PROVIDENCE, Rhode Island (17 Feb 2006) -- David Swain, accused of killing his wife almost seven years ago during a scuba-diving vacation, appeared briefly in the Superior Courthouse yesterday to meet privately with the judge presiding over his civil trial. Then, as an accountant in the adjacent courtroom prepared to tell a jury how Swain collected more than $570,000 after Shelley Tyre's death, Swain turned his back on the proceedings and walked outside. There on the sidewalk, the former Jamestown Town Council member explained why he had chosen not to defend himself against the allegation. "This is a tragic accident that is a personal matter between me and the Tyres" -- his former in-laws. "I didn't do it. To this day it's painful. . . . I feel for the Tyres. I'm sorry. They have the pain to deal with. I have pain to deal with, too. But the thought that we are going to work out this pain by going through this is absurd." "This issue of money -- and that's what this [trial] is -- is not something I want to be a part of," said Swain. But the wrongful-death suit that Richard Tyre, and his wife, Lisa, have brought against their former son-in-law isn't about money at all, says their lawyer, J. Renn Olenn. It's about justice. "They wanted to find out how their daughter died," Olenn said during a break in testimony. "And what they have discovered over the seven years was she was killed by her husband. Tortola authorities won't do anything, and Rhode Island authorities can't, and so it's up to them to see that justice gets done. A jury verdict announcing his responsibility for killing her is what they want." Whether he wants to or not, Swain will be participating in the trial come next Tuesday. Olenn has subpoenaed him to tesify. SHELLEY TYRE, 46, died on March 12, 1999, in the warm Caribbean waters off Tortola, in the British Virgin Islands. The Tortola police said at the time that Tyre and Swain, both experienced divers, became separated as they were diving over the wrecks of two tugboats. When Tyre did not surface, Swain and the husband of another couple vacationing with them found her on the bottom in about 80 feet of water. Police said they administered CPR after bringing her to the surface, but she had already drowned. The police ruled her death accidental "unless proven otherwise." FOR THREE DAYS now, Olenn has presented a series of witnesses to bolster the Tyres' contention that Swain killed their daughter for her money. The witnesses' testimony has gone unchallenged, as neither Swain nor an attorney representing him have been present. Olenn yesterday called to the stand Anthony D. Lee, a forensic accountant from Wayland, Mass., who said he had examined financial statements of Shelley Tyre, Swain and his Jamestown dive business, Ocean State Scuba. At the time of their 1993 marriage (the second for both), Lee said Tyre's assets totaled about $238,800 while Swain's may have reached $70,000 but were probably far less. Lee noted that during a deposition a few years ago, Swain said "he had nothing but a pickup and the clothes on his back" at the time he married Tyre. Lee said the couple depended entirely on Tyre's $70,000 salary as a principal at Thayer Academy in Braintree, Mass. Swain's dive shop was "basically a break-even operation," said Lee, and Tyre "was continually pumping money into Ocean State Scuba to keep it going." By the end of 1998, Lee said Swain and Tyre were "living on the edge financially." Still she decided to take a job at Rocky Hill School, in Warwick, that paid much less -- $44,000 a year. Olenn said in his opening statement to the jury that Tyre took the job because she believed her marriage was in trouble and thought that working closer to home might help salvage it. The new job "absolutely created a financial crisis" for the couple, said Lee. In his opening remarks to the jury on Tuesday, Olenn alleged that Swain had pursued an extramarital affair. A prenuptial agreement prevented Swain from receiving anything from Tyre if they divorced. After her death, Lee said, Swain collected $390,000 from two life-insurance policies. He also sold a Jamestown house Tyre owned for a $46,000 profit and became the recipient of $134,000 held in Tyre's bank and investment accounts. By the end of 2001, said Lee, Swain had amassed $570,000 in cash "on account of her death." | | PADI 5-Star IDC Ocean State Scuba owner David Swain is on trial for allegedly killing his wife while scuba diving in Tortola. But by February 2003, Lee testified, "it was all gone." "There was not $500 left in the investment accounts or bank accounts" and Swain's credit-card debt was skyrocketing. "He was taking extensive trips to the Caribbean and other cities in the United States -- just rolling up the debt," said Lee. Swain charged expenses to some two dozen credit cards, Lee said, and currently faces debts of about $189,000. OLENN ALSO HAD the jury watch the videotaped deposition of Dr. Thomas Neuman, a 30-year specialist in diving medicine who worked secretly with Navy submarine and SEAL commandoes. Neuman, who had reviewed Tyre's medical records, said the 5-foot, 1-inch woman was in good health, weighed 120 pounds, did not smoke and rarely, if ever, drank alcohol. She had logged at least 352 dives, was in good health, and had no reason to panic. Her air tank was at least two-thirds full and the dive site was a "benign" sand location, absent of any hazards such as fishing gear, which can sometimes entangle divers. What was suspicious, said Neuman, was the condition of Tyre's scuba equipment, recovered the next day. The strap of her mask hung loose and the strap's anchoring pin on the mask's frame was missing. So was the mouth piece of her snorkel. One of her swim fins was also found toe-first embedded in sand. A diving expert who had performed a test of Tyre's fin testified Wednesday that the fin sunk heel-first under normal conditions and suggested its odd finding might have been caused by some "external force" which had pulled the fin off Tyre's foot. THE JURY yesterday also heard the videotaped deposition of Sue Summer, a dive master on Tortola who testified she saw David Swain walking past her boat at a marina a day after Tyre died. "He had two drinks in hand and he appeared to be quite jovial," said Summer, like "someone would appear who is about to go on vacation." In fact, said Summer, "he was laughing." It was "strange behavior," she said, "for someone who had just had a fatality on their boat." In a chamber conference yesterday morning with Superior Court Judge Patricia A. Hurst, Swain filed a motion for dismissal of the case. Hurst said she would consider the motion later. In the meantime, the trial resumes this morning, again without Swain or a lawyer representing him. Outside the courthouse yesterday, Swain said it was too late to worry about what people may think. He did have two lawyers working on his case, he said, but one was a friend who had no trial experience and the other developed cancer. "People are going to form their own opinions," he said. The results of this case, "I don't think are going to sway a lot of people one way or another." SOURCE - The Providence Journal |
