48 Hours - Shelley's Last Breath

Episode Date: September 2, 2026

In 1999, Shelley Swain and her husband, David, began the vacation of their dreams on the beautiful Caribbean island of Tortola. They were avid divers and couldn’t wait to explore its crystal blue waters. But their adventure quickly turned into a nightmare when Shelley drowned and David was accused of killing her. "48 Hours" correspondent Troy Roberts reports. This classic "48 Hours" episode last aired on 9/8/2012. Watch all-new episodes of “48 Hours” on Saturdays and stream on demand on Paramount+.

Tortola 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. My name is Jen Bloom and I'm the oldest child of David Swain. In March of 1999, my father and his wife, Shelley, put together a trip to Tortola. 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 Shelley and their friends decided they wanted to dive

site called the Twin Tugs. My father and Shelley decided to go into the water first. At some point, they separated, they usually separated on dives. Shelley 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. It 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 him. had Shelley 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 Shelley's body. My father went to start the whole CPR process, but she was already gone. She 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. In most diving accidents, for all intensive 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? I 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. It 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 Shelley 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. Shelly's last breath. It was the Caribbean vacation Shelley Tire had been looking forward to. Sunny, 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 was a lot of.

went horribly, mysteriously wrong. Now, Shelly 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. I wasn't with her. I don't know what happened, but Shelley 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 is going to happen. There's cops. Turtola 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 Shelley died so after a few days with no evidence of foul play authorities ruled Shelley's death and 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 David's son Jeremy Came over to me and Jen, and he gave us a hug and he said, it's all right, it's going to be all right. And he was genuinely hurt. Shelly Tyre was swollen stature, but her impact on David and his children was enormous. And 10 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, Shelly 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. Shelly stripped down to her swimsuit. The water hit you, get that sort of shock.

Shelly turned this beet-red color, goose pumps, head to toe, shaking uncontrollably with a ear-to-ear grin. With such a love of adventure, it was no wonder Shelly found David Swain attractive. 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. Been 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, Shelly went along. Suddenly there was this lightning storm going on, and my father just took charge the whole thing and attached his boat to her boat and rode them out of it. 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 Scuba Poolside. He says he sank nearly every dive. 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 Shelley 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 Shelley was. needed him. While their friends stayed on the boat, David and Shelley dove into the water. Swam our course that we had all agreed upon, got to the wrecks, and we went our separate way, as we always did. David says he has no idea how Shelley died because he wasn't with her, and that's exactly what he told her parents, Richard and Lisa Tire. 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, and I kept saying, well, weren't you her buddy? And he said, no, I left her. 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 it. How many times have you broken the speed limit? every diver at one time another is diving alone. Shelly had done solo dyes 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? Is 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. Who knows what it was?

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 Shelly'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 Shelly. 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 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 rances. David's friend and fellow scuba instructor, John Langella, says despite appearances, there's no doubt in his mind that David was grieving.

I 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? 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 need him. needed him to express it most of all were Shelley's parents. And for whatever reason, David just could not do it.

In the year or two after Shelley's death, he was not able to say the things that the tires needed to hear. When I heard through the grape line that they were starting to throw the word murderer around, I couldn't believe it. I still can't believe it. Every cell in my body wanted to go over there and just knock on the door and say, are you insane? Diving is a beautiful sport that's inherently dangerous,

and it went horribly wrong. And accidents happen. 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? Sad. Sad. It made me sad, but... Not angry? They didn't know diving. One year after Shelley's death, the Tires 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. 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 sit through case documents provided by 48 hours. He also attempted to replicate underwater key parts of Shelley and David's fatal dive.

anywhere right around in here. What first troubled Sergeant Morgan about the case was the short amount of time David performed CPR on Shelley. Typically, you don't stop CPR until as a rescuer, you can no longer perform it until you're exhausted. How long did you perform CPR? Hmm, that's the big magic question. Minutes.

Was it five minutes? Was it 10 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. But it wasn't just David's behavior that afternoon

that raised red flags. Turtolan police discovered Shelley'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 Shelley'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. Shelley's snorkel attached to the same side of the mask as the broken pin, was also missing its mouthpiece. My belief is something pulled the mask off of her face. And I can see in a scenario where she resisted that, she held onto the mask, and in the tug war, some things gave.

Bottom line is, somebody intervened besides Shelly Tyre with this equipment to get it in that condition. Sergeant Jeff Morgan agrees. Shelly didn't die in an accident. 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 Siali'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 Shelly Tyre? Did not, would not, could not. This thought, this craziness that I would do something like that to Shelly is just so revolting. But the tires insist David had a motive. Right before the trip to Tortola, Shelly 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 than 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 a flat rope. It's less hassle.

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 videotape 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. And that's the last time I saw her as I swam off towards the rear. But the Tire's 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 videotape demonstration that he and his team prepared,

illustrating their theory of how David Swain swam up behind Shelley, turned off her heir and killed her. In less than three hours, the jury found David Swain responsible for Shelley's death and awarded the Tires $3.5 million. But the Tires say this has never been about the money. Money has nothing to do with it. Nothing.

We just want Shelly. Armed with a civil court victory, the Tire's attorney convinced her told 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 tortolan 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 be able to have to explain. This woman, 10 years after his fatal vacation with Shelly, 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 church. 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, Shelley, is still very much on their minds. I wanted to go to a place that would be special to me where I could pay my respects in peace, doing something that Shelley and I.

shared because Shale and I used to dive together too. See you have a few. We went down the line when I had her wreath up on my arm. There was a pipe, and I put the brief down on top of that. That was it. I said, I said goodbye. 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 claimed 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.

The only explanation, according to Jeremy, is that Shelley was alive a lot longer than prosecution experts believe, meaning David would have been long gone and nearly back to the boat at the time of Shelley's death. The only thing that everybody can agree on is that there was some external force applied to her equipment. For his criminal trial, David has the help of two experienced Boston defense attorneys, Tim Braddle and Neil Tassel. They argue that Shelly could have ripped off her own mask in a panic.

It's right in the Patty Beginners Manual. Panic divers are prone to reject their gear. In other words, ripped their mask off. You believe that. She panicked underwater. Absolutely. That's what all the evidence appears to be. Now with these lawyers helping to prepare for the criminal trial, David's children are

feeling hopeful about their chances. We know the truth is on our side, so we actually have the upper hand. If you just stay with the truth, it's all going to be good. But staying with the truth will mean talking about another possible motive for murder. About a year before Shelley's death, David got very friendly with a chiropractor who visited his dive shop named Mary Bassler. Mary Bacheler came along, bright, happy woman, willing to talk. Mary Bassler might have been willing to talk, but when David kissed her one summer night, she told him she was not willing to get involved with a married man.

I'm as guilty of being curious beyond what I should have as anybody. Perhaps still curious, David wrote Mary that fall, inviting her to spend the weekend with him in Killington, Vermont. The letter said, I promised to return you in a rejuvenated state or in need of rest, whichever strikes our fancy. You invited her to Killington for the weekend. Wasn't that going to be the beginning of something?

No. It was just going to be a friendly, Weekend and Killington? You make it sound like a guy can't have a girlfriend. Does your wife know that you invited her? No. Mary didn't go to Killington, but soon David wrote Mary again, telling her, I'm wanting to be with you,

but I can't change this mess I've got anytime soon. You made a reference to a mess that you need to get out of. Well, I think I made a mess by letting my curiosity get the best of me. You weren't describing your marriage to Shelley as a mess. No. David addressed that letter to soulmate Mary. You thought Mary was your soulmate? It's a nice word, isn't it?

Did you envision a future with Mary Basta? At that time, no. But according to both David and Mary, after that kiss, nothing happened between them. It was a stupid, inconsiderate mistake. That is, until Shelley Tire died. Two months after the fatal trip to Tortola, David Swain and Mary Bassler started a relationship. When my father started dating Mary soon after Shelley's death, I remember thinking he's running. He's never dealt with emotion in a strong way.

It's starting to come up, and so he's running to this woman. David and Mary dated for about a year. I don't think it's about whether he was having an affair or not. It's about whether he killed his wife or not. David's ex-wife, Sandy Wheeler. I asked him straight out, did you do this? And he said, no, I did not do this. And I believe him.

What prompted you to ask him, did he kill Shelley Tire? I think I just needed to hear it from him. I never thought he did it, but I think I just needed to hear it from him. You were married for 12 years? Yeah. And within that time, did you ever see a violent side? Never. To David.

No. Never. But it turns out David's early life was far from peaceful. David was a person who kind of wanted to leave things. The past is the past. And now, with his life on the line, David Swain's defense will delve into secrets he has protected for decades. His mother died the first year. We were together.

From what? She was killed. They went from respecting him as the man that their daughter chose to spend the rest of alive with to calling him a murderer. They basically made him the scapego for a mystery that can't be solved. While the mystery may never be solved, Jen and Jeremy are hoping at the very least, evidence presented in a Tortola court can convince the tires that their father is an innocent man.

He's never given us reason to doubt him. He's a quiet guy. a reserved guy. He doesn't express himself particularly well. I really feel in a big way that those things put him in jail. It was, after all, David's unemotional, strangely detached response to Shelley's death that first raised the suspicions of her parents. But Jen says that's the way her dad has always been. My father was uncomfortable around emotion and emotional experiences. And I never, ever saw him upset. That dispassionate demeanor, says Jen,

is the product of an unspeakably horrific past. He grew up in a very complicated and abusive household. There was sexual and verbal abuse going on. When David was nine years old, his father, Donald Swain, was convicted of sexually abusing another young family member and sentenced to two years in prison. He grew up learning to not speak about things, Because it just made it worse when he did.

David says he too was preyed upon by his father. What happened to you at the hands of your father? Horrible things. Can you share some of them? No, I'm not going to share those. In the early 1970s, Donald Swain began living as a woman and changed his name to Diane. It seemed to leave another scar on David.

But it was in 1976 and many of the men. Minneapolis, Minnesota, that David's already fragile world completely shattered. His brother murdered his mother when I was a baby. 47-year-old Betty Swain was bludgeon to death. By her own son, David's 18-year-old brother, Richard. Your own brother kills your mother? Yes. How did that affect you?

Horrible. That was just another... incredible loss. David was 20 years old when his mother's body was found in the family station wagon five miles away from her home. Sons don't kill mothers. Former Minneapolis assistant district attorney Jim Erickson remembers Betty Swain's murder for its brutality. I think a garbage bag was put on her head and she was then hit again and again. There was plastic embedded deep in her head in her skull. After a nine-day-long trial, a jury found Richard Swain guilty. This kid killed his mom. He just snapped.

33 years later, David Swain, just like his brother, stands accused of murder. No shortage of tragedy in our lives. I don't know if you've had the occasion to suffer a loss where you didn't get to say goodbye, but I've had two now, and then that's just... As David's trial approaches, his attorney's Neil Tassel and Tim Bradle hoped to use the traumas of David's past to explain how his bizarre response to Shelley's drowning, turn an accident into an accusation of murder. He is a peculiar personality who, because of his traumatic upbringing, deals with emotional events in a very stunted way. And it was misperceived by Shelley's parents who essentially started a boulder rolling down off a mountain

that was not going to stop. But the defense's biggest worry, what will happen when this emotionally crippled man takes the stand to defend himself in court? I can't control what's going to happen. I just have to let it happen. He's scared, as anyone would be, thousands of miles away from home, accused of murder.

Ten years after Shelley Tire's death, David Swain's murder trial in Tortola is finally underway. Shelley's elderly parents have flown in, determined to see justice done. They lost their daughter, and we'll never know how. They know they'll never know how. For Jen and Jeremy, seeing the two people who they once consider their grandparents is particularly painful. The times that I tried to connect with them over the grief of losing, in Shelly, it was rebuffed. They don't want anything to do with me.

But they were forced to sit uncomfortably close to each other in the tiny courtroom. Cameras were not allowed, but microphones recorded the moment when prosecutor Terrence Williams laid out David's motive for murder, money, and another woman. This man here, his wife is killed, and all his dreams came true. All his dreams came true. Most damning, says the prosecutor. Within months of burying his dead wife, David rekindles his relationship with Mary Batchelor. The wife dies in March, and by May, they are having intimacy.

It painted David Swain in a very bad light. David's defense team is working with local council, Hayden St. Clair Douglas. It was a jury of nine people, seven of whom were women. Women jurors who he believes won't like the idea of David dating Mary so soon after Shelley's death. But that's not the defense team's only worry. Prosecutors show the jury Shelley's damaged diving gear, tell them how David stopped giving her CPR, and present their theory that David held her down and turned her air off.

They had to come up with some kind of scary story that would make the jurors who are not divers all say, oh, that's what happened. David's only chance, take the stand to defend himself. His defense attorney questions him first. Did you kill Shelley Tyre? I did not, could not, would not dream of taking

the rock of my life out of the world. No, I did not. Did you in any way deprive Shelley Tyre of ill? The last thing in the world is I would deprive Shelley of anything. So I certainly didn't deprive her of air. Then the prosecutor tries to rattle David. You held her down. I did not.

And made her become unconscious. I did not. David begins to lose his patience when prosecutor Williams pushes him about those letters he wrote to Mary Bassler, calling her his soulmate and inviting her to spend the weekend. You desired her. I certainly desired her friendship. You desired her the sexual nature?

Not the way you're suggesting, no. Do you often write, love letter? to ladies? No. These are not a love letter. This is not a love letter. This is not a love letter. Okay.

You came off as arrogant, a little hostile, smug. What were you thinking when you were up there? I mean, this is a moment for you to win sympathy from the jurors, to make a connection with them. And how well do you know me? Not well at all. But I know how you're supposed to comport yourself if your life is on the line. life is on the line.

So you would want me to be something I'm not. I am what I am. I think people would want the truth. In what seems like a fatal blow to the defense, the judge refuses to allow certain testimony about how long Shelley was alive underwater. We had data on her air consumption that was derived from her own dive logs.

A defense expert was prepared to testify that Shelley's last breath occurred more than 20 minutes into the dive. long after David says he left her side. Unfortunately, the judge viewed our data with suspicion, and I don't know why. But the prosecution does present its evidence that Shelley died eight minutes into the dive,

when they say David was still with her. That's when I started to get really scared. That was the first day I thought we could lose. Now it's all up to the jury. It takes them only four hours. only four hours to reach a verdict. Up until I saw the jury walking in, I was pretty hopeful. Guilty of the offense of murder.

David Swain has been found guilty of the murder of his wife, Sherry Tarry. David Swain is sentenced to life behind bars. As authorities take their father away, his children are stunned and angry. I have never doubted my father's innocence. He is completely innocent. The jury made a mistake today. They made a mistake today. did not allow our witnesses to say their full share.

Our father is an innocent man. But Richard and Lisa Tyers say that they know the truth, and they thought their long journey to get justice for Shelley had ended. We feel extremely good that people like David Swain won't be able to hurt any more women. From his Tortola jail cell, David Swain could still see the ocean he loved so much.

He could even taste the salt. in the air, but he wondered if it would ever wash over him again. Do you think you'll ever walk? We'll ever walk out of here as a free person. To not think that would be to give up. I'm not going to give up. Swain did not give up. Two years after his conviction, a three-judge panel overturned his guilty verdict

because the trial judge have refused to let the jury consider accidental death as a defense. The judges also decided there would be no new trial. Too much time has passed and witness memories have faded since Shelley's death more than a decade ago. David Swain walked out of court a free man. No judicial body has declared him innocent. The Tire's attorney, Ren Olin, spoke for the family. And two distinctly different juries have found him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of the murder of Shelly Tyre. Swain quickly returned to the United States and issued a written statement still insisting

Shelley's death was an accident. But for the Tire family, David Swain is still a guilty man. For a parent whose daughter has been murdered, it will never go away. David Swain died in 2022.