Mom Likely Dead as Questions Mount for Son Lost at Sea

Nathan Carman was a person of interest in his grandfather's 2013 murder
By Michael Harthorne,  Newser Staff
Posted Sep 28, 2016 4:27 PM CDT
Questions Mount in Case of Man Lost at Sea
Nathan Carman arrives in a small boat at the US Coast Guard station in Boston on Tuesday. The Coast Guard has questions about the circumstances that led to him to be stranded at sea for eight days and his mother's presumed death.   (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer)

The case of a 22-year-old man with Asperger's rescued Sunday after eight days lost on the Atlantic Ocean got stranger Tuesday with revelations that police searched his home and that he was once a person of interest in his grandfather's murder, CBS Boston reports. Nathan Carman left Rhode Island for a fishing trip with his mother, Linda Carman, Sept. 18. Linda is now presumed dead. According to the Boston Globe, Carman was getting the life raft after his boat, the Chicken Pox, suffered engine trouble and started taking on water when he lost sight of his mother. "All I'm going to say right now to you is that a terrible tragedy happened," the Hartford Courant quotes Carman as saying. "I'm lucky to be alive."

Police searched Carman's home on Monday, taking a modem, SIM card, and letter. They believe he may have been making repairs on his boat that made it unsafe. They also say "Linda and Nathan had different intentions as to the final destination of the fishing trip." And there are other questions: a witness says neither mother nor son had fishing gear or food with them; Carman claims the boat sunk within the Coast Guard's search area, but searchers never saw him or the boat; and there were no calls for help. Nathan's grandfather was shot and killed in 2013, and Carman was briefly a person of interest. He says the cases are "totally separate." “Losing my grandfather was like losing a father,” he tells the Globe. “Losing my mom—is losing my mom.” (More lost at sea stories.)

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