Rod Covlin wanted to marry daughter Anna to Mexican man to collect her trust fund

Publish date: 2024-05-07

The estranged husband of a finance executive who was arrested this earlier month and charged in her 2009 death tried to set up a marriage between their 13-year-old daughter and a Mexican man, it is alleged. 

Roderick Covlin, 42, attempted to make the arrangements in 2013 to collect the $1million trust fund his dead wife had left their daughter Anna, prosecutors said Monday at a bail hearing in Manhattan.

Covlin has pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder charges after he allegedly made statements to his girlfriend 'implicating himself' in the slaying of his former wife, Shele Danishefsky Covlin.

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Rod Covlin (center) is pictured with his mother (right) and then-attorney in 2010 after he appeared in court over custody of their children. His parents have since been granted custody of them

Rod Covlin (center) is pictured with his mother (right) and then-attorney in 2010 after a custody hearing

Covlin (center), was an unemployed backgammon player when he allegedly murdered his wife. In 2011, a judge denied Covlin access to her insurance policy after discovering that he was the prime suspect in her death

Covlin (center) was an unemployed backgammon player when he allegedly murdered his wife in 2009

Prosecutor Matthew Bogdanos told Justice Bonnie Wittner in Manhattan Supreme Court that Colvin was planning to 'get custody and get access to all of the money', according to the NY Daily News

Bogdanos said: 'The defendant comes up with a plan to kidnap his 13-year-old daughter, take her to Mexico and pay some Mexican $10,000 to marry her so that she'll no longer be a minor.'

The prosecutor then played a tape for the judge where Covlin told an unidentified person: 'Some Mexican law firm can handle it, make sure it gets done properly.'

Previous incidents where Covlin had been called an 'absolute pedophile' and a 'dirty bastard' by parents of underage girls he had contacted and poked on Facebook were also mentioned in court.

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Bogdanos also said Covlin 'falsely' reported Danishefsky Covlin for sexually abusing their three-year-old son Myles and that he lied to her work supervisor and said his ex-wife was a drug addict.

Covlin's attorney, Robert Gottlieb, called his client a 'desperate' man and said the marriage claim and the other issues Bodganos introduced had 'nothing to do with the murder allegations'.

Judge Wittner sided with the district attorney and ordered that Covlin remain held without bail. 

Danishefsky Covlin was found in the bathtub at her Manhattan apartment the day before she was planning to write Covlin out of her will, court papers claim.

Danishefsky Covlin's body was found in the bath tub of her home in this apartment block in Manhattan's Upper West Side

Danishefsky Covlin's body was found in the bath tub of her home in this apartment block in Manhattan's Upper West Side

Covlin, who was headed to his weekly visit with Anna and Myles at his parents' house at the time of his arrest on November 1, faces 25 years to life in prison if he's convicted.

The failed stock trader was less than two months away from inheriting half of his wife's $4million fortune until he was charged for her gruesome murder, WABC reported. 

The other half of the money is intended for Anna and Myles, who are each due $1million. 

The money has been being held in a trust due to a wrongful-death suit filed against the defendant in 2011, according to the New York Post.

According to the court papers about the agreement, Covlin could inherit the money if he was not found responsible for her death, if he was no longer a suspect or if six years passed after the 47-year-old mother's death. 

Gottlieb said last week that his client was 'stunned' by the early November arrest.

'There can be no credible evidence, because he did not kill his wife,' Gottlieb said after Covlin's arraignment. 

Danishefsky Covlin was a money manager at UBS, part of a finance family in which she worked alongside her brother and father.

Covlin had been a trader and was a noted figure in the backgammon world, having helped found the US Backgammon Federation. 

After years of marriage and the two children, their relationship was falling apart. 

He had moved into an apartment across the hall in their Manhattan building, and they were embroiled in a bitter divorce, court papers show.

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