- I'm Craig Melvin and this is "Dateline: Secrets Uncovered."
- Rod Covlin calls 9-1-1
and says that his wife appears dead.
He said that Anna found her in the bathtub.
- I've never seen my son shell-shocked.
- It was a case tailor-made for the tabloids.
- You have this beautiful woman.
A tall handsome guy. Greed. Infidelity.
He's sleeping around with other women.
- A failing marriage with millions at stake
- He didn't have any money of his own.
- This is getting ugly. - Yes.
She said, "We're broken" and she cried.
- Was it a fall in the tub
or a husband's fall from grace?
- We believed it was a staged accident.
- He was adamant about his innocence.
- The case bothered me for a long time.
- He said to me,
"You have to help me kill my parents."
- You can't even think about the magnitude of it all.
**
- Hello, and welcome to "Dateline: Secrets Uncovered."
It was a tragic turn of events
in an upscale Manhattan neighborhood.
Shele Covlin was found dead in her apartment.
First responders thought it was an accident,
but investigators found troubling clues
that seemed to indicate otherwise.
Answers would take years, while those closest to Shele
believe someone was keeping a dark secret from Day 1.
Here's Andrea Canning with "Endgame."
**
- If you had to pick one place that screams New York City,
it's usually this.
Times Square is the city's heart and soul
and normally, full of noise and lights
and people rushing somewhere, or nowhere.
Take a short walk uptown, however,
maybe 25 minutes on foot,
and the endless racket of tourist hotspots
and commerce gives way to a quieter vibe.
Here, you find the tree-lined streets and cozy apartments
of the Upper West Side.
I started my own family here on the Upper West Side,
just steps from Central Park.
During the day,
this neighborhood is buzzing with families.
At night, it's quiet and safe.
But just two blocks from where I lived,
in the early morning hours of New Year's Eve 2009,
something terrible touched this neighborhood.
It happened inside this pricey apartment building
on West 68th Street.
Around 7 A.M.,
a man named Rod Covlin called 9-1-1
to say his 9-year-old daughter Anna
found his wife Shele unconscious in the bathtub.
Rebecca Rosenberg, then a reporter
for "The New York Post," covered the case.
- He sees his-his wife in the tub.
He pulls her out,
puts her, um, face-up on the ground,
and starts performing CPR.
Then, he calls 9-1-1
and, um, they tell him to keep performing CPR.
- This is a horrible scene.
- I-- And I would imagine absolutely devastating
for their daughter.
- The EMTs arrived in minutes.
They found no pulse.
47 year-old Shele Covlin was beyond help.
- The police come to the scene.
Eventually, a detective comes to the scene.
- Detectives found a tub full of bloody water
and Shele wrapped in a comforter
on the floor next to it.
Above the tub,
a cabinet with a door hanging off its hinge.
They surmised Shele had grabbed it
as she fell and landed hard in the tub.
And so, investigators began the difficult process
of deconstructing a life that had just come to a sad
and mysterious end.
The police would soon learn that Shele Danishefsky Covlin
was larger-than-life.
Nobody admired her more than her sister Eve
and brother-in-law Marc Karstaedt.
- We would have a blast. We would laugh a lot.
Um, she was a lot of fun.
- She graduated with a marketing degree
and then m-my dad had asked her if she wanted to,
uh, come and work with him, um, at Merrill Lynch.
- Shele eventually became a private wealth manager.
The money was good. So was the prestige.
- Shele was fancy.
She was smart. She was educated.
- Shele's friend, Stephanie Goldman,
remembers the day Shele took her
to the upscale Friar's Club.
- It was wintertime.
She was wearing her fur coat, her mink coat.
Men just came over to her.
They-- It was like being swept off her feet.
- She's got the finance job, the style, the--
I mean, sounds like she kinda was the-the classic
New York City woman.
- Absolutely. Absolutely she was.
- In February of 1998,
Shele went to a Jewish singles mixer in Manhattan
where sparks flew with a guy she met there.
His name? Rod Covlin.
She called her sister that night
with an outrageous announcement.
- She was all giggles and she said, "I met a guy.
"Really nice guy." And she said,
"We're on our way to the airport to elope."
She was laughing.
And I said, "Shele, please don't do this."
- Eve talked her sister out of it that night,
but Shele was serious. And so was Rod.
Shele was 11 years older than him,
but that didn't seem to matter.
His parents, Dave and Carol Covlin,
say he adored her right from the start.
- He told us he has a girlfriend
and we have to meet her.
And I said, "Okay, Passover's coming up.
"We don't have time right now."
"No, you have to meet her."
- A brunette back then,
Shele married Rod 6 months later
and reality set in as they settled down
to life as a couple.
It wasn't exactly bliss
because, while Shele was a stunning over-achiever,
Rod was, well, not in the same league.
He was a stock trader of middling success.
- What I did see was a guy
that really had a lot of big ideas.
Um, and was unable to execute on any of them.
- But he had a couple of talents.
Martial arts and backgammon.
- And when he sat down and played...
- He won. And he won money. - He won.
- Two years after she married Rod,
Shele gave birth to baby Anna.
- She was inseparable, um, from-from Anna.
She was doting on that child.
She was an incredible mom.
A second pregnancy followed. Twins.
But that ended in tragedy.
- So, they were born prematurely
and, um-- and they died.
- Oh, my gosh. How did-- - I think at childbirth
and one, like a few hours later.
- How did she handle that? How did you support her?
It's just such an awful thing.
- Devastating. - The entire year--
- Yeah.
- Was, uh, a nightmare for her.
- Then, in 2006, Shele had a baby boy.
She and Rod named their son Myles.
But now, three years later, Shele was dead.
And the scene inside that apartment
on the Upper West Side was chaos.
Marc says Eve could barely function.
- When I first saw her, she walked down the corridor
and she was as white as-as a sheet.
She was in terrible shock.
- Carl Roadarmel was an NYPD detective.
He was there, too. Pondering various scenarios.
- I've been to places
where people have fallen in the tub,
and it's-- anything's possible.
- In this case, that would be an understatement.
- A whirlwind romance that ended in a storm.
- She said, "He doesn't get a job
"and he's just hanging around the house."
And she was very frustrated.
She said, "He's driving me crazy."
- And, it might get worse.
- When Shele told me
that he was going to be living across the hall,
my first instinct was,
"I don't think this is a good idea."
**
- New Year's in the Big Apple is usually a happy time.
Celebrations everywhere
and the promise of fresh starts and new dreams.
But for those who knew and loved Shele Covlin,
2010 began with sadness.
Shele's sister Eve and her husband Marc
couldn't believe the mother of two was gone.
Did it kind of hit you later,
the-the more emotional side of things, as--
do you think about your life without her?
- Ri-Right. Exactly.
- And the children without her.
- Right.
You can't even think about the magnitude of it all.
- Shele's in-laws, David and Carol Covlin,
were also in shock.
Their son Rod called with the news.
- He says, "Shele's dead."
I don't think I've ever made it to Manhattan faster in my life.
- Did you get any details? - No.
- In that first phone call?
- Nothing. - No, he just said, "Shele's dead."
- When you arrive, what's going on?
- Roderick was sitting on the couch.
- He was in shock.
- Honestly, I-I've never seen my son shell-shocked
and speechless in my life.
- The next few days were a blur.
For religious reasons,
the family decided not to have an autopsy performed.
- My father obviously made the final decision.
He went by his rabbi who said, "Don't do the autopsy."
- It was only as his friends and family
gathered to sit shiva, the Jewish period of mourning,
that they had time to think about
the vibrant woman they just lost.
- She was an incredibly devoted mother.
She was an incredible person.
- But what was also on their minds
was dark and troubling--
Shele's rocky marriage to Rod.
- She said he doesn't get a job.
He goes to the gym twice a day,
um, and he's just hanging around the house.
And she was very frustrated.
She said, "He's-- He's driving me crazy."
- In 2009, Shele confessed to her sister
that her marriage was in serious trouble.
- And she said, "We're broken
and we just have to part ways."
And she cried. She wept to me.
- One thing Marc and Eve say came between the couple
was Rod's dramatic mood swings.
- Rod has and has always had a violent, explosive temper.
He could be sitting very calmly in the--
in a chair and something can set him off
and in seconds, he will literally explode.
- Shele also complained about Rod's growing obsession
with backgammon.
- It became an-- a passion and then an obsession for him.
- Did he ever say why?
- I think he had, um, forged relationships
in the backgammon community that he really liked.
- Even Rod's parents felt their son was spending
too much time on the game.
- I told him that he was being a little ridiculous
with the backgammon and, you know,
going to backgammon too much.
I said, "You've got a family."
- The Covlins say they saw changes in Shele, too.
Ones they felt were equally damaging to the marriage.
- She started going to the-- - Friar's.
- Friar's Club.
- From once a week, it became much more frequent than that.
- The coupled seemed to be living separate lives.
In what had to be a painful moment,
Shele told her sister it wasn't the backgammon
or the fact that Rod wasn't pulling his weight
that pushed her to separate.
It was Rod's cheating.
- She believes that he left an email up
so she would purposely see it, from another woman.
And she confronted him, and he said that, yes,
he's sleeping around with other women
and he wants an open marriage.
He still loves her, and he wants and open marriage.
- Most women don't wanna go along
with the open marriage concept. - And she--
- Right. - She was one of those
who said absolutely no.
- By June, Rod had moved out.
And he didn't go far.
Shele arranged for him to live for free
in an apartment across the hall to make it easy for the kids.
Her close friend, Stephanie Goldman,
wasn't happy with the arrangement.
- When Shele told me
that he was going to be living across the hall,
my first instinct was, "My goodness,
I don't think this is a good idea."
- Nevertheless, Shele was moving on.
And so was Rod.
- Well, he was very charming. Intelligent.
Funny in a quirky sort of way.
And I really enjoyed playing backgammon with him.
- Debra Oles met Rod at a backgammon tournament.
Months later, their relationship became romantic.
- I wasn't looking for any sort of relationship,
and, um, he was-- you know,
he was pretty aggressive.
And I think I was naive in the fact
that I'm considerably older than Rod is--
- Yeah, like-- - So, it never occurred to me
that he would be interested in me in that-- in that way.
- So, it surprised you when he-- - It surprised me.
- Made an overture? - Right.
And of course, it made me feel good, you know?
A younger man bein' attracted to me.
- Meanwhile, Shele was working
with divorce attorney Lance Meyer.
- We talked about all the problems
she was havin' with her husband
and the concern she had about herself, her children,
and she was really tryin' to figure out the best way
to go about proceeding with a divorce case.
- By fall, she was dipping her toe
in the dating pool again.
- She was on Jdate.
She had met some gentlemen and--
- Jdate, the Jewish dating website?
- Yeah. Yeah.
- Shele seemed on track to make a fresh start in 2010,
until that fresh start ended
in what seemed like a deadly accident.
- When I heard that she slipped and fell in the tub,
my initial reaction was-- she wouldn't even take a bath.
- And now, Shele's friends and family
were wondering about the story Rod told police.
That his daughter Anna called him that morning in a panic
and let him into the apartment because he didn't have a key.
- I was very suspicious.
- Suspicions that only deepened when Marc learned
the medical examiner wasn't sure either.
- I'm reading the death certificate
and I saw that the cause of death was undetermined.
- Shele's family and friends
are not the only ones with suspicions.
Investigators focus on unsettling clues.
- She had bruising to her lip.
She appeared to have some scratch marks
and she had bruising to her right hand.
- And Rod said he had pulled Shele's wet body
out of the tub.
So, why wasn't he wet?
- Two officers found this unusual and noted this.
How would you not get wet?
- When "Dateline: Secrets Uncovered" continues.
- From the moment
Shele Covlin's family heard the story of her death--
a slip and fall in a bathtub full of water--
they felt it just didn't make sense.
- How do you fall in a bathtub?
And then I started thinking and I said,
"Shele takes a bath? She showers."
You know, she's-she's not taking a bath.
- Plus, Shele had gotten a keratin
hair straightening treatment the previous morning.
She wasn't supposed to get her hair wet for several days.
And they say don't wash your hair
for, like, what? - 72 hours.
- Yeah.
- Not even supposed to go to the gym.
- This what's been sort of labeled
the "Legally Blonde" moment. - Yep.
- That any woman who knows about a keratin treatment
to straighten your hair-- - Right.
- Is not going to-- - Right.
- Expose her hair like that.
Shele's death didn't sit right
with Lead Detective Carl Roadarmel either.
While he felt her death could have been an accident,
details at the scene bothered him.
The way that cabinet door had been yanked down.
The blood in the tub.
And marks on Shele's body.
- She had bruising to her lip.
She appeared to have some scratch marks,
and she had bruising to her right hand.
- And what the detective would learn later
cast suspicion directly on Rod.
Rod told an officer
that he had to pull Shele's wet body out of the tub,
yet his clothes were bone dry.
Then "New York Post" reporter, Rebecca Rosenberg.
- Two officers found this unusual and noted this.
How would you not get wet?
He was wearing a light-colored shirt.
He just wasn't wet at all,
and it wasn't consistent with the story he had told.
And their doorman remembered Rod doing something
early that morning that was highly unusual for him.
He stopped by the front desk on his way
out of the building to get a snack.
Even bought the doorman a Snickers bar.
- The doorman thought this was weird,
because Rod Covlin usually wasn't chatty.
And had, in all the years he'd been there,
never offered to bring him anything back.
- Suspicious details indeed.
The detective was hoping
more clues would emerge from an autopsy.
But remember,
Shele's family didn't have one done
for religious reasons.
How did you feel about that?
- I was uncomfortable,
but if that's what the family wanted,
I mean, you always wanna try
to help the family the best you can.
It's a hard time.
- But without autopsy results,
he says there wasn't much he could do.
So, less than a week after Shele died,
her family hired a private investigator.
So, you're not satisfied.
- Not at all.
- The private investigator had started--
um, had started talking to friends of-of Shele's,
and we had a flood of information
that was extremely suspicious.
People were telling us things that were very worrying.
- Including things that confirmed
what the family had already seen for themselves.
Shele's divorce attorney, Lance Meyer.
- He would belittle her.
He would yell at her.
He'd call her ugly.
He would make fun of her looks.
So, he was-- he was a demeaning person.
He would go low.
- So low, in fact,
that at one point during their divorce,
Rod tried to undermine her at work.
He called her company to report that Shele was on drugs,
unstable, and depleting their joint bank account.
- He was trying to get her to lose her job, and it was--
obviously, she worked in a family operation within UBS,
so it was-it was a very serious thing.
He was trying to hurt her and her family.
- The company determined Shele was drug-free
and found that Rod was taking much more money
from their account than she was.
The divorce got uglier.
The two squabbled over child support.
At one point, a judge told Rod
he could no longer play backgammon,
something he blamed on Shele.
- He was beyond angry.
She was taking away the thing
he apparently cared about the most.
- A couple of weeks after Shele's death,
her family took their private investigator
over to her apartment to check out the scene.
Something caught the investigator's eye.
The cabinet that Shele had supposedly grabbed as she fell?
The screws had been pulled out of the wall.
He thought that would've taken more force
than the 5'4", 132-pound Shele could muster.
- That it would've taken a lot of strength
to pull the actual door of the cabinet off.
- Something that Shele wouldn't have been able to do,
he didn't believe? - Most likely.
- So, there's no doubt in your minds now
that this is a staged accident?
- We believed it was a staged accident.
- But none of this was a smoking gun.
The only way to know for sure how Shele died
was to exhume her body and do an autopsy.
Two months after Shele's death, at the family's urging,
her body was pulled out of its grave and reexamined.
Detective Roadarmel was in the room
with the medical examiner.
What are you seeing? What are you thinking?
- Pretty much near the end of it, he looked at us,
he showed us the, uh, hyoid bone.
That it was broken.
- That's in the neck-- - I-Inside the neck area.
And he says it was gonna be a homicide.
- Wow.
Shele had been choked to death.
- The question was never, "Is he going to kill Shele?"
The question was always, "When?"
- What do they have going for them with this jury?
- Covlin had access.
He was right across the hall.
He had motive, and he is not a sympathetic guy.
- A trial of lies, secrets, and surprises.
- Wow. - Yeah.
- So, this is getting ugly. - Yes.
**
- Welcome back to "Dateline: Secrets Uncovered."
I'm Craig Melvin.
Two months had passed since Shele Covlin died.
Her family was certain it was no accident.
They urged investigators to exhume her body
and perform an autopsy,
which yielded chilling information.
Shele was strangled to death.
However, the stunning revelation
did not result in a quick arrest.
Years passed, leaving Shele's loved ones wondering
if justice would ever arrive.
Back to Andrea Canning with "Endgame."
- Shele Covlin had been found dead in her bathtub
in December 2009.
Investigators had long believed
her husband Rod had killed her,
but they didn't have enough evidence to prove it.
Then, after nearly 6 years of slowly building a case,
prosecutors finally became convinced
they had enough to pursuade a jury.
In November 2015,
Shele's sister Eve got word from
the District Attorney's Office.
- She said, uh, "We're about to arrest Rod Covlin
for the murder of Shele Covlin."
So, um, I started to get very emotional
and she says to me, "Are you okay?"
And I said, "I've just been waiting a really long time
to hear those words."
- It would take three more years for Rod's trial to begin.
- The People of the State of New York versus Roderick Covlin.
- After waiting so long for justice,
Eve and her husband Marc steeled themselves.
Why was it important for you to be there?
- So, I can tell you that on December 31,
I said, "I'm not leaving
until they take Shele's body out."
And then, when it came to the trial,
I said, "I will be there every single day
so she knows that I'm there for her
along with the rest of the family."
- There's only one person--
- Prosecutor Matthew Bogdanos described Rod Covlin
as a cold-blooded killer determined to get his wife
out of his life, take their children,
and seize her assets at any cost.
- Only one person had the motive,
the opportunity, and the means
to have done this.
- Prosecutors admitted their case wasn't a tidy one
ready for CSI,
but they put a lot of circumstantial evidence
in front of the jury.
We know it's a circumstantial case.
- Mm-hmm. - But what do they have going for them
with this jury?
- Uh, what they have going for them
is that, obviously, Covlin had access.
He was right across the hall.
He had motive.
And he is not a sympathetic guy.
- Prosecutors presented witnesses who said Rod
didn't even try to hide his abuse of his wife.
The family nanny told the jury that at one point,
he had become enraged and violent.
- She said to me, said Rod throw her down
on the floor.
And when he asked her to go into the bedroom,
she said she was scared
of going in there with him
because she didn't know what he'll do.
- The prosecutor described Shele as a textbook victim
of domestic abuse.
- The question was never, "Is he going to kill Shele?"
The question was always "When?"
- Shele was living in fear, prosecutors said,
because her estranged husband was boiling with rage
in their custody battle.
Shele's divorce attorney, Lance Meyer, took the stand
to say how Rod had even used his son as a weapon.
- Mr. Covlin, um, took the children
and, um, accused Shele of abusing Myles.
- It turns out that he took them to the hospital
and made allegations that Shele had sexually abused their son.
- Wow, so, this is getting ugly. - Yeah, yes.
- Prosecutors said those disturbing and false accusations
were just one example of how Rod was becoming unhinged.
He was also obsessively tracking Shele's every move
with secretly installed software on her computer.
Rod told this co-worker that it enabled him
to read her emails.
- He was reading through things
and he was upset with the number of people
that she was talking to
and he was upset about, uh, the way he was being portrayed
in her emails.
- By late 2009, he was also deeply in debt
with virtually no income.
Still, even with their divorce pending,
he believed he would gain control
of her 5-million-dollar estate if she died.
But then, Rod found some emails Shele sent
just 2 days before her death.
- She reaches out to a-an-an attorney
and-and also tells several people
that she wants to change her will
and essentially write Rod Covlin out of her will.
- The State said that's when Rod snapped
and hatched his plan.
The night of December 30th,
her friend Melissa Fields saw her
and sensed something was wrong.
- Shele was nervous when we first met up
and she was looking around quite a bit.
And I did ask her what the problem w--
if something was wrong.
She was worried that her ex-husband
was following her.
- On what would turn out to be her last night alive,
Shele remained in fear.
It was all heavy on her mind when she got home
to her apartment that night at 7:51,
caught here on security cameras.
Later, she logged on
to her online dating profile at 10:13.
The last activity on any of her devices.
Rod, meanwhile, was across the hall.
He was usually online playing backgammon
late into the night.
But suddenly, his online presence stopped at 1:03 A.M.
No sign of him until he popped up on that surveillance video
in the lobby at 4:13 A.M.
The allegation was that he wanted to be seen on camera?
- Yes, he wanted to make an a-alibi.
That this was, like, his way of sort of building an alibi.
- The prosecution called the New York State Medical Examiner.
In the autopsy, he had noticed those scratches on her face
and that fractured bone in her neck.
- My conclusion was that she had, uh, died
as a result of neck compression
and I classified her death as a homicide.
- Strangulation, not an accidental fall.
And in another sinister twist, prosecutors believe that
three and a half years after Shele's death,
Rod drafted a note
composed from his 12-year-old daughter's email account
pretending to be her.
It read:
It was never sent, but it did hit the tabloids
after it was filed with the court.
- What father does that?
- Who does that to a-- Who does that to a child?
- Right.
- Who basically frames a child?
- Right, and their own.
- Prosecutors didn't get that note admitted into trial,
but they were about to bring forward a star witness
whose explosive allegations would rock the courtroom.
- Coming up...
- What was it like walking into that courtroom
and seeing Rod Covlin in there?
- Terrifying.
- She fell in love with one Rod Covlin.
Then, she says, she met the other.
- He said, "You have to help me kill my parents."
- Veteran prosecutors will tell you
that once they've built their case for the jury,
they try to put a closer on the stand,
a witness who buttons everything up
with a riveting tale.
- The whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
- Yes. - Thank you, ma'am.
- In the trial of Rod Covlin, the closer turned out to be
none other than Debra Oles.
Rod's backgammon buddy and his former lover,
taking the stand, sunglasses on.
What was it like walking into that courtroom
and seeing Rod Covlin in there?
- Terrifying.
I had to look at him one time. Once.
Just to point him out and say that's-that's who he is.
- Debra testified that she got a late-night call from Rod
on that fateful New Year's Day.
- He told me that his wife had an accident,
and died.
My very first thought was,
"That's a really weird coincidence in timing
and that really, basically, solves all his problems."
But then, I felt guilty about thinking that
because he said it was an accident
and then the paper said it was an accident.
- You're saying coincidence like, he needed money.
- Right, mm-hmm. - They've broken up.
And then she dies. - Yeah.
- So, it-it make Rod's life easier?
- Right, but then, he was very adamant about
his innocence, always.
- After that, their long-distance relationship
progressed in fits and starts.
They'd often play backgammon online.
Debra would drive from her home down South
to tournaments,
sometimes picking up Rod in New York
and taking him with her.
Then, one day in 2010,
the police paid her a surprise visit.
- I answered all their questions
and, um, offered to give them a copy of the games--
the backgammon games that we played,
so they'd have exact times that we played.
Um, then, that was it.
- Did they tell you why they were there?
- They thought he was-- They thought he was guilty.
They said he was a really bad person.
And, um, I didn't believe them at the time.
- You had gotten to know him pretty well
at this point, too. - Right, right.
I never saw the monster that I eventually came to know,
until later.
- But the monster was lurking.
As Debra told the court, over time,
she began to see just how volatile Rod could be.
- He had a Mer-Mercurial temper.
It didn't take much to set him off.
- She also saw terrible fights that he had with his parents.
By 2012, Rod and his children
were living with his parents in a New York City suburb
and the fighting was constant.
- One time, during one of these fights,
Rod, like, brought his arms back
and he shoved his father as hard as he could.
His father went flying into the room.
Hit his head on the floor.
- Eventually, Rod's parents evicted him
and kept his kids.
Rod was determined to strike back.
Debra says he hatched bizarre plots
to kill his parents.
She told the court about one he dreamt up
when superstorm Sandy struck the East Coast.
- He said that, um, because there was no electricity,
the a-alarms-- the alarm would not be on.
He wanted to go through a window in the basement,
kill his parents, set his-- and set his house on fire.
I was, you know, just stunned.
- He was going to-- - He wanted to go over there.
- Set fire? - Kill his parents,
set fire to the house, and somehow get
Anna and Myles out safely.
And, you know, I dis-- I discussed it with him
for like 15 minutes or so.
I'm like, "No, you're not gonna do this," you know.
And then finally, I said, "Just how are you
going to explain, um, mir-miraculously,
that you just happened to be there,
um, to save your children?"
And finally, that, you know--
- So, he backed down. - He finally backed down.
- Then, she said, there was the poison plot
that called for his young daughter Anna to participate.
- He wanted her to, like, put rat poison
in-in, uh, their food
or, like, sugar for their tea or whatever.
- Why don't you leave him at this point?
- How am I supposed to protect his-his f--
you know, parents if I don't know what's going--
what he's plotting? You know?
I can't-- I can't be there and protect,
you know, them if I'm not there.
He won't confide in me and let me know what's going on.
- You're helping this situation is to be
the-the voice of reason for Rod?
- Either-Either try and talk him out of it
or have enough definitive proof where I can go to the police.
- By this time,
Debra had rented an apartment for herself
and Rod to live in just north of New York City.
But she says she was growing weary of his anger
and exasperated by his lurid schemes.
One day, she testified, things came to a head.
- We were in the car driving and he said to me,
"You have to help me kill my parents."
And I said,
"I am not going to help you kill your parents."
And he-he asked me, like, four or five times
and I finally, I just, like,
"I'm not gonna help you kill your parents.
And even if I wanted to, which I don't,
you'd kill me, too."
And he had this kind of creepy laugh
and he looked at me in a way that, like,
oh, you're just now figuring this out?
And then, he said, quote,
"No, I only wanna kill the people
who try to take my children away from me."
- Did you believe, now, that Rod killed Shele?
- There was no questions susceptible of doubt in my mind
that he killed her, at that point.
- Finally, Rod and Debra split.
In August 2014, she called investigators
and told them everything she knew.
Now, four and a half years later,
she had told a jury.
And she was about to get grilled by
Rod Covlin's defense attorneys.
- Coming up.
- So, is it fair to say, yes or no, you were jealous?"
- No. I was mad at him.
I was mad at him for a lot of reasons.
- Questions.
And after nine years, an answer.
- How say you as to the first count
of this indictment,
charging the defendant, Roderick Covlin,
with the crime of murder in the second degree?
- How hard was it waiting for the verdict?
- Oh, my gosh. That was so painful.
I had s-such butterflies.
**
Welcome back.
Rod Covlin was on trial for murder
and the plot was about to thicken.
On the stand, Rod's ex-girlfriend, Debra,
described his secret plan to kill his parents
and regain custody of his two children.
The defense was about to strike back,
hoping the jury would see a gaping hole
in the prosecution's case-- evidence.
Here's Andrea Canning with the conclusion of "Endgame."
- Carol Covlin sat behind her son
during the long weeks of trial.
Why was it so important for you to be there?
- He's my son.
And I think any mother would do that for their child.
- You had to listen to your son being called a philanderer,
a bum, an abuser, and a killer.
How did you handle that?
- You really wanted to get up and scream at them
and call them liars, but you can't.
- One of the most explosive pieces of testimony
was Debra Oles alleging
that-that Rod had wanted to kill you.
And in grand fashion.
We're talking arsenic, rat poison.
Rod's dad, Dave, says Debra's claims were laughable.
- The alleged murder plots, I think, are a farce.
- Rod's defense attorney, Robert Gottlieb, agreed.
During a testy cross-examination,
he tried to poke holes in Debra's testimony.
Starting with her story of those plots.
- Were you scared? - Yes.
- Did you call the police? - It--
- Yes or no, did you call the police?
- No.
- Gottlieb says Debra's stories of Rod's temper
didn't add up either.
- Time and time again, when she is saying that
she felt bullied by Rod, she was afraid of him,
the only thing she ever says in her emails is "I love you.
Dear, I love you." Over and over again.
- Despite her denials, Gottlieb said Debra
had been crushed when the relationship ended.
Her testimony, he said, was nothing more than
the words of woman scorned.
- So, is it fair to say-- yes or no-- you were jealous?
- No. I was mad at him.
I was mad at him for a lot of reasons.
- Is it fair to say that you have a history
and have admitted to being a habitual liar.
- That is a f-- that is disgusting and false.
That is not true. - The defense conceded
Rod wasn't always a stand-up guy.
But he said that didn't make him a murderer.
- You may despise him.
You may not even be able to look at him.
You may want to convict him.
To convict somebody of murder, there's got to be proof.
- There was none, Gottlieb said.
Zero evidence there'd been foul play.
No signs of a struggled.
He said Rod couldn't have slipped into Shele's apartment
and killed her like the prosecution argued,
because there was no evidence he even had a key.
Remember, Rod said little Anna had let him in that morning.
- There's been no evidence that Mr. Covlin
was ever in the apartment on December 30
or December 31 before 7 A.M.
- No evidence either, Gottlieb said,
about what had caused Shele's injuries.
He suggested one explanation-- the exhumation.
- They used backhoes to exhume.
Uh, they used, uh, shovels to get to the--
uh, the coffin.
- Carol said there was nothing she heard in court
that convinced her Shele's death was anything but
a tragic accident.
If you see those photos, it doesn't look like
she just slipped and fell.
It looks like someone did something to her.
- Not really.
If you look at her face, if she slipped and fell
and hit her face into the bathtub.
- So, where did her scratches come from, then?
I mean, you don't get scratches falling in a bathtub.
- Depends on what's in there. How-How they took her out.
- I have no idea. - No. We--
- I just-- You know.
Again, you're left with a conundrum.
- A conundrum that would never be solved,
the defense argued,
because of bungling by investigators.
- And you did not have any notes for any of those interviews
on December 31, correct?
- Not that I recall, sir.
- Investigators hadn't dusted for fingerprints
or collected DNA samples.
There was a long list, Gottlieb said,
of what investigators hadn't done at the scene.
- Every single viewer would know that
that's not the way you investigate
a suspicious scene.
If there's even a remote possibility
that it could be a homicide.
It was disgraceful.
- Then, in a bold move, the defense rested
without calling any witnesses.
After more than eight weeks of testimony,
it was up to the jury to decide.
Was this an accident or a cold-blooded murder?
How hard was it waiting for the verdict?
- Oh, my gosh. That was so painful.
And I had s-such butterflies.
Oh, my gosh. That was bad.
- They didn't have to wait long.
After only a day of deliberations,
the jury was back.
- How say you to the first count of this indictment,
charging the defendant, Roderick Covlin,
with the crime of murder in the second degree?
Guilty or not guilty? - Guilty.
- Judge, anything to say?
- Do you want to poll the jurors?
- Poll the jury. - Guilty.
I've been through a lot of trials
and I don't know that I've ever seen
that much emotion from a family.
And that many hugs and that many tears.
I mean, it was pretty incredible to watch your family.
- It wasn't a moment of celebration.
It was a moment of relief. - Right.
- For fear of what would have been
if the wrong verdict, um, came down.
- And outside the courthouse, family and friends gathered.
- Finally!
[shouting]
- After all this time, they felt like
they could breathe again.
- First thing I thought of was, it's justice for Shele
and she can finally rest.
- Debra Oles hopes she can rest now, too.
The prosecution's star witness is happy the jury believed her.
- It was like a huge weight has been lifted off of me
and I'm finally, like, completely, you know--
it's-it's done.
- Do you regret the day you met Rod Covlin?
- I do. I really do.
- Rod is appealing his conviction.
One of his biggest supporters is his daughter, Anna.
Both children live with Rod's parents.
How are the children doing?
- They're holding it together as best they could.
- Shele's children are growing up
without much contact with Shele's side of the family.
- Is there anything that you want the children to know
about their mother and how you feel about them?
- Their mother, with every breath she took
and every ounce of her, she adored them.
- That's all for this edition of "Dateline: Secrets Uncovered."
I'm Craig Melvin. Thank you for watching.