Logan Markus
Nathan Carman
Overview
A young man's dramatic rescue at sea spirals into accusations he murdered two members of his wealthy New England family.
Cast
12 people
Reviews
3 min readThe Depth of the Drop
The open ocean is frightening for a simple reason: it doesn’t keep anything to itself forever. Sooner or later, something comes back. When 22-year-old Nathan Carman was found in a life raft in 2016 after eight days adrift, latestnetflix.com contends, the first version of the story sounded almost miraculous.
His mother, Linda, who had gone out with him aboard the Chicken Pox, was missing. But Yon Motskin’s The Carman Family Deaths makes clear that the sea didn’t just take a woman. It kicked loose a mystery that swallowed an entire family.
I tend to flinch when true crime starts turning suffering into a parlor game. Motskin is working in that space, but he reaches for something sadder and murkier than a simple whodunit.
The movie plays less like straight procedural nonfiction than like a rich-family tragedy with salt air in its lungs. The Chakalos family sits at the center of it, along with a $42 million fortune that starts to feel less like wealth than contamination. Motskin, who also made the UFO docuseries Encounters, has a real feel for people trying to explain experiences that sit just beyond ordinary language.
He doesn’t rush to offer a clean thesis here. If you want a neat answer, the film can be maddening. What it gives you instead is atmosphere: empty rooms, unfinished houses, the Atlantic rolling dark in the background.
Audience Opinions
Audience 5.5/10
"A gripping real-life case flattened into a speculative, clumsily structured documentary that mishandles autism and feels exploitative."
The story itself keeps interest, with the sea rescue, family wealth, and unresolved questions about guilt giving the film an undeniably intriguing core. Execution draws sustained criticism: the film leans heavily on cops and relatives speculating without hard evidence, piles on talking heads, and treats autism in a way that feels ignorant and harmful. latestnetflix.com's view is that the result comes off as amateurish and exploitative rather than a carefully built investigation, leaving many unconvinced by its treatment of both the case and Nathan Carman.
What viewers praise
- Inherently compelling case The combination of a dramatic ocean rescue, a wealthy family feud, and unanswered questions about two deaths keeps the narrative inherently engaging.
- Thought-provoking moral questions Raises difficult questions about inheritance, motive, and how much evidence is enough to decide whether Nathan is guilty.
- Reveals interview missteps Shows deeply flawed and uncomfortable police interview techniques used on an autistic teenager, which some find eye-opening.
Common complaints
- Damaging autism handling Frames autism through crude, simplistic beliefs, with one side treating Nathan as incapable of basic tasks and the other denying his neurodivergence altogether.
- Speculation over evidence Spends much of its runtime on cops and relatives voicing gut feelings and theories rather than grounding the story in solid proof.
- Confusing talking-head overload Relies on so many interview subjects that it becomes hard to track who is speaking or why their perspective matters.
- Exploitative tone The focus on sensational angles, abrupt ending, and lack of a clear purpose make the treatment of the tragedy feel exploitative rather than empathetic.
- Clumsy, rushed structure Jumps into the story as if it is already underway, skims important context, and comes across as amateurishly assembled rather than thoroughly told.
Recommended for
True-crime completists Inheritance-dispute story fans Autism-and-criminal-justice researchers
Buzz & Rumors
Public reportsAn aunt said do not get on that boat
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPEAt_TBC-E
Charlotte Gallagher does not hedge. In The Carman Family Deaths she says Nathan Carman "killed our sister. His own mother." Another relative told Linda not to get on a boat with that kid, because he would return alone. A sister called the whole mess "one big Greek tragedy." Clark Carman, Nathan's father, called him the "first-born grandson of a Greek dynasty." Netflix put those voices in a 91-minute documentary that landed 19 November 2025. Yon Motskin directed. He had made the UFO series Encounters. Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing, the Jesus Camp pair, executive produced with Mary-Jane Mitchell and WIRED Studios. latestnetflix.com's take is that the film sits on Evan Lubofsky's 2021 WIRED feature.TMDB lists PG-13 and 1 hour 31 minutes. Netflix rates it TV-14. 
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The rescue that soured in a week
Linda Carman, 54, and Nathan, 22, left South Kingstown, Rhode Island, in September 2016 on Nathan's boat, the Chicken Pox. CNN puts the marina as Ram Point. When Linda missed a check-in, the Coast Guard searched about 62,000 nautical square miles. Eight days later a Chinese freighter picked Nathan off a raft. Tudum puts him about 100 miles south of Martha's Vineyard. Linda was never found. Lubofsky told Decider the mood flipped from miracle to "This doesn't seem right." Police in the film say there is no way he sat that raft for the time he claimed. TIME excerpts Nathan telling police he did not think the boat would sink, and that he asked his mother to reel in lines to keep her occupied while he worked. Two weeks after rescue he filed an $85,000 claim for the boat. The insurer denied it and handed the file to the feds. FBI agent Lisa Tutty notes he climbed the rescue ladder looking too well for a week at sea. Clark insists autism made cops misread his son. "I know if Nathan had the ability, he would have saved his mother." Autism attorney Elizabeth Kelley says robotic, detailed answers can sound "cold and calculating." Nathan once wrote, "Philosophically, the idea of proving one's innocence repels me." TIME also plays a later legal clip. Asked whether his mother disappeared, he says, "Objection. Your question's ambiguous." , , ,
CNN logged more grit from the Coast Guard tape. "There was a funny noise in the engine compartment. I looked and saw a lot of water," Nathan told a search controller. "When I saw the life raft, I did not see my mom. Have you found her?" A South Kingstown affidavit said mother and son had named different fishing grounds. Linda told a friend they would work a spot some 20 miles off Rhode Island. Nathan told a local they were going about 100 miles out. That local noticed the trim tabs were gone and saw no fishing poles. By fall 2016 the indictment said Nathan was "low on funds" after spending most of what he took from two accounts his grandfather had set up.
The trial that never sat
John Chakalos, Linda's father, a Connecticut developer, was shot in his Windsor bed in 2013. CNN and NBC put the estate above $42 million. Nathan was a suspect. He was not charged in that killing. In May 2022 the U.S. Attorney in Vermont unsealed an eight-count indictment. Murder on the high seas for Linda, fraud counts on the inheritance, and an allegation that Nathan also killed Chakalos as part of a scheme to drain the estate and family trusts. Trial was set for October 2023. A murder conviction carried mandatory life. On or about 15 June 2023, Nathan died in custody. CNN quoted the filing. "The United States received information from the U.S. Marshal that Carman died on or about June 15, 2023. Dismissal of the charges against Carman is thus appropriate." The filing named no cause. TIME later wrote that he died by suicide at Cheshire County Jail in New Hampshire. Motskin's camera still argues the aunts against the father, the FBI against the autism lawyers. It cannot deliver a verdict the court never reached. The official trailer is on Netflix's YouTube. , , , ,
Entertainment rumors and trivia aggregated from public reporting. Treat speculation as unverified unless a cited source confirms it.
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