Former Politician Almost Gets Ways with the Perfect Murder

A former politician, David Swain, 53, a diving shop owner and former council member in Jamestown, Rhode Island, faces life behind bars after being found guilty of drowning his wife, Shelley Tyre, 46, during a scuba-diving trip in what prosecutors called a near perfect murder in the British Virgin Islands in March 1999.

Swain and his wife, a headmistress in the Boston area, went to Tortola in 1999 for a romantic Caribbean getaway. On the last day of their holiday, Ms Tyre was found dead in 80ft of water with her damaged mask hanging from her face and her mouthpiece missing. One of her flippers was found embedded toe-first in the sand.

The couple had been diving near the wreck of RMS Rhone, a Royal Mail Steam Packet Company vessel that sank in a hurricane in 1867. Island authorities ruled the death an accident and allowed Swain to take his wife's body home, but her parents sued and won $3.5 million in damages.

They said that Swain, who had inherited $630,000 from his wife, would not have got anything under a prenuptial agreement if he had divorced her.

Police at first wrote off Shelley Tyre's drowning as a tragic accident, a strange but otherwise unremarkable death of an experienced diver on a romantic getaway to one of the hemisphere's premier dive spots. Swain testified he tried to revive using CPR following a mysterious accident. But Ms Tyre's parents suspected that Swain had killed her and wouldn't let it drop, pursued a murder trial.

No eyewitnesses or DNA evidence linked Mr. Swain to the murder. The prosecution's case rested largely on experts who testified they believed Mr. Swain wrestled his wife from behind, tore off her scuba mask and shut off her air supply while they swam near the shipwreck. Her mask was damaged, the mouthpiece of her snorkel was missing, and her fin was found embedded in a sandbar. All signs of a struggle, prosecution witnesses said.

Tom Neuman, an expert on diving deaths, said medical records indicated that Ms Tyre died about eight minutes into her dive. The torn mask and embedded fin "bespeaks some sort of violent activity", he said. "This is a pretty benign place to dive. There is not a lot there that would cause a diver to panic."

Bruce Allen Hyma, chief pathologist at Schneider Hospital in the US Virgin Islands, told the court: "This death is not a natural death. It is not a suicide. It is not an accident. It is a homicidal drowning."

Prosecutors said that Swain's intention was to run off with Mary Basler, his chiropractor lover, who testified that she had become intimate with him about two months after his wife's death.

In court, Swain said that he and his wife had gone their separate ways under water and that he had tried to resuscitate her when a friend found her body. "It was a horrible vision, seeing her with open mouth and open eyes," he told the court. "I did not, could not, would not dream of taking the rock of my life out of this world."

But defense lawyers maintained the poorly done autopsy report could not rule out medical reasons for her death, including the possibility that she suffered a heart attack or stroke during what they say was an accidental drowning.

The defense called it a weak case that lacked physical evidence and was built on speculative theories and circumstantial evidence they argued were designed to roil the emotions of the jury. No witnesses or DNA evidence linked Swain to the death.

Some witnesses testified Swain did not appear to be sincere in his subdued grief after Ms Tyre drowned. The prosecutor described his manner as "arrogant", and defense lawyer Hayden St Clair-Douglas urged the jury to discard any feelings of "dislike" they might have towards Swain.

On Nov. 10th, 2009, Justice Indra Hariprashad-Charles, a British Virgin Islands judge ruled today that a former Rhode Island dive shop owner must serve at least 25 years of a mandatory life sentence for killing his wife, rejecting his lawyers' bid for leniency. The judge said the premeditated nature of the crime bound her to deny a defense request that Mr. Swain become eligible for parole after 18 years in prison. "It is my view that this murder was carefully planned and premeditated and calls for stiff punishment," the judge said.

The judge granted Mr. Swain about two years credit for time served. He is to serve his sentence at Her Majesty's Prison at Balsam Ghut on Tortola, a mountainous island about east of Puerto Rico.

A jury unanimously convicted Mr. Swain on Oct. 27 of murdering Shelley Tyre in what authorities portrayed as a near-perfect crime.