UWS Man Who Murdered Wife Gets 25-To-Life, DA SAys

UPPER WEST SIDE, NY — An Upper West Side man who was found guilty of murdering his wife in 2009 may spend the rest of his life in prison, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr., announced.

Roderick Covlin, 45, was given a sentence of 25-years-to-life in state prison on Wednesday, nearly one month after being convicted on second-degree murder charges. Covlin killed his wife Shele Danishefsky Covlin inside their shared apartment on West 68th Street and attempted to stage the death as an accident, prosecutors said.

The Upper West Side man attempted to make his wife's death look like an accidental fall by filling their apartment's bathtub with blood and by remaining at the murder scene after calling police and reporting his wife's death

"Roderick Covlin will now spend decades in prison for his domestic violence, depravity and deception," Vance said in a statement.

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.

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.
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