Rod Covlin gets 25 years to life in prison for killing wife

May 2024 · 3 minute read

Explore More

Wife-killing backgammon ace Rod Covlin was sentenced to 25 years to life behind bars Wednesday for snapping his estranged spouse’s neck to score her $5.2 million fortune in 2009.

Audible gasps echoed through the courtroom as Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Ruth Pickholz handed down the maximum sentence, while Covlin dropped his head and closed his eyes.

Pickholz’s decision came right after his 12-year-old son, Myles, implored the judge to go easy on his dad, saying he still believes Covlin is innocent of his mother’s death.

“Please give him a light sentence so I have him back in my life … I love him so much,” the boy told the judge.

But Pickholz said she based her decision on the “overwhelming evidence” against Covlin.

A jury last month convicted the 45-year-old pro backgammon player of second-degree murder for snapping the neck of his estranged wife, Shele Danishfesky, in the bathtub of her luxury Upper West Side apartment on New Year’s Eve 2009.

Prosecutors argued that Covlin — a failed stockbroker who was living across the hall after the couple separated over his philandering ways — snuck into Danishfesky’s apartment, choked her to death, and then tried to make it look like an accidental drowning.

Danishefsky, 47, a wealth manager at UBS, was about to take Covlin out of her will and the pair were engaged in a bitter divorce and custody battle over Myles and their daughter, Anna.

Covlin claimed that his daughter found Danishefsky’s lifeless body in the tub, and he rushed over to help, performing CPR and then calling 911.

His mom on Wednesday read the judge a letter from Anna, also pleading for a light sentence.

During the trial, prosecutors said Colvin hatched numerous plots to kill his own parents, kidnap a then-13-year-old Anna and marry her off to access his wife’s inheritance — and once coached a 2-year-old Myles to claim that his mom had molested him.

Covlin nevertheless tried to invoke his kids again while insisting on his innocence to the judge and vowing to appeal.

“Fortunately my daughter, who slept in Shele’s bed that night, knows the truth. She is the one person who could. Our children are amazing people, they are strong, and courageous and wise and they know that I love them,” he told Pickholz.

Danishefsky’s younger brother accused Covlin of using “two innocent little children” and labelled him a “menace to society.”

“He’s a killer, he’s a terrorist … he must rot there never to see the light of day,” Philip Danishefsky told the judge.

Older brother Fred Danishefsky called Colvin “an evil predator.”

“The existence of Rod Covlin is the strongest argument there is for the death penalty. Unfortunately, the death penalty is not available,” he said.

After the judge’s sentence came down, her sister Eve Karstaedt told The Post: “She got it right, she got it right.”

ncG1vNJzZmimqaW8tMCNnKamZ2Jlfnp7j21mamhfp7ylecKoraWhnmKwsLrVopqtnZRixKqyxGaioqScmr9us8StqmZqZWLGpq3RrGStp12htqexjKKlZqiinsCwuo4%3D