In December of 2009, Shele Danishefsky Covlin’s physique was discovered within the bathtub of her Manhattan condominium. Her estranged husband (who lived throughout the corridor from her) known as 911 and informed the operator he had tried to revive her. Investigators decided her dying had been the results of an accident — a deadly slip as she was entering into the bathtub. A number of days later, Shele’s physique was buried. An post-mortem had not been carried out.
For 9 years, that was Shele Danishefsky Covlin’s story. Then, in March of 2019, her estranged husband, Roderick Covlin, was charged along with her homicide. What occurred to Shele Danishefsky Covlin? Right here’s what we all know.
What occurred to Shele Danishefsky Covlin?
When Ms. Danishefsky Covlin was 36 years outdated, she attended a celebration for Jewish singles in New York. That’s the place she met Rod Covlin, who was 25 on the time. The 2 made an on the spot connection and had been married simply six months after they first met. They’d two kids collectively, Anna and Myles.
Ms. Danishefsky Covlin had loved a profitable profession as a senior vice chairman for personal wealth administration at an funding financial institution. She labored arduous and had a cushty life. Rod by no means reached the identical stage of success in his personal profession as a stockbroker.
In an episode of Dateline, Ms. Danishefsky Covlin’s sister Eve Karstaedt mentioned her sister’s rising issues about Mr. Covlin’s lack of labor ethic, in addition to his unhealthy mood. In January of 2009, she wrote to Eve saying that she was “very scared that in some unspecified time in the future sooner or later all his anger and rage could end in one thing unhealthy taking place — he actually can’t management his mood” (per The New York Instances).
Only a few months later, Ms. Danishefsky Covlin filed for divorce. The 2 separated (with Ms. Danishefsky Covlin renting the condominium throughout the corridor from her estranged husband) and shortly grew to become embroiled in an unpleasant custody battle. Mr. Covlin tried to sabotage his estranged spouse’s life, telling her employer that she used medicine and had stolen cash from their joint account. He coached their 3-year-old son to falsely accuse his mom of sexual abuse. He additionally informed a girl he met on-line that he deliberate to kill his spouse.
Ms. Danishefsky Covlin made plans to take away her estranged husband from her will — which appears to have been the tipping level. Whereas he was in her will, he stood to achieve entry to $5 million within the occasion of her dying. Nonetheless, after Ms. Danishefsky Covlin was discovered useless in her condominium, Mr. Covlin didn’t get the cash. As a substitute, his mother and father grew to become the authorized guardians of the kids.
Ultimately, Ms. Danishefsky Covlin’s household organized for her physique to be exhumed, and a health worker decided that she had not merely slipped and fallen within the tub. She had been strangled. Mr. Covlin grew to become the first suspect within the investigation of his estranged spouse’s dying. Nonetheless, he wasn’t arrested for a number of years.
Earlier than his eventual arrest, Mr. Covlin continued to try to get entry to his estranged spouse’s property. He laid out a number of plans to kill his mother and father (although he didn’t carry any of them out). He stole $84,000 from his kids’s faculty fund. At one level, prosecutors state he even plotted to kidnap his daughter Anna and take her to Mexico, the place he would pay somebody $10,000 to marry her, thereby emancipating her from her grandparents. This plan didn’t come to cross, both.
Mr. Covlin even tried to border his daughter for Ms. Danishefsky Covlin’s homicide, drafting a confession e-mail from her account so it might look as if she wrote it. Though it took practically a decade, the courts finally discovered Mr. Covlin responsible of murdering Ms. Danishefksy Covlin. Though his conviction can not deliver Ms. Danishefsky Covlin again, her household was relieved to lastly know what actually occurred to her and to see her killer dropped at justice.
Watch Dateline cowl the story of Shele Danishefsky Covlin on Friday, June 12 at 10 p.m. ET on NBC.
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