Fisherman

Nathan and his mother, they'd taken a boating course. They had some fundamental knowledge, but they stuck pretty close to land and were fishing for stripers and blues.

You're relying on your engine, you're relying on electronics to get you there.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Nathan has excellent line of sight on her the whole time, and yet he says he never saw her afterwards.

The initial videos showing this guy walking up the gangway of the ship without any great problem, he seemed to be just fine.

Absolutely. People had doubts about this story from the beginning.

He gets really defensive if people pry a little bit too much. And the way that he shut her off on so many questions and wouldn't cooperate, he was shooting himself in the foot on national TV.

He walked out. He walked out of the interview. Only to come back.

You know, I spent a lot of time with Nathan. I think he was cold, calculating, and had this whole story planned out to explain the disappearance of his mother and the sinking of the vessel.

Not even for a second.

It happened very promptly, and that indicated to me that this guy's really serious.

We filed our suit to deny insurance coverage. We were in for a fight. We came away with the distinct impression that almost everything he said to us was a lie. There were holes in every aspect of his story.

There were pictures of Nathan that were on the front page of newspapers all over the world because everybody thought that this was a wild story.

It wouldn't work. My theory is that he was trying to make it look like he was deliberately altering the boat in a dangerous fashion.

He's very calculating. He wanted people to be able to point to, oh, no wonder the boat sank.

No, and he had ample opportunity because each of the times that he went into the wheelhouse to carry gear forward, he was within arm's length of the microphone for his VHF radio, a good one.

Yeah, right here. A microphone within arm's reach. And he came in here three times to get survival gear and bring it up to the bow. So he was within arm's length three times he could have picked it up.

I got an oceanographer to assess whether it was possible for him to drift in a life raft to where the Orient Lucky picked him up seven days later. And was it? Absolutely impossible. Physically impossible. I looked at drifting buoys.

The newspapers reported it as a tremendous win for Nathan. I wasn't too troubled by it.

He is very articulate when he wants to be, very exacting. but also very evasive.

The judge asked him, what's going on with your mother during all this time? And Nathan's peculiar answer was, my mother was part of the problem rather than the solution to a sinking boat.

I can't recall now. I've been under a lot of stress. Understandable. Financially, everything going on at home, having to expect me to remember every detail. That's why we're just asking. Okay.

I don't recall the exact time.

The caller is a fisherman on the Little Tutti, a boat docked for the night along the city's waterfront.