- From the outside looking in, Shele had everything--
beauty, brains-- and it didn't hurt
that she was making some major coin as well.
- A Manhattan mom and exec
found dead in her family bedroom.
- The overriding opinion was that this was an accident.
- The funeral, as in Orthodox Jewish customs,
was within 24 hours.
- 'Cause of her faith, they didn't want an autopsy.
- But was this really a fatal slip and fall
or the perfect crime?
- The family had said Shele felt she was being watched.
- So whoa, let's tap the brakes.
Maybe this wasn't an accident.
- A family desperate for answers...
- She said she's going through hell.
He's acting crazy. She's scared of him.
- Leads New York City investigators
to do something they hadn't done in half a century.
- We want this body exhumed.
- This was a case so twisted,
it shocked even our most seasoned guys.
- It turned to something akin to a horror movie.
- A killer who would stop at nothing.
- It was almost like, "Catch me if you can."
- I've worked on 1,500 murder cases.
He's the worst human being that I've ever had to encounter.
[tense music]
* *
- Every homicide detective knows the first 48 hours
are the most crucial in solving a case.
But in 2009,
the NYPD was put to the test
when everything that could go wrong did
in those first two days.
The victim, Shele Danishefsky Covlin,
the gorgeous power player at the pinnacle of her career,
found dead in her family's million-dollar
Upper West Side high-rise.
This case proved to be more
than anyone could have expected.
It's New Year's Eve morning
when a call comes in to dispatch.
[phone ringing]
- It's probably 7:20 when the 911 call goes in.
Rod Covlin is frantic and panicked.
- Rod had just pulled his unconscious wife,
Shele Covlin, out of a bloody bathtub.
- The 911 operator was telling him to perform CPR,
which he was trying to do.
But he explains that his wife's body was cold
and, in fact, was stiff, indicating rigor mortis.
So he pulled a comforter off of the bed
to cover his wife's body.
[sirens wailing]
- We responded over to 155 West 68th Street.
It's a luxury building.
It's a couple of blocks from Lincoln Center.
So I wasn't thinking much when I responded.
You know, we go probably 15 to 20 DOAs a month.
- When police respond to a death on arrival
in this neighborhood,
it's safe to bet it's an accident
or of natural causes.
- The Upper West Side is thought to be, you know,
among some of the safest neighborhoods
in New York City.
- You have The Met.
You had museums on the West Side.
You have Central Park.
And there's a big Jewish community.
It was really a beautiful place to reside in.
- I went in to the apartment,
walked to the back,
where I observed Shele Covlin
lying on a floor in the bathroom.
There was water on the floor,
and she had some blood running
from the back of her head along the floor.
And then there was a set of cabinets above it
with doors and hinges,
which was partially pulled off.
And it looked like she may have tried
to grab the shelf as she was falling.
- I arrived at the scene around 11:00 in the morning.
I went into the apartment to have a look for myself.
And there were two small children
that lived in the apartment, so there were a lot of toys
and things around.
- There was no signs of forced entry.
There was no signs of a struggle
throughout the apartment.
- The overriding opinion was that this was an accident.
- Detectives sit down with the person who first found Shele--
her nine-year-old daughter.
- The daughter was, as you would expect,
emotionally distraught about the entire thing.
She and her three-year-old brother
had got in bed with their mother the night before,
which was not an unusual occurrence.
And she woke up a few hours later,
and her mother was not present,
so she got up and went and looked into the bathroom.
- She found her mother was in the tub.
She was obviously in distress.
And then she called her father.
- Rod Covlin, having recently separated from Shele,
lives in his own apartment just across the hall.
- She then let her father into the apartment.
And Rod ran into the bathroom, pulled her out of the tub,
and began giving CPR.
- After speaking with Rod,
police find her story matches her father's.
This appears to be a tragic accident,
which is what police tell Shele's family.
- Shele's sister and brothers arrived.
And they were, as you would expect,
devastated.
- Shele was from a prominent family of the Upper West Side.
I met Shele in the 1980s.
We were part of the same Upper West Side Jewish community,
where everybody knows everybody.
She grew up in a religious Orthodox Jewish household.
She would go to shul regularly.
I know she'd eat kosher.
She had a fine sense of humor
and a strong interest in public service
and charity events.
- Shele began working at UBS,
a private wealth management company,
and quickly rose to the top.
She was managing millions of dollars for her clients.
- In February of 1998,
the 36-year-old VP met 25-year-old Rod Covlin.
- They met at a singles Jewish party.
Rod worked in the same industry as Shele.
He was a stockbroker, smart.
- Despite Rod being 11 years her junior,
they immediately hit it off.
- She told her sister that night
that she wanted to elope.
Her sister talked her down,
but the two of them married in weeks.
[glass shatters]
- She fell for him.
She fell for him.
- They were really active at their local synagogue
and in the Jewish community.
And it just appeared to be the perfect match.
- They've got two beautiful children
and, like, the happiest marriage in the world.
- A beloved mother, sister, and wife
tragically dead in the prime of her life.
For NYPD, it's an open-and-shut case
with just one final step.
- This may have been an accident,
that she slipped in the tub,
but the only way that I'm going to find out
is I need the evidence that can be discovered in autopsy.
And so, this autopsy was going
to take place the next morning.
- The next day, Detective Mooney gets jaw-dropping news.
- I called Carl to see what time
he was going to go to the medical examiner's office.
And he just said to me, he goes,
"Well, no, there's no autopsy happening."
And I was like, "What do you mean there's no autopsy?"
And then he explained the whole sequence of events.
- The rabbi from Shele's temple had contacted Misaksim,
a local organization whose job
is to ensure a proper Orthodox burial.
The organization then contacted the NYPD
and got the OK to enter the apartment.
- A rabbi showed up
and essentially wiped the scene clean.
- They take everything that they perceive
to be part of the body.
If there's blood, tissue, or hair,
it goes with the body so that it's all buried,
all at the same time.
- The rabbi also impresses on the family
another key tenet of Jewish burials.
- In the Orthodox faith,
it's forbidden to do an autopsy when somebody dies.
- They do not want to desecrate the body.
- The rabbi convinced the family
to prevent the autopsy from happening.
I don't think that they had any intention
to interfere with the investigation.
I think that their understanding
was that this was an accidental death.
- The funeral, as in Orthodox Jewish customs,
was within 24 hours.
I was in such pain, I said,
"I'm not even gonna go to the funeral.
I can't be there."
But I did go.
I did go to the funeral.
There were hundreds and hundreds of people.
The entire community was there.
To be honest with you, my mind was totally, totally in shock.
She's dead.
The woman is 47 years old.
After the funeral, as I'm thinking over the days,
it was obvious to me
that there should be some investigation here.
When people fall in their bathtubs,
they get hurt, they break a leg.
But to die in a bathtub?
It just didn't make any sense to me.
- As the shock of the death begins to wear off,
Shele's family also begins
to share a deeply unsettled feeling.
[phone ringing]
- Their lawyer calls our private investigation agency.
And she's like,
"I need you to get in here, and I need you here yesterday."
- The family had time to take a really deep look at it
and listen to each other, sharing different stories
that Shele might have told one sibling but not the other.
As they were comparing all their notes,
they started putting together a picture
that didn't quite meet with the narrative
that she accidentally slipped and fell.
- He was becoming unhinged.
God only knows what his next plan will be.
- He drafted an email in her email account
confessing to the death.
- I've seen many people put in the ground,
[tense music]
* *
- A week after 47-year-old Shele Covlin
was found dead in her bathtub,
her family's grief turns to suspicion.
- Some of the people in the family
said, "Whoa, let's tap the brakes a minute.
"Maybe this wasn't as accidental
as we all were led or wanted to believe."
- Though the case isn't officially closed,
with the crime scene wiped clean
and without an autopsy to rule it a homicide,
NYPD has no reason to continue investigating,
so Shele's parents enlist the help of private investigators.
- We went to Shele's brother-in-law's home
on the Upper West Side.
Father was there, her sisters, her brother.
You know, everybody had a little bit to add
about what they knew about Rod and Shele's relationship.
- We were told that it was around 2008
and around their 10-year wedding anniversary
that things started taking a downward turn.
- He was in and out of jobs
and began gambling a lot
and losing their money.
- A hobby of Rod's was becoming a compulsion.
- Backgammon took over his life.
He would go all across the country joining tournaments.
He would stay up all night online
in different tournaments.
- But as Shele found out,
Rod wasn't just in it for the gameplay.
- He would always arrange to have women
in whatever city he was gonna be in.
Shele managed to see an open email.
And she realized that he wasn't being faithful to her.
- Gathering information from Shele's family,
we were told that Shele sought and received a Jewish divorce,
which is known as a "get."
But they still weren't legally divorced
in the eyes of New York State.
- They were pending the finalization of their divorce.
And at that point, for the sake of the kids,
he moved into an apartment right across the hall.
- But even with a joint custody agreement
and a seemingly amicable living situation,
the animosity between them escalated.
- Shele complained to her sister
that Rod would get really angry and seemed out of control.
- She said she's going through hell.
He's acting crazy. She's scared of him.
- He was living across the hall.
And even though she had changed the locks,
she believed that he had a key.
When she originally got her phone, he set up the password.
And so, she felt that he was hacking in,
reading her emails.
And the family had said Shele felt she was being watched.
She felt that he had some kind of a camera
set up in the hallway.
She'd show up or leave, and he would be right there.
- Her family can't help but wonder.
If Shele's death wasn't an accident,
could Rod actually be capable of murder?
- There was still a lot of unanswered questions.
And I knew I had to get into that apartment.
The apartment was still sealed.
- Part of the department procedure, in any death,
if there's nobody else in the apartment,
we seal the apartment.
- So we got permission from the court.
And we were able to go there supervised with the NYPD
to document it.
We had the key, but it was a tricky lock.
And after multiple attempts had been made
to get into the apartment,
the door across the hall opens, and out comes Rod Covlin.
The first thing that went through my mind
was that we were being monitored.
He saw that we were there.
He wanted to know who we were, what we were doing.
And surprisingly, he walked over and took the key.
And jiggle, lift up, lift down.
And he knew exactly what to do.
- Upon entering, Swain begins looking
for any indications of foul play.
And at the family's request,
he's also looking for Shele's cell phone,
which the NYPD hadn't found
in their original search of the apartment.
- You know, we started looking around,
you know, looking in drawers, the side of the bed--
the usual places.
You know, there was the charger,
where people would normally plug in the phone,
but no phone attached to it.
So we couldn't find it.
We then focused on the bathroom.
- And when he inspects the cabinet door,
Mike Swain has an epiphany.
- I just was trying to grasp
how this small,
light woman
was going to be able to yank that out of the wall.
And it would have taken tremendous force.
How, during this accidental slip and fall,
arms going up in the air,
were you able with one hand to grab that little knob?
I was convinced this is a staged crime scene.
- With no witnesses
and only circumstantial evidence,
there's only one way the NYPD can
revive this investigation.
We need that autopsy.
- You're exhuming a body.
That may lead to absolutely nothing.
And so, there was a lot of debate back and forth.
- Amongst the Orthodox Jews,
to desecrate a body is disturbing to them.
For Shele's family, you can only imagine
the inner conflict they had.
But they just wanted to find the truth.
- In the end, the family actually advised the NYPD
that "we want this body exhumed."
- I've seen many people put in the ground in coffins.
I've never seen anybody coming back out of the ground.
In New York City, they haven't exhumed a body
since, like, 1977.
You have to petition the DA to say,
"We think it's a homicide."
- Three months later,
the district attorney signs off on the warrant.
For the first time in decades,
a body is exhumed and sent to the medical examiner's office.
- The findings at autopsy
was asphyxiation by neck compression.
- Shele had been strangled so forcibly
that it broke the bones in her neck.
- So now, it's officially a homicide.
- It wasn't an accident.
I remember punching the air, saying, "Mission accomplished."
Things were gonna accelerate.
[tense music]
* *
- Three months after 47-year-old mother of two,
Shele Covlin, was found dead in her bathtub,
an autopsy proves it was a homicide.
Finally, the NYPD have a go-ahead
to begin investigating.
- We asked for lots of records--
bank records, phone records,
things that we couldn't get earlier
because we had no crime.
- Investigators don't waste any time
speaking with family and friends,
digging deep into Rod and Shele's
contentious relationship.
- We interviewed people that were in the apartment--
babysitter, the maid,
and victim's attorney.
- They learned that it's May of 2009,
seven months before Shele's murder,
when things began to really spiral.
- Once Rod was
served with the divorce papers, it got a little bit ugly.
- Rod was largely dependent on Shele.
And so, he told a judge
that he could not afford to pay child support.
The judge grew really angry and told Rod
that he could not attend any more backgammon games.
- Enraged at the ruling, Rod channeled his anger at Shele
and embarked on a mission to ruin her life.
- He called her employer.
Said that she was stealing money
from their children's college fund,
that she was using drugs.
- He was alleging that she was a drug user,
obviously to benefit himself for purposes of child custody.
He had an endgame.
- Even more insidious,
an allegation is made by Rod
that Shele was sexually abusing her own son.
- So there was a whole investigation.
And there was an examination.
There was zero evidence discovered
that this was an actual thing that happened.
- But the investigation does reveal something sinister.
- Their son admitted that Rod had coached him on what to say
and that none of it was actually true.
- To allege that the mother of your child
sexually abused your child, that was a new one for me.
It was becoming obvious that he was somebody
that without a doubt could have snapped
and taken it to the next level.
- His devious plan to discredit Shele
to get custody of their children backfires.
In July, the couple appear at divorce court.
And when the judge learns about Rod's schemes,
she makes a severe ruling.
- Rod cannot be around his children alone.
He was only permitted to see the children
so long as there was supervision.
- The consequences of Rod's actions
would continue to haunt him.
Five months later, after Shele is killed,
the kids are still not allowed to be in his care.
- Rod assumed that when Shele died,
he would automatically get custody of his children.
And so, he became really enraged
when that didn't happen.
- Instead, a social worker at the crime scene
sent the kids home with Rod's parents
as a temporary solution,
one that Shele's family is not happy with.
- There was a battle in court
over who would get custody of the children.
Shele's sister really wanted to have the children.
- But the children went to the custody of Rod's parents
up in Scarsdale.
- Children were obviously very, very devastated.
Felt very isolated. Felt alone.
- Rod had even cut them off from their beloved,
longtime nanny, Rose, unceremoniously firing her.
But that wasn't even the most important piece of intel
our men learned when they sat down with her.
- Rose mentioned
that Shele had a very expensive hair treatment done
that day on the 30th,
the day of her death.
- It was a keratin treatment,
which I wasn't familiar with at the time.
- And she was specifically instructed
no humidity, no shower, no heat.
It would destroy the treatment.
- There was no way on Earth that a woman
who had just spent probably a couple hundred dollars
would ever wash their hair for probably three or four days.
That dispelled the notion that Shele was taking a bath.
- This is the type of evidence that worked
in "Legally Blonde," but it's still circumstantial.
If we didn't have something more concrete,
we needed a rock-solid motive.
And when our guys started digging
around Shele and Rod's finances,
the case is blown wide open.
- They still weren't legally divorced
in the eyes of New York State.
And what that means,
in case of an untimely death,
unless otherwise determined specifically in the will,
he would receive everything that she owned.
- Total was about 5.2 million.
That she was basically worth dead to him.
- And what investigators learned next
changes everything.
- Shele's trust and estate attorney told us
that she made an appointment to go and see him
on New Year's Day of 2010,
the same day that Shele was found dead.
And she was going to take Rod out of her will.
- He was about to be cut out and lose everything.
He was gonna be penniless, divorced.
He was gonna have nothing.
That was his last opportunity
to save his tie to her money.
- He was desperate.
And he knew that something had to happen that day.
- There were many plots that Rod had.
And if you read this in a book,
you wouldn't believe it.
- He was willing to kill his own parents
[tense music]
* *
- NYPD investigators have finally discovered a motive
in a twisted case
of murdered 47-year-old mother of two
Shele Covlin.
- If anything had happened to Shele,
Rod stood to gain over $5 million.
- And the timing of her death confirms a certain suspicion
that Shele had shared with her family.
- He would never have
known that she was going to see an estate attorney
unless he was monitoring her communications.
He was already setting it all up.
He knew exactly what he was gonna do.
- As a suspect in Shele's murder,
Rod can't touch that $5 million.
It's wrapped up in trust until he's cleared.
And investigators need to work fast
to make sure that doesn't happen.
With the case classified officially a homicide,
now they're able to get their hands
on that surveillance footage from the apartment building
on the night Shele was killed.
- There was extensive video in the building
and outside of the building, both at the front door
and the back door.
- That night, at 4:00 in the morning,
we have Roderick Covlin coming down.
- We interviewed the doorman.
And he said it was very unusual
for him to go out at that time of night.
- It was kind of odd. He asked the doorman
if he needed anything.
In New York, there's stores open 24 hours a day.
But this was strange
because he would always talk down to the doorman.
- They declined to have him bring them anything,
but he came back with, like, candy bars.
Like, "Here, take these. You'll like--this'll be good."
For him to buy something for them
was just completely out of character.
And I think that,
without tremendous planning,
he attempted to set up an alibi.
- We also found Shele on tape from earlier that night,
just before 8:00 p.m.
The footage captures her arriving home from work.
- The victim came home.
And she was on camera.
She was alone.
- Investigators note one important detail.
- She was on the phone when she walked into the building.
She had the phone.
You know, like, where could this phone be?
- With proof that Shele had her phone that night
and suspicious that Rod had put cloning software on it,
investigators make one last Hail Mary attempt
to locate it.
- So my partner and I went back in the apartment.
We started looking around.
We went into the bedroom.
And right by the nightstand...
We saw a phone...
plugged in.
I looked at my partner. He looked at me.
We go, "That wasn't there."
We know we didn't miss it.
We had taken a picture,
and you could clearly see from the picture
there was no phone there.
- And the apartment was sealed.
We couldn't prove that Rod put it back in there,
but we eliminated any other possibility
that it could have occurred in any other way.
- It was almost like, "Yeah, I know what you're doing.
Catch me if you can."
We did try to interview Rod Covlin again,
but he hired an attorney
who obviously advised him not to speak to the police.
- If Rod won't talk to us,
we need to find out who he is talking to.
And when his email and phone records finally come in,
a number in Jacksonville, North Carolina,
appears again and again.
It belongs to a woman named Debra Oles.
- Debra Oles was a married mother of three children.
She met Rod at a backgammon game.
- Five months before Shele's murder,
not long after Rod is served with divorce papers,
he begins a relationship with Debra, 14 years his senior.
Besides seeing each other at competitions,
she visits him frequently in New York.
And when they aren't physically together,
they are playing backgammon online.
- On the night of Shele's murder,
she's on the computer with him playing backgammon.
And there was an exchange of messages
between the two of them
that were deleted.
So I call her, and I explain who I am.
But she said, "My lawyer says that I cannot speak to you."
- And when our guys find out who her lawyer is,
it's clear where the gameplay has led.
- It was Rod's lawyer as well, same attorney.
So for obvious reasons,
Debra Oles becomes a serious focal point
in this investigation.
- But with Rod's lawyer by her side,
Debra is not talking.
Their only hope now is that he unwittingly
admitted something in an email or text.
Investigators execute search warrants
on Rod's phone and computers.
But everything, including the phone
that mysteriously reappeared in Shele's apartment,
has been wiped.
- His devices were cleaned up.
And so, we weren't really
finding much useful information
despite some of the smartest tech wizards on Earth
working on these things for us.
- Why can't we find a smoking gun?
It's obvious who did it.
Why can't we just prove it?
[tense music]
* *
- With only circumstantial evidence
linking the murder of Shele Covlin
to her estranged husband, Rod,
weeks turned into months, and months turned into years.
And the investigation goes cold.
- Typically when someone is killed,
there's a ton of evidence that's collected.
In this case,
this was initially treated as an accident,
and so, there was no DNA.
There were no fingerprints collected.
And then a rabbi wiped all of that evidence away.
- If, in fact, Rod Covlin killed his wife,
he was never going to confess.
- And so, it was really difficult
for the prosecution to build a case
from which there was no evidence.
- It's kind of frustrating
that, you know, five years are passed
and there's no arrest in the case.
- One can only imagine the frustrations for the family.
Almost growing numb to it. Will this ever end?
- But in the summer of 2014,
detectives get a phone call that renews hope.
[phone ringing]
- Debra Oles, Rod's girlfriend,
calls me and says,
"I need to talk to you."
- Debra and Rod had broken up a few months earlier.
Free from Rod's tyranny,
she could finally come forward.
- For the next three days,
we interviewed her extensively.
- Rod told her about his plans and schemes
to gain custody of his children by any means.
- But it's not about any sort of desire to be a father.
- Rod Covlin's motivation in all of this
is always about money.
- Rod can't access his inheritance
until the district attorney deems
that he's no longer a suspect in Shele's murder.
But Shele had put money aside for the kids
in their own trusts.
- In order for him to have control of that trust,
he had to have custody of his children.
- Debra saw firsthand
the lengths Rod was willing to go to
to get control of the money
and tells us everything.
- The plans that this man had,
what he was prepared to do--
the only one-word adjective that I can give towards Rod
is "evil."
- He has this plan to convince his daughter
to use a cucumber
to simulate a rape
and blame her grandfather.
And then he would go to jail.
At this point, the little girl is about 11 or 12 years old.
Thank God, the little girl couldn't bring herself
to do this whole thing.
And so, that never occurred.
- As he continues to scheme for the trust,
Rod takes money from the kids' college funds,
the one family account he has access to.
And when his parents catch on, a fight breaks out,
secretly recorded by Debra.
- His rage shifted
from being about Shele when she was alive
to now being focused on his parents
because they stood in the way of him getting Shele's money.
- He's beginning to dissemble.
And he starts planning to kill his parents.
- In 2012, he had come up with a plan
that he shared with Debra
that he would have his daughter
put rat poison in his parents' tea.
And he told Debra that his daughter
would not get that much time in jail based on her age
if she were caught.
- Debra dissuaded him from doing that.
But Debra told us that there was another plan
in the fall of 2012
where he buys an Afro wig and blackface makeup.
So he was going to go ring the doorbell.
And he knew that his mother would answer the door.
He was gonna punch her in the throat and kill her.
But that never happened.
- He also considered setting his parents' home on fire.
- His parents would both die in the flames.
- The plots and plans that Rod had--
you couldn't write something like this.
It wouldn't-- if you read this in a book,
you wouldn't believe it.
- We felt like we had
to really accelerate our investigation
because he was becoming unhinged.
God only knows what his next plan will be.
- And Debra doesn't just give detectives the horror stories.
She's got proof to back everything up.
- She had five or six external hard drives
that were all filled
with stuff from his computers and his phone
that Rod had given her to keep for him.
- Now it's a matter of good, old-fashioned legwork.
Our guys tracked down
every person he corresponded with over email,
whether it was a backgammon buddy or girlfriend.
And they got people talking.
- There was a woman that he used to work with.
And he told her he had a key for Shele's apartment
and he could come and go whenever he wanted,
which, of course, was a huge revelation.
There was hundreds and hundreds
and hundreds of things that we collected
that, when all put together,
became an extremely formidable case.
- And then investigators discover an email
that brings the case against Rod Covlin
one step closer to home.
- In June of 2013,
he was trying to frame his own daughter
of having killed Shele.
He drafted an email in her email account
confessing to the death.
- It's your child. It's your blood.
I would die for my children.
- Something bad is going to happen because he's desperate.
And if we don't do something before that happens,
that's on us.
- We're gonna get you.
This is endgame.
[tense music]
* *
- Six years after the murder of Shele Danishefsky Covlin,
police finally have enough evidence
against their prime suspect from the beginning--
her husband, Rod Covlin--
the icing on the cake, an email he drafted
pretending to be his daughter
confessing to her mother's murder.
- He wrote, "I lied. She didn't just slip.
"That day, we got into a fight about her dating.
"I got mad, so I pushed her.
"The water started turning red.
"And I tried to pull her head up,
but she remained still."
That a father would attempt
to frame his own daughter--
it is unimaginable.
- We felt we had enough for an indictment,
so we presented the case to the grand jury.
Circumstantial cases are always tricky.
There was an enormous amount of information
that looked bad,
but there was no smoking gun.
And so, he was indicted for murder in the second degree.
- After so many years of pain, doubt, and fear,
on November 1st, 2015,
Rod was arrested
at the Scarsdale train station.
- He went in the cell, laid down on the bench,
and off to sleep he want.
That's always an interesting tell.
It happens almost every single time when someone is guilty
because they're-- psychologically,
they're carrying this weight around.
And there's a sort of sense of relief
that they don't have to play this game any longer.
- I did go to the trial.
But when I saw Covlin sitting there with his attorney,
it really, really upset my whole being.
I just left.
I knew that the government has a strong case.
But he is extremely, extremely manipulative.
The guy could talk his way out of everything.
And if anybody can get away with murder, it's Rod Covlin.
- But Rod had made a critical mistake
shortly after he was arrested.
An inmate informs investigators
that Rod told him that he had murdered his wife.
- We got the video surveillance from that particular day.
And there was Rod demonstrating how you could kill somebody
by putting your arm around their neck like this
and squeezing until they died,
which was exactly fitting the evidence
that was discovered at autopsy.
- Over the next seven weeks,
the jury is presented with chilling testimonies
detailing the horrific lengths that Rod Covlin went to
for Shele's money.
- I've worked on 1,500 murder cases
in the years that I was in the police department.
He's the worst human being
that I've ever had to encounter
because he did so many bad things to his own children
in his infinite greed.
- In March of 2019,
after two days of deliberations,
jurors come back with the verdict.
- When I saw Rod with his defense attorneys,
I saw poker face,
but I knew he was soiling his pants.
- Rod Covlin was found guilty by a jury
for murder in the second degree.
- I was elated,
trying to give closure to the family.
- Shele's family wept,
hugged each other.
It was clearly an emotional time for them.
- They got what they deserved.
You know, they got justice.
It was a good feeling to see that.
- Rod Covlin is sentenced to 25 years to life.
- This is over.
Shele's got her justice.
God has given us justice.
I remember she just had a beautiful smile.
She was a presence in the room.
It was a sense of love
and happiness and joy in the air.
That joy, unfortunately, is gone.
And we miss that.
We miss that very, very much.
This thing should have never happened.
Should've never ever happened.
Never.