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Speaker 1: School of Humans. Helen Gone Murder Line actively investigates cold case murders in an effort to raise public awareness, invite witnesses to come forward, and present evidence that could potentially be further investigated by law enforcement. While we value insights from family and community members, their statements should not be considered evidence and point to the challenges of verifying facts inherent in cold cases. We remind listeners that everyone is presumed innocent until proven.
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Speaker 2: Guilty in a court of law.
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Speaker 1: Nothing in the podcast is intended to state or imply that anyone who has not been convicted of a crime is guilty of any wrongdoing.
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Speaker 2: Thanks for listening.
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Speaker 3: But in this case, the suspicious activity wasn't from anything that was actually going on.
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Speaker 2: It was kind of the opposite.
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Speaker 3: The neighbors were concerned because things were a little bit too quiet. They had their eyes on a little one-story White House at 1033 Flushing Avenue, where 88-year-old David Swan and his wife, 80-year-old Mina Swan, lived. They had lived in that home for the past 20 years. Mina had actually lived there for 40 years. This was a second marriage for both David and Mina. She had lived there with her first husband until he passed away and then later made a home there with David, her second husband. According to friends and family, David and Mina were in a very happy marriage and they had no known enemies. And they had a really regular routine. They always came out to get their newspaper. They had a neighbor across the street named Joel Locke who lived there with his father, John Locke. Now, Joel told police that he last saw the Swans on Thursday afternoon at around 3 p.m. Then, on Friday, they never walked outside to get the paper. Then, over the weekend, Joel said he noticed that the Swans' lights were on, but again, on Saturday, there was no sign of either David or Amina.
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Speaker 2: So by Saturday, he told police he was getting concerned.
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Speaker 3: David and Mina had married later in life, so they never had any children together. But they had seven children between them. Both of them were involved in each other's children's lives. The families were close. Finally, on Saturday, a little before 2 p.m., Joel got in touch with Mina's daughter, Noelle Devine. It says in media reports that Noelle had a key to the house. But in the end, she didn't need to use it because Noelle came to the neighborhood she lived nearby... And she and Joel approached David and Mina's house. They went in through the back door and it was unlocked. And what they saw when they walked in that house was horrific. David and Mina were at the kitchen table, slumped over in pools of blood. Forensic testing revealed they had been dead for at least a day. Joel Locke told WFLA News Channel 8, Noel could not handle it. She ran out the door and I was with her right behind, end quote. David and Mina were shot execution style. They were sitting at the kitchen table. David had been shot once, Mina multiple times. There was nothing stolen and no sign of forced entry. Of course, there were a lot of media reports after this case because it was shocking, the murder of two elderly people. And what we kept hearing on the news was that this shocked the town of Clearwater, which is a place probably best known for having a large presence of Scientology church members. A few early commenters on the case kind of wondered if Scientologists could have had something to do with it. But let me just say right off the bat, there is zero indication that Scientology had anything to do with these murders. So before I get a lot of calls, I just want to say that up front. All we heard on the news was that David and Mina were this super happy older couple. And the headline has basically been, who would want to kill this nice elderly couple who had no known enemies? But as Hell and Gone listeners know, I always try to look beyond the headlines. So I've spent a lot of time doing a deep dive into the probate records that followed these deaths. By the way, thank you Pinellas County, Florida, because this county does have a really good open record system. Now, Joel Locke, the neighbor, gave more details to another news organization. He said that when he was in that kitchen, he saw signs that food had been prepared. He said, quote, she, meaning Mina, was face down and he was on his back. She was on one side of the coffee table. He was on the other side. So, at least in the beginning, it seems as though they were just hanging out at home about to eat dinner when the killer walked in and shot them.
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Speaker 2: Their obituaries focused.
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Speaker 3: On how happy David and Mina Swan were. According to his obituary, after retirement, David had fulfilled a lifelong dream of travel. He and Mina loved to have new adventures. He hiked the Appalachian Trail in 2002, and his trail name was Twinkle Toes. Mina hiked part of it with him, and her trail name was Artsy because she had been an art teacher. David had a private pilot's license. He and Mina traveled everywhere. They went to Europe, China, Chile, Argentina, the Panama Canal, Australia, New Zealand, the South Pacific.
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Speaker 2: This list goes on and on.
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Speaker 3: But again, even though they appeared to be living this idyllic lifestyle, and apparently David had been this very successful CPA who was retired, I wondered what the real story was. because now the police have admitted they're pretty much stumped. After these murders, they had no time of death and no suspects. And over three years later, this case is still unsolved. So who could have killed David and Minus One? Could it be someone like a tradesperson? Could it be a serial killer or someone targeting elderly residents? Or could it be one of David's former business associates from Chicago? Or was it someone a lot closer to home? I'm Katherine Townsend. This is Hell and Gone Murder Line. If you have a case you'd like me and my team to look into, you can reach out to us at our Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145.
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Speaker 2: That's 678-744-6145.
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Speaker 3: A week after David and Mina Swan's bodies were found, Chief Daniel Slaughter of the Clearwater Police Department held a press conference to talk about the murders.
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Speaker 2: This is what he said.
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Speaker 4: What I can share in the investigation is that David and Mina were seen alive on Thursday, September 27th in the early afternoon. From the investigation... We are looking closely at a 24-hour window from Thursday, September 27th, around 3 p.m. to Friday, September 28th, about the same time, 3 p.m. Although our investigation is looking closely at that window as a suspected period of time when these two murders occurred, the investigators are also looking at leads outside of that window. I can share that David and Mina were both shot and killed, and as previously reported, are homicide victims. The evidence does not indicate that the offender committed I'm sorry, the evidence does indicate that the offender came with the intent to kill David and Mina. This does not appear to be a random event. Being vigilant and following simple common crime prevention techniques like locking your doors, your car doors, your home doors, your garage doors is always a very prudent thing to do for safety. But we do not believe there is any reason for the rest of the community to be concerned. Clearwater detectives and Pinellas County Sheriff's Office forensic specialists spent over 40 hours working in the crime scene, documenting the crime scene, processing the crime scene, and collecting trace evidence. The collection of trace evidence is very time-consuming. Any person that entered the Swan home would leave trace evidence behind, and that would be in the form of hair, fibers, skin cells, touch DNA, a variety of different things. Those traceable substances would be very vitally important for our investigation, and so it's very important that we collect them in a very methodical manner and in a very appropriate manner. We know that in murder cases, there's usually some form of a victim-offender relationship. Investigators will therefore speak to anyone that had a relationship with the Swans, whether it's family, friends, or business dealings. We're going to talk to everyone and anyone involved or connected to the family until we get.
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Speaker 5: To the bottom of it.
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Speaker 3: So let's break down those statements. First, Chief Slaughter kind of clarified the window of time when David and Mina were killed. The last time the Swans were seen alive that was verifiable was Thursday, September 27th at around 3 p.m. Remember, that's when the neighbors saw them come outside and pick up those newspapers. They didn't come out of their house on Friday or Saturday when Noel and Joel went into the house. So this is why investigators were concentrating on the 24-hour window between Thursday at 3 p.m.
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Speaker 2: And Friday at 3 p.m.
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Speaker 3: If the neighbor's reports are true, if the lights were left on all night on Thursday night, Thursday night, in my opinion, becomes the most likely time when they could have been murdered, especially if we believe Joel, if there was food on the counter that looked like they were about to eat dinner. The lights were on and the door was unlocked. Also, the Tampa Bay Times talked to a neighbor named Bob Anderson. Bob said his wife had gone by the Swan House on Friday to drop off some pamphlets.
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Speaker 2: And that nobody answered the door.
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Speaker 3: Noelle talked to reporters about her experience going into the house. She said, quote, when I heard the papers were building up, I just panicked, end quote. As she drove to her mother's house, she said that she was trying to tell herself there could be a rational explanation. Maybe her mom and stepdad went off on a last minute trip. Then once she went into that house and saw those bodies, her world fell apart. She said, quote, At the press conference and also later.
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Speaker 3: Law enforcement's made a point to say this was likely an isolated attack. And they said the community did not need to be worried, which I always think is a little bit misleading because what they mean is that this is a person who is targeting this one specifically. It's not some random person out there. But in my opinion, if someone killed a person, whatever their motivation was, and they're still out there, someone could find out about those killings, confront that person, and.
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Speaker 2: They could be in danger.
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Speaker 3: So I get what the police are trying to do here. They don't want the community to panic. But I do feel like, and I hear this statement often about the public not needing to be concerned. I don't think it's always that valid. So let's take a closer look at this couple. We're going to see very soon that there are two different versions of their life story that start to emerge. The official version and what I call kind of the unofficial version. This isn't meant with any kind of disrespect at all, by the way. Everyone has secrets. But sometimes if you want to find out who killed someone, who wanted them dead, you have to look behind some of these headlines that are just superficial. You have to try and discover some of their secrets. So we know the killing was very personal and that the Swans were targeted. So the question is, who could have wanted to kill them and why? David Sidney Swan Jr., and this is from his obituary, was born on April 15, 1930.
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Speaker 2: He was raised in Shreveport, Louisiana.
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Speaker 3: He enlisted in the Navy, and after his naval service, he went to work for an accounting firm called Swifton Company in Chicago. He met his first wife, whose name was Eva Sorenson, in Chicago. He graduated from Northwestern University and became a CPA. He later worked at another firm, and he and his wife had four kids, Julia, Janet, Stephen, and a son named David. So David and his first wife raised their family. Then in the early 1980s, they moved to Clearwater, Florida. David set up his own practice doing taxes, and eventually David and.
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Speaker 2: His first wife retired there. That's what I saw in the obituary.
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Speaker 3: But there's something in that part of my brain that gets activated when I have insomnia, which is often. So one night I woke up and started looking through court records. It was like 2 a.m. that night, and I found some court documents that mentioned a woman connected to David Swan named Mae Swan. These court documents said that David was divorced from this woman. But I noticed that this alleged second wife was apparently never mentioned in his obituary. So that just got me wondering, why not? Why would that not be mentioned? Again, not trying to air any dirty laundry, but in a case where money could be involved, someone clearly had a grudge against this couple. So we need to try to cover all the facts. And these facts are, by the way, in public records, if you look deep enough. And also, I feel like with a lot of these media reports, there's this kind of flippant idea that just because these people are elderly, that they're just this sweet little old couple. I don't know, maybe it's because I watch the Golden Girls a lot or because I have some very active, older, southern women in my family. But I reject the notion that just because someone is older means they don't have drama or conflict or any kind of an inner life. Or, for that matter, that they're not capable of being criminals. Life is complicated no matter what age you are. So I need to find out more about this woman, Mae. and try and figure out what happened between her and David and where she is now. Mina was an art teacher. She taught at a local high school. She was married to her first husband, Harold, for many years. According to Mina's children, Mina and Harold were very happy together. They had three kids, Noel, John, and William, and they were living in that home in Clearwater until he passed.
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Speaker 2: Away in the late 90s.
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Speaker 3: David and Mina met in Clearwater. They started dating and married in 1999. Now, according to Noel in the deposition, David was actually her parents' accountant. He did some accounting work for Mina and her late husband, which, as we will see in a minute, Noel appears to have a big problem with. But let's go back to the murders. Months go by and then over a year. The police have no suspects. But then there's an item in a news report about a lawsuit. By the way, David's son, Stephen, is the personal representative of David's estate. And Mina's daughter, Noelle, is the representative of her mother's estate. It turns out that Noelle is suing Stephen and that the lawsuit is all about the estate and money.
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Speaker 2: So we're going to try to follow that money. We need to answer the.
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Speaker 3: Question of what exactly was going on with David and Mina Swan's financial situation. We know that Mina owned her home and that David had been.
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Speaker 2: A successful CPA.
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Speaker 3: The police said that they were living in a nice neighborhood and they had some investments, but these were not super wealthy people. But the probate records give us a lot more detail about what was going on behind the scenes with their finances. According to court documents, Mina and David Swan did have a prenup when they got married. And that prenup basically said that they would keep their finances separate. Each one would provide for their own biological children. Mina's will also discussed her property, her house. And the will said if she and David stayed married and she died before him, he would have the right to live there for another six months. But basically, he would not inherit it. Everything went to her children. But according to Noelle, it wasn't that simple. Now, here's where it gets a little bit bizarre, because Noelle is kind of the main spokesperson for her mom. And the family talked a lot with police. They participated in press conferences. And in the early press conferences, Noelle would talk about her mom and David and how they were soulmates. She talked about him in a very endearing way. She said that they love to garden. She talked about how they would have wine and cheese in the afternoons and they would walk their dog, whose name was Benji, around town. And she said something I remember well. She said they would end up giving their dog a little slice of the cheese, which I completely relate to. So it seemed like she believed they were this great match. But behind the scenes... In 2019, it became clear that Noelle was developing a different view of her mom and David's relationship. Now, remember, in the press conference, Chief Slaughter talked about all the evidence that police took from the scene. They talked about DNA testing. But some of the things that law enforcement have said since then have continued to lead me to believe that DNA probably won't be the key to this case. Now, this could be for a couple of reasons. It could be because whoever killed the Swans wore gloves and was super careful. That's a possibility. But it's also possible that whoever killed the Swans was someone who had been inside the home before, maybe a family member or a friend, someone who would have had a reason for their DNA to be present in there. That's also a possibility I've considered. In a later press conference, Detective Kinnicky, who became the lead investigator on the case, seemed to allude to this. He said, quote, some cases are made on DNA or fingerprints or ballistics. I think this is going to come back to good old-fashioned police work, end quote. Police say several times this was not a random home invasion. And Chief Slaughter also said something that alluded to money being involved. He said, quote, while they didn't live a lavish lifestyle, both of them had investments, end quote. So again, what was their net worth? Were they an elderly couple who lived simply? Was there a ton of money being hidden somewhere?
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Speaker 2: What was going on?
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Speaker 3: There are at least two versions of the story. David Swan's daughter, Julie Swan, publicly spoke out. She said that her dad was, quote, the type of person who was true to his word, end quote. She said he was a successful accountant and he was generous with money. But Mina's daughter, Noelle, in her lawsuit, alleged something very different. She seemed to say in her lawsuit that David withheld money, that he was kind of cheap, and that he had done some business deals that had been, in her opinion, a little bit shady. She alleged that he had been controlling her mother's finances. And she said that she had discovered a lot of things in David's background that she was not aware of. So let's take a deeper look at some of these allegations. On June 24, 2019, Noelle filed her lawsuit she asked for compensation from David's estate for 14 different items she listed there, around half a million dollars in total.
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Speaker 2: Stephen Swan said from.
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Speaker 3: The beginning that these allegations were ridiculous, that the estate did not owe that money, that his father and Mina had kept their finances separate.
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Speaker 2: One of the items.
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Speaker 3: Noelle said she had an issue with was a promissory note. It was signed in 2006 by David. Apparently, Minus One had homeowner's insurance on her home. And David wanted her to drop the homeowner's insurance policy.
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Speaker 2: He thought it was too expensive.
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Speaker 3: So what happened was he signed this promissory note in 2006 saying he promised to pay $ 2, 500 to Mina every year and to put that money in an account so that if anything ever did happen, they would have money to do the home repairs. She agreed to this, and they signed an agreement. He said he would deposit money every year that would equal what the premium would have been. If they ever needed that money, they would take it out of that fund, and David agreed to cover any amount that was in excess of that. Now, there's nothing necessarily alarming about that at all. David may have been totally right. It may not have been worth the money to have that insurance policy. But it's obvious from what Noelle said in her lawsuit that she believed this was about more than that. She obviously had issues with David controlling her mother. So at first, those payments were put into an account. Noelle said her mom had access to it. Then in June of 2018, the balance was transferred into a new Charles Schwab account. Mina was the joint owner of that account. But later, Noelle claimed the money was moved into another account, an account that only David had access to. And that wasn't Noelle's only complaint. Noelle also alleged that David failed to make payments that he agreed to make to her mother. Basically, she claimed David had been trying to hide money from her mother.
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Speaker 2: Again, Stephen Swan said this entire lawsuit was bogus.
00:23:26
Speaker 3: And in the end, the court appeared to side with him because Noelle's lawsuit was dismissed, but denied. I want to dive into this a little bit because through Noel and Stephen's depositions, we get two drastically different versions of this marriage that had seemed so perfect to the outside world. It's one of the only ways I can think of, of really getting behind closed doors and finding out what's going on.
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Speaker 2: Noel and her sister were both deposed.
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Speaker 3: And they said David made their mother feel unsafe and they painted a completely different picture of the relationship between David and minus one. And again, I have no idea if any of this is true. They could be completely wrong. We just don't know. All I'm saying is that when we're trying to figure out victimology, it is crucial to understand how family members and friends view this relationship between David and Mina. Remember what I said about David's obituary and there being another woman who showed up in court records, but he was not mentioned in the obituary. Well, the deposition seemed to confirm that. According to Noel's deposition, David was actually married to someone else when he got together with Mina. Noel alleged that David had moved in on their mom very quickly after their father's death. So it's interesting because the initial financial dispute that Noel had seemed to be solved pretty quickly. According to the information that Stephen Swan provided the court, Noelle had made a mistake. She had been double counting on certain accounts. She thought there was money there that didn't exist. He also said that even if there was money in a homeowner's insurance account that belonged to Mina Swan, after David and Mina's death, he said Noelle would have had no right to that money. The money was for homeowner's insurance. And in the end, they didn't need to use it for that reason. And again, the fact that there was fighting over potential inheritance money is not uncommon, unfortunately. So in the end, David Swan's estate was settled, but the court cases involving Mina's estate are still ongoing. I found something else interesting in this lawsuit. I found out Mina Swan's estate was frozen by police. Now, apparently this has something to do with Florida's Slayer statute, and that's a law that's on the books. That basically prevents anyone who is related to the deceased from profiting off of the death if they are believed to have had anything to do with it. I don't know all the legalities of that law, but it is mentioned in the deposition, and that is the reason why the estate was frozen. So meanwhile, while all this stuff is going on in the background, the family.
00:26:11
Speaker 2: Has publicly appealed for help.
00:26:14
Speaker 3: Stephen has told reporters that he does believe that these murders were about money. He said, quote, I already have six theories of the case. Don't know if any of them are correct, but what do you always hear? Follow the money, end quote. Seven months after the murders.
00:26:31
Speaker 2: Police reached out again.
00:26:33
Speaker 3: Again, the detective in charge of the investigation, Brian Kanicki, told the Tampa Bay Times that they had multiple detectives looking at the case. They looked at hundreds of pieces of evidence, and he said, quote, This is interesting to me for a couple of reasons. First of all, I just want to say I think it's great that the police department continues to provide updates. Even if they don't have that much information, just keeping it in the public eye, allowing the families of boys, I think it's a great thing because a lot of police departments don't do that. Secondly, though, I think it's very telling. Police are admitting they're basically at a dead end. They're saying they need help. I wonder how many of their detectives have experience with what I call fraud detection homicides. I've talked a lot on my other podcast about red collar cases. And one of the most important things in a potential fraud detection homicide is finding out everything that you can about the finances of the deceased and finding people who are close to them, who they have financial relationships with. And the question to ask is not necessarily always what would a potential killer gain from someone's death, but At the time of death, did they have a desperate financial situation? What did they believe that they were about to lose? So that's what I've been trying to figure out. So let's take a closer look at some of David and Mauna's other family relationships. Noelle has been deposed multiple times for the litigation, and she's actually shed a lot of light on the relationship between David, her mother, and her siblings. Noelle said both she and her husband worked in the banking industry. Several years before the killing, she moved back to an area of Florida near her mom. So she saw Mina a lot. She got to spend a lot of time with her. David's children lived in Chicago and Oregon, so farther away. But both of Mina's other sons, William and John, also lived in Florida. In her deposition, Noelle said she had learned that David Swan was not, according to her, everything he appeared to be. Even with really simple things. For example... David was a serious bridge player. She said in her deposition that when David went to play bridge every day, that he, quote, So now I'm wondering, what was he supposedly lying about? Did she believe he was playing bridge somewhere else? Was there something else going on there? According to the depositions, there were also other issues between this perfect couple and some of their other children. In 2009, David Swan apparently had an issue with his son, David A. Swan, and they weren't speaking as a result of that. And according to the court documents, this dispute they had was about money. During the deposition, something else came out. Noelle apparently told people that the police considered her and possibly one of her siblings to Suspects at one point. The attorney questioning Noel asks, you did volunteer that you were aware, for whatever reason, remaining as a suspect by the Clearwater Police Department in this matter. She answers, we heard it from a neighbor, didn't you? it from the police. And we talked before about the freeze that police had put on these funds. Noelle talks about trying to remove the freeze from those funds and get access to them. She said, quote, so it sounds like to remove the freeze, I need to solve the case that the police are incapable of solving, end quote. I can completely understand her frustration here because it's been years and naturally I can understand why she would want access to her mother's estate.
00:30:55
Speaker 2: At the same time, I can see the other side.
00:30:57
Speaker 3: The police don't want to get this wrong and they want to keep those funds locked down until they know exactly what happened. It also emerged in the depositions that Mina's son, John Wolf, was terminally ill.
00:31:11
Speaker 2: Noelle said.
00:31:13
Speaker 3: John had stage four cancer, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, and that over the years, David and Mina had been helping him financially. Noelle said that John had a lot of health issues. They had left him basically unable to work. She said he'd had the lifetime maximum of chemotherapy over the years, and eventually his illness meant he got put on disability. So for several years, John lived at a property that was owned by Mina on New York Avenue in Clearwater. Noelle said John didn't pay rent, but for a long time he did a lot of work on the property. She said it really wasn't in very good shape, and since he did construction-type work, he helped fix it up. Noelle said that they needed to sell the home at some point, and also John was getting sicker, and he couldn't really keep up with the physical labor that he needed to do on that property. So Noelle said she found John an apartment for around $ 1, 000 a month. She gave him emergency distributions from their mother's estate to pay for his rent and his moving costs, which meant that as of January 2022, $ 92, 000 had been taken out of Minus One's estate. Just over $ 57, 000 of that was emergency distributions to John. In the deposition, Noelle said police have told her that they believe that her brother, John, is faking his cancer. She said, quote, The police have accused him of not being sick, which is insulting to those of us who live with this every day, watching him. We're focused on keeping him alive, end quote. She also says that to her knowledge, John is still a suspect, but she says that her brother William.
00:32:53
Speaker 2: Apparently is not. What emerged during.
00:32:58
Speaker 3: This deposition was a picture of John's finances and And we know that he lived in Mina Swan's house for several years with his son. His son was sick at one point and had to go to Children's Hospital. But Noelle said that a year or two before David and Mina's deaths, circumstances started to change. She said that there was apparently a buyer who was interested in the New York Avenue house, the one that John was living in. She said that a couple days later, after this buyer contacted.
00:33:27
Speaker 2: David and Mina.
00:33:29
Speaker 3: David went over to John's house and, quote, started screaming at him and telling him he had to leave and move out in seven days, end quote. Now, at this point in the deposition, the attorney questioning Noelle starts asking her about her mom's will. Noelle said that her understanding was that David would take care of her mother. They would keep their finances separate, as we've discussed. But Noelle alleged that she'd learned a lot about David since her mom's death. She said what she had learned had changed her view of him. She said that before Mina got involved with David, that her mom had a longtime financial broker. But, Noel said, David allegedly pressured her mom to get rid of this woman, who Noel said was a family friend. She said that in 2012, this woman had witnessed David put his hand over Mina's mouth and that he would throw huge temper tantrums every time they would get into arguments about money. Noel said that David tried to control her mother financially. And Noelle said since David's death, she looked into some court records. She said that she had found records from Illinois that showed a lot of loans, mortgage foreclosures, and what she called unusual behavior in David's records. Noelle said she had a bad feeling about David because in her opinion, he'd kind of taken advantage of her mother when she was in a vulnerable position after her father passed away. She said, quote, he moved into mom's house weeks after dad's funeral, end quote. So reading between the lines from Noelle's deposition, it appears that she believed that David did kind of a bait and switch on her mom, that he had presented himself as this amazing businessman who was going to love Mina and take care of her, and that he swept Mina off her feet and took her on trips, promised her this great life, but then in the end turned out to be very controlling with money. Noelle claims her mom was not allowed to have a cell phone or to open the mail or to answer the phones. she claimed that David had isolated her mother from her friends. Now, again, this is only one side of the story. David's son, Stephen Swan, has said publicly and in court documents that these allegations are completely ridiculous. And obviously, this is only one person's view of what was going on in this relationship. But in my opinion, we absolutely need to find out more about what was actually going on in that marriage. We really need to talk to the family, and Mina Swan's friends. Six months after Mina and David were found dead, the families and law enforcement did a public update. Noelle made a plea for new information.
00:36:21
Speaker 5: So we are looking very, very much for answers. We know that there's answers out there.
00:36:26
Speaker 4: We know that.
00:36:27
Speaker 5: We know someone out there knows something, and I hope they'll share that information. It's extremely important to us. We wanted the reward out there as a reminder that mom was loved and very much missed. And now the one thing that could help is finding the answers to what happened. So please, if anyone knows something, if anyone hears anything, if they've seen anything, please, please call the tip line. It's very important. Don't hold back. We would really love to find the answers in this case. We would like to have our piece.
00:37:12
Speaker 2: Thank you.
00:37:17
Speaker 3: Noelle and her brother William have spoken up during these press conferences. John Wolfe also.
00:37:22
Speaker 2: Made a brief statement.
00:37:23
Speaker 3: He said, Billboards have been posted across the Tampa Bay area asking for information, and there's been several rewards offered.
00:37:38
Speaker 2: Right now, the reward is up to $ 53, 000. In 2020, there was another update in the case. Again, this was a little bit bizarre.
00:37:49
Speaker 3: This is something I had not seen before because in September of 2020, the Clearwater Police Department released crime scene photos in an attempt to help the case. It was on the second anniversary, two years, no arrests. These photos, though, are a little bit bizarre because they're not actually of the crime scene. They're of the exterior of the house. And they're these very mundane photos. I'm going to provide a link to those because I'm really hoping that someone out there will look at these and they will see something that I miss or that the police miss. One of the photos is a close-up shot of the Swans' front door of their house. You can see the newspapers in front of their residence. There's a Tampa Bay Times newspaper on top and some other papers in a clear plastic bag. I noticed, though, that the newspapers are neatly lying one on top of the.
00:38:40
Speaker 2: Other next to the door.
00:38:42
Speaker 3: My first thought was, usually paper boys throw things in the yard in a kind of crazy way.
00:38:47
Speaker 2: So who stacked those papers.
00:38:50
Speaker 3: There that neatly? There could be an explanation for it. It could be the woman who knocked on the door to try to give the Swans flyers or one of the neighbors.
00:38:58
Speaker 2: But why would police not say that?
00:39:00
Speaker 3: I zoomed in on the headline and the newspaper on top was the Tampa Bay Times. I couldn't see the date, but I googled the headline to figure out this was the Tampa Bay Times from Saturday, September 29th, 2018. So we have Saturday's newspaper, presumably on top of Friday's. Another photo shows the Swans' mailbox, a white wooden box with the address 1033 printed on it in black letters. There's another picture of the open mailbox with letters inside it. It's just a couple of envelopes and what appears to be junk mail. I can't read what's on the envelopes, and I've really tried. I've zoomed in a lot. Then there's a photo of a car in a garage and pictures of the screened-in back porch, or what we call in Florida the lanai with the pool. But there's nothing in the picture that I can see that stands out, just a screened door and a closer look inside a screened-in porch. The water is blue and clear in the pool. I go back to what Chief of Police Dan Slaughter told media. Based on the time they were last seen, it's likely that David and Minus One were killed between 3pm on Thursday and 3pm on the following day, Friday. Officers are asking neighbors and friends of the couple to focus on that 24-hour window. They say if anything unusual stands out, regardless of how small it is, they want to hear from you. If you know anything about this case, please contact the Clearwater Police. The number to call there is 727-562-4141. In the meantime, I'm going to keep following up on this case because I absolutely believe that the answers are out there. There's something that someone missed. There's a missing piece of the puzzle, and we just have to work together to try and figure it out. I'm Katherine Townsend. This is Hell and Gone Murder Line. Hell and Gone Murder Line is a production of School of Humans and iHeart Podcasts. It's written and narrated by me, Katherine Townsend, and produced by Gabby Watts. Music is by Ben Salih. Executive producers are Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, and Elsie Crowley.
00:41:13
Speaker 2: If you have a case you'd.
00:41:14
Speaker 3: Like me and my team to look into, you can reach out to us at our Hellengal Murder Line at 678-744-6145.
00:41:19
Speaker 2: That's 678-744-6145.
00:41:46
Speaker 1: School of Humans.
Speaker 1: School of Humans. Helen Gone Murder Line actively investigates cold case murders in an effort to raise public awareness, invite witnesses to come forward, and present evidence that could potentially be further investigated by law enforcement. While we value insights from family and community members, their statements should not be considered evidence and point to the challenges of verifying facts inherent in cold cases. We remind listeners that everyone is presumed innocent until proven.
00:01:15
Speaker 2: Guilty in a court of law.
00:01:17
Speaker 1: Nothing in the podcast is intended to state or imply that anyone who has not been convicted of a crime is guilty of any wrongdoing.
00:01:26
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening.
00:01:39
Speaker 3: But in this case, the suspicious activity wasn't from anything that was actually going on.
00:01:43
Speaker 2: It was kind of the opposite.
00:01:45
Speaker 3: The neighbors were concerned because things were a little bit too quiet. They had their eyes on a little one-story White House at 1033 Flushing Avenue, where 88-year-old David Swan and his wife, 80-year-old Mina Swan, lived. They had lived in that home for the past 20 years. Mina had actually lived there for 40 years. This was a second marriage for both David and Mina. She had lived there with her first husband until he passed away and then later made a home there with David, her second husband. According to friends and family, David and Mina were in a very happy marriage and they had no known enemies. And they had a really regular routine. They always came out to get their newspaper. They had a neighbor across the street named Joel Locke who lived there with his father, John Locke. Now, Joel told police that he last saw the Swans on Thursday afternoon at around 3 p.m. Then, on Friday, they never walked outside to get the paper. Then, over the weekend, Joel said he noticed that the Swans' lights were on, but again, on Saturday, there was no sign of either David or Amina.
00:02:56
Speaker 2: So by Saturday, he told police he was getting concerned.
00:03:05
Speaker 3: David and Mina had married later in life, so they never had any children together. But they had seven children between them. Both of them were involved in each other's children's lives. The families were close. Finally, on Saturday, a little before 2 p.m., Joel got in touch with Mina's daughter, Noelle Devine. It says in media reports that Noelle had a key to the house. But in the end, she didn't need to use it because Noelle came to the neighborhood she lived nearby... And she and Joel approached David and Mina's house. They went in through the back door and it was unlocked. And what they saw when they walked in that house was horrific. David and Mina were at the kitchen table, slumped over in pools of blood. Forensic testing revealed they had been dead for at least a day. Joel Locke told WFLA News Channel 8, Noel could not handle it. She ran out the door and I was with her right behind, end quote. David and Mina were shot execution style. They were sitting at the kitchen table. David had been shot once, Mina multiple times. There was nothing stolen and no sign of forced entry. Of course, there were a lot of media reports after this case because it was shocking, the murder of two elderly people. And what we kept hearing on the news was that this shocked the town of Clearwater, which is a place probably best known for having a large presence of Scientology church members. A few early commenters on the case kind of wondered if Scientologists could have had something to do with it. But let me just say right off the bat, there is zero indication that Scientology had anything to do with these murders. So before I get a lot of calls, I just want to say that up front. All we heard on the news was that David and Mina were this super happy older couple. And the headline has basically been, who would want to kill this nice elderly couple who had no known enemies? But as Hell and Gone listeners know, I always try to look beyond the headlines. So I've spent a lot of time doing a deep dive into the probate records that followed these deaths. By the way, thank you Pinellas County, Florida, because this county does have a really good open record system. Now, Joel Locke, the neighbor, gave more details to another news organization. He said that when he was in that kitchen, he saw signs that food had been prepared. He said, quote, she, meaning Mina, was face down and he was on his back. She was on one side of the coffee table. He was on the other side. So, at least in the beginning, it seems as though they were just hanging out at home about to eat dinner when the killer walked in and shot them.
00:06:04
Speaker 2: Their obituaries focused.
00:06:05
Speaker 3: On how happy David and Mina Swan were. According to his obituary, after retirement, David had fulfilled a lifelong dream of travel. He and Mina loved to have new adventures. He hiked the Appalachian Trail in 2002, and his trail name was Twinkle Toes. Mina hiked part of it with him, and her trail name was Artsy because she had been an art teacher. David had a private pilot's license. He and Mina traveled everywhere. They went to Europe, China, Chile, Argentina, the Panama Canal, Australia, New Zealand, the South Pacific.
00:06:37
Speaker 2: This list goes on and on.
00:06:40
Speaker 3: But again, even though they appeared to be living this idyllic lifestyle, and apparently David had been this very successful CPA who was retired, I wondered what the real story was. because now the police have admitted they're pretty much stumped. After these murders, they had no time of death and no suspects. And over three years later, this case is still unsolved. So who could have killed David and Minus One? Could it be someone like a tradesperson? Could it be a serial killer or someone targeting elderly residents? Or could it be one of David's former business associates from Chicago? Or was it someone a lot closer to home? I'm Katherine Townsend. This is Hell and Gone Murder Line. If you have a case you'd like me and my team to look into, you can reach out to us at our Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145.
00:07:35
Speaker 2: That's 678-744-6145.
00:08:19
Speaker 3: A week after David and Mina Swan's bodies were found, Chief Daniel Slaughter of the Clearwater Police Department held a press conference to talk about the murders.
00:08:28
Speaker 2: This is what he said.
00:08:30
Speaker 4: What I can share in the investigation is that David and Mina were seen alive on Thursday, September 27th in the early afternoon. From the investigation... We are looking closely at a 24-hour window from Thursday, September 27th, around 3 p.m. to Friday, September 28th, about the same time, 3 p.m. Although our investigation is looking closely at that window as a suspected period of time when these two murders occurred, the investigators are also looking at leads outside of that window. I can share that David and Mina were both shot and killed, and as previously reported, are homicide victims. The evidence does not indicate that the offender committed I'm sorry, the evidence does indicate that the offender came with the intent to kill David and Mina. This does not appear to be a random event. Being vigilant and following simple common crime prevention techniques like locking your doors, your car doors, your home doors, your garage doors is always a very prudent thing to do for safety. But we do not believe there is any reason for the rest of the community to be concerned. Clearwater detectives and Pinellas County Sheriff's Office forensic specialists spent over 40 hours working in the crime scene, documenting the crime scene, processing the crime scene, and collecting trace evidence. The collection of trace evidence is very time-consuming. Any person that entered the Swan home would leave trace evidence behind, and that would be in the form of hair, fibers, skin cells, touch DNA, a variety of different things. Those traceable substances would be very vitally important for our investigation, and so it's very important that we collect them in a very methodical manner and in a very appropriate manner. We know that in murder cases, there's usually some form of a victim-offender relationship. Investigators will therefore speak to anyone that had a relationship with the Swans, whether it's family, friends, or business dealings. We're going to talk to everyone and anyone involved or connected to the family until we get.
00:10:20
Speaker 5: To the bottom of it.
00:10:24
Speaker 3: So let's break down those statements. First, Chief Slaughter kind of clarified the window of time when David and Mina were killed. The last time the Swans were seen alive that was verifiable was Thursday, September 27th at around 3 p.m. Remember, that's when the neighbors saw them come outside and pick up those newspapers. They didn't come out of their house on Friday or Saturday when Noel and Joel went into the house. So this is why investigators were concentrating on the 24-hour window between Thursday at 3 p.m.
00:10:56
Speaker 2: And Friday at 3 p.m.
00:10:58
Speaker 3: If the neighbor's reports are true, if the lights were left on all night on Thursday night, Thursday night, in my opinion, becomes the most likely time when they could have been murdered, especially if we believe Joel, if there was food on the counter that looked like they were about to eat dinner. The lights were on and the door was unlocked. Also, the Tampa Bay Times talked to a neighbor named Bob Anderson. Bob said his wife had gone by the Swan House on Friday to drop off some pamphlets.
00:11:28
Speaker 2: And that nobody answered the door.
00:11:32
Speaker 3: Noelle talked to reporters about her experience going into the house. She said, quote, when I heard the papers were building up, I just panicked, end quote. As she drove to her mother's house, she said that she was trying to tell herself there could be a rational explanation. Maybe her mom and stepdad went off on a last minute trip. Then once she went into that house and saw those bodies, her world fell apart. She said, quote, At the press conference and also later.
00:12:13
Speaker 3: Law enforcement's made a point to say this was likely an isolated attack. And they said the community did not need to be worried, which I always think is a little bit misleading because what they mean is that this is a person who is targeting this one specifically. It's not some random person out there. But in my opinion, if someone killed a person, whatever their motivation was, and they're still out there, someone could find out about those killings, confront that person, and.
00:12:41
Speaker 2: They could be in danger.
00:12:42
Speaker 3: So I get what the police are trying to do here. They don't want the community to panic. But I do feel like, and I hear this statement often about the public not needing to be concerned. I don't think it's always that valid. So let's take a closer look at this couple. We're going to see very soon that there are two different versions of their life story that start to emerge. The official version and what I call kind of the unofficial version. This isn't meant with any kind of disrespect at all, by the way. Everyone has secrets. But sometimes if you want to find out who killed someone, who wanted them dead, you have to look behind some of these headlines that are just superficial. You have to try and discover some of their secrets. So we know the killing was very personal and that the Swans were targeted. So the question is, who could have wanted to kill them and why? David Sidney Swan Jr., and this is from his obituary, was born on April 15, 1930.
00:13:45
Speaker 2: He was raised in Shreveport, Louisiana.
00:13:47
Speaker 3: He enlisted in the Navy, and after his naval service, he went to work for an accounting firm called Swifton Company in Chicago. He met his first wife, whose name was Eva Sorenson, in Chicago. He graduated from Northwestern University and became a CPA. He later worked at another firm, and he and his wife had four kids, Julia, Janet, Stephen, and a son named David. So David and his first wife raised their family. Then in the early 1980s, they moved to Clearwater, Florida. David set up his own practice doing taxes, and eventually David and.
00:14:22
Speaker 2: His first wife retired there. That's what I saw in the obituary.
00:14:28
Speaker 3: But there's something in that part of my brain that gets activated when I have insomnia, which is often. So one night I woke up and started looking through court records. It was like 2 a.m. that night, and I found some court documents that mentioned a woman connected to David Swan named Mae Swan. These court documents said that David was divorced from this woman. But I noticed that this alleged second wife was apparently never mentioned in his obituary. So that just got me wondering, why not? Why would that not be mentioned? Again, not trying to air any dirty laundry, but in a case where money could be involved, someone clearly had a grudge against this couple. So we need to try to cover all the facts. And these facts are, by the way, in public records, if you look deep enough. And also, I feel like with a lot of these media reports, there's this kind of flippant idea that just because these people are elderly, that they're just this sweet little old couple. I don't know, maybe it's because I watch the Golden Girls a lot or because I have some very active, older, southern women in my family. But I reject the notion that just because someone is older means they don't have drama or conflict or any kind of an inner life. Or, for that matter, that they're not capable of being criminals. Life is complicated no matter what age you are. So I need to find out more about this woman, Mae. and try and figure out what happened between her and David and where she is now. Mina was an art teacher. She taught at a local high school. She was married to her first husband, Harold, for many years. According to Mina's children, Mina and Harold were very happy together. They had three kids, Noel, John, and William, and they were living in that home in Clearwater until he passed.
00:16:16
Speaker 2: Away in the late 90s.
00:16:19
Speaker 3: David and Mina met in Clearwater. They started dating and married in 1999. Now, according to Noel in the deposition, David was actually her parents' accountant. He did some accounting work for Mina and her late husband, which, as we will see in a minute, Noel appears to have a big problem with. But let's go back to the murders. Months go by and then over a year. The police have no suspects. But then there's an item in a news report about a lawsuit. By the way, David's son, Stephen, is the personal representative of David's estate. And Mina's daughter, Noelle, is the representative of her mother's estate. It turns out that Noelle is suing Stephen and that the lawsuit is all about the estate and money.
00:17:08
Speaker 2: So we're going to try to follow that money. We need to answer the.
00:17:15
Speaker 3: Question of what exactly was going on with David and Mina Swan's financial situation. We know that Mina owned her home and that David had been.
00:17:26
Speaker 2: A successful CPA.
00:17:28
Speaker 3: The police said that they were living in a nice neighborhood and they had some investments, but these were not super wealthy people. But the probate records give us a lot more detail about what was going on behind the scenes with their finances. According to court documents, Mina and David Swan did have a prenup when they got married. And that prenup basically said that they would keep their finances separate. Each one would provide for their own biological children. Mina's will also discussed her property, her house. And the will said if she and David stayed married and she died before him, he would have the right to live there for another six months. But basically, he would not inherit it. Everything went to her children. But according to Noelle, it wasn't that simple. Now, here's where it gets a little bit bizarre, because Noelle is kind of the main spokesperson for her mom. And the family talked a lot with police. They participated in press conferences. And in the early press conferences, Noelle would talk about her mom and David and how they were soulmates. She talked about him in a very endearing way. She said that they love to garden. She talked about how they would have wine and cheese in the afternoons and they would walk their dog, whose name was Benji, around town. And she said something I remember well. She said they would end up giving their dog a little slice of the cheese, which I completely relate to. So it seemed like she believed they were this great match. But behind the scenes... In 2019, it became clear that Noelle was developing a different view of her mom and David's relationship. Now, remember, in the press conference, Chief Slaughter talked about all the evidence that police took from the scene. They talked about DNA testing. But some of the things that law enforcement have said since then have continued to lead me to believe that DNA probably won't be the key to this case. Now, this could be for a couple of reasons. It could be because whoever killed the Swans wore gloves and was super careful. That's a possibility. But it's also possible that whoever killed the Swans was someone who had been inside the home before, maybe a family member or a friend, someone who would have had a reason for their DNA to be present in there. That's also a possibility I've considered. In a later press conference, Detective Kinnicky, who became the lead investigator on the case, seemed to allude to this. He said, quote, some cases are made on DNA or fingerprints or ballistics. I think this is going to come back to good old-fashioned police work, end quote. Police say several times this was not a random home invasion. And Chief Slaughter also said something that alluded to money being involved. He said, quote, while they didn't live a lavish lifestyle, both of them had investments, end quote. So again, what was their net worth? Were they an elderly couple who lived simply? Was there a ton of money being hidden somewhere?
00:20:28
Speaker 2: What was going on?
00:20:30
Speaker 3: There are at least two versions of the story. David Swan's daughter, Julie Swan, publicly spoke out. She said that her dad was, quote, the type of person who was true to his word, end quote. She said he was a successful accountant and he was generous with money. But Mina's daughter, Noelle, in her lawsuit, alleged something very different. She seemed to say in her lawsuit that David withheld money, that he was kind of cheap, and that he had done some business deals that had been, in her opinion, a little bit shady. She alleged that he had been controlling her mother's finances. And she said that she had discovered a lot of things in David's background that she was not aware of. So let's take a deeper look at some of these allegations. On June 24, 2019, Noelle filed her lawsuit she asked for compensation from David's estate for 14 different items she listed there, around half a million dollars in total.
00:21:31
Speaker 2: Stephen Swan said from.
00:21:33
Speaker 3: The beginning that these allegations were ridiculous, that the estate did not owe that money, that his father and Mina had kept their finances separate.
00:21:42
Speaker 2: One of the items.
00:21:42
Speaker 3: Noelle said she had an issue with was a promissory note. It was signed in 2006 by David. Apparently, Minus One had homeowner's insurance on her home. And David wanted her to drop the homeowner's insurance policy.
00:21:57
Speaker 2: He thought it was too expensive.
00:21:58
Speaker 3: So what happened was he signed this promissory note in 2006 saying he promised to pay $ 2, 500 to Mina every year and to put that money in an account so that if anything ever did happen, they would have money to do the home repairs. She agreed to this, and they signed an agreement. He said he would deposit money every year that would equal what the premium would have been. If they ever needed that money, they would take it out of that fund, and David agreed to cover any amount that was in excess of that. Now, there's nothing necessarily alarming about that at all. David may have been totally right. It may not have been worth the money to have that insurance policy. But it's obvious from what Noelle said in her lawsuit that she believed this was about more than that. She obviously had issues with David controlling her mother. So at first, those payments were put into an account. Noelle said her mom had access to it. Then in June of 2018, the balance was transferred into a new Charles Schwab account. Mina was the joint owner of that account. But later, Noelle claimed the money was moved into another account, an account that only David had access to. And that wasn't Noelle's only complaint. Noelle also alleged that David failed to make payments that he agreed to make to her mother. Basically, she claimed David had been trying to hide money from her mother.
00:23:22
Speaker 2: Again, Stephen Swan said this entire lawsuit was bogus.
00:23:26
Speaker 3: And in the end, the court appeared to side with him because Noelle's lawsuit was dismissed, but denied. I want to dive into this a little bit because through Noel and Stephen's depositions, we get two drastically different versions of this marriage that had seemed so perfect to the outside world. It's one of the only ways I can think of, of really getting behind closed doors and finding out what's going on.
00:23:52
Speaker 2: Noel and her sister were both deposed.
00:23:55
Speaker 3: And they said David made their mother feel unsafe and they painted a completely different picture of the relationship between David and minus one. And again, I have no idea if any of this is true. They could be completely wrong. We just don't know. All I'm saying is that when we're trying to figure out victimology, it is crucial to understand how family members and friends view this relationship between David and Mina. Remember what I said about David's obituary and there being another woman who showed up in court records, but he was not mentioned in the obituary. Well, the deposition seemed to confirm that. According to Noel's deposition, David was actually married to someone else when he got together with Mina. Noel alleged that David had moved in on their mom very quickly after their father's death. So it's interesting because the initial financial dispute that Noel had seemed to be solved pretty quickly. According to the information that Stephen Swan provided the court, Noelle had made a mistake. She had been double counting on certain accounts. She thought there was money there that didn't exist. He also said that even if there was money in a homeowner's insurance account that belonged to Mina Swan, after David and Mina's death, he said Noelle would have had no right to that money. The money was for homeowner's insurance. And in the end, they didn't need to use it for that reason. And again, the fact that there was fighting over potential inheritance money is not uncommon, unfortunately. So in the end, David Swan's estate was settled, but the court cases involving Mina's estate are still ongoing. I found something else interesting in this lawsuit. I found out Mina Swan's estate was frozen by police. Now, apparently this has something to do with Florida's Slayer statute, and that's a law that's on the books. That basically prevents anyone who is related to the deceased from profiting off of the death if they are believed to have had anything to do with it. I don't know all the legalities of that law, but it is mentioned in the deposition, and that is the reason why the estate was frozen. So meanwhile, while all this stuff is going on in the background, the family.
00:26:11
Speaker 2: Has publicly appealed for help.
00:26:14
Speaker 3: Stephen has told reporters that he does believe that these murders were about money. He said, quote, I already have six theories of the case. Don't know if any of them are correct, but what do you always hear? Follow the money, end quote. Seven months after the murders.
00:26:31
Speaker 2: Police reached out again.
00:26:33
Speaker 3: Again, the detective in charge of the investigation, Brian Kanicki, told the Tampa Bay Times that they had multiple detectives looking at the case. They looked at hundreds of pieces of evidence, and he said, quote, This is interesting to me for a couple of reasons. First of all, I just want to say I think it's great that the police department continues to provide updates. Even if they don't have that much information, just keeping it in the public eye, allowing the families of boys, I think it's a great thing because a lot of police departments don't do that. Secondly, though, I think it's very telling. Police are admitting they're basically at a dead end. They're saying they need help. I wonder how many of their detectives have experience with what I call fraud detection homicides. I've talked a lot on my other podcast about red collar cases. And one of the most important things in a potential fraud detection homicide is finding out everything that you can about the finances of the deceased and finding people who are close to them, who they have financial relationships with. And the question to ask is not necessarily always what would a potential killer gain from someone's death, but At the time of death, did they have a desperate financial situation? What did they believe that they were about to lose? So that's what I've been trying to figure out. So let's take a closer look at some of David and Mauna's other family relationships. Noelle has been deposed multiple times for the litigation, and she's actually shed a lot of light on the relationship between David, her mother, and her siblings. Noelle said both she and her husband worked in the banking industry. Several years before the killing, she moved back to an area of Florida near her mom. So she saw Mina a lot. She got to spend a lot of time with her. David's children lived in Chicago and Oregon, so farther away. But both of Mina's other sons, William and John, also lived in Florida. In her deposition, Noelle said she had learned that David Swan was not, according to her, everything he appeared to be. Even with really simple things. For example... David was a serious bridge player. She said in her deposition that when David went to play bridge every day, that he, quote, So now I'm wondering, what was he supposedly lying about? Did she believe he was playing bridge somewhere else? Was there something else going on there? According to the depositions, there were also other issues between this perfect couple and some of their other children. In 2009, David Swan apparently had an issue with his son, David A. Swan, and they weren't speaking as a result of that. And according to the court documents, this dispute they had was about money. During the deposition, something else came out. Noelle apparently told people that the police considered her and possibly one of her siblings to Suspects at one point. The attorney questioning Noel asks, you did volunteer that you were aware, for whatever reason, remaining as a suspect by the Clearwater Police Department in this matter. She answers, we heard it from a neighbor, didn't you? it from the police. And we talked before about the freeze that police had put on these funds. Noelle talks about trying to remove the freeze from those funds and get access to them. She said, quote, so it sounds like to remove the freeze, I need to solve the case that the police are incapable of solving, end quote. I can completely understand her frustration here because it's been years and naturally I can understand why she would want access to her mother's estate.
00:30:55
Speaker 2: At the same time, I can see the other side.
00:30:57
Speaker 3: The police don't want to get this wrong and they want to keep those funds locked down until they know exactly what happened. It also emerged in the depositions that Mina's son, John Wolf, was terminally ill.
00:31:11
Speaker 2: Noelle said.
00:31:13
Speaker 3: John had stage four cancer, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, and that over the years, David and Mina had been helping him financially. Noelle said that John had a lot of health issues. They had left him basically unable to work. She said he'd had the lifetime maximum of chemotherapy over the years, and eventually his illness meant he got put on disability. So for several years, John lived at a property that was owned by Mina on New York Avenue in Clearwater. Noelle said John didn't pay rent, but for a long time he did a lot of work on the property. She said it really wasn't in very good shape, and since he did construction-type work, he helped fix it up. Noelle said that they needed to sell the home at some point, and also John was getting sicker, and he couldn't really keep up with the physical labor that he needed to do on that property. So Noelle said she found John an apartment for around $ 1, 000 a month. She gave him emergency distributions from their mother's estate to pay for his rent and his moving costs, which meant that as of January 2022, $ 92, 000 had been taken out of Minus One's estate. Just over $ 57, 000 of that was emergency distributions to John. In the deposition, Noelle said police have told her that they believe that her brother, John, is faking his cancer. She said, quote, The police have accused him of not being sick, which is insulting to those of us who live with this every day, watching him. We're focused on keeping him alive, end quote. She also says that to her knowledge, John is still a suspect, but she says that her brother William.
00:32:53
Speaker 2: Apparently is not. What emerged during.
00:32:58
Speaker 3: This deposition was a picture of John's finances and And we know that he lived in Mina Swan's house for several years with his son. His son was sick at one point and had to go to Children's Hospital. But Noelle said that a year or two before David and Mina's deaths, circumstances started to change. She said that there was apparently a buyer who was interested in the New York Avenue house, the one that John was living in. She said that a couple days later, after this buyer contacted.
00:33:27
Speaker 2: David and Mina.
00:33:29
Speaker 3: David went over to John's house and, quote, started screaming at him and telling him he had to leave and move out in seven days, end quote. Now, at this point in the deposition, the attorney questioning Noelle starts asking her about her mom's will. Noelle said that her understanding was that David would take care of her mother. They would keep their finances separate, as we've discussed. But Noelle alleged that she'd learned a lot about David since her mom's death. She said what she had learned had changed her view of him. She said that before Mina got involved with David, that her mom had a longtime financial broker. But, Noel said, David allegedly pressured her mom to get rid of this woman, who Noel said was a family friend. She said that in 2012, this woman had witnessed David put his hand over Mina's mouth and that he would throw huge temper tantrums every time they would get into arguments about money. Noel said that David tried to control her mother financially. And Noelle said since David's death, she looked into some court records. She said that she had found records from Illinois that showed a lot of loans, mortgage foreclosures, and what she called unusual behavior in David's records. Noelle said she had a bad feeling about David because in her opinion, he'd kind of taken advantage of her mother when she was in a vulnerable position after her father passed away. She said, quote, he moved into mom's house weeks after dad's funeral, end quote. So reading between the lines from Noelle's deposition, it appears that she believed that David did kind of a bait and switch on her mom, that he had presented himself as this amazing businessman who was going to love Mina and take care of her, and that he swept Mina off her feet and took her on trips, promised her this great life, but then in the end turned out to be very controlling with money. Noelle claims her mom was not allowed to have a cell phone or to open the mail or to answer the phones. she claimed that David had isolated her mother from her friends. Now, again, this is only one side of the story. David's son, Stephen Swan, has said publicly and in court documents that these allegations are completely ridiculous. And obviously, this is only one person's view of what was going on in this relationship. But in my opinion, we absolutely need to find out more about what was actually going on in that marriage. We really need to talk to the family, and Mina Swan's friends. Six months after Mina and David were found dead, the families and law enforcement did a public update. Noelle made a plea for new information.
00:36:21
Speaker 5: So we are looking very, very much for answers. We know that there's answers out there.
00:36:26
Speaker 4: We know that.
00:36:27
Speaker 5: We know someone out there knows something, and I hope they'll share that information. It's extremely important to us. We wanted the reward out there as a reminder that mom was loved and very much missed. And now the one thing that could help is finding the answers to what happened. So please, if anyone knows something, if anyone hears anything, if they've seen anything, please, please call the tip line. It's very important. Don't hold back. We would really love to find the answers in this case. We would like to have our piece.
00:37:12
Speaker 2: Thank you.
00:37:17
Speaker 3: Noelle and her brother William have spoken up during these press conferences. John Wolfe also.
00:37:22
Speaker 2: Made a brief statement.
00:37:23
Speaker 3: He said, Billboards have been posted across the Tampa Bay area asking for information, and there's been several rewards offered.
00:37:38
Speaker 2: Right now, the reward is up to $ 53, 000. In 2020, there was another update in the case. Again, this was a little bit bizarre.
00:37:49
Speaker 3: This is something I had not seen before because in September of 2020, the Clearwater Police Department released crime scene photos in an attempt to help the case. It was on the second anniversary, two years, no arrests. These photos, though, are a little bit bizarre because they're not actually of the crime scene. They're of the exterior of the house. And they're these very mundane photos. I'm going to provide a link to those because I'm really hoping that someone out there will look at these and they will see something that I miss or that the police miss. One of the photos is a close-up shot of the Swans' front door of their house. You can see the newspapers in front of their residence. There's a Tampa Bay Times newspaper on top and some other papers in a clear plastic bag. I noticed, though, that the newspapers are neatly lying one on top of the.
00:38:40
Speaker 2: Other next to the door.
00:38:42
Speaker 3: My first thought was, usually paper boys throw things in the yard in a kind of crazy way.
00:38:47
Speaker 2: So who stacked those papers.
00:38:50
Speaker 3: There that neatly? There could be an explanation for it. It could be the woman who knocked on the door to try to give the Swans flyers or one of the neighbors.
00:38:58
Speaker 2: But why would police not say that?
00:39:00
Speaker 3: I zoomed in on the headline and the newspaper on top was the Tampa Bay Times. I couldn't see the date, but I googled the headline to figure out this was the Tampa Bay Times from Saturday, September 29th, 2018. So we have Saturday's newspaper, presumably on top of Friday's. Another photo shows the Swans' mailbox, a white wooden box with the address 1033 printed on it in black letters. There's another picture of the open mailbox with letters inside it. It's just a couple of envelopes and what appears to be junk mail. I can't read what's on the envelopes, and I've really tried. I've zoomed in a lot. Then there's a photo of a car in a garage and pictures of the screened-in back porch, or what we call in Florida the lanai with the pool. But there's nothing in the picture that I can see that stands out, just a screened door and a closer look inside a screened-in porch. The water is blue and clear in the pool. I go back to what Chief of Police Dan Slaughter told media. Based on the time they were last seen, it's likely that David and Minus One were killed between 3pm on Thursday and 3pm on the following day, Friday. Officers are asking neighbors and friends of the couple to focus on that 24-hour window. They say if anything unusual stands out, regardless of how small it is, they want to hear from you. If you know anything about this case, please contact the Clearwater Police. The number to call there is 727-562-4141. In the meantime, I'm going to keep following up on this case because I absolutely believe that the answers are out there. There's something that someone missed. There's a missing piece of the puzzle, and we just have to work together to try and figure it out. I'm Katherine Townsend. This is Hell and Gone Murder Line. Hell and Gone Murder Line is a production of School of Humans and iHeart Podcasts. It's written and narrated by me, Katherine Townsend, and produced by Gabby Watts. Music is by Ben Salih. Executive producers are Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, and Elsie Crowley.
00:41:13
Speaker 2: If you have a case you'd.
00:41:14
Speaker 3: Like me and my team to look into, you can reach out to us at our Hellengal Murder Line at 678-744-6145.
00:41:19
Speaker 2: That's 678-744-6145.
00:41:46
Speaker 1: School of Humans.
