TORTOLA, British Virgin Islands — A former Rhode Island politician on trial for murdering his wife on a scuba-diving vacation in the British Virgin Islands so he could run off with his lover as a wealthy widower will take the witness stand tomorrow, his lawyer said. "He'll be telling the truth. He loved his wife," Boston defense attorney Jeffrey Denner said of David Swain's anticipated high drama in Tortola's High Court. Swain, 52, was a town councilman in Jamestown, R.I., and owner of Ocean State Scuba. His wife, Shelley Tyre, 46, a middle school principal at Thayer Academy in Braintree, was found eyes open in 80 feet of water, her damaged breathing apparatus hanging from her face, on March 12, 1999. She was near the wreck of the RMS Rhone - a national park best known as the grouper-guarded ship Jacqueline Bisset plundered in a scandalous white T-shirt in the 1977 thriller "The Deep." Tortola authorities initially ruled Tyre's death an accidental drowning. For the past couple years, however, Swain - penniless despite inheriting $630,000 from his dead wife - has been a guest of Her Majesty's Prison due to the dogged determination of in-laws Richard and Lisa Tyre of Canton. The Tyres, both in their 80s, sued Swain for wrongful death in Rhode Island Superior Court and won in 2006, persuading officials in Tortola to reopen their daughter's case. Swain, said Denner, "doesn't know what happened" to his wife, as the pair swam off in different directions. Denner described the couple's relationsip as "a working marriage," toward the end of which Swain, who had a son and daughter from a previous marriage, flirted with a Rhode Island chiropractor. "I think he cared about her," Denner said of the doc. "I don't think it ever got off the ground." Swain and Tyre chartered a yacht on the last day of their Caribbean getaway with Rhode Island pals Christian and Bernice Thwaites. Prosecutors have keyed in on one of Tyre's swim fins, which was found apart from her embedded toe-first in the sand. "From that," Denner said, "they thought there should have been some violent interaction. That's so speculative. It could have been caused by panic. It could have been caused by some sea creature - a shark, a stingray, that didn't wait around to be interviewed. "There's no way of telling what happened down there," he said. "She was 80 feet down, by a wreck, in the Caribbean, by herself." | 
