David Swain Faces Murder Charges in Wife's Scuba Diving Death

And it only took ten years to bring the man to trial.

A prosecutor opened the trial of a Rhode Island man on Wednesday by accusing him of killing his wife while scuba diving in the British Virgin Islands to pursue a romance with another woman.

The director of public prosecutions in this British territory, Terrence Williams, said that David Swain knew a divorce would ruin him financially and he believed money from his wife's life insurance policy would help him win over his love interest.

"That dive was for this new woman," Williams told the nine-person jury.

The 1999 drowning of Shelley Tyre, 46, was initially ruled an accident. But authorities in the British Virgin Islands later charged Swain with murder after a 2006 Rhode Island civil trial found him responsible. Federal U.S. agents arrested Swain at his Rhode Island dive shop in November 2007 and he was extradited to Tortola.

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