
Endgame
Dateline NBC- 171 views
- 1 Jan 2025
Rod Covlin calls 911 after his young daughter finds his estranged wife, Shele Danishefsky, unconscious in the bathtub. Soon after her mysterious death, Shele’s loved ones would come to suspect that what happened was no accident. Andrea Canning reports.
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Fbd Insurance Group Limited trading as FBD Insurance is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. Tonight on Dateland. Rod Copeland calls 911 and says that his wife appears dead. He said that Anna found her in the bathtub I've never seen my son shell shocked. I'm reading the death certificate, and I saw that the cause of death was undetermined. This is a really sensational case, and you have this beautiful woman, a tall, handsome guy, grieved infidelity. People were telling us things that were very worrying. He's sleeping around with other women. We believed it was a staged accident. The case bothered me for a long time. He was adamant about his innocence. They just don't have direct evidence. A New Year's Eve mystery that would take the next nine years to solve. First thing I thought of was, she could finally rest. I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateland. 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, we 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 07:00 AM, a man named Rod Covlin called 911 to say his nine-year-old daughter, Anna, found his wife, Shelle, unconscious in the bathtub. Rebecca Rosenberg covered the case for the New York Post and knows it inside and out. He sees his wife in the tub. He pulls her out, puts her face up on the ground, and starts performing CPR. Then he calls 911, and they tell him to keep performing CPR. This is a horrible scene. And I would imagine absolutely devastating for their daughter. The EMTs arrived in minutes. They found no pulse. 47-year-old Shelle 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 Sherley wrapped in a comforter on the floor next to it.
Above the tub, a cabinet with a door hanging off its hinge. They surmised Shelle 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 Shelle Danischewski-Kovlin was larger than life. Nobody admired her more than her sister, Eve, and brother-in-law, Mark Karstadt. We would have a blast. We would laugh a lot. She was a lot of fun. She graduated with a marketing degree, and then my dad had asked her if she wanted to come and work with him at Merrill Lynch. Shelle eventually became a private wealth manager. The money was good. So was the prestige. Shelle was fancy. She was smart. She was educated. Shelle's friend, Stephanie Goldman, remembers the day Shelle took her to the Upscale Friars Club. It was wintertime. She She was wearing her fur coat, her Minn coat. Men just came over to her. It was like being swept off her feet. She's got the finance job, the style. I mean, it sounds like she was the classic New York City woman. Absolutely.
Absolutely, she was. In February of 1998, Shelle 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, Shelle, please don't do this. Eve talked her sister out of it that night, but Shelle was serious, and so was Rod. Shelle 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 is coming up. We don't have time right now. No, you have to meet her. A brunette back then, Shelle married Rod six months later. And reality set in as they settled down to life as a couple. It wasn't exactly bliss, because while Shelly was a stunning overachiever, 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 and was unable to execute on any of them. But he had a couple of talents, martial arts, and back gammon. And when he sat down and played, he won. He won, and he won money. Two years after she married Rod, Shelle gave birth to baby Anna. She was inseparable 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 then they died. Oh, my gosh. I think at childbirth and one 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 was a nightmare for her. Then, in 2006, Shelle had a baby boy. She and Rod named their son Miles. But now, three Three years later, Shelle was dead, and the scene inside that apartment on the Upper West Side was chaos. Mark says Eve could barely function. When I first saw her, she walked down the corridor, and she was as white as she did. She was in terrible shock.
Nypd Detective Carl Rodermel was there, too, pondering various scenarios. I've been to places where people have fallen in a tub, and it's... Anything's possible. In this case, that would be an understatement. Coming up, 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 Shelle 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 Sherry Covlin, 2010 began with sadness. Sherry's sister, Eve, and her husband, Mark, couldn't believe the mother of two was gone. Did it hit you later, the more emotional side of things, as you think about your life without her? Right, exactly. And the children without her. Right. You can't even think about the magnitude of it all. Shelleys in-laws, David and Carol Covlin, were also in shock. Their son, Rod, called with the news.
Shelleys 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, Sheil, he's dead. When you arrive, what's going on? Rodert was sitting on the couch. He was in shock. Honestly, 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-in-law obviously made the final decision. He went by his rabbi who said, going to the autopsy. It was only as friends and family gathered to sit Shiva, the Jewish period of morning, 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, Shelley's rocky marriage to Rod. She said he doesn't get a job. He goes to the gym twice a day, and he's just hanging around the house, and she was very frustrated. She said, He's driving me crazy. In 2009, Shelley confessed to her sister that her marriage was in serious trouble.
She said, We're broken and we just have to part ways. And she cried. She wept to me. One thing Mark 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 a chair, and something can set him off, and in seconds, he will literally explode. Shelly also complained about Rod's growing obsession with that gamut. It became a passion and then an obsession for him. Did he ever say why? I think he had 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 back gamut and going to back gamut too much. I said, You've got a family. The Covlin say they saw changes in Shelle too. Ones they felt were equally damaging to the marriage. She started going to the Friars Club. From a once a week, it became much more frequent than that. The couple seemed to be living separate lives in what had to be a painful moment. Shelle told her sister it wasn't the back gamut 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 wants an open marriage. Most women don't want to go along with the open marriage concept. She was one of those who said absolutely no. By June, Rod had moved out, and he didn't go far. Shelley 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 Shelley 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, Shelley was moving on, and so was Rod. He was very charming, intelligent, funny, in a quirky way, and I really enjoyed playing backgammon with him. Deborah Oles met Rod at a backgammon tournament. Months later, their relationship became romantic. I wasn't looking for any relationship. He was pretty aggressive. And I think I was naive in the fact that I'm considerably older than Rod.
It never occurred to me that he would be interested me in that way. So it surprised you when he made an overture? It surprised me, right. Of course, it made me feel good, a younger man being attracted to me. Meanwhile, Shelly was working with divorce attorney Lance higher. We talked about all the problems she was having with her husband and the concerns she had about herself, her children, and she was really trying 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 She was on JDate. She had met some gentlemen. Jdate, the Jewish dating website? Yeah. Shelley 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. Now, Shelle'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.
Suspitions that only deepened when Mark learned the medical examiner wasn't sure either. I'm reading the death certificate and I saw that the cause of death was undetermined. Coming up, Rod said he had pulled Kelly'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 Dateland continues. They called it the happiest place on the high desert, home to a tight-knit group of 30-somethings who like to party. It starts as a Playboy channel fantasy, but this is real life. Where passion leads to murder, and a killer seeks God's help with the cover-up. I'm Josh Mankowitz, and this is Deadly Mirage, an all-new podcast from Dateland. Listen to all episodes now, wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Keith Morissen. This This story is about the end of the world, a frostbitten pet cemetery, and zombies. This is a story about a woman linked forever to the awful things that happened to her children. Children. It has to be heard to be believed. Think you know every Dateland story? Think again. Listen to Mommy Doomsday and a dozen other riveting series when you follow the Dateland Originals podcast.
Tex and Diane had it all. Until the night, neither of them wish to relive. The night, only one of them can. She said, Tex, what did you do? You shot me. Join us as we dive deep into a world of power, money, and greed, and one man's secret quest to grab the million-dollar fortune of his deceased wife. From Sony Music Entertainment and Waveland Road, this is Deadly Fortune. Listen wherever you get your podcast. From the moment Sherry 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, Shelle takes a bath? She showers. She's not taking a bath? Plus, Shelle had gotten a keratin hair straightening treatment the previous morning. She wasn't supposed to get her hair wet for several days. They say, Don't wash your hair for 72 hours. Yeah. Not even supposed to go to the gym. This is what's been labeled the legally blonde moment, that any woman who knows about a keratin treatment to straighten your hair is not going to expose your hair like that.
Shelleys death didn't sit right with lead Detective, Carl Rodermel, 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 Shelleys body. She had bruising to her lip. She appeared to have 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 Shelley's wet body out of the tub, yet his clothes were bone dry. 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. Killed. 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 Covalent 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, But Sheli'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 want to 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 Sheli died, her family hired a private investigator. So you're not satisfied? Not at all. The private investigator had started had started talking to friends of Shelley'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. Shelley'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 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 Shelley 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 a very serious thing. He was trying to hurt her and her family. The company determined Shelley 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 backammon, something he blamed on Shelley. He was beyond angry. She was taken away the thing he apparently cared about the most. A couple of weeks after Shelley'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 Shelley had supposedly grabbed as she fell, the screws had been pulled out of the wall. He thought that would have taken more force than the 5'4, 132 pound Shelley could muster. That it would have taken a lot of strength to pull the actual door of the cabinet off. Something that Shelle wouldn't have been able to do, he didn't believe. Most likely. 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 Shelle died was to exhume her body and do an autopsy. Two months after Shelle's death, at the family's urging, her body was pulled out of its grave and reexamined. Detective Rodermel 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 hyoid bone that it was broken. That's in the neck? Inside the neck area. And he says it was going to be a homicide. Wow. Shelle had been choked to death. Coming up, a trial of lies, secrets, and surprises. The question was never Is he going to kill Shelle? The question was always, when. Shelle Covalent 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 six years of slowly building a case, prosecutors finally became convinced they had enough to persuade a jury. In November 2015, Shelle's sister, Eve, got word from the district Attorney's office.
She said were about to arrest Rod Covlin for the murder of Shelle Covlin. So 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 Rod was public. After waiting so long for justice, Eve and her husband, Mark, steal 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 Shirley's body out. 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, but what do they have going for them with this jury? 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. When he asked her to go into the bedroom, she said she was scared of going in there with him because she don't know what he No. The prosecutor describes Shelle as a textbook victim of domestic abuse. The question was never, is he going to kill Shelle? The question was always, when. Shelley was living in fear, prosecutor said, because her estranged husband was boiling with rage in their custody battle. Shelle's divorce attorney, Lance Meyer, took the stand to say how Rod had even used his son as a weapon. Mr. Coblin, took the children and accused Shelley of abusing Miles. It turns out that he took them to the hospital and made allegations that Shelley had sexually abused their son.
Wow. So this is getting ugly. Yes. Prosecutor said those disturbing and false accusations were just one example of how Rod was becoming unhinged. He was also obsessively tracking Shelley's every move with secretly installed software on her computer. Rod told this coworker 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 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 estate if she died. But then, Rod found some emails Shelle sent just two days before her death. She reaches out to an attorney and also tells several people that she wanted to change her will and essentially write Rod Kovlin out of her will. The state said that's when Rod snapped and hatched his plan. The night of December 30th, her friend Melissa Field saw her and sensed something was wrong. Shelle Shelle was nervous when we first met up, and she was looking around quite a bit, and I did ask her what the problem, 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, Shelle 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 10:13, the last activity on any of her devices. Rod, meanwhile, was across the hall. He was usually online playing backam and late into the night, but suddenly his online presence stopped at 1:03 AM. No sign of him until he popped up on that surveillance video in the lobby at 4:13 AM. The allegation was that he wanted to be seen on camera leading the apartment. Yes, he wanted to make an alibi, that this was his way 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 died as the result of neck compression, and I classified her death as a on his side. Strangulation, not an accidental fall. And in another sinister twist, prosecutors believe that three and a half years after Shelleys death, Rod drafted a note composed from his 12-year-old daughter's trial account, pretending to be her.
It read, I lied. She didn't just slip. I got so mad, so I pushed her. I didn't mean to hurt her. I swear. 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 child? 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. When Dateland continues. Hey, everybody. I'm Al Roker from the Today Show. I am so excited to kickstart the new year with help from our all new Start Today app. It has everything you need for your wellness journey all in one place. Fitness challenges for all levels, meal plans that are easy and delicious, and so much more. It's built to fit your lifestyle, and our experts will guide you every step of the way.
Come on, let's do this. To subscribe, download Start Today from the App Store on your Apple device now. Terms apply, cancel anytime through Apple under profile settings. A true crime story never never really ends. Even when a case is closed, the journey for those left behind is just beginning. Since our Dateland story aird, Tracy has harnessed her outrage into a mission. I had no other option. I had to do something Catch up with families, friends, and investigators on our bonus series, After the Verdict. Ordinary people facing extraordinary circumstances with strength and courage. It does just change your life, but speaking up for these issues helps me keep going. To listen to After the Verdict, subscribe to Dateline Premium on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or at datelinepremium. Com. 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 tail. Nothing but the truth? Yes. Thank you, ma'am. In the trial of Rod Covlin, the closer turned out to be none other than Deborah Oles, Rod's back gammon 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 who he is. Deborah 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, they've broken up, and then she dies. So it makes 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 back gamut online. Deborah would drive from her home down south to tournament elements, 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 offered to give them a copy of the games, the Grgemen games that we played, so they'd have exact times that we played.
Man, that was it. Did they tell you why they were there? They thought he was guilty. They said he was a really bad person, and I didn't believe them at the time. You had gotten to know him pretty well at this point, too. Right. I never saw the monster that I eventually came to know until later. But the monster was lurking. As Deborah told the court, over time, she began to see just how volatile Rod could be. He had a 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 had 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. Deborah 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 because there was no electricity, the alarms would not be on. He wanted to go through a window in the basement, kill his parents, and set his house on fire. I was 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 Miles out safely. And I discussed it with him for like 15 minutes or so. I'm like, No, you're not going to do this. And then finally, I said, Just how are you going to explain miraculously that you just happened to be there to save your children. And finally that-So he backed out. 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 put rat poison in their food or sugar for their tea or whatever. Why don't you leave him at this point? How am I supposed to protect his parents if I don't know what he's plotting? I can't be there and protect 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 as to be the voice of reason for Rod? Either try and talk him out of it or have enough definitive proof where I can go to the police. By this time, Deborah 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 lured schemes. One day, she testified, 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 asked me four or five times. And I finally, I just like, I'm not going to help you kill your parents. And even if I wanted to, which I don't, you'd kill me, too. And he had this creepy laugh. And he looked at me in a way that like, Oh, you're just now figuring this out? And then he said, No, I only want to kill the people who try to take my children away from me. Did you believe now that Rod killed Shelley? There was no question, susceptible of doubt in my mind that he killed her at that point.
Finally, Rod and Deborah 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. Questions, and after nine years, unanswered. How hard was it waiting for the verdict? Oh, my gosh, That was so painful. I had such butterflies. 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 phalanderer, 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 Deborah Oles alleging that Rod had wanted to kill you. In grand fashion, we're talking arsenic rat poison. Rod's dad, Dave, says Deborah's claims were laughable. The alleged murder plot, I think, are a farce.
Rod's defense attorney, Robert Gottlieb, agreed. During a testy cross-examination, he tried to poke holes in Deborah's testimony, starting with her story of those plots. Were you scared? Yes. Did you call the police? Yes or no? Did you call the police? No. Gottlieb says Deborah'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 Deborah had been crushed when the relationship ended. Her testimony, he said, was nothing more than the words of a 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 an habitual lie. That is disgusting and false. That is not true. The defense conceded Rod wasn't always a 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 had been foul play. No signs of a struggle. He said Rod couldn't have slipped into Shelleys apartment and killed her, like the prosecution argued, because there was no evidence he had a key. Remember, Rod said little Anna had let him in that morning. There's been no evidence that Mr. Coughlin was ever in the apartment on December 30 or December 31 before 07:00 AM. No evidence either, Gottlieb said about what had caused Shirley's injuries. He suggested one explanation, the exhumation. They used back hose to exhume. They used shovels to get to the in the coffin. Carol said there was nothing she heard in court that convinced her Shelle'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.
It depends on what's in there, how they took her out. I have no idea I just... Again, you are left with a conundrum. A conundrum that would never be solved, the defense argued, because of bumbling by investigators. You do 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 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. I'll say this is 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, I don't go to the second count. Do you want to poll the jurors? Over here. 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 for fear of what would have been if the wrong verdict came down. And outside the courthouse, family and friends gathered. Finally. After all this time, they felt like they could breathe again. First thing I thought of was, It's justice for Shelle, and she can finally rest. Deborah 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 completely… It's done. Do you regret the day you met Rod? I do. I really do. How are the children doing? They're holding it together as best they could. Shelle's children are young adults now. They don't have much contact with Shelle'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 Dateland. We'll see you again Thursday at 10:00, 9:00 Central. And of course, I'll see you each week night for NBC Nightly News. I'm Lester Holt. For all of us at NBC News, good night..