N.Y. Man Tries to Frame His 12-Year-Old Daughter for Murder

On Wednesday, a jury found Roderick Covlin guilty of second-degree murder in the death of Shele Danishefsky Covlin, 47, The New York Times reports.

Unemployed stockbroker Roderick Colvin’s lavish life was about to come to a halt when his wealthy wife filed for divorce, so he killed her say, prosecutors. It was also reported In 2013, that prosecutors alleged, he tried to frame his daughter, by then 12, by posing as her in a fake confession letter that said she had killed her mother.

It looks like this was a severe case of greed. The Covlins were in the midst of a bitter divorce and living in separate apartments across the hall from one another in the upscale Dorchester Towers on West 68th Street when she was killed, CBS News and the Associated Press report.

Danishefsky Colvin, a successful wealth manager at UBS, had filed for divorce in May 2009. She planned to cut her estranged husband out of her will but was killed just a day before she was due to meet with her lawyer.

She had originally planned to leave him $5 million, prosecutors said

“She was fearful for her life, believed Rod intended to kill her, and there was some urgency to make changes in her will,” documents filed previously in New York Surrogate’s Court state, NBC New York reports.

Danishefsky Colvin’s death was initially ruled accidental after the couple’s then 9-year-old daughter found her in a bloody bathtub with a large gash on her head, The New York Times reports.

Covlin told police he had administered CPR to his wife after calling 911.

Danishefsky Colvin’s family initially declined an autopsy for religious reasons. But they later agreed to have her body exhumed after investigators learned that their daughter had filed for an order of protection against her husband earlier that year.

After the exhumation, a New York City medical examiner determined that she showed signs of strangulation and reclassified her death as a homicide.

In 2011, Danishefsky Colvin’s family filed a wrongful death suit against Covlin claiming he killed her.

In 2013, prosecutors alleged that he tried to frame his daughter, by then 12, by posing as her in a fake confession letter that said she had killed her mother, the Times reports.

Covlin was arrested on Nov. 1, 2015, and charged with two counts of second-degree murder.

 

Roderick Covlin is scheduled to be sentenced on April 10.

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