Karen Swift’s death haunts her daughter as David Swift maintains his innocence from prison

Ashley Swift always saw her father as a supportive, thoughtful parent.

He showed her how to change the oil in her car. He helped her get her first job, she said, then shuttled her between there and home. When it was time for college, they talked about the pros and cons of going right after high school.

But two years ago, David Swift, 56, was charged with murder in the slaying of someone else who had a big impact on Ashley’s life: his wife – Ashley’s mother. Karen Swift’s mysterious and violent death had been unsolved for more than a decade and Ashley, then 20, was stunned by her father’s arrest.

Then came another development. David, who has maintained his innocence, was acquitted at trial earlier this year of the most serious charges – first and second degree murder. But the jury was deadlocked on the lesser crime of manslaughter. Weeks after a judge declared a mistrial in the case, David was indicted on one count of manslaughter and remains in jail awaiting a new trial.

The ordeal has lasted more than half of Ashley’s life.

“It’s something that’s very difficult at first, and it’s still difficult, but I feel like over time you work things out,” she told “Dateline.” But “over and over and over, everywhere I go, every school I went to, every workplace I’ve worked — it comes up.”

For more on the case, tune into “After the Halloween Party” on “Dateline” at 9 ET/8 CT tonight.

Two turbulent decades together

Karen, a 44-year-old mother of four, disappeared on Oct. 30, 2011, after picking up Ashley early from a sleepover and falling asleep with her at their home in Dyersburg, a small town about 80 miles north of Memphis, Dyer County District Attorney Danny Goodman told the jury in May.

Soon after, Karen’s SUV was found nearby with a flat tire, as were her two phones. Both had been damaged, Terry McCreight, chief investigator with the Dyer County Sheriff’s Office, told “Dateline.”

In interviews with local authorities, David said he wanted to help what he could and described the couple’s turbulent two decades together, recordings show. They had two children after marrying in 1989, then divorced after he had an affair, he said. They later remarried and had two more children — including Ashley — before Karen had an affair, David said.

When she disappeared, David thought she was having a mid-life crisis.

She had started drinking, sometimes heavily, he said, and partying with new friends. Weeks before her disappearance, he said, she had served him with divorce papers.

Although he thought she was “lost”, he said in one of the interviews, “I still love her and care for her.”

While David told authorities that Karen appeared to have withdrawn from their relationship, her friends told “Dateline” that in the last months of her life she had become more independent, social and confident.

For Ashley, who was 9 at the time, her mother was a parent who went to every game and every dance competition — “all the things, she was there,” Ashley said. Although she also noticed a change in her mother, she said. Karen went out so often, Ashley recalled, that she tearfully begged her mother to stay home.

There is a lack of evidence

Six weeks after Karen disappeared, her remains were found near a local cemetery, Dyer County Sheriff Jeff Box told “Dateline.” The medical examiner determined that she died of blunt force trauma to the head.

Authorities focused on what they saw as possible evidence linking David to the murder. Karen had gotten one of her two phones to avoid being monitored by her husband and had tried to keep it a secret from him, Goodman said during the trial. David told investigators he didn’t know about Karen’s other phone, but authorities found the device’s number programmed into David’s work phone, prosecutors said.

And during his interview with authorities, McCreight said, David seemed unable to focus on anything other than his wife’s behavior.

“It was just a sign to me that this guy is hiding something,” McCreight said. “He’s covering something up.”

Despite these suspicions, there was no physical evidence or eyewitnesses linking David to the murder. The investigation stalled.

David moved to Alabama and remarried, Ashley said, and her father remained an involved parent, taking her to his grocery store job and teaching her to work on his Jeep. As Ashley got older, she said she wanted to know more about what happened to her mother, but she became increasingly hopeless about it.

“I reached an age where I realized I would never know what happened,” she said.

Trying to put a puzzle together

Two years ago, when David was arrested and charged with her mother’s murder, Ashley recalled how distraught she was at the turn of events. Her father and stepmother had separated, she said, leaving Ashley struggling to find care for her younger sister. She was also confused.

“I was trying to figure out why,” she said.

Goodman, the prosecutor, said he believed his predecessor had been waiting for evidence that would make the case against David a “slam dunk”. But four years ago, the Covid pandemic led to a slowdown in cases that gave prosecutors time to go through 30 large containers of files in Karen’s murder, Goodman told “Dateline.”

They did not reveal what Goodman called “a big thing” that could be used in efforts to prosecute David, he said. What they found instead, he said, was a puzzle with a clear motive.

“I think he saw that he was losing control,” Goodman said. “Because he was previously able to control everything Karen did, everywhere she went.”

“He saw it start to slip away,” Goodman added.

David was so enraged by Karen’s drinking, partying and impending divorce that he violently planned her death, prosecutors said when they tried the case earlier this year.

After Karen returned home after picking up Ashley, Goodman said the two fell asleep in the same bed. Goodman claims that at some point that night, David put Ashley in the same room as her younger sister, then dragged Karen from her bedroom to the garage.

The medical examiner had attributed Karen’s cause of death to a fractured skull from being trampled, and in court Goodman told the jury that David had used such violence in the assault that the fatal blow “hollowed her skull.”

Then David allegedly loaded Karen into a car, dumped her body in the cemetery and staged the crime to make it appear she had been abducted, Goodman said.

During the trial, prosecutors detailed the circumstantial evidence uncovered more than a decade ago — the possible lie about Karen’s secret phone and David’s “degrading” comments about Karen to investigators — and said there was no evidence she planned to leave out again after she picked up. Ashley. Karen’s autopsy showed she had taken a sleeping pill, prosecutors said, and her phones were inactive after she got home.

Prosecutors also raised a key new detail about Karen’s secret phone. Although there was no activity on her devices after she slept with Ashley, a forensic extraction found that someone used the secret phone hours later to call the device’s voicemail, prosecutors said.

That call was made at 9:55 a.m. on Oct. 30 while the phone was connected to the family’s home Wi-Fi, Dyer County Assistant District Attorney Tim Boxx told the jury. Karen had already disappeared by then, but her phones had not yet been found.

“We know there was an adult in the Swift home at 9:55 in the morning,” Boxx said.

To question the evidence

In court, defense lawyer Daniel Taylor said David was not overly controlling but genuinely concerned about his partner.

There was no evidence to support the state’s account of the murder, Taylor said — no blood in the garage or the car and no evidence that David ever left the house. Even the medical examiner who had determined Karen’s cause of death told the prosecutor he no longer believed she had been fatally trampled, Goodman told “Dateline.”

The conclusion that a phone call was made inside the Swifts’ home that Saturday morning was based on unreliable evidence, Taylor said. He added that David’s physical condition would have made it impossible to commit the type of crime Goodman alleged. At the time of Karen’s death, David had re-injured his knee and was on crutches, Taylor said.

At trial, David’s physical therapist testified that he would have had extreme difficulty walking and lifting. (Goodman accused David of faking the injury and said he was seen moving hay bales the day before the killing.)

Ashley, who testified at trial, also disputed the prosecutor’s claims. It wasn’t David who moved her that night, she testified. It was her mother.

“I will go to my grave knowing that it was my mother,” she told “Dateline.”

Ashley believed her father’s injury was the strongest piece of evidence casting doubt on the prosecution’s case. Her mother was athletic, Ashley said, and she couldn’t imagine someone in her father’s condition could easily overtake and move her.

After five days of testimony and two days of deliberation, the jury reached its decision, acquitting David of murder but remaining deadlocked on the manslaughter charge. No date has been set for his reinstatement.

Ashley, now a dental hygienist in Alabama, recalled the difficulty of awaiting the verdict and — once it was handed down — he initially thought the case was over. Then she learned it wasn’t. David is innocent, Ashley said, and she believes her father is being falsely imprisoned while he awaits a new trial.

That reality has made her fight to move on.

“I want justice for my mother and I want my father home,” she said. “But I want to live a normal life.”