Shelley's Last Breath

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
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**Jen Bloom** (0:11)
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.

**David Swain** (0:43)
I felt so lucky that her and I had found each other and connected. She was just a phenomenal, wonderful woman.

**Jen Bloom** (0:53)
Shelley was absolutely passionate about diving. It excited her on every level.

**David Swain** (0:58)
She loved adventure. That was one of the attractions.
I'm an adventurous person. She's an adventurous person.

**Jen Bloom** (1:06)
On the last day of the trip, my father and Shelley and their friends decided they wanted to dive this 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.

**David Swain** (1:31)
And I'd go off and take pictures.

**SPEAKER_5** (1:33)
He wasn't enjoying himself.

**Sandy Wheeler** (1:35)
It wasn't a lot to see.

**David Swain** (1:36)
I was a little chilly, and it wasn't that great of a dive, so I decided to surface.

**Jen Bloom** (1:39)
And my father asked, had Shelley surfaced yet, because he didn't know where she was. The other diver decided to go in.

**Sandy Wheeler** (1:46)
And 10 minutes later, he came up with Shelley's body.

**Jen Bloom** (1:49)
My father went to start the whole CPR process, and she was already gone.

**David Swain** (1:55)
She was not responding to anything, nothing. I know she's dead.

**Jen Bloom** (2:01)
He loved her so much, and he loved diving so much. And then to lose her to something he loved, no one deserves that.

**Jeff Morgan** (2:12)
And most diving accidents, for all intents and purposes, appear to be just that, accidents.
My name is Jeff Morgan. I'm an underwater forensic investigator.
Shelly'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.

**Jen Bloom** (2:38)
She had a couple medical things that could have gone wrong.

**David Swain** (2:42)
Was it a mild stroke or a mild heart attack?

**Jeff Morgan** (2:46)
I didn't read anything in the autopsy report that would lead me to believe that it was a heart attack.

**Jen Bloom** (2:51)
It could have been a seizure. It could have been a headache. She could have panicked.

**David Swain** (2:55)
Once panic sets in, almost every rule that you can think of is out the window.

**Jen Bloom** (3:00)
We don't know what happened to Shelley under 75 feet of water. I would characterize it as an accident.

**Jeff Morgan** (3:05)
I truly do not believe that this was an accident. In my opinion, it was murder.

**SPEAKER_8** (3:14)
Shelley's last breath.

**Troy Roberts** (3:23)
It was the Caribbean vacation Shelley Tyre had been looking forward to. Sunning, sailing and scuba diving with her husband and friends in Tortola.
And in March 1999, it finally happened.

**Jen Bloom** (3:37)
They put together a really fun trip. I 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.

**Troy Roberts** (3:47)
But on that fateful last dive, something went horribly, mysteriously wrong. Now, Shelley was dead, and the Tortola police wanted to talk to her husband, David Swain.
He called his daughter, Jen.

**Jen Bloom** (4:02)
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.

**Troy Roberts** (4:18)
Tortola 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 an accident and released her body to her husband.

**Jen Bloom** (4:39)
It had been a really rough flight. He had to load the coffin onto the plane himself.

**Jeremy Swain** (4:44)
So he came off the plane.