JAMESTOWN, Rhode Island — Federal marshals came and took David Swain away in the fall of 2007, took him from right behind the counter of his beloved (PADI) dive shop in Jamestown, armed with a murder warrant from Tortola. Within months Ocean State Scuba closed. Weeds took over the gravel lot and the water in the pool began turning a murky green. Now, while Swain still sits in a Caribbean prison awaiting trial on a charge that he killed his wife, Shelley Tyre, while on vacation 10 years ago, the shop that so defined the former town councilman may soon disappear. Jamestown officials are considering a proposal to turn the abandoned North Main Road business into 10 units of affordable housing. Church Community Housing Corporation, a nonprofit group based in Newport, wants to buy the property from Shelley Tyre's estate this September and begin construction next spring, says its executive director, Stephen Ostiguy. Councilwoman Barbara A. Szepatowski spearheaded the idea, which she says town leaders greeted with great excitement "and a sigh of relief." "There will be nothing that makes up for Shelley Tyre's death," Szepatowski said. "Shelley was a wonderful person. She died and if out of it we can have some seniors who can't afford to stay in their homes live there, or some town workers who can save up for one of these places, well at least something positive has come from all of it." In the final years of her life, Tyre, who drowned in March 1999 while scuba diving with Swain off Tortola, bought the property and kept the dive shop afloat with her salary as a headmistress at a private school in Massachusetts. Like Swain, Tyre, 46, was an experienced diver. Tortola officials initially ruled her death an accident. But in 2002, her parents, unsatisfied with Swain's inability to explain how Tyre had died — Swain has said the two separated during the fatal dive and her death is an unexplained accident — filed a wrongful-death suit against their son-in-law. During a civil trial in 2006, the Tyres' lawyer, J. Renn Olenn, presented several expert witnesses who advanced his theory that Swain had drowned Shelley Tyre for her money and at a time when he was seeing another woman. A second marriage for both, a prenuptial agreement prohibited Swain from getting any of Tyre's assets if they divorced. Much of the circumstantial evidence centered on Tyre's broken face mask, her missing snorkel mouthpiece and one of her flippers sticking into the sand. Olenn's experts testified the equipment indicated a violent struggle. They said Tyre died within a few minutes after she and Swain had descended some 80 feet down a mooring line and then swam along the sandy bottom to a pair of shipwrecks, where Tyre was later found. Swain put on no defense at the civil trial and Olenn's claims went unchallenged. A jury determined Swain had drowned Tyre and awarded her parents millions of dollars in damages. But the repercussions were far greater. Tortola officials reopened the case and based largely on the testimony of Olenn's witnesses, charged Swain, in 2007, with murder. Swain's trial is expected to begin this October. By then the purchase of his former dive shop hopefully will be completed, said Szepatowski. (Swain lost any holding to the property in Probate Court following the civil verdict against him.) The half-dozen lien holders on the property have signed off on the proposal, she said, to build 10 two-bedroom apartments on the property with a monthly rent of about $1,100. "The town of Jamestown was so excited we were getting this, that we gave [the church corporation] $60,000 in free water and sewer hook ups," said Szepatowski. In return, the corporation is considering using the pool where Swain once trained divers, to hold a rain-water cistern. by Tom Mooney | 
