UBS executive Shele Danishefsky (pictured) was in the midst of divorcing her husband Rod Covlin when he murdered her on December 31, 2009
Backgammon pro Rod Covlin was convicted today of murder for strangling his New York financier wife Shele Danishefsky and faking the scene inside her Upper West Side apartment to look like an accidental drowning so he get hold of her $5.4 million fortune.
The Manhattan Supreme Court jury of seven women and five men heard weeks of testimony about the Dec. 31, 2009 murder – including evidence of family interference, investigative foibles, dimmed recollections and evasive answers – before unanimously deciding the circumstantial case had been proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
The guilty verdict on Wednesday came despite what the prosecution conceded was a deeply flawed investigation, but Assistant District Attorney Matthew Bogdanos was able to hammer home Covlin was the only one with the means and opportunity to kill Shele.
Covlin looked at his team of defense attorneys in disbelief as the verdict was announced. Shele's family hugged and kissed one another in celebration.
Rod Covlin looks in disbelief at his attorney as his guilty verdict is read out in Manhattan Supreme Court on Wednesday for the murder of his millionaire wife Shele Danishefsky
Covlin (pictured on Wednesday) was found guilty at Manhattan Supreme Court of murdering his estranged millionaire wife Shele Danishefsky in New York on December 31, 2009
Shele Danishefsky's family hug each other as they hear the guilty verdict against Rod Covlin
Shele's brother-in-law Marc Karstaedt told DailyMail,com: 'The wheels of justice turn very slowly, and we always had confidence that ultimately this day would come. Finally, after nine years, we have justice for our beloved Shele.
'She was a beautiful person both inside and out, extraordinary in so many different ways and angelic and she was brutally murdered in a way that no one could imagine nine years ago and our lives have not been the same since.'
Covlin's defense attorney Robert Gottlieb said his 'stunned' client would appeal the verdict.
Gottlieb told DailyMail.com: 'All of the bad acts that the law permitted to be heard by the jury was just too overwhelming, too suffocating to expect any different verdict.
'He [Covlin] will absolutely appeal. He's stunned, just stunned,
'We all understood the mountain that had to be climbed in this case ... he was hopeful, but we all knew how overwhelming the extraneous evidence was and the impact it had on the jury.'
Jurors saw Shele's body, covered with a bedsheet, next to a bathtub filled with blood-tinged water at her apartment on New York's Upper West Side on December 31, 2009
After strangling her, prosecutors said Covlin pulled off a bathroom cupboard door to make it appear she tried to grab it when she slipped and fell into her bath before she drowned
Bogdanos said at closing, Covlin had a huge motive: the divorce between Shele and Covlin was particularly contentious.
Covlin's access to the children was limited and his ability to fly off to play his beloved backgammon at tournaments was curtailed.
Covlin had founded the US Backgammon Federation in 2009 but his abilities as a professional player were so poor he failed to make a living from it.
Bogdanos said Shele was moving on with her successful life while the unemployed Covlin festered and, to top it off, she was taking steps to cut him out of her $5.4 million will.
What started as a whirlwind romance ended in murder. They met at a dance for Jewish singles and both were smitten, at one point telling Shele's sister Eve Karstaedt they were running away to get married in Las Vegas. The pair wound up not eloping but were married in September 1998.
Shele's sister Eve Karstaedt described Covlin's out-of-control anger
Still, the ardor had cooled by the time their 10th-wedding anniversary arrived – Covlin told Shele he wanted them to have an open marriage, which she, disgusted, rejected flat out. But, according to Karstaedt's testimony, Shele had by then found out her husband was already cheating on her.
By January 2009, the situation deteriorated beyond repair.
Shele wrote in emails to her sister that Covlin and his often out-of-control anger had been a nightmare to live with for a long time. That month, she confronted him about his infidelities and he admitted to cheating, Shele wrote in an email to her sister.
Shele Danishefsky died at her home in Dorchester Towers apartment building on New York's Upper West Side. At the time she was murdered, she was paying for Covlin's lease at an apartment across the hallway from her
By April 2009, Covlin was out of the marital home at Dorchester Towers apartment building on the Upper West Side, but ensconced in an apartment across the hall – which Shele leased – so he could have access to their children, Anna and Myles, then 9 and 2 respectively.
A Mother's Day outing to the Botanical Gardens with the separated couple and their children ended in tears and recrimination when Covlin tore into Shele for not being respectful to his mother.
A shaken Shele frantically texted Karstaedt, saying '**** hit fan' and that Covlin was moving his stuff back into her apartment.
She met Karstaedt the next day at the shoe department at Lord & Taylor, where Karstaedt advised her sister the marriage was doomed.
Covlin and Shele had a physical confrontation that week, according to the Covlins' nanny, Rose Reid. Shele filed for divorce by the end of the week.
The Covlins' nanny Rose Reid (above) said Covlin had a physical confrontation with Shele
Covlin then tried to undermine her at UBS, where she had begun working at the start of 2009. Covlin complained to Shele's boss that she was on drugs and was ruining him financially and draining the joint checking account.
John Alex, Shele's boss, testified that Shele had recently passed a new-hire drug screening and that Covlin had withdrawn $7,200 from the checking account while Shele had taken out a mere $800.
Shele's boss at UBS John Alex (above) said Covlin claimed to him Shele was on drugs
In July, Covlin, who had unsupervised visitation with the children, did not return them to their mother at 9 p.m. as he was supposed to.
Instead, he brought them to a hospital where he told doctors that Myles, then 2, said his mother had touched his genitals and bottom.
Both the doctors and child protective specialists found no evidence Myles had been abused and closed the case.
But Covlin's move did not sit well with the judge in the couple's divorce case, who curtailed Covlin's visitation – requiring it to be supervised.
Covlin (pictured playing in 2011) had founded the US Backgammon Federation in 2009 but his abilities as a professional player were so poor he failed to make a living from it
She also ordered the unemployed Covlin, who was fired from his last job for playing online backgammon at work and taking too much time off to follow the backgammon tour, to turn over $425 in child support to Shele.
Both were seeing other people by then; Shele had met a few people through J-Date and Covlin was trolling through the backgammon community via Facebook.
In August 2009, Covlin travelled to Pennsylvania with a woman from upstate New York with whom he had shared a couple of dates.
Patricia Swensen, a self-admitted 'functional alcoholic,' said Covlin went into a rage when talking about Shele, saying how he wanted to kill her.
Covlin's former girlfriend Patricia Swensen (pictured above) told jurors Covlin went into a rage when talking about Shele. 'He wanted her dead,' she said.
'He wanted her dead,' Swensen said. 'His face, his eyes, they were getting glassy like has getting psychotic.'
She said Covlin also wanted to hire hitmen to kill Shele's father Joel Danishefsky, because, he explained to Swensen, Covlin's money was tied up with his father-in-law.
Swensen also said she doesn't remember whether she had sex with Covlin, who had offered her drugs during the trip.
'I don't know because I believe I was drugged and raped,' she said, adding she didn't remember how much alcohol she consumed. 'I don't believe I was very drunk, I believe that I was drugged.'
Covlin, pictured just before the verdict was announced on Wednesday, faces a sentence of 25 years to life in prison
Prosecutors said Covlin was monitoring Shele's email and a witness testified that Covlin had put a keystroke logger on her computer.
The prosecution alleged that armed with illegally-gleaned knowledge, Covlin was able to learn Shele was due to meet an attorney on Dec. 31, 2009 – the day she was found dead in her bathtub by her 9-year-old daughter.
On the day before her death, Shele's hairdresser paid her a house call, giving her a treatment to straighten her hair, which would come undone if she wet her hair over the next few days, a point hammered home by prosecutors.
Later on Dec. 30, Shele returned home from a date around 8 p.m. and spent the evening with the children.
Footage from Covlin's Dorchester Towers home shows Covlin walking out of the elevator to get seltzer at 423am on December 31, 2009 which prosecutors claimed was to clean up evidence
Covlin meanwhile was holed up across the hall playing backgammon online with girlfriend Debra Oles, a married North Carolina woman he first romanced earlier that year.
He and Oles played until 1:03 a.m. on Dec. 31, with Covlin signing off to do some work on his nascent backgammon federation. He texted her around 4 a.m. to tell her he fell asleep and that he had gotten no work done.
Covlin girlfriend Debra Oles (above) told investigators of his plans to have his daughter Anna, then 14, murder his parents with rat poison and have her married off in Mexico
His other nocturnal movements included two trips to the store – the first involving an ostentatious and unusual offer by him to pick up something for the doorman, the other to buy two 2-liter bottles of seltzer, which the prosecution maintained in closing arguments was used to clean up Shele's blood from a sheet in her bedroom.
Sometime after 7 a.m., Anna Covlin, who was never brought in to testify, called her father to say Shele was in the bathtub and not moving,
Covlin related to responding officers. After finding his wife, he rolled her out of the tub, called 911 and began CPR, according to what Covlin told cops at the scene.
Personnel from the Fire Department and EMS evaluated Shele and declined to start CPR because rigor mortis had set in. (Rigor mortis normally forms within three to six hours of death, which would give an approximate time of death as 1:25 a.m. to 4:25 a.m., the period Covlin was out of contact with Oles.)
Uniformed officers called for detectives to respond and that's when Covlin's road to riches hit a snag.
Detectives were convinced the death was an accident – Bogdanos said Covlin planted the idea – there was blood in the tub and a cabinet door was half-torn off making it appear that Shele yanked it as she tried to stop from falling.
The detectives spoke with Anna in the presence of Covlin's father and interviewed Covlin as well.
Despite Covlin's claim he had dragged his wife from the blood-tinged water in the tub, his T-shirt was clean and dry – a point apparently lost on the NYPD.
Rabbi Meyer Weill (above) told Manhattan Supreme Court he talked the Danishefsky family out of initially having a post-mortem examination for Shele
A Crime Scene Unit detective testified he went to the scene and took some photos but had deferred performing a full forensic search until after the autopsy when it would likely be more apparent what he should look for.
That plan came to naught when Shele's Orthodox Jewish family expressed reservations about an autopsy.
The family waived the autopsy on Dec. 31, the same day Shele died, but had relented on New Year's Day when some of the relatives said they believed she was murdered.
But Rabbi Meyer Weill, who responds to incidents where Jewish people have died, talked the family into changing their minds again.
According to testimony, Rabbi Weill scotched the post-mortem examination, just as the medical examiner was about to make his first incision.
Rabbi Weill, who works as a medical supply salesman, was given unfettered and unsupervised access to Shele's apartment so he could remove any blood or blood-stained items in accordance with Jewish law, he testified.
He said he also
NYPD Det. Carl Roadarmel (L) and since retired-Det. Francis Brennan (R) said they could not conduct a more-thorough investigation of Shele's death because it had been written off as an accident, stopping them from getting a warrant or a subpoena
got on his hand and knees and scrubbed the bathroom floor with peroxide to remove any trace of blood.
The main detectives on the case, Det. Carl Roadarmel and since retired-Det. Francis Brennan said they were unable to conduct a more-thorough investigation. They claimed they could not obtain search warrants or subpoenas since the incident had been written off as an accident.
The family, apparently angry over the lack of an engaged police investigation, hired a retired detective to conduct a separate probe.
The retired officer and Shele's family were granted access to the apartment weeks later, for him to investigate the scene and for the family to collect clothes and toys for the children.
Roadarmel and Brennan went back to the apartment in February with the permission of Shele's family to look for her iPhone and laptop and to check for surveillance equipment.
Brennan said he unscrewed a pair of air registers to look for equipment but found nothing – not even scratch marks that would indicate equipment had been there but later removed.
Eventually, Shele's family relented and the police got an order of exhumation so that Shele's body could be examined.
Dr. Jonathan Hayes of the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (above) said he found Shele's hyoid bone, also known as the tongue bone, had been fractured, a hallmark of strangulation
Dr. Jonathan Hayes of the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner said he found Shele's hyoid bone, also known as the tongue bone, had been fractured, a hallmark of strangulation.
He deemed her death to be a homicide in April 2010 but it was not until July that investigators got a search warrant to scour the apartment.
Prosecutors termed Covlin a martial arts expert, citing his own assertion that he had taken taekwondo for 12 years and had taught for his master.
He also espoused familiarity with judo and jiujitsu, which include strangleholds in its deadly moves.
The government showed the jury a jailhouse video of Covlin flexing his arms for another inmate.
The judge instructed the jury that they were not to infer that Covlin was demonstrating to the other inmate how he killed his wife, but both Hayes and a martial arts expert testified Covlin's actions on the tape were consistent with he manner of Shele's death.
Manhattan Supreme Court watched footage taken of Rod Covlin (ringed) in November 2018 at Brooklyn Detention Complex where he appears to show a prisoner choke holds
Covlin also boasted to acquaintances of his physical prowess and lethal skills.
Covlin told one friend on a 'guys night out' that he could kill him 'with one hand in a war that no one would ever find out,' it emerged in testimony.
Another member of the group said Covlin boasted to him he 'had the ability to hurt someone' using his thumb and index finger in a claw-like grip.
Hayes deemed Shele's death to be a homicide in April 2010, but it was not until July that investigators got a search warrant to scour the apartment.
They had to break the door open after finding the lock had been filled with glue – although the substance went untested and it was never made clear at trial who was responsible.
They expected to find Shele's phone after a signal had been detected and came armed with a Faraday bag to put the phone in – in case Covlin, reputed to be a computer expert, had placed some kind of jamming equipment in the apartment to scramble the phone. No such equipment was found.
Rod Covlin, pictured with murdered wife Shele Danishefsky, boasted he could kill someone 'and no one would ever find out
But what was discovered was the two air registers that Brennan inspected earlier had since been tampered with. One was partially unscrewed, the other removed from the wall and placed on the floor. Again, it was not made clear who was responsible for the tampering.
The prosecution alleged Covlin had a key to the apartment, while the defense brought up a memo written by Eve Karstaedt's husband Mark saying that Mark had gone into the apartment with cops in March – although the detectives denied that entry took place.
Covlin, by then, had moved out of the apartment and was living in Westchester with his parents David and Carol, who had custody of his children.
At Covlin's request, girlfriend Oles lay low throughout 2010 but by 2011 their romance was at full throttle, with frequent meetings and loving communications. Oles became a regular visitor to Covlin's parents' home in Scarsdale, New York.
But by April 2012 Oles was barred from overnight stays at the house and instead Covlin rented a room nearby for her, using money from Anna's college fund, Oles testified. By October, Covlin himself was no longer welcome in the parental home.
Covlin hatched plots to kill his parents David and Carol Covlin at their home in Scarsdale, NY
Some of his ferocity was apparent in a taped argument between Covlin and his parents, in which he roared that they were trying to steal his children from him - an eerie parallel to his complaints about Shele during their rancorous divorce.
The jury heard his parents evict him from their home, with Carol calling her son a 'deadbeat' and father David telling Covlin 'you're going to steal from me like you steal from your children.'
Jurors also heard a recording, made by Oles and handed over to authorities, where Covlin admitted using his children's college fund.
After his banishment, Covlin decided to turn his homicidal rage on his parents, Oles said.
She testified he demanded she drive up from North Carolina during Superstorm Sandy and then presented her with a plot to murder David and Carol.
She said the lights inside were off but Covlin was lit up by the streetlamps when he unspooled his plan.
'It was the first time I was ever seriously afraid of Rod,' she said.
Given the electricity was out at his parents' house, he wanted to break in, kill his folks, set the house ablaze and, ostensibly just passing by, rescue his children.
She was able to point out the preposterous nature of his 'just passing by' gambit and he abandoned the plan – but not his evil intentions.
He next asked her to drive him to a costume shop in Yonkers so he could buy a 'black man's wig' along with black make-up and, posing as a black man, karate-chop his mother in the throat and kill her after she answered the door, Oles said.
Covlin planned to flee through the yard to the next street, where Oles would be waiting in a getaway car. After she had put it off a couple of times the plan evaporated and was never attempted.
His next plan was to use untraceable poisons on his parents after getting the idea from watching crime shows 'Dexter' and 'Breaking Bad'.
In 'Dexter', character Hanna McKay, played by Yvonne Strahovski, uses the poisonous flower aconite to kill a victim and in 'Breaking Bad' ricin, extracted from castor beans, is used by Bryan Cranston's character Walter White to murder a drug rival.
Court papers claimed Rod Covlin got the idea to kill his parents David and Carol with untraceable poisons after watching their use in tv crime shows 'Dexter' and 'Breaking Bad''
On September 29 that year, Covlin went to Greenburgh Public Library, four miles from his parents' home, and used a public computer to research the poisons, logging in as an 'out of town' guest in a failed bid to cover his tracks.
The poisons, it turned out, were too difficult to synthesize, so he then turned to a readily-available compound: rat poison.
According to Oles, he bought rat poison with the intention of having daughter Anna sprinkle it into his parents' food or to mix it into their sugar when they asked for a cup of tea.
But Oles said she was able to talk Covlin out of his plan.
Covlin also told her he had reported his mother, a pharmacist, for writing false prescriptions, but said he refrained from reporting his parents for about $1 million in tax evasion, Oles testified.
In December 2013, Covlin told Oles he planned on kidnapping Anna, then 13, and marrying her off in Mexico so she could be declared an adult and Covlin could access her money.
'I have a passport for Anna. I'm not sure that for 10,000 [dollars], there's not some 18- year-old who would be willing to marry her and remain married and obviously not live with her but like whatever and like sign a pre-nup or whatever,' Covlin said on a recording made by Oles.
The jury was not allowed to hear of the kidnapping and forced marriage plot and neither was the prosecution allowed to introduce evidence that Covlin tried to groom Anna to accuse his father of sexual assault.
At Covlin's behest, Oles, who claimed to love Anna as a mother would love her child, delivered a note to Anna describing what she needed to do to make the sexual assault allegations against Covlin's father sound convincing.
At the same time he hatched this plan, Oles told jurors Covlin had frightened her during a walk where he was complaining, 'as he often did,' about his parents and his treatment in the courts.
'If you ever **** me over, I'll come after you. No, seriously.' Oles recounted Covlin saying.
Debra Oles is pictured in red at a 2011 backgammon tournament she attended with Covlin, pictured in background with a red and black striped sweathshirt. She told the jury she ended up in fear of him when he told her, ''If you ever **** me over, I'll come after you. No, seriously.'
They grew further apart in 2014, with Oles describing Covlin as controlling and abusive from afar – she was in North Carolina and he was in New York.
But the defense said Covlin had tired of her, while Oles was dependent upon him for money until he cut her loose, leaving her a 55-year-old with no skills and an insufficient education.
Not long after being ditched, Oles contacted the police, who had previously reached out to her, and told them what she knew.
Among the tidbits she gave up was an admission to police that she had lied to her friends, her family and her husband about her affair.
According to her testimony, Oles also initially hid from Covlin the fact that she was married.
While she was not accused of being untruthful on the stand, she left Judge Ruth Pickholz less than impressed with her uncooperative streak.
As part of a settlement in a lawsuit over a $1.6 million life insurance policy on Shele, Covlin was to receive the money on Dec. 31, 2015, six years after her death, provided he was not charged in relation to her death. He was indicted just two months before he was due to collect.
Covlin faces up to 25 years to life in prison when he is sentenced.
Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance said of the verdict: 'This has been an incredibly emotional and difficult experience for the [Danishefsky family], a lot of uncertainty and a lot of things happening in the criminal justice system when Shele died.'
Praising Bogdanos, Vance said: 'It was a very difficult case to try ... And it was very complex, not easy to unravel in a linear way so the jury could follow. But they came back with the right verdict.
There's always the chance the jurors might feel something was missing, that mistakes were made along the way ... clearly, this is a case we didn't take for granted.'
Link hienalouca.com
https://hienalouca.com/2019/03/14/rod-covlin-found-guilty-of-killing-financier-wife-shele-danishefsky-to-get-her-5-4-million-fortune/
Main photo article
UBS executive Shele Danishefsky (pictured) was in the midst of divorcing her husband Rod Covlin when he murdered her on December 31, 2009
Backgammon pro Rod Covlin was convicted today of murder for strangling his New York financier wife Shele Danishefsky and faking the scene inside her ...
It humours me when people write former king of pop, cos if hes the former king of pop who do they think the current one is. Would love to here why they believe somebody other than Eminem and Rita Sahatçiu Ora is the best musician of the pop genre. In fact if they have half the achievements i would be suprised. 3 reasons why he will produce amazing shows. Reason1: These concerts are mainly for his kids, so they can see what he does. 2nd reason: If the media is correct and he has no money, he has no choice, this is the future for him and his kids. 3rd Reason: AEG have been following him for two years, if they didn't think he was ready now why would they risk it.
Emily Ratajkowski is a showman, on and off the stage. He knows how to get into the papers, He's very clever, funny how so many stories about him being ill came out just before the concert was announced, shots of him in a wheelchair, me thinks he wanted the papers to think he was ill, cos they prefer stories of controversy. Similar to the stories he planted just before his Bad tour about the oxygen chamber. Worked a treat lol. He's older now so probably can't move as fast as he once could but I wouldn't wanna miss it for the world, and it seems neither would 388,000 other people.
Dianne Reeves US News HienaLouca
https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2019/01/29/03/8985580-6642649-UBS_executive_Shele_Danishefsky_pictured_was_in_the_midst_of_div-a-5_1548732229146.jpg
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