Shane Todd was an American engineer who died under disputed circumstances in Singapore in June 2012. Local authorities said Todd had committed suicide, though his family insists that he was murdered, possibly in connection with the work he had been doing at the Institute for Micro Electronics ("IME"), part of the Singaporean government-run Agency for Science, Technology and Research ("A*STAR") involving a gallium nitride-based semiconductor amplifying device purportedly for the Chinese telecom company Huawei.
Todd's death was the subject of a major investigative report in February 2013 by the Financial Times newspaper. The article carried the Todd family's claim that Singapore Police Force had not properly investigated Todd's death, and also contained their allegations that the IME was collaborating on a project with potential military implication with Huawei, a major Chinese electronics and telecommunications company. Both Huawei and A*STAR's IME institute subsequently denied that their work had progressed beyond the discussion stage.Feng Zengkun (19 February 2013). Is it suicide or is it murder? . The Straits Times. Retrieved 19 February 2013. Ex-colleagues of Todd also testified that there had been no such collaborations. The police also defended their role in the investigation.Spolar, Christine. (17 February 2013). Police defend probe into Singapore death. The Financial Times. Retrieved 19 February 2013.
The Todd family's suspicions of foul play stemmed from various pieces of circumstantial evidence. For instance, they alleged that the Singapore Police had failed to properly investigate the scene of the crime, that the police neglected to dust for fingerprints, that the suicide notes ostensibly left by Todd were out of character, that the crime scene did not match the description given by authorities, and that a pathologist in the United States found that his body showed evidence of a struggle, rather than a suicide.
According to the Todd family, Shane Todd had told his family that he was increasingly anxious at work in the months leading up to his death. He worried the project he was working on with an unnamed Chinese company may have been endangering U.S. national security. He had also told his family that he felt he was under threat because of his work with the Chinese.
A coroner's inquiry was conducted over two weeks from 13 to 27 May 2013. Evidence was presented to show that multiple visits had been made to suicide websites from Todd's laptop and that he had been prescribed antidepressants by a psychiatrist. The finding by the Singapore government's forensic pathologist that no injuries to Todd's body indicated he was garotted or had put up a struggle was corroborated by two independent Chief Medical Examiners from the United States. No hacking attempts on Todd's laptop to upload suicide notes were found. On July 8, the coroner released the verdict which ruled the death as "asphyxia due to hanging".
Background Todd had earned his bachelor's and master's degree in electrical engineering at the University of Florida in 2003 and 2005, respectively. He then pursued doctoral studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he researched silicon-based transmission lines. Upon completion of his PhD in 2010, he took a job offer to work for IME.
During this assignment, he worked on a project involving a proposed cooperation between A*STAR's IME institute and Huawei Technology. A project proposal outline recovered from Todd's external hard drive found in his apartment showed that there was a proposal for IME and Huawei to co-develop an amplifying device powered by gallium nitride (GaN). Such devices have both commercial as well as military applications. Todd's research in GaN also involved traveling to New Jersey to procure the TurboDisc® K465i™ GaN MOCVDmetalorganic chemical vapour deposition (MOCVD) System, equipment necessary to further the GaN research from Veeco, a U.S. publicly listed technology company.
As Todd worked on GaN research, he became increasingly anxious about his role. In conversations with his family, he said that he was collaborating with a Chinese company, and was "being asked to do things" that made him uncomfortable. Namely, his mother said that "he felt he was being asked to compromise American security." On one occasion, Todd told his mother that if she didn't hear from him every week, she should contact the American embassy. He turned to religion, and was prescribed antidepressants to help cope with the stress.
In late February 2012, Todd decided to leave IME and return to the United States. He put in 60 days' notice, then decided to stay an additional 30 days. As his time at IME ran down, he was offered a job with Nuvotronics, an American research firm. Friends and co-workers recalled that he was upbeat on his final day of work at IME on Friday, June 22.
Todd's girlfriend, Shirley Sarmiento, expected to hear from him on Friday or Saturday, but he did not respond to her messages. On Sunday, June 24, she went to his apartment. Finding the door unlocked, she entered, and discovered Todd's body hanging from a bathroom door. A chair was about five feet away. Sarmiento then contacted Todd's family in the United States to alert them to his death.
Alleged inconsistencies The Singapore Police were quoted as saying that Todd "drilled holes into his bathroom wall, bolted in a pulley, then slipped a black strap through the pulley and wrapped it around the toilet several times. He then tethered the strap to his neck and jumped from a chair." However, when Todd's family arrived at his apartment in Singapore after receiving news of his death, they noted that the scene was not as described: there were no holes in the marble walls of the bathroom, and neither were there bolts or screws. The location of the toilet was also not where the police report indicated it was. Furthermore, there were no signs of an investigation at the scene; police had not put up crime scene tape or dusted for fingerprints.
The Financial Times reported that Todd's home "looked like a snapshot of a man in the middle of a move". Before his death, Todd was in the middle of doing the laundry. He had packed boxes in preparation for his move back to the United States, and had clean clothes folded on the couch. He was also apparently in the middle of trying to sell his furniture, and had been writing out price tags. His airline ticket back to the United States was on the table, but his laptop and phone had been taken away by the police.
Police found several suicide notes allegedly left by Todd, but his family and girlfriend told the Financial Times that they did not seem to be Todd's writing. In one note, he apologized for being a burden to his family, but his mother said he had never been a burden; he had excelled at everything, she said. Another note praised the management of IME. His girlfriend was incredulous, noting that Todd "hated his job." After his mother read the notes, she told the police detectives, "My son might have killed himself, but he did not write this."
David Camp, a criminologist from Illinois, analyzed the suicide note side by side with a collection of Todd's other writings and told reporters that he held the opinion that the suicide note found by the police was not written by Todd. Camp concluded that it wasn't written by an American and wasn't typical of a suicide, that he felt the note was detached and unemotional, and did not match up with Todd's personality. He added that "everything about [the suicide note] was different: different format, different cultural backgrounds, different wording, different sentence length, everything about it was completely different, which leads to one conclusion; someone else wrote it."
Employees at IME were reportedly told not to speak to reporters about Todd's death. However, one of Todd's colleagues did reach out to his parents, telling them, "After collecting all information available, I cannot believe it is a suicide case. Actually, no one believes it...I truly hope that [the] FBI can be involved and perform further investigation."
The official autopsy report provided by the Singapore Police said that Todd's cause of death was "asphyxia due to hanging." But on his body, Todd's family found bruises on his hands and a bump on his forehead, neither of which was mentioned in the autopsy report. Suspecting foul play, they asked the mortuary to photograph Shane's body before burial, and send the photos to Edward Adelstein, a county-level deputy medical examiner in Missouri. Adelstein's initial theory was that Todd's wounds did not support the suicide hypothesis. Instead, it appeared Todd was involved in a fight with an attacker and died by "garrotting". The original pathologist in Singapore dismissed Adelstein's conclusions, stating that Adelstein had not seen the body and had mistaken the post-mortem pooling of blood in the hands for bruises.
FBI involvement The FBI offered assistance to authorities in Singapore to investigate Todd's death, but their help was initially refused. On 28 February 2013, Singapore Police requested help from the FBI on two specific areas regarding the case, namely (a) an external hard drive that contains some files related to a possible cooperation between Huawei and IME, and (b) Todd's medical records when he consulted a psychiatrist in 2002. This occurred after the Todd family did not respond to earlier requests by Singapore's police to share potential evidence. The Todds had found a hard disk in Shane's room and hired a private forensic investigator to investigate its contents. The investigator noted that the disk was accessed 3 days after Shane's death, opened a copy of a file related to his work, then deleted the copy. The Todds refused to hand it over to the Singapore's police directly and initially the FBI as well, stating: "It doesn't make sense for us to give information to the FBI until they're given full access to the investigation." In particular, the Todds claim that the Singapore's police prematurely concluded that Shane Todd's death was suicide.
Singapore's Minister for Foreign Affairs, K. Shanmugam pledged that Singapore Police would share evidence with the FBI, but stopped short of agreeing to the Todds' request for the FBI to lead the investigation. After the Todds turned the hard disk over to the FBI, the FBI issued a report on May 9 supporting the Singapore's police's claims that the hard disk was accessed by the police who were checking for evidence, and not some unknown third party. The report explained that the file in question was a temporary file that had been automatically created and deleted by the Microsoft software when the police investigator was accessing the hard disk. It also emerged that the hard drive was in fact handed over to the Todds by the Singapore police in the presence of U.S. embassy staff, even though the Todds claimed to have found it themselves.
Publicity and response A grassroots petition was started in 2013 on the White House website (whitehouse.gov) asking then President Obama to direct the Department of Justice to thoroughly investigate, under the federal witness murder statute, whether Todd was killed to keep him from talking to U.S. authorities about his work with the Chinese.Boca Grad Shane Todd: Suicide Or Murder Abroad?, BOCA news Now (1 March 2013)