Shelley's Last Breath

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0:43Tortola is a beautiful mountainous island in the Caribbean. It feels really exotic but really safe at the same time for a tourist. The ocean all around Tortola is beautiful, clear crystal water that you can see for several feet in. Tortola is gorgeous.

1:03My name is Jen Bloom and I'm the oldest child of David Swain. In March of 1999, my father and his wife Shelly put together a trip to Tortola. I felt so lucky that her and I had found each other and connected. She was just a phenomenal, wonderful woman. Shelly was absolutely passionate about diving. It excited her on every level. She loved adventure. That was one of the attractions. I'm an adventurous person. She's an adventurous person. On the last day of the trip, my father and Shelly and their friends decided they wanted to dive this site called the Twin Tugs. My father and Shelly decided to go into the water first.

1:49At some point they separated. They usually separated on dives. Shelly is specifically interested in her fish counting project. She had a slate and she would mark the kinds of fish she would see underwater. And I'd go off and take pictures. He wasn't enjoying himself. There wasn't a lot to see. I was a little chilly and it wasn't that great of a dive, so I decided to surface. And my father asked, had Shelly surfaced yet, because he didn't know where she was. The other diver decided to go in. And 10 minutes later, he came up with Shelly's body. My father went to start the whole CPR process, but she was already gone.

2:27She was not responding to anything, nothing. I know she's dead. He loved her so much, and he loved diving so much. And then to lose her to something he loved, No one deserves that. And most diving accidents, for all intents and purposes, appear to be just that, accidents. My name is Jeff Morgan. I'm an underwater forensic investigator. Shelley's equipment, the mask was broken. The mouthpiece from the snorkel was dislodged. That lends itself to believe that a struggle may have ensued underwater. It is very suspicious. She had a couple medical things that could have gone wrong. Was it a mild stroke or a mild heart attack?

3:17I didn't read anything in the autopsy report that would lead me to believe that it was a heart attack. Could have been a seizure. Could have been a headache. She could have panicked. Once panic sets in, almost every rule that you can think of is out the window. We don't know what happened to Shelly under 75 feet of water. I would characterize it as an accident. I truly do not believe that this was an accident. In my opinion, it was murder.

3:46Troy Roberts:Shelley's last breath.

3:54Troy Roberts:It was the Caribbean vacation Shelley Tyre had been looking forward to. Sunning, sailing, and scuba diving with her husband and friends in Tortola. And in March 1999, it finally happened. They put together a really fun trip, got to do a lot of different things, where they were sailing all around the British Virgin Islands, and they were diving off the sailboat they were living on. But on that fateful last dive, something went horribly, mysteriously wrong. Now, Shelley was dead, and the Tortola police wanted to talk to her husband, David Swain. He called his daughter, Jen. And he said, I'm so sorry.

4:35I wasn't with her. I don't know what happened. But Shelly died today. And he was crying and he was very upset. And he was doing his best to get her home. He said, the autopsy's going to happen. There's cops.

4:50Troy Roberts:Tortola police began questioning David about every detail of the dive. And the local medical examiner performed the autopsy. But no one could figure out just how Shelly died. So after a few days with no evidence of foul play Authorities ruled Shelley's death an accident and released her body to her husband It had been a really rough flight He had to load the coffin onto the plane himself and came off the plane David's son Jeremy came over to me and Jen and he gave us a hug and he said it's alright It's gonna be alright and he was genuinely hurt Shelly Tyre was swollen stature, but her impact on David and his children was enormous.

5:34Troy Roberts:And ten years after her death, David still remembers why he fell in love. She had a heart bigger than her. She had passions and drive that had no equal. A middle school principal at prestigious Thayer Academy outside Boston, Shelley was anything but straight-laced. The penguin plunge. Every New Year's Day on her frigid Rhode Island beach. 500 to 1 ,000 people all go racing into the 37-degree water. Shelley stripped down to her swimsuit. The water hits you, you get that sort of shock. Shelley turned this beet red color, goosebumps head to toe, shaking uncontrollably with a ear-to-ear grin. With such a love of adventure, it was no wonder Shelley found David Swain attractive.

6:25Troy Roberts:When she met him in the early 90s, the divorced father of two teens was running a dive shop in Jamestown, Rhode Island. The ocean was his passion. Then way back with this one to push and then you pull this one in a lot. My father is a teacher. He's a naturalist by nature. You only have so much energy anyway. He taught me and my brother that the most important thing in the world is to teach and share what you know and be excited about the ocean. What we'll do is we're going to paddle out around this point. On one of his kayaking tours, Shelley went along. Suddenly there was this lightning storm going on and my father just took charge of the whole thing and attached his boat to her boat and rowed them out of it.

7:03Troy Roberts:Shelley was impressed by David's courage and leadership. He moved in and in October 1993, they were married. Back then, Shelley earned far more money than David. Well, here we are at Ocean State School poolside. He says he sank nearly every dime into the dive shop. Shelly's parents were worried, so David signed a prenuptial agreement. He would get no money if he and Shelly divorced. Dad never cared about money. Shelly herself couldn't have cared less about money. She just decided this is it, this is the guy I want to be with. He loves adventure, he's not afraid, and he'll always be there. But on that dive in Tortola, even David admits he wasn't there when Shelly needed him.

7:49Troy Roberts:While their friends stayed on the boat, David and Shelly dove into the water. Swam our course that we had all agreed upon, got to the wrecks, and we went our separate ways, as we always did. David says he has no idea how Shelly died because he wasn't with her. And that's exactly what he told her parents, Richard and Lisa Tyre. We got a telephone call, and it was David. He said, Shelly's no longer with us. And he indicated he wasn't there and didn't know what had happened. I knew that they were unhappy with me when I made the phone call that night. We just assumed that divers always had buddies, the buddy system.

8:32And I kept saying, well, weren't you her buddy? And he said, no, I left her.

8:36Troy Roberts:You said you split up during the dive, which you said you normally do. But doesn't that go against standard practice? I'm not a diver. I understand that. How many times have you broken the speed limit? Every diver at one time or another is diving along. Shelly had done solo dives before, and David says he tried to help her parents understand what could have happened, explaining that even something small, like a headache, could have caused Shelly to lose control underwater and make a mistake. You think it's possible she just panicked? Sure, panic is the end result of something else. I don't know what factor got Shelly, but I think some factor got her started.

9:18Who knows what it was?

9:20Troy Roberts:In fact, Shelly had panicked on previous dives. She even wrote about it in her dive log, which David gave to her parents. But it didn't seem to help them. Because they're not divers. You know, unless you're a diver, this is going to be so foreign. It would be very foreign. But what was really foreign to her parents was how unemotional and matter-of-fact David seemed about Shelley's death. I'm just not, I'm not an outwardly warm, fuzzy guy. But your wife just died, and your behavior didn't seem appropriate for a man in mourning. My daughter saw it, my son saw it. But around Jamestown and at Shelley's school, the talk was about how well David was doing without Shelley.

10:05Troy Roberts:This isn't right. He's too related almost about this. This guy is too happy. Don Badger taught at Thayer Academy. He says David didn't appear to be in mourning, even at the school's memorial service just weeks after Shelley's death. There wasn't any solemnity to what he was saying, and it bothered so many of us there. It really did. Then, when David collected more than$600 ,000 from her estate, he started spending a lot of money very visibly, making pricey renovations to the dive shop, taking vacations, and even dating. People were looking for answers. David's friend and fellow scuba instructor John Langella says despite appearances, there's no doubt in his mind that David was grieving.

10:52I knew he was upset. He was not right. He didn't know what he was going to do. He didn't know if he could ever go back in the water. He called me and he said, I'm not doing well. when is this pain going to go away?

11:02Troy Roberts:Sandy Wheeler is David's ex-wife, Jen and Jeremy's mother, and has known him for 40 years. He was in a lot of pain, and he didn't know how to handle the pain. But if he was in pain, the people who needed him to express it most of all were Shelly's parents. And for whatever reason, David just could not do it. In the year or two after Shelly's death, He was not able to say the things that the tires needed to hear. When I heard through the grapevine that they were starting to throw the word murder around, I couldn't believe it. I still can't believe it. Every cell in my body wanted to go over there and just like knock on the door and say, are you insane?

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13:45Troy Roberts:This is just a horrible accident, a mystery. I don't have the answers. David Swain says his inability to explain Shelley's death led her parents to assume the worst. That he murdered their daughter. How did that make you feel, knowing that your in-laws thought you had killed their daughter? It made me sad, but... Not angry? They didn't know diving. One year after Shelley's death, the Tyers hired an attorney and sent him and his team of experts to Tortola in search of the answers David didn't have. We just want to know the facts. He never told us the facts. Over the course of several months, the team uncovered evidence they believe proves David was lying.

14:35Troy Roberts:We asked a leading expert in underwater investigations to examine their findings. In reviewing the facts in this case, this was much, much more than just a simple scuba diving accident. Sergeant Jeff Morgan with the San Bernardino, California Sheriff's Department offered to sift through case documents provided by 48 hours. He also attempted to replicate, underwater, key parts of Shelley and David's fatal dive. What first troubled Sergeant Morgan about the case was the short amount of time David performed CPR on Shelley. Typically, you don't start CPR until, as a rescuer, you can no longer perform it until you're exhausted.

15:18How long did you perform CPR? Hmm, that's the big magic question. Minutes. Was it five minutes? Was it ten minutes? Was it four minutes? I don't know. It was minutes. David was very emphatic that she's gone or she's dead. I don't think that's an appropriate response. I don't think that you can declare a person dead in that short of a time span. There was nothing left to do. Nothing. If you are performing CPR on somebody that is responsive, sure, I would have gone until hell froze over. But she was not responding to anything.

15:59Troy Roberts:But it wasn't just David's behavior that afternoon that raised red flags. Tortollan police discovered Shelly's equipment was damaged. The police didn't make much of it, but the expert hired by her family's attorney did. Engineer Bill Oliver designs scuba gear. What was unusual about Shelly's mask is the strap was broken from the side of the mask here, and where this pin here is intact on this mask, it was missing from hers. Shelly's snorkel attached to the same side of the mask as the broken pen was also missing its mouthpiece. My belief is something pulled the mask off of her face. And I can see a scenario where she resisted that, she held on to the mask, and in the tug of war, some things gave.

16:48Bottom line is, somebody intervened besides Shelly Tyre with this equipment to get it in that condition.

16:58Troy Roberts:Sergeant Jeff Morgan agrees. Shelley didn't die in an accident. She was murdered. What's more, he says only one person could have been responsible. In our reality, there was nobody else in the water at the time of Shelley's death but David Swain. I think that David swam up behind her and shut off the air supply, held on to her until she was struggling, reached up, grabbed the mask, ripped the mask from her face, and held on to her until she stopped struggling. Did you kill Shelley Tyre? Did not, would not, could not. This thought, this craziness that I would do something like that to Shelley is just so revolting.

17:50Troy Roberts:But the tires insist David had a motive. Right before the trip to Tortola, Shelley decided to change jobs and take a substantial cut in pay. The dive shop that David had was very much supported by Shelley's income. If Shelley was going to take a pay cut, his business may not survive. According to Sergeant Morgan, that, along with the couple's prenuptial agreement, meant Shelley was worth more to David dead. that are alive. That provides for a motive to commit murder. Everybody keeps thinking that I'm doing all this for money. I'm just as happy being flat broke as I am when I'm fat and rich. Probably happier flat broke.

18:35It's less hassle.

18:36Troy Roberts:The tires weren't buying it. They were now convinced David murdered their daughter. But authorities in Tortola still refused to rule Shelley's death a homicide. So in 2006, the tires sued David in a Rhode Island civil court for wrongful death. Is that part of the reason why you're fighting this? To keep Shelley's memory alive? Yes. Yes. Very much so. In a videotaped deposition, David testified he and Shelley swam together for 10 to 15 minutes before they separated. I have a vague recollection of circumnavigating the wrecks, poking around the wrecks, and seeing Shelly still interested in looking at something around there.

19:20And that's the last time I saw her as I swam off towards the reef.

19:25Troy Roberts:But the tires attorney tried to prove David was with Shelly when she drowned. Based on the air left in Shelly's tank, he calculates she stopped breathing just eight minutes into her dive. She battled for her life. At the point and place and time exactly when he was with her, She was burning her air. Right up to the point where he shut it off. He then showed the jury a videotaped demonstration that he and his team prepared, illustrating their theory of how David Swain swam up behind Shelly, turned off her air, and killed her. In less than three hours, He has a verdict. The jury found David Swain responsible for Shelley's death and awarded the Tires$3.5 million.

20:19Troy Roberts:But the Tires say this has never been about the money. Money has nothing to do with it. Nothing that's... We just want Shelley. Armed with a civil court victory, the Tires attorney convinced Tortolan authorities to reopen their investigation. A year and a half later, island prosecutors charged David Swain with the murder of his wife. David did not fight extradition and wound up in a Tartalan jail. What? Now what do we do? How do we... Who does this? With his trial now looming, Jen and Jeremy will travel to the island to help prove their father is innocent. But before they can do that, their father will first have to explain this woman.

21:22Troy Roberts:Ten years after his fatal vacation with Shelley, David Swain again has a Caribbean view. But this time, it's from inside a jail cell. in Her Majesty's prison on Tortola. He has been here awaiting trial for nearly two years. It's a journey that I didn't want to take, but if I'm forced to take it, I'm going to do the best I can with it. His children, Jen and Jeremy, have come to Tortola to help him prepare his defense. He's very hopeful. He believes. He has to believe. We all, all of us have to put 100 % of our belief into that this will be okay. This is a man's life we're talking about. Even as Jen and Jeremy are fighting for their father, their stepmother Shelly is still very much on their minds.

22:12I wanted to go to a place that would be special to me, where I could pay my respects and peace, doing something that Shelly and I shared, because Shelly and I used to dive together too. Hi. See you in a few. We went down the line, and I had her wreath up on my arm. There was a pipe, and I put the grease down on top of that. That was it. I said goodbye.

22:45Troy Roberts:Jeremy said goodbye, but could not let go of a troublesome detail. I went back a couple more times because what was coming up really bothered me. He was most bothered by claims that his father was with Shelly when she stopped breathing. Prosecution experts claim that the amount of air left in Shelly's tank showed that she was alive for only eight minutes. I went down to the site. I used that amount of air that she consumed, and it took me 15 minutes. Jeremy says the prosecution's eight-minute calculation doesn't add up. He says Shelly just wouldn't breathe air that quickly. Not if she was running a marathon under the water would she have ever used up air that fast.