Dateline: Secrets Uncovered - How did Rod Covlin try to frame nine-year-old daughter in estranged wi
Former stock trader turned backgammon pro Rod Covlin, charged with killing his wealthy banker wife, Shele Danishefsky, on New Year's Eve 2009, reportedly attempted to frame his nine-year-old daughter Ann for the murder. Covlin allegedly wrote a letter that was synced to Ann's email account, saying that "she didn't just slip" and that "I pushed her."
An upcoming episode of Dateline: Secrets Uncovered on Oxygen will re-examine the controversial case of Shele Danishefsky, which saw multiple curves before the killer was brought to justice. The episode, titled Endgame, will air on Wednesday, January 11, at 8 pm ET.
Danishefsky, 47, was found unresponsive and floating face-down in the bathtub of her Upper East Side, Manhattan apartment, by her nine-year-old daughter Anna just one day after she informed her husband about cutting him out of her $5.27 million will.
It was alleged that Rod Covlin strangled his estranged wife before staging her death to make it appear like a terrible accident. When he realized that investigators were closing in on him, he attempted to blame his own daughter, who was only nine years old at the time of the incident.
He was arrested six years later in 2015 and was found guilty in a trial that took place after an additional four years.
"I pushed her," read a note that Rod Covlin wrote, pretending to be his 12-year-old daughter in 2013
According to the New York Post, prosecutors alleged that Rod Covlin, who was found guilty of second-degree murder in the 2009 slaying of his estranged wife and banker Shele Danishefsky, planned to blame their young daughter for the killing by fabricating a bogus confession on June 25, 2013. Covlin allegedly composed an Apple note that synced to his daughter's Gmail account.
Posing as his 12-year-old daughter Anna, who was only nine at the time of her mother's death, Covlin reportedly wrote:
"All of these years I have been so incredibly afraid and guilty about the night my mom died. I lied. She didn’t just slip. That day we got into a fight about her dating … I got mad so I pushed her, but it couldn’t have been that hard!"The note further read:
"I didn’t mean to hurt her! I swear! But she fell and i (sic) heard a terrible noise and the water started turning red and I tried to pull her head up but she remained still…"According to the New York Post, prosecutors claimed that Covlin wrote the message out of fear as the investigation into the murder of Shele Danishefsky heated up once more, with detectives closing in on him. This message was addressed to Anna's legal guardian.
On New Year's Eve 2009, Anna, then nine years old, found her mother floating face-down in a bloody bathtub. Myles, her three-year-old brother, was allegedly sleeping at the time.
According to reports, Rod Covlin allegedly placed his estranged wife, who was worth $5 million back then, in a martial arts chokehold, fractured her neck, and then staged her death to make it look like she accidentally slipped in the bathtub and died, leaving her body in the bloody scene for their children to discover.
Rod Covlin was charged with Shele Danishefsky's murder after an autopsy determined that she was choked to death
Danishefsky and her unfaithful husband were embroiled in a messy divorce and custody battle and reportedly lived in separate apartments on the same floor of a posh Upper West Side building. Moreover, Danishefsky had scheduled a meeting with her attorney the day before her murder to have Covlin's name removed from her will.
Medical examiners eventually discovered she had been strangled, contrary to an earlier belief that she had fallen and hit her head. But Covlin wasn't arrested and charged with her murder until 2015 after his girlfriend had spilled the beans about what he might have done. She also claimed that he allegedly planned on killing his parents, who had custody of their children and access to his dead wife's finances.
Based on a mountain of circumstantial evidence and witness testimonies, Rod Covlin was found guilty in a 2019 trial and received 25 years of life in prison.
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