Shele Danishfesky Murder: Where is Rod Covlin today? – Approximately ten years ago, on New Year’s Eve 2009, former stockbroker Rod Covlin killed his estranged wife, Shele Danishfesky. A Manhattan jury found him guilty of second-degree murder in March 2019. According to the allegations, Covlin strangled Danishfesky before staging the crime scene to make it appear like an accident.
Wealthy 47-year-old banker Shele Danishfesky, a mother of two, was found dead floating face-down in her luxurious Manhattan apartment’s blood-filled bathtub. Initially considered to be an accident, an autopsy later revealed otherwise.
She was engaged in a bitter custody dispute with her divorced husband at the time, and additional circumstantial evidence implicated him. In fact, the victim had taken him off her $5 million will’s list of beneficiaries.
According to reports, Rod Covlin is incarcerated at the Green Haven Correctional Facility, serving a sentence of 25 years to life in jail.
NBC series Dateline: Secrets Uncovered episode details Rod Covlin’s trial and conviction, which occurred ten years after he was reportedly charged with the crime.
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How Did Shele Danishfesky and Who Kill Her?
Nine years after the murder, Roderick Covlin, 45, was found guilty of killing his wife two days ago. His purpose? He was a failing stockbroker who was out of work and yearning for her $5 million estate. She had recently served him with divorce papers and wanted to exclude him from her will. When their 9-year-old daughter Anna discovered her mother, she phoned her father, who pretended to be incredibly innocent in front of the police and Shele’s relatives and said he had even tried to revive Shele.
Considering that Shele’s Orthodox Jewish family elected to bury her without an autopsy, Covlin almost got away with the murder as well. Today, however, her family is delighted that “finally, after nine years,… we have justice for our dear Shele,” although “the wheels of justice turn extremely slowly.”
Rod Covlin was not arrested and tried for more than five years.
The authorities did not immediately dust for fingerprints or gather DNA since they initially thought Shele’s death was an accident. According to The New York Times, “they even permitted the family’s rabbi to clean the lavatory with peroxide, removing any evidence of blood.”
Shele’s family eventually had her body exhumed. In 2010, a medical examiner found that she had been strangled and that her neck had been snapped “with such force it fractured the hyoid bone, causing bleeding in her right eye,” according to the Times. As suspicions surrounding her death grew, however, the family decided to have Shele’s body examined. The demise was then deemed to be a homicide.
Covlin, a self-described martial arts expert who had previously mistreated his wife to the point where she was terrified for her life and safety, wasn’t charged with her murder until 2015. You can watch Dateline episode to hear the rest of his story, which isn’t even half-told. The case has literally more twists than any Special Victims Unit episode of Law and Order.
Rod Covlin made an attempt to Frame his 9 Year Daughter.
According to the New York Post, the following are some of the bizarre developments that fans can anticipate tonight: He planned to use his young daughter as a pawn in a plot to poison his own parents, dress up as a black man to kill his mother, and marry the young girl off in Mexico when she was 14 so he could have control over her inheritance.
In essence, when his wife passed away, Covlin engaged in a protracted custody dispute for his two children, which he was eager to win to gain access to their fortune. Instead, his own parents received custody. He started to come up with many murderous plans for his parents, strongly influenced by TV episodes like Dexter and Breaking Bad, but he never carried them through.
Though he did smash his mother’s skull against a wall in 2011, steal $84,000 from his kids’ education funds, and attempt to have his daughter falsely accuse her grandfather (Covlin’s own father) of rape in 2013. In a later scheme, Covlin kidnapped his daughter and paid someone to marry her in Mexico, freeing her from guardianship and allowing him to receive her inheritance.
The hardest part to accept is, though, his plan to frame Anna, his 9-year-old daughter. Covlin entered his daughter’s phone and used the Notes app to create a note, according to court documents, which was one of his last actions before being accused of the murder. Covlin pretended to be his daughter when he wrote, “I lied.” She didn’t merely stumble.
Where is Rod Covlin Now?
Although it took until 2015, Rod Covlin was eventually accused of killing his estranged wife, Shele Danishefsky. He was then put on trial in 2019, and on March 13, 2019, the jury returned a guilty judgement after deliberating for two days before finding Covlin guilty of fatally strangling the 47-year-old on New Year’s Eve 2009.
Covlin received a sentence of 25 years to life in prison after being convicted of second-degree murder. To make Danishefsky’s death appear accidental, the prosecution claimed that he strangled her in the bathroom before pouring bloody water into the bathtub. In an effort to regain custody of their children and to claim the millions of dollars in her estate, he went to unscrupulous lengths.
To win custody of his kids, Covlin allegedly pondered killing his parents. The New York Times claims that Covlin even tried to blame his daughter, who was only nine years old at the time, for the 2009 death.
According to sources, Rod Covlin is currently incarcerated at the Green Haven Correctional Facility.
