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Shele Danishefsky's 2009 New Year's Eve death was a mystery from the beginning. She was found unresponsive and floating face-down in the bathtub of her Upper East Side, Manhattan apartment, by her nine-year-old daughter Anna, who called her father, Rod Covlin, screaming for help.
Covlin, who lived on the same floor but in a separate apartment amidst a contentious divorce and custody battle with Danishefsky, rushed to the scene, pulled her out of the bathtub, and administered CPR to no avail. He then called 911. Authorities initially determined that her death was an accident. Hence, she was buried within days without an autopsy.
But what came to light during the prolonged investigation in the years that followed revealed a sinister plot fueled by greed, a disputed divorce, and a crafty cover-up that would end with the conviction of the estranged husband.
An all-new Dateline: Secrets Uncovered episode will chronicle the suspicious case of Shele Danishefsky. The upcoming episode, titled Endgame, airs this Wednesday, January 11, 2023, at 8 pm ET. The synopsis of the episode reads:
"Rod Covlin calls 911 after his young daughter finds his estranged wife unconscious in the bathtub; soon after her mysterious death, family members would come to suspect what happened was no accident."
Manhattan-based banker Shele Danishefsky was found dead in the bathtub of her Upper East Side apartment
According to The Washington Post, when authorities arrived at the Upper East Side apartment of Shele Danishefsky on December 31, 2009, they found her body wrapped in a comforter on the floor. The door to the medicine cabinet was found unhinged and dangling, and the bathtub was filled with blood. Her husband, Rod Covlin, told authorities that she slipped and fell in the tub in a terrible accident.
However, Danishefsky's story started long before she was found dead in the bloody bathtub. It was in 1998, about a decade before the incident, when 36-year-old Shele met Covlin, who was 25 at the time, at a party for Jewish singles in New York. The two instantly fell in love and married within six months. They would eventually have two children together, Anna and Myles.
However, not long after, their disagreements started to weaken their connection. Danishefsky had a fruitful career and was the breadwinner as senior vice president for private wealth management at an investment bank. At the same time, Covlin saw little to no success as a struggling stockbroker obsessed with playing backgammon online.
An ugly divorce and custody battle fueled the December 2009 murder of Shele Danishefsky
The Washington Post stated that Shele Danishefsky's sister Eve Karstaedt talked about her sister's rising worries about Covlin's poor work ethic and anger management issues. Per The New York Times, in early 2009, she once wrote to Eve, saying,
"At some point in the future, all his anger and rage may result in something bad happening - he really can't control his temper."
Shele Danishefsky filed for divorce within months, and the two started living in separate apartments before getting involved in an unpleasant custody battle. Rod Covlin then tried to ruin his estranged wife's life by first accusing her of abusing drugs and draining their joint account before alleging that she was s*xually abusing their three-year-old son, both of which were lies.
According to The Washington Post, on December 30, Danishefsky told Covlin that she intended to remove him from her $5.27 million will. But within hours, she was dead, and her body was buried without an autopsy. Numerous inconsistencies in the crime and the convenience of the entire situation kept gnawing at her family.
How did Shele Danishefsky actually die, and who was behind it?
According to Distractify, Shele Danishefsky's body was eventually exhumed for an autopsy, and the medical examiner was able to change the cause of death from "undetermined" to "homicide," stating that she died of neck compression and was likely strangled to death. Rod Covlin became the primary suspect and was only arrested years later, in 2015.
Covlin even tried to frame his daughter Anna, who was only nine years old at the time of Danishefsky's death, for the murder. He was eventually found guilty of second-degree murder charges by a jury in 2019. It was alleged that he strangled Danishefsky to death, put her body in the bathtub, and staged the scene to make it look like an accident. He was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.
Tune in to Oxygen's Dateline: Secrets Uncovered on Wednesday, January 11, to learn more about the case.
