Man Guilty Of Killing Wife In UWS Apartment, DA Says

UPPER WEST SIDE, NY — A man is facing the possibility of life in prison after being found guilty of killing his wife in their Upper West Side home on New Year's Eve in 2009, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. announced.

Roderick Covlin was convicted of second-degree murder for strangling Shele Danishefsky Covlin inside their shared apartment on West 68th Street, prosecutors said. Covlin attempted to make the death look like an accidental fall by filling the apartment's bathtub with blood and by remaining at the murder scene after calling police and reporting his wife's death, prosecutors said.

Covlin and his wife were estranged at the time of the murder following a year of domestic disputes where the two fought over the custody of their children, prosecutors said. In April of 2009 a court gave Danishefsky Covlin full custody of the children and her husband moved out of the apartment into a unit across the hall, prosecutors said.

The day before the murder, Danishefsky Covlin told her husband that she intended to write him out of her will. Covlin inherited $5.27 million from his wife's estate, using the money to travel to backgammon tournaments with female friends, prosecutors said.

"Shele Danishefsky Covlin had a soaring career, two adoring children, and the love and respect of her many friends, colleagues, and relatives. But Ms. Danishefsky also had a devastating secret: she was being psychologically tortured by Roderick Covlin," Vance said in a statement. "She suffered at the hands of this defendant for months, and as soon as she sought to sever ties, he murdered her in a brutal and vicious crime."

Danishefsky Covlin's death was originally ruled an accident. An initial medical examination following her death did not reveal enough evidence to overrule her family's religious objection to an autopsy, prosecutors said. New evidence unearthed in 2010 allowed officials to exhume her body and perform an autopsy. Following the autopsy, Danishefsky Covlin's death was declared a homicide.

Covlin was arrested at the Scarsdale, New York train station on Nov. 1, 2015, prosecutors said. The man is expected to be sentenced on April 10, 2019.