US researcher's death: His Filipino girlfriend's emotional roller-coaster
By Rennie Whang
The New Paper
Friday, May 17, 2013
SINGAPORE - They met on an online dating site in December 2010 and started seeing each other less than a month later.
Both were foreigners making a living in Singapore: Ms Shirley Sarmiento, 27, a Filipino staff nurse at Tan Tock Seng Hospital and Dr Shane Todd, 31, a US researcher working with the Institute of Microelectronics (IME), which is part of A*Star, a statutory board.
Most weekends, they met for dinner and she would sleep over at his place. His family knew they were dating and she had spoken with his brothers over Skype.
Little did they know that the relationship would end in devastation.
They had a routine: He would contact her on Friday nights or Saturday mornings to see if they would be meeting. The couple rarely spoke on weekdays.
But when Ms Sarmiento did not hear from Dr Todd on June 22 and 23 last year, a Friday and Saturday, she tried to contact him on Sunday morning to ask if he was all right.
The message and call, between 1pm and 2pm, went unanswered. She sent a text message again at 6pm, saying if she did not hear from him, she would go to his home at Spottiswoode Park.
Worried and tired of waiting for him to reply, she took a taxi to his home.
She found the common main door to both of the units on the second floor unlocked. Dr Todd stayed in one of the units.
The apartment door was shut, but unlocked. She went in and found the hall dark. But she spotted the lights in the master bedroom from under the door.
"When I first saw this, I was upset, as I thought that Shane had been ignoring my calls and texts," she said on Monday, on the first day of a coroner's inquiry into Dr Todd's death.
In the room, she glanced to her left and saw Dr Todd's body leaning away from the door of the toilet in the master bedroom.
It was mostly pale. But, as the nurse described it, he was purple from his elbow to his fingers and from his knees to toes.
A black cord hung above his head, around his neck.
Shocked, she screamed and ran out of the flat and into the hallway.
Her screams alerted Dr Todd's neighbour, Mr Michael Goodwin, 46, who came out and asked what was going on.
"I quickly approached (her) and tried to calm her down," said Mr Goodwin in court on Monday.
"Shirley, however, kept on repeating, 'it's Shane, go and look, go and look'."
But instead of checking the flat, Mr Goodwin went to the ground floor to call the police.
Why?
"I somehow knew that Shane was dead and I did not want to see his body," he said.
"I guess it was just my instincts. Given the severity of the scream, I had assumed that something bad had happened."
Ms Sarmiento went back to the master bedroom and shook Dr Todd's body back and forth from the front, to see if he was dead or alive.
"His body did not move when I shook it. He was also heavy. Shane did not respond or move and I left the master bedroom," she said.
Up till Dr Todd's death, even as he showed signs of depression, the couple were close.
On May 25 last year, a Friday, they arranged through text messages to have dinner the next day; but Dr Todd messaged her about not feeling well on Saturday and again on Sunday.
"I was upset as Shane had suddenly cancelled our plans to meet again when we already had so little time before he was due to return to America," she said.
She had text messaged him: "I want you to know that it makes me happy to be in the same room as you. It doesn't matter whether you are happy, sad or too grumpy because you have a bad headache.
"I love you too. I was just too pissed a while ago to say it back."
He replied: "I know it isn't fair to you to make plans and then cancel last minute... I just can't explain fully what I am going through. You make me so happy too. I am sorry I haven't been showing it. I do love you dearly."
The last time they saw each other was on the weekend of June 16 last year: They had dinner that day and she spent the night at his flat.
After church the next day, they went cycling at Changi Beach Park. She again spent the night at the flat and they parted on June 18 at about 8am.
He was going to work and she returned to her own flat. He told her he'd bought a ticket back to the US for July 1 and added that he would be running errands that week, including selling furniture and cancelling his mobile phone and Internet subscriptions.
"We bade each other goodbye that morning," she said.
Two days later , at about 8.30pm, she sent an SMS to say she missed him.
"Shane replied about two hours later, telling me that he also missed me and that he was having dinner with his colleagues."
He sent a text message again at about 11pm that night, saying he was going to sleep and would text her later.
"This was the last time I heard from Shane," she said.
'Perfectionist' who measured everything
Her boyfriend was not only friendly and kind, he was also a perfectionist, said Ms Shirley Sarmiento.
In her words: "Whenever he wrote a paper for work, he would always proofread it many times and would even ask me if the format looked all right or the positioning of the tables and figures were right.
"Whenever we cooked together, he always had to measure precisely the quantity of ingredients required.
"Even for salt and pepper, while people normally just used a pinch, Shane always used a measuring spoon to ensure that the measurements were accurate.
"Shane also timed how long it took him to travel from his apartment to the nearby MRT station.
"He even measured the time it took for him to walk across the overhead bridge, to cross the road, and to use the underpass at the police station to get to the MRT station."
He told her he was depressed
In the weeks before Dr Todd died, he behaved coldly towards Ms Sarmiento, she said.
He would back out of meetings at the last minute, saying he was unwell.
When she confronted him about it, he would only say: "I just can't explain fully what I am going through."
Ms Sarmiento said on Monday she thought he was referring to his work or to their relationship.
"Whenever I brought up the topic of him leaving Singapore, Shane would keep quiet."
She added that from the time Dr Todd was transferred to a new team at work, he told her how much he hated his job.
"Shane said that he hated work every time we met in his last few months...
According to Shane, he worked in a dishonest environment."
But he didn't elaborate - about why he hated work, or what he meant by dishonest. "We did not talk much about Shane's job as he hated talking about it."
Dr Todd had told her of a project he was doing with a friend, Mr Alexander Fang, who was based in the US. He had invited Mr Fang to Singapore for a meeting over the project, but it was cancelled at the last minute.
"Shane told me that Fang was not going to pursue this collaboration as Fang did not like the interaction he had with the IME," said Dr Todd's friend, Dr Ali Gilles Tchenguise Miserez, 37, an assistant professor with the Nanyang Technological University who also testified on Monday.
Dr Todd told Ms Sarmiento sometime early last year that he was given an assignment and did not know how to go about it.
He also mentioned
he did not like his new team as most of his team members communicated with each other in Mandarin, a language he did not understand.
In late February or March last year, Dr Todd told Ms Sarmiento he wanted to quit. "I was upset because I did not know how our relationship would work out... however, I was supportive of his decision to resign," she said.
Dr Todd later delayed his resignation till the performance bonus payout, as advised by his boss, she said.
On June 10 last year, over lunch after Mass at church, she recalled telling Dr Todd about the number of patients who visited the accident and emergency department at Tan Tock Seng Hospital because they were depressed.
"When Shane asked me if depression could be cured, I told him that people with depression just needed a good support network. I did not know if Shane had sought medical treatment for depression without my knowledge," she said.
But sometime between April and June last year, he told her he was depressed and had been so since October 2011.
He said he was depressed by the cancellation of the meeting with Mr Fang, and that one of his bosses had stolen his team's idea. He didn't elaborate.
On one occasion, he told her there were "heavy hands" coming after him and he was working on something that could get him into trouble with the US government.
"This concerned something about defence but I did not understand what Shane was talking about. I thought Shane was joking."
She said she told him he had nothing to worry about, since he was leaving Singapore in a few weeks.
"When I told Shane that he was thinking too much, he acknowledged that maybe he was."
She thought he meant by "heavy hands" that he was going to be punished by bosses for not performing well.
She added she had noticed that Dr Todd's hands shook ever since they met, but thought that some people just had shaky hands.
"In the last few days we were together, I noticed that his hands were shaking more than usual and that he would drop things when we were cooking together."
Still, she said, Dr Todd did not display any suicidal tendencies.
"He was eating properly. He was also not lying in bed and doing nothing. He exercised regularly.
"He was a very respectful and sweet man. We had a healthy relationship. Shane never raised his voice at me or cheated on me.
"He never hit me."
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