“Mama’s in the Graveyard, Papa’s in the Pen”: Why the Children of a Slaying Spouse Cannot Inherit

The trip to Tortola, in the British Virgin Islands, ended in tragedy. Shelley Tyre and David Swain, a couple in their sixth year of marriage, went there on a scuba-diving vacation, but Shelley never made it back. She drowned while diving down to a shipwreck at a site called Twin Tugs. Shelley’s death was at first ruled an accident by Caribbean authorities. David flew back to the U.S. with her body, and told her parents that she had died during a dive. He insisted that he didn’t know what happened; that, although they generally dive as a pair, he had left her and surfaced alone. Her body was later found floating 80 feet below the surface, near the shipwreck. When she was brought to the surface, David attempted CPR, but it was futile