The estranged wife of Roderick Covlin was found dead in her bathtub just hours before she was to meet with an attorney to cut a cheating hubbie out of her will.
Shele Covlin’s new year’s eve drowning in her upper Westside apartment on 68th Street in New York City was discovered by the couple’s 9-year-old daughter.
Covlin, who had left his family to live in a unit across the hall from them, stood to gain millions from his deceased wife’s estate.
She was in the process of divorcing and disowning him, however, namely because the stock-trader wanted an “open marriage.”
Police at first believed Shele (Danishefsky) Covlin had struck her head and drowned in the tub on December 31, 2009; so they declared her death accidental and she was buried without an invasive exam.
In light of her disrupted legal plans, though, Danishefsky-Covlin’s family had nagging doubts about their relative’s convenient demise and had her body exhumed in April 2010 for a belated autopsy.
A coroner then ruled Shele Covlin’s death a homicide, after discovering the drown victim had actually been strangled, and, after a years-long homicide investigation, the prime suspect was apprehended:
“On the final day of 2009, a 47-year-old mother of two was found dead in her apartment,” Manhattan’s DA Cyrus Vance announced, upon the arrest this weekend of Rod Covlin for intentionally killing his spouse.
“An investigation over the ensuing years has resulted in her husband being charged with her murder,” the district attorney stated.
Eponymous Rox
Cold Case, Drowning
