The strange death of engineer Shane Todd — and the questions it raised

A young engineer found dead

On June 24, 2012, the body of Shane Todd — a 31-year-old American electronics engineer — was found hanging in his Singapore apartment. Todd, who had earned his bachelor's and master's degrees at the University of Florida and a PhD at UC Santa Barbara, had just wrapped up an 18-month stint at IME, a government research institute in Singapore. He was a week away from returning to the United States.

Singapore police called it suicide. His parents, Mary and Rick Todd of Montana, refused to believe it.

Why the family suspected murder

The Todds flew to Singapore and found details that, to them, didn't add up: the police said Todd had drilled holes into his bathroom wall, bolted in a pulley, and hanged himself from it — but his mother said she saw no holes, no bolts, no pulley in the marble bathroom.

Todd had also been anxious at work. His family said he told them he was uncomfortable with a project that seemed to involve a Chinese company and feared it was compromising US national security — telling his mother that if she didn't hear from him every week, she should contact the American embassy. He had been prescribed antidepressants, and he was upbeat on his last day at IME — a group had met at a steak restaurant, he had a job lined up in the States, and a friend showed his parents a video of Todd at a karaoke bar belting out his go-to song, "Susie Q."

Then came the find that, in early 2013, turned the family's grief into an international story: an external hard drive containing a backup of Todd's work files — including a project plan for IME and Huawei Technologies to co-develop an amplifier device powered by gallium nitride (GaN), a semiconductor material able to withstand extreme heat and power well beyond silicon.

Why GaN mattered

GaN devices have clear civilian uses — LED lighting, high-powered transistors for mobile phone base stations. But they also have serious military potential: high-powered radar, electronic warfare, signal jamming. Major US defense contractors, including Northrop Grumman and Raytheon, had pursued significant GaN research. Experts who reviewed the project plan said it would be "unnerving but not surprising" if Huawei were trying to advance its GaN technology.

What the other side said

IME said neither Todd nor the institute was involved in any classified research. Huawei said it had no cooperation with IME related to gallium nitride. The FT's investigation — the source of this story — presented the family's claims alongside those denials, while noting that Huawei had already been blocked from projects in Australia and deemed a security risk by the US Congress over spying fears.

The verdict

In May 2013, a two-week coroner's inquiry heard the evidence. State counsel presented suicide-related websites on Todd's laptop and suicide letters to family members; a psychiatrist had prescribed antidepressants for a history of depression. Two independent US chief medical examiners corroborated the Singapore pathologist's finding of no struggle — and the Todds' own pathologist reversed his earlier claim that Todd had been garroted.

On July 8, 2013, Judge Chay Yuen Fatt ruled that Todd "committed suicide by hanging himself," recording the cause of death as "asphyxia due to hanging" and finding no evidence of foul play. The family walked out before the inquest ended, saying they had lost faith in the process — and continued to believe otherwise.

Archive summary, February 2013 (with the July 2013 inquest outcome added), based on reporting by the Financial Times, the Associated Press, and Al Jazeera.