Jury convicts Rod Covlin who snapped his wife's neck for her fortune
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A Manhattan jury on Wednesday convicted a backgammon-ace turned cold-blooded killer for snapping his estranged wife’s neck to score her $5.2 million fortune — as her family burst into tears.
It took the panel roughly two days to find Rod Covlin, 45, guilty of one count of second-degree murder for the shocking murder of banker Shele Danishfesky in her luxury Upper West Side apartment on New Year’s Eve 2009.
As the forewoman read the verdict, Danishefsky’s relieved siblings wept and embraced each other in Manhattan Supreme Court.
Covlin appeared stunned and dropped his head and closed his eyes.
“Finally, after nine years, we have justice for our beloved Shele,” said her brother-in-law, Marc Karstaedt, who has frequently spoken on behalf of the family. “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.”
During the seven-week trial, Assistant DA Mathew Bogdanos argued that Covlin, who was living across the hall, snuck into Danishfesky’s apartment, used a martial arts chokehold to kill her then staged the scene to look like an accident.
Danishefsky, 47, a wealth manager at UBS, was about to excise the failed stockbroker and manic philanderer out of her will.
The couple was in the midst of a bitter divorce and custody battle over their two children, Anna and Myles.
Bogdanos acknowledged to jurors that the case was circumstantial but still overwhelmingly stacked in favor of a guilty verdict.
“There’s only one person in the universe, to the exclusion of every other person on the planet, only one person who had the motive, the opportunity and the means,” the prosecutor said in summations.
Covlin claimed that his daughter called him after finding Danishefsky’s lifeless body in the tub, and he rushed over to help. He told police he had pulled her body from the blood-tinged water, performed CPR then called 911. Yet his shirt was bone dry, cops noted.
Despite the suspect circumstances, police initially thought Danishefsky’s death was an accident.
Her face was covered in scratches, she had bruises on her right arm and she had a protective order against Covlin, who had repeatedly threatened to end her life.
Further hampering the investigation, her Orthodox Jewish family waived an autopsy.
But as suspicions multiplied, Danishefsky’s body was eventually exhumed and the city’s medical examiner determined that she had a fractured hyoid bone and ruled her death a homicide.
After the botched police investigation, it took nearly six years for prosecutors to gather enough evidence to charge Covlin.
A significant portion of the prosecution’s case involved Covlin’s depraved behavior before Danishefsky’s slaying and years after — including four murder plots against his own parents.
Defense lawyer Robert Gottlieb told jurors “you may despise him, you may detest him, you may be offended by his character” – but that doesn’t make him guilty.
In his summation, he harped on the lack of evidence, the bungled police investigation and the compromised crime scene.
Family members, a private investigator and a rabbi had repeatedly traipsed through the apartment unsupervised.
After the verdict, Covlin’s visibly stricken mother declined to comment as she left the courthouse.
Gottlieb blamed the unfavorable outcome on all the testimony jurors were permitted to hear about Covlin’s disturbing conduct before and after Danishefsky’s murder.
“We all knew how overwhelming the extraneous evidence was and the devastating impact it had on the jury,” he said.
Covlin’s defense plans to appeal.
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