nights like that.
And then the ocean swallowed almost everything.
For eight long days, the water offered no clues. No boat. No radio calls. No bodies. Just silence. Until a cargo ship spotted a lone life raft, miles from anywhere. Inside, it was Nathan, exhausted, sunburned, strangely composed.
But Linda was gone.
Nathan told investigators the boat suddenly sank. No warning, just darkness and chaos. It sounds simple enough… until you hear everything else. Until you hear the Coast Guard saying the boat’s condition didn’t match the story. Until you hear about missing parts, changes made to the engines, and safety steps skipped.
Nothing lined up neatly.
Nothing ever does in The Carman Family Deaths.
The Carman Family Deaths: A murder in the family that wouldn’t stay buried
If this were the only tragedy, maybe the world could have called it an accident. A heartbreaking one, but still an accident.
But there was another death. A bigger one. A more violent one.
Three years earlier, Linda’s father, Nathan’s grandfather, businessman John Chakalos, was found shot to death in his own home—one bullet. No break-in. No robbery. Whoever did it walked in, killed him, and walked out as if the night meant nothing.
And the last person to see him alive?
Nathan.
Police learned he had bought a gun similar to the murder weapon shortly before the killing… and then casually claimed he “lost” it. The timing was the sort that even strangers would raise eyebrows at, let alone investigators.
When Netflix’s The Carman Family Deaths explores these two tragedies side by side, it becomes almost overwhelming. You start seeing the threads. The questions. The uncomfortable possibilities no family wants to confront.
The Carman Family Deaths: A family torn in half
By 2022, after years of tension, whispers, and cold stares across courtrooms, Nathan was charged with killing his mother at sea. Prosecutors said he wanted inheritance money. His relatives agree. His father didn’t.
The case wasn’t just a legal matter; it was emotional warfare.
Aunts accuse their nephew.
A father defending his son.
A dead grandfather.
A missing mother.
One young man was standing in the center of a storm that he could not escape.
But before a jury could hear a single argument, Nathan was found dead in his jail cell in June 2023. No explanation. No closure. Just another layer of silence on a story already drowning in it.
And with that, The Carman Family Deaths became a puzzle frozen in time. No convictions. No confessions. No truth anyone can swear by.
The Carman Family Deaths: What Netflix wants us to understand
The new Netflix documentary doesn’t pretend to solve the case.
Instead, it forces us to sit with the same haunting uncertainties that investigators wrestled with for years.
And somewhere between the interviews, the evidence, and the unanswered gaps, the documentary raises the same cold, aching questions many have avoided:
What really happened to Linda Carman?
Was Nathan a victim of tragic circumstances… or the cause of them?
And how does a family recover when the truth is buried deeper than the ocean itself?
This documentary doesn’t try to scare you with jump moments or dramatic twists. It scares you with the quiet kind. The kind that creeps in when the credits roll and leaves you wondering about the small decisions, the broken trust, and the secrets that families carry for years without speaking aloud.
Because sometimes, the most frightening part of a story is not the crime itself…
But the possibility that the truth may never surface.
Stay with The ScreenLight for more real stories that stay with you.
