A New Year's Eve slip and fall in a bathtub, or was it? An accident or something more sinister? 2020 starts right now. That awful day, December 31st. Shelly's last day, you see the last time she's captured on video, which is entering the building at about 8:00 PM. Rodd says his daughter called him, said something's wrong with mommy. He sees his wife face down in the bathtub. I got a call from Shelly's babysitter. She said to me, There's been an accident. Shelly slipped and fell. And I said, Rose, is Shelly alive? And she said, No. I heard that she had slipped in the bathtub and died. Obviously, that was beyond shocking because she was young and she had little children. As a detective, you could understand why this did look like an accident. Absolutely. Your sister is 47 years old, pretty healthy. It didn't make sense. But there are some things that seem inconsistent with a simple slip and fall. She says, I may need to drop my kids off by you. I'm afraid for my life. They don't dust for fingerprints. They take any DNA evidence at this time. The family objected to an autopsy.

I hate to say this, but without an autopsy, sometimes people can get away with murder. A good morning, America. On this New Year's Eve, December 31st, 2009… I'm going to go for a high of a city of 38 degrees today. It's December 31st, 2009, and New Year's Eve preparations are underway in Times Square. In just a few hours, Times Square is going to be transformed into the biggest New Year's Eve party in the world. Meantime, a mile and a half north, a tragedy is unfolding inside a Manhattan luxury apartment building. The unexpected death of 47-year-old mom of two, Shelly Covent. There's a lot of shock at this Upper West Side address. Shelly was a healthy, vibrant woman in the prime of her life. I was living in the building at the time when I heard the tragic news that a young mother had lost her life by slipping in a bathtub. Shelly was an acquaintance. I knew her from the lobby. She seemed like a very lovely person and very attentive to her kids. People described Shelly as very warm and a really kind person. She's very beautiful, blonde, very petit, she's five-four. How did you see Shelly growing up as the older sister?

She was a great sister. She was very loving. She was fun. She was energetic. She was electric. She would walk into a room and she would light it up. Shelly was the glue that kept us all together. Shelly was an Orthodox Jew. Her religion was very important to her, and she lived a traditional Jewish life. My father came from a very religious home himself, and we were observant, a modern Orthodox family. After studying marketing in college, Shelly later develops a passion for numbers and begins to climb the corporate ladder of New York's world of high finance. Shelly was very driven. She worked at Merrill Lynch with her father and brother as a wealth manager, and then they were recruited to UBS. What was it that made her so good at what she was doing? Such an honorable person and a reliable person. In our business, to be trusted, to be a valued advisor is so important. In addition to her career success, Shelly was longing to start a family. You had found love and got married to Mark. Shelly, in her early 30s, still trying to find that right person. What was that like for her?

I'm sure it was very frustrating for her. She was looking for Mr. Right. She wanted to be married. She wanted children. That's what she wanted. I met Shelley February 15th, the day after Valentine's Day in 1998 at a Jewish single party. I'm out of a place called La Barbet. We started chatting and we hit it off. What was it about her that sparked interest for you? She was smart. We wanted the same things in life. It was just an instant connection. We met and just fell head over heels for each other. He was a much younger man, six two, good looking, blue eyes, solid muscle, and he completely swept over feet. They had this whirlwind romance. Even though there was this significant age gap, he was 25 at the time. She was 36. She called us probably around 11 o'clock. She was giggling and she said, I met a guy and we're flying to Las Vegas to a loathe. And I said, Oh, my God, Shelly, please don't do this. Please don't do this. He said he met this most wonderful woman in the world. He proposed marriage that night. Rod is a graduate from Columbia University with a degree in Civil Engineering.

And he lavishes Shelly with attention. Just six weeks after they meet, Rod and Shelly are engaged. So he was smitten. He said she's terrific. And I guess she felt the same way because they got married within six months. Early on, things were fantastic. We did everything together, and we enjoyed each other's company very much. They moved into a very nice apartment in the Dorchester Towers on the Upper West Side. It's located in an affluent area, just blocks from Lincoln Center and Central Park. This is the same neighborhood, serving as a backdrop for only murders in the building. The popular Hulu series about a trio of true crime fanatics intent on solving a murder in their own building. I don't lock my door. Never have. That's insane. It's neighborly. I mean, a murderer probably lives in the building. I lived in the door Chester for 15 years on door-to-door, 24-7, door-to-door, door-to-door, 24-7, door-to-door. I felt very safe there. It's a very family-oriented part of Manhattan. Shirley's younger sister knows that she desperately wants to start a family. She didn't get pregnant right away. She was in her 30s. And so she knew she just wanted to go straight to IVF, and the first one worked.

They have a baby girl, Anna. How happy was the family? Everyone was thrilled. She was elated. She loved being a mother. When we finally had Anna, it was fantastic. I always made her birthday cakes for her parties. We did science projects together. I mean, it was great. I taught her how to make balloon animals. We would go to the playground and she would make balloon animals for the other kids. Rod and Shelly want to expand their family, and soon she's pregnant again with twins. But they're complications. The babies are born prematurely at just six months. She delivered them. One died at birth and the other one died several hours later. How did that impact her? She was devastated. She really was. That heartbreak had to be tough on the marriage. It was. How did that affect your son and his wife? They were all very, very upset for quite a while. A year and a half later, Shelly gives birth to a son who they named Miles. This is the four of them. That's very sweet. Very, very sweet family. She had her girl and she had her boy. And the family was happy for her?

Absolutely. Did the happiness return to the marriage? You know, initially, sure. But I think that it, unfortunately, didn't didn't change things for very long. I think at that point, the marriage was deteriorating. Rod had barely worked at all. He always had a bit of difficulty with steady employment. He was a stockbroker at one point. That didn't quite work out. She really would have loved to stay home and be with the kids, but she saw that was not in the cards. I mean, he couldn't hold a job. And just as Shelly and Rod's relationship seems to be crumbling, her family says he makes her a shocking proposition. Backgamet is not simply a matter of shaking the dice. It's how you use particular role that you get, and it appeals to people who are very mathematically minded. What was it about the game that attracted you? There is plenty of math, and there's a lot of deep thought required, which again, is very surprising given the fact that there are dice involved in the game. Fair to say it became an obsession? I don't think so. I think I'd say a passion. Rod spent a lot of his time and whatever money he was making on his dream of becoming a professional backgammon player.

Backgammon's Rod's main focus. So, Shelly is the major breadwinner in the family, and according to her family, it takes a terrible toll on their marriage. Whenever we would have family gatherings, he would sit on the side and either play back at him on the computer or have a game going. He is online at all hours, pulling all nighters, and just constantly reaching out to women. Were other women starting to catch your eye? Sure, sure. I definitely dated. Even though you were married? -correct. So you began to see other women? I did. I did. Rodd often liked to take his dates to a place called Lure Fish Bar. It's an upscale restaurant in lower Manhattan, known for its yacht-like interior decor. He went on dates with numerous women. He favored this location because I believe he said, quote, they had yummy drinks. As Shelly and Rodd approach their 10-year wedding anniversary, their marriage unravels. She discovered that Rodd was having an affair. It wasn't just one affair, it was several. He had left up an email from one of the women. And so that's how she found out. At a certain point, there probably wasn't very much love between Shelly and me.

We were, I guess, out of love. And we had two kids. Yet, Shelly doesn't say anything to Rod at the time, and the couple celebrate their 10-year wedding anniversary. Shelly tells her sister that's when Rodd makes a stunning proposition. He said to her he wanted to have an open marriage. He still loved her, but wanted an open marriage 10 years after they've been married. Yeah. How did she respond to that? Oh, she was disgusted. She said, This is not okay for me, and it's not okay for my children to see it that anybody should be treated like this. Here's a traditional Jewish woman, and her husband wants an open marriage. And she swiftly rejected the idea, but that really caused a lot of problems. Not long after that, he returned home at 6:00 AM, smelling of perfume. A few days later, Shelly tells her sister, Eve, that she had gotten fed up with Rob, writing in an email. I confronted him about my suspicions of him being with other people, and he confirmed and admitted to cheating. In March of 2009, when Shelly contacted me, she just wanted to get an idea of what her options were, how she could protect her kids, how she could protect her future and really prepare herself for the next step, which would be actually filing for divorce.

Shelly doesn't move forward with the divorce at that time, but her family says that her husband's cheating and his constant absences were becoming unbearable for her. He was having these affairs. She just didn't want to be anywhere close to him. He came up with the idea that he would leave the apartment if she would sign the lease next door. The apartment across the hall became available, and the kids wouldn't have me out of their life anymore than was absolutely necessary. There was always this thought of doing what was best for the kids from both of us. I did not feel it was the best idea, having them in such a close vicinity to each other, but Shelly thought it might provide a little bit of consistency for the children. She loved her children, and that was what she lived for. Anne and Miles in every fiber of her body, she loved them. In April of 2009, even though they're separated, Rod and Shelly take their kids to New Jersey for the weeklong Jewish holiday of Passover. They stay in the same hotel, but in different rooms. The four of them had gone away for a Passover week together, and Rod left Midway through the holiday.

He leaves his family to head to Las Vegas with another woman to attend a back camp and tournament. Though they're no longer together as a couple, Shellys family says Rod is still incredibly demanding of her. When he came back and Shelly had come back from Passover, his suitcase was not unpacked and his laundry was not done. He flew off the handle. And mind you, he was already living in the apartment across the hall at that point. She called me absolutely weeping. He expected her to unpack his suitcase? Good morning, America, and happy Mother's Day to all the special women in our lives. Thank you. Happy Mother's Day to everybody out there. On Mother's Day, Shelly organizes an outing with Rodd's family, hoping to maintain a relationship for the sake of the children. They had gone to the botanical gardens as a family together with his parents. In public, Rodd went into this major, explosive temper rage and was screaming at Shelly. And he was calling her every ugly name in the book. In front of the children? In front of the children. And that's when she communicates with me and says, I may need to drop my kids off by you.

I'm afraid for my life. She was texting me and calling me frantically. It's hitting the fan, said he's going to move back into my apartment and kicked me out at Botanical Gardens, ready to proceed. And she followed up with a What should I do? That's the last straw for Shelly. She decides to file for divorce. She changed the locks immediately once she knew that the papers were being served on him, his divorce to pay the papers. Rod had pretty standard visitation with the children. He was seeing them on a regular basis. But soon there's a fight over custody of the children. This is where it really gets extremely ugly. One night, when Rod is supposed to return the children, he doesn't show up. Shelly is in a panic. Every possible, horrible thought was going through her mind. He was charming, very charming, intelligent, funny, in a quirky way. And he was a good backgammon player. It's the fourth of July weekend in 2009. Shelly has already filed for divorce, and Rod is now in Michigan at a backgammon tournament. Here, he runs into another backgammon player named Deborah, who he had become Facebook friends with.

Deborah asked 2020 not to show her face during our interview. It never occurred to me that he would be attractive to me. I'm a lot older than he is, but when Rod wants something, he can be very aggressive. The first time we met, he asked me out for a drink, asked me if I wanted to play a couple of games after we walked back to the hotel and went to his room and I went into the restroom. And when I came out, he was like, nude from the waist on down, and he came at me. And I didn't say no. He begins a relationship with Deborah Owles. She's a woman from North Carolina and about 14 and a half years his senior. He said that he had been separated for, I think he said, seven months at that point, and she had filed for divorce. To me, it was just like what you'd hear of a typical divorce, custody battle. But after Rodd comes back to New York, things take a dark turn during a scheduled visit with the kids. One night, when Rodd is supposed to return the children, he doesn't show up. She called me and she was frantic.

And she said, I don't know. I said, Is everything okay? She says, No, I don't know where my children are. And Rodd was supposed to return them. He's not answering any text messages. He's not answering phone calls, and I don't know where they are. Shelly is in a panic. She is beside herself. She calls the police. She calls hospitals. She doesn't know what to do. Shelly has no idea where Rod is. All attempts to reach him go unanswered, and she is desperate. I received frantic phone calls and emails from Shelly. She was crying. She was extremely concerned that something really bad had happened. God forbid there was an accident. She thought maybe he fled with the children. Every possible, horrible thought was going through her mind. But in reality, what had happened was something Shelly couldn't have even fathomed. It turns out Rod had taken the children to a nearby hospital, claiming that his wife had sexually abused their two-year-old son, Miles. 1:00, two o'clock in the morning, Child Protective Services got involved. They were up at Columbia Presbyterian. Acs was interviewing them to make sure that there were no concerns about their safety. And until all these interviews and medical examinations were done, the children were not returned home to our- There was an investigation, and it was determined that there was just no basis for this at all.

This was getting ugly. She said, His hatred for me is stronger than his love for his children. We immediately began to draft an application to suspend all of Rodd's visitation based upon his behavior. This really backfires on him. The judge is so outraged that she now says you can only visit with the children now with the supervision of someone else. You had to be present for him to see the children. They had to be supervised after he took them to the hospital. Despite the custody issues, as the months go by, Shelly seems to be finding herself again. Though the divorce wasn't legally finalized yet, Ron offers Shelly a religious document called a get, which terminates the marriage under Jewish law. The get allowed her to start dating. And so she started to get out there, and she was on jaydate and just meeting other men. Shelly also begins meeting friends at the Friars Club. It's a private gathering spot in Manhattan that's known for those televised celebrity roasts. The Friars Club has a long and distinguished tradition of paying tribute to the very finest entertainers in our nation's history. Tonight, they've broken with that tradition and are honoring Jerry Stel.

This whole new chapter of her life was opening, and she just looked really great, and it seemed as though she was very excited about her future. Were you starting to see a different Sally? Yeah, a lot more of the old Shelley. And it was like this really bright light, and it was showing again. After being dimmed for so long. Yeah, it was sparkly again. Was she happier from what you could see? I think she was hopeful. Yeah. I think she was hopeful. By the end of the year, how was she? She seemed fine, getting on with things. She was just on the phone with work. Another call coming in was a fella. She was dating. And things were good for her. Things seemed pretty good. So it would look like she was about to get this divorce and move on with her life. Exactly. But on the morning of New Year's Eve, Shelly's nine-year-old daughter makes a gruesome discovery. Rodd says his daughter called him very distraught, said something's wrong with mommy. It's the morning of New Year's Eve, 2009. Rod Covent, who's living across the hall from his estrangement wife, says he gets a frantic call from their nine-year-old daughter, Anna.

I got a call from Anna in the morning, and she stuttered out something about Mommy and the bathtub. And she was distraught, I mean, clearly distraught. And he rushed across to the apartment. And he told her to let him in. He said he came into the apartment. Inside, Rodd says he heads into the bathroom and finds a horrific scene. Shelly was floating in a pool of dark water. I mean, it-Bloody water. Yeah. I grabbed her, I pulled her out. He says that he pulls her out, and then he eventually calls 911, and they tell him to perform CPR on his wife. On surveillance footage, you can see members of the New York Fire Department arrive, followed by paramedics. He continues to do CPR until EMS arrives, and they come in and pretty quickly say that she's gone. She's been dead a significant period of time. I get to the scene. I walk back to the bathroom. I observed the victim, Shelly Colombe laying on the floor. There was a blanket over. There was bloody water in the tub. Above the bathtub, there is a cabinet door. And when police come in, the cabinet door is halfway off its hinges.

Rodd tells the police that he thinks his wife had a terrible accident. That awful day, December 31st, 2009, how did you get word that your grandchildren's mother was dead? Rodd called us. I have never, ever before or since seen my son in that state of mind. He said they told me I had to keep doing CPR until they got there, and I did it. How distraught was Rod? Horrible. He was completely and totally… I've never seen him out of it before. That morning, Shelly's nanny arrives and is stunned to learn of her death, and she immediately reaches out to Shelly's sister, Eve. I got a call from Shelly's babysitter, and she said to me, There's been an accident. Shelly slipped and fell in the bathtub. And I said, Rose, is Shelly alive? And she said, No. I just had this involuntary scream that came out and just extreme grief. Eve, it said that there was an accident. I think I didn't believe it when I heard it again. And I just wailed and I just cried. Your sister's 47 years old, pretty healthy. Yeah. It didn't make sense. And it could have been a slip.

It could have been a fall. She had bruising to her face like a scratch mark and some bruising to her hands. It didn't really look consistent with a fall, but a lot of people fall in the tub and die in New York. I wanted a second opinion. So I called over to the homicide squad, asked Detective Mooney to respond over. My boss called and said, Can you meet me at this address? The two always got a suspicious death. I walked down the hallway to where her body is, but I'm paying attention to what the rest of the apartment looks like. It's clearly a lived-in apartment where there's two little kids that are there. And I get to her bedroom, and I can see that there's some disarray in there. The bed is certainly not made, but it doesn't even look like anybody was really sleeping in it. This is because Rod took the top sheet and the comforter off the bed to drape over her body because he didn't want the kids to see her, is what he said to us. Anna was trying to shield Miles. I was trying to shield Anna. It was a nightmare of a scenario.

Did you get to talk to Anna? I got to sit in on her interview with one of the detectives. They started questioning her, and she told them that Mommy had talked the two of them into bed in her bed. She said that she woke up at either one or three o'clock in the morning. She doesn't really remember. Heard the bath running, went in and looked and saw her mother in the tub. And she thinks her mother is washing her hair. So she goes back to sleep. When she wakes up, it's at seven o'clock, shes goes back and she sees her mother is still in the bathtub, though this time her head was submerged. And so that's when she said she realized something was wrong. Rod opined that she must have been standing in the tub and slipped and grabbed this cabinet door and yanked it out and fell down and hit her head and then drowned in the bathtub. The detectives had no reason to believe that it was a crime scene, there's nothing there that would say, Hey, this wasn't an accident. Father-daughter story matched up, and looking at the scene and listening to what the husband had to say, it made sense.

She had to tell me that she accidentally felt. They have a crime scene guy come and take pictures, but they don't take any forensic evidence. They don't dust for fingerprints, take any DNA evidence at this time. This was pretty much of an airtight surveillance system that was set up on that building. So this eliminates any possibility, in my opinion, of a stranger having come in and done this. You're a private investigator, but you were a detective with the New York City Police for 16 years. The thinking was that she may be grabbed for the cabinet. So as a detective, you could understand why this did look like an accident. Absolutely. It would have been obvious if there were gunshot wounds, stab wounds, some type of ligature mark around the neck, something that would indicate that this was anything other than an accident. None of that was present. The water in the tub, though, is bloody. Why would it be if there was no sign of any foul play? If she accidentally slipped, fell, landed face down in the water over the course of time after you pass away, blood pools. Gravity pulls it down. The blood would start to seep out through the nostrils and to color the water.

No forced entry. I looked at the lock, photos. We have no forced entry, no stranger in the apartment. No sign of a struggle in the house. No sign of a struggle. I mean, just a normal apartment. She's got two children in the household. Presumably, they would have heard if there had been something that happened. That's correct. The nine-year-old daughter had a very consistent story with Rod Covelain's story. I need to do an investigation to try to figure out exactly what happened. But until I had anything concrete, I had to go with an accidental fall. But there's a big problem. Before detectives can determine what exactly happened to Shelly, the scene would be scrubbed clean. As Shelly's family grapples with her death, they can't understand how a day that started like any other could end in such a tragic way. December 30th, Shelly's last day, she has a hairstylist come to her home to give her a keratin treatment, which is a hair straightening treatment. There's surveillance video in the building, and you actually see her leaving for work at 11:00 a. M. After keratin treatment. At around 6:00 p. M, Shelly leaves work and heads to the Friars Club.

Hings out for a little bit, chats with some friends, and then she goes home to see her children. You see the last time she's captured on video, which is entering the building at about 8:00 PM, talking on her cell phone. Shelly says good night to her nanny and apparently begins helping her daughter, Anna, with her homework. One of the last Google searches on her computer was for long division. She goes online onto Jaydate at one point to see if she has any messages, and that's the end of her online activity. The morning after, Anna finds her mom's body in the bathtub. Jilly Danashevsky-Coveland, 47 years old, a mother of two, found dead. I pretty quickly heard that she had slipped in the bathtub and died. Obviously, that was beyond shocking because she was young and she had little children. I had two little kids as well, and I quickly ran out and bought non-stick bathmats for the tubs. The thought of something like that happening to my kids or to myself was really, really a scary thought. I don't think they had a rubber mat in the bottom of the tub. It could have been just a tragic accident.

Yes. But to police, there are some things that seem inconsistent with a simple slip and fall. I look at her body and I see things that are suspicious to me. She has some scrapes, but I didn't see her the day before. Whatever they are, there are questions that need to be answered, and those questions can be answered by a pathologist. Shelly's body is taken from the apartment to the medical examiner's office for further examination. So once the detective left the scene that day, the door was being guarded by a police officer. I mean, it's still technically a potential crime scene. It's being safeguarded. During the time that the officer was there, a member of a religious organization showed up. We have an organization that helps families in time of need. In the Jewish custom, it is customary to collect all bodily fluids and to be buried with the deceased. The same way that God put you on this earth is the same way you should go back to God. Remember, Schelly's family belongs to a form of Judaism called modern orthodox, and this is one of the practices they observe. Schelly's reached out and called us that there is a cleanup that has to be done.

I went down to the apartment. There were police officers there. They allowed me in. He was let in at some point, which I had no idea about. More than likely had I still been at the scene, I doubt very seriously that I would have allowed him to go in there. The bathtub was the bulk of where I had to clean up. I was in the apartment that evening for approximately an hour and a half, two hours. The notion that a scene is cleaned up so quickly due to religious reasons, have you seen that before? Yeah, absolutely. I investigated many Jewish natural causes, death, accidental deaths, and this is common. This is part of their religious belief. All parts of the body have to be buried with the body, whether it's blood, tissue, hair, whatever might be there, it gets cleaned up and it all gets buried with the body. The body gets buried whole. Meanwhile, down at the coroner's office, the medical examiner, Dr. Jonathan Hayes, had just finished conducting an external examination of Shelly's body when he receives a call from Shelly's family. We called the medical examiner, who at that point wasn't sure.

He'd only had a cursory look at Shelly. So we asked him, How does a healthy 47-year-old woman suddenly die like this? Tell us what could have been cause of death? He said, What? I don't know. It could have been a fall. It could have been a heart attack. It could have been a drug interaction. It could have been any one of those things. The only way we would know is by doing an autopsy. The medical examiner, Dr. John Hayes, would later say that as he's about to make his first incision, he's told to stop. The family initially wants an autopsy, but then the Jewish official who cleaned up the scene calls them. This individual called me said, Listen, I heard that the family are looking to do an autopsy. It's a terrible mistake. It's a terrible mistake because I've just come from the police and I spoke to the medical examiner and both of them say it's an accident. Under Jewish law, if it's an accident, you can't do the autopsy. By that point, Dr. Hayes's boss, the chief medical examiner, had determined that there wasn't enough that was suspicious to warrant overruling a religious objection.

If there's no autopsy, then there's nothing really for the ME to do, and to be able to say there was a cause of death. No. The medical examiner, without conducting an autopsy, can't assume anything other than whatever the police say. The family objected to an autopsy. Shirley was buried. After the body was buried, we slowed down because we really didn't have a cause of death. An accidental death has no meaning to the homicide squad. We got plenty of other work to do. There was no reason for me to continue with this. So I just went about my business. The children had been living with Shelly during the couple's contentious custody battle. The question now was, where would they go? Initially, we had thought we were going to be taking temporary custody of the children. Police officer in charge said that the children would have to go home with the maternal aunt and uncle. Upon hearing that news, Anna threw the mother of all fits. She wanted to stay with her Daddy. She wanted to stay with her Daddy. Unbeknown to us, the Covelans, that Rod and his parents had called Child Protective Services. The woman from Child Protective Services said, Sweetheart, who do you want to go home with?

Anna raised one hand and pointed at me, raised her other hand and pointed at my wife. And she said, Those grandparents. The bottom line was the children were assigned or given to the senior cowlands. That's where we're going to live. A week after her death, Shellley's family goes to the funeral home to pick up the death certificate. And when they read it, that's when everything changes. I opened the envelope to look at a death certificate, and I see the cause of death is listed there as undetermined. And my heart lost a beat. We were absolutely stunned. I mean, we buried her based on the initial thought that it was an accident. I hate to say this, but without an autopsy, sometimes people can get away with murder. The family sees only one way forward. They need to exhume Shelly's body. What they find and what we learn inside a replica 2020 built of Shelly's bathroom. Does this bring back your memories of the scene? Oh, absolutely. Would help answer the big question, was her death truly an accident? Is it possible? Sure, it was possible. Until I actually got into the bathroom myself. You're finding your wife dead in the tub.

The children are there. What do you think has happened? Why is she dead? This is such a sensational story that at this Tony Upper West Side address, you now have a murder. But this is your wife. This is the woman that you fell in love with. I was administering CPR to somebody who was a corpse. I mean, it wasn't my wife anymore. She said to me numerous times, if something happens to me, he is your number one suspect. You look into Rod Covent. We want her out of the ground. We want her body telling its story. And the ME looks up at us and he goes, This is going to be a homicide. So this is a replica that 2020 built of Shelly's bathroom. So you had suspicions right away. Oh, yeah. The whole cabinet looked staged. Red flags were going up all over the place. You began to think that she had been murdered. We're talking about absurd, ridiculous murder plots with zero evidence. It's several days after 47-year-old mother of two, Shelly Covent, is found dead in her bathtub, and rumors are swirling around Dorchester Towers, her luxury high rise in New York's Upper West Side.

What started as a slip and fall turned into rumors of possibly a murder involving her ex-husband who lived right across the hall. Shelly's family is devastated and struggling to come to terms with her death. We were in this fog of pure shock and just extreme grief. And it's not until after they received Shelly's death certificate from the funeral home that they learned she had suspicious scratches on her face and that her cause of death was ruled undetermined. I called up a private investigator, and I asked him, What does undetermined mean? And he said, Case undetermined pending police investigation. In other words, it's a suspicious death. And my heart sunk. Mark actually took charge. Mark took it upon himself to play detective, and he did a very good job at it. He went out, he spoke to people. He never stopped. A lot of information was starting to come in, and it was very suspicious. Red flags were going up all over the place, and a lot of it was pointing to Rod. Rod and Shelly were going through this incredibly contentious divorce and a brutal custody battle for their two kids. But now there are new revelations about how bad that it all become.

For instance, they learned the night of her death. Shelly was telling friends at the Friars Club she was planning to remove Rod from her will. She had told several people that she planned to change her will. She'd reached out to an estate lawyer. She'd even told her doorman that she planned to change her will. Do you think Rod knew this? We really believed he knew this. He took him about five and a quarter million dollars. Another suspicious element here is that her iPhone is nowhere to be found in the apartment. She was observed on surveillance video walking into the building, talking on that cell phone. How did the phone disappear from the apartment if, in fact, this was just an accidental death? This information adds to what they already knew about Rod, that Shelly feared him. She would regularly say she was afraid of Rodd. That was consistent from the very beginning. Shelly's family says that Rod actually assaulted her during that argument over his laundry. She called me absolutely weeping because he pushed her to the ground in an argument in front of the children. I was getting very loud and angry, and she started pushing at me.

And I took her and I… I mean, I've put her on the floor. -shoved her? No, I specifically, I did not shove her. I grabbed her, held her, and in a controlled but quick fashion, put her on the floor. So yes, there was one incident that got physical between us. Yet, Shirley seems to have become so frightened of her husband. She's granted an order of protection during divorce proceedings. She said to me numerous times, If something happens to me, he is your number one suspect. You look into Rod Covent. There was no acceptance in your mind that this was an accident. You began to think that she had been murdered. We absolutely believe she'd been murdered. And in our hearts of hearts, we believed he murdered her. I hired private investigators to help with investigation into her death. Former NYPD Detective Mike Swain was one of those private eyes that Mark hired to begin investigating Shelly's death. The NYPD was basically closing the case. Without an autopsy, there is no cause of death, and this was going to be a very, very uphill battle. We would need to examine the body. Shelly's family took this video after they were allowed into the apartment with Swain.

It would later be used in court. I needed to get into the apartment. I needed to see the scene. Maybe something was missed. 2020 built this model recreation of the bathroom where Shelly was found. So this is a replica that 2020 built of Shelly's bathroom. Close? Very close. Does this bring back your memories of the scene? Oh, absolutely. What did you notice right away when you got here? The first thing was the cabinet. The story was that she slipped, fell, and possibly grabbed onto the cabinet, yanking it off his hinges and winding up to cease. Did that make sense to you initially? Was it possible? Sure, it was possible until I actually got into the bathroom, and I had to tie it up myself. I realized how high this cabinet is. I realized how far away from the tub it is. There are little knobs here, too. Does that make sense to somebody who's relatively short, 5'4, could actually catch that knob for support? It's not like a doorknob where you're actually going to grab onto it with a hand. It's a little tiny knob. She wasn't a very big woman. I don't know if I could take this knob, put my hand on it, and put all my dead weight, and yank that out of a wall.

I certainly don't think she could have done that. So the idea is that if she's in the tub, and she's falling, and she's grabbing for this. Imagine trying to grab that knob. Look where you are, the distance to the cabinets. Why wouldn't you try to brace yourself on the forces? On this? Yes, exactly. Why would you -As opposed to reaching up high? Why would you reach up? Why would you reach up? The family came out of that apartment feeling that we just have to continue to move forward. We want her out of the ground. We want her body telling its story, and we want justice. The police get permission to dig up her grave so they can now do the autopsy that should have been done from the beginning. We actually watched them dig the body up. They harness the rope around it. They pulled it up. It must have been the pain all over again. It was. I remember sobbing all night. I was so crying. You put her to rest and then she had to be disturbed. Exactly. Exactly. It was for good cause, though. We're actually in this room with the medical examiner when he's doing the autopsy.

When he looked up at us, it was shocking. Holy miracle. I was shocked. It's now two months after Shelly Covelain's been laid to rest, and investigators have exhumed her body to complete an autopsy. We watched the body be rolled into the medical examiner's office to do the autopsy. Dr. Jonathan Hayes, the medical examiner on the case, begins the autopsy by noting those same scratches on Shelly's face that had raised suspicions during the first examination before the autopsy was stopped. The fact that there are scratches and lacerations to the face is an indication that there may be more of a foot. Then the medical examiner notices a new injury, two pinpoints in Shelly's right eye, known as petechiae. A petechiae is like a red spot or a dot in the eye, and that was a telltale sign to him. Petechiae are not typically seen in a normal person. Petechiae, though tiny, have major medical implications. They're very often caused by pressure applied to the neck or strangulation. It raises red flags, but obviously, it's got to be looked into further. You can't draw conclusions just from the petechiae. Then, as the autopsy continues, the medical examiner makes a shocking discovery.

There's a bone in Shelly's neck that is completely fractured, the hyoid bone. The hyoid bone allows you to chew and swallow. It's very easy to break, and if it does, there may be a chokehold here. When you put together all the evidence, the scratch marks to the face, the petechiae in the eye, and the broken hyoid bone, there's no way this is not a chokehold. We're actually in this room with the medical examiner when he's doing the autopsy. And the M, he looks up at us and he goes, This is going to be a homicide. I was, Holy mackle. I was shocked. Six weeks later, the official autopsy report is issued. The cause of death is listed as neck compression. The manner of death, homicide. Shelly Covington's death is now officially a murder. I remember exactly where I was. Mark called me and he said the results are back. It was murder. And I remember I just kept saying, Oh, my God. Oh, my God. There's a lot of shock. This is such a sensational story that at this Tony Upper West Side address, you now have a murder. I was... The death was horrified.

I mean, just the thought of somebody murdered in the building was really awful. So this is now a homicide, but the DA doesn't feel like it has enough yet to bring an indictment. Rodd's the suspect, but they have a very circumstantial case. June second was the day we finally got a warrant to process the apartment. Investigators for the first time treat it as an actual crime scene. I obviously knew we were six months behind the eight ball for the investigation, but I was pretty excited. By then, the apartment has been badly contaminated, forever tainted. Remember, the bathroom has been cleaned by a religious official. They allowed him to go into that apartment and with peroxide, washed down the bathroom. You got to be kidding me. I had no idea patrol let somebody into that crime scene. If it was my decision, nobody would have been in that apartment. The crime scene had been compromised, but police did have those original pictures that were taken on the morning of Shelly's death, and those photos now raise several red flags. Some of the things that might not have looked very suspicious when you thought that it was an accidental death, now you take a different look at it, this is no longer a slip in the tub, which would mean that the tub itself is part of the staged crime scene.

There are clothes on the floor. There's some water on the floor. What's leading the DA to think that this is suspicious? Picture a lot of water coming out with that body. But there is some water on the floor. Yeah, there's obviously dry blood. So there obviously was some type of bloody water that came out of the tub. There was talk about Rod's clothes being dry. For somebody that had lifted a body out of the water moments earlier, why wasn't he wet? I had pulled Shelly out. I was soaking wet. So I raced across the hall. I stripped my clothes off and I changed my clothes. Even in this moment of distress, you're thinking about changing your clothes. I'm thinking about comforting my kids. I couldn't fathom the idea of hugging Anna and Miles and soaking them with Shelly's blood. We went back to that bathroom replica to get an idea of other red flags that stood out. The only towel was a toilet roll on the rail, which- A hand towel. -wasn't a bath towel. If somebody's coming in to take a bath, I would want to see a bath towel someplace. But many people go to the bathroom forget their towel?

Absolutely. This is all just basic speculation. It's all circumstantial. The other thing was there was shampoo, conditioner out. The way the story was presented was that she was going to be washing her hair. Not many people wash their hair while taking a bath. And that came out from the nanny that the positioning of the shampoo and the conditioner, it's always in the shower because that's where she washed her hair in the shower, not in the bathtub. So all of these little things, when you put them all together and add them up, it creates a picture. The district attorney was going to have to build a circumstantial case. So two weeks later, investigators decide to pay a visit to one of Rodd's confidants, his girlfriend, Deborah Owles. When I came home, detectives from New York were behind me in my driveway, and I talked to them. I just gave them whatever information I could. Owles gives them access to her online backgammon records, and that's a gold mine for investigators because she'd been playing backgammon and chatting with Rod online the night of Shelly's death. He was actually very quiet that night. He didn't have a lot to say.

Once Rodd and Deborah Oles finished gaming online about 1:00 AM, he tells her he's going to go do some work for a backgamp an organization he was involved in. But security cameras would show that Rodd was up and active in the middle of the night. What would surveillance footage show about Rodd's movements the night of Shelly's murder. As the investigation into the death of Shelly Coventon continues detectives begin to retrace her husband's actions the night of her murder. They learned that Rod and Deborah Owles had been playing backgammon online that night. We finished our matches 1:03 a. M. I wanted to play a little bit longer, but he said he had to go. Then he goes completely dark online. There's no activity, nothing on his computer, nothing on his phone. This is a guy who usually was up all night online the whole time. Why did you go dark after 1:00 AM? I took a nap. I know it certainly sounds strange, but it wasn't unusual for me to catch a three-hour nap in the middle of the night and then get up and start being active. Sometime around four o'clock in the morning, Rodd comes downstairs.

He engages in conversation with the concierge. He says, Hey, what do you want? Can I get you something? And this struck the doormat. He doesn't speak to the employees in the building in a friendly manner ever. So the doormat finally said, Okay, get me a Snickers. So he came back with a candy bar and gave it to the guy on the desk. It's a feeble attempt. He's trying to visually alibi himself. Rodd leaves the building one more time at 5:02 a. M. To go by Seltzer, and then isn't seen again until first responders arrive at Shellys apartment. Deborah Owles remembers the phone call from Rod that next day. It just seemed so surreal. I'm like, What? What do you mean? She's dead. He said it was an accident. In the months after Shelly's death, the relationship between Rod and Deborah intensifies. She frequently drives to New York to stay with Rod, who had now moved in with his parents, but they say it was a tense situation. He had brought Deborah into the house. So that was a source of some concern. Oh, that was a source of huge conflict. We just didn't think it was a healthy situation for the children.

Anything could set him off. He could be charming. One minute and seconds later, he could fly into a rage. And Raga, so mad, he shoved his dad as hard as he could. His dad went flying into the next room and hit his head on the floor. So there was a volatile situation happening. Yes, there was. Were you worried? Were you scared of your son? Not really. Not really. Not really. No. Yet Rod's parents filed a new custody petition arguing that he was an unfit parent. Then your October 2012 custody petition, you even painted a picture of a violent man saying that he had assaulted you both. If you take two Alpha males and you put them in the same house together, you're going to have- Conflict. It was not a happy situation. Carol and Dave are granted custody after evicting Rod from their house, accusing him of spending his kids' college savings, as heard in this dramatic audio recording that would later be played in court. I know how much money you've taken it from your children. He stole from your children. He stole before. You're stealing their college money. No, no. I'm not throwing it here.

I'm telling you. Excuse me. I want to be out of the house by October first. Okay, even better. You were frustrated. Extremely. Yes, extremely. Rod told us that he left the house willingly, but Deborah Owles says that he was extremely upset that his parents were granted custody of his children. He was enraged. His parents took custody of his children away from him to control the money, and he was enraged. According to Deborah Owles, Rod proposes a horrifying plan, right as Superstorm Sandy is hitting New York. It is happening right now. Hurricane Sandy crashing on shore, winds now at 90 mph. He wanted to go over and kill his parents. He said that because electricity was off, their alarm system would be off and he wanted to kill them, set the house on fire. I'm trying to think of something to say to stop this lunacy. And then I said, How are you going to explain your presence there? You're miraculously just happen to be there to save Anna and Miles. In the midst of this investigation, some shocking revelations. Authorities say that your son had actually plotted to kill you both. Did you believe it?

No. No? No. No, we were laughing because it was so absurd. Rodd also denies ever trying to kill his parents, and no charges are ever filed. But the Deborah Owles, it was no laughing matter. It doesn't matter how much I care for a person. I'm not going to sanction cold-blooded murder. Deborah ultimately flips on Rod. She comes forward to police with several hard drives from Rod's computer that he had given her for safekeeping. She explains to us that he would give her these hard drives and say, take these home with you and put them in a closet. Investigators comb through nearly two million documents on these hard drives, building a case against Rod Covlin. At the end of the day, there was no smoking gun there. You just keep piling up rocks until you have a pile big enough that you think that you can win a case with it. Prosecutors have spent years building that case, but it's largely circumstantial. Still, they finally feel they have enough evidence against Rod to bring an indictment almost six years after the death of his wife. We're at the Scarsdale train station. He had pulled up in a car, said you're under arrest, handcuffed him, put him in the back of the car.

He looked shocked. The 42-year-old's house of cards came crashing down here at the Metro North station in Scarsdale yesterday morning. After six long years, his world was just turned upside down, and he never saw it coming. Mr. Coveland is stunned. He's stunned by what has happened. What was that moment like for you to hear that he was arrested for your sister's murder? I started to tear up. I said, I've just been waiting so long to hear those words. It's the backgame and Champions match of his life. The people versus Roderick Coveland. But it's no Slam dunk. Remember, there's still no physical evidence tying him to the murder. So prosecutors plan to play their ace card. Rod's former flings under oath and oversharing. His face, his eyes, they were getting glossy, almost like psychotic. A little over nine years after Shelly Covent was found dead in that bathtub, Rod Covelain is about to face a jury. Opening statements underway today in the trial of Roderick Covelain. Prosecutors say he staged the scene of his wife, Shelly's, strangulation back in 2009 to make it look like a drowning. People of the state of New York versus Rodd-Covlin.

You attended the trial every day. Every day. Every day. We all did. And then you have Rodd's mother, who sits on the opposite side of the gallery. What was the hardest part for you? The first time I saw him walk in with handcuffs. That had to be difficult. Yes. This was not an accident. The defendant did it. Leading the prosecution, Matthew Bogdanos, a former boxer and a war veteran. His nickname, The Pit Bull. The question was never is he going to kill, Shelly? The question was always when. Defending Covent is Robert Gotley. No one will ever know the truth. A former prosecutor who now represents many high-profile defendants. One fact is undeniable. There is no evidence whatsoever proving that Mr. Covent had anything to do with his wife's death. This is very much a circumstantial case. Seven weeks of testimony, much of which had little to do with what actually happened that night. This is one of the main reasons he murdered his wife, the money. She was going to change her will. In lieu of any hard physical evidence, Bugdanos tries to paint a character profile of Rod Covlin, one of an obsessive, dangerous man.

To do that, he calls to the stand women who Covlin quartered online. One is Patricia Swanson. The defendant kept asking me out on dates and asking me to travel around the country with him. The jury hears about one of those dates. Go ahead and hit you. Play. A weekend in Gettysburg, and they see a video Covlin shot on that trip. Oh, I'm getting you. Yeah. I still have you. It's video. It's video. I got some video going. I have the good scenery. Don't worry. Coventry may sound lighthearted in the video, but Swinson testifies that totally changes later at brunch when he begins talking about the wife from whom he says he separated. He said that he wanted to kill her or he wanted her dead. Obviously, Deborah Oles' testimony was very significant. He had a Mercurial temper. It didn't take much to set him off. To make that case that Rod had an explosive relationship with his own parents, prosecutors present a video that Deborah Oles recorded. What are we looking at? That's a picture of Rodd approaching his parents' front door. She testifies that the video shows Rod finding himself locked out of his parents' house.

They changed the lock. What just happened? He said they changed the lock. She tells the jury about that plot that Rod allegedly had to kill his parents during Hurricane Sandy. More than a million people in 11 states are already without power. He said that because there was no electricity, the alarm 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 not about to be a party to murder. I tried talking them out of it. Were you able to talk him out of this? Yes. Oles testifies about three other plots she claims Coughlin revealed to her. And incredibly, one of them supposedly involved his 12-year-old daughter. He wanted his daughter, Anna, to poison Rodd's parents. He said that if Anna was able to kill his parents because she was a child, if she got jailed at all, it wouldn't be for very long. And I said, You cannot do that to your child. Were you able to talk to Matt? Yes. We're talking about absurd, ridiculous murder plots with zero evidence. You don't have any audio or video of any of those instances, correct?

I do not. When you spoke to Detective Mooney, did you not say it but just thought it was typical of a bad divorce? Yes. Other witnesses discussed Rod Covlin's behavior the night before the body was discovered. Rose Reed, the former nanny, testified Rod asked her if she would be staying in the apartment for a sleepover. Had he ever asked you if you were going to have a sleepover before? No. That's the first time he asked me. That's the first time he asked me. The defense portrays it as an innocent question since Covlin knew that Shelly was coming home late. But the prosecution says what's really strange is the idea that Shelly would have taken a bath that night at all. Watch what's happening. They called to the stand Adam Aminov. The who did Shelly's hair earlier in the day. Tell us the instructions you gave Shelly. No wash, no shampoo, no gym. Be careful from the rain. Anybody who's ever had this treatment done knows you cannot get your hair wet. It's this legally blonde moment in this case. Had you ever gotten a perm before? A legally blonde moment because of how similar it was to this scene in that famous movie.

Because isn't it the first cardinal rule of perm maintenance that you're forbidden to wet your hair for at least 24 hours after getting a perm at the risk of deactivating the ammonia thigloccolate? Because someone gets a hair treatment, it doesn't mean that you can't clean your sofa 72 hours. You didn't tell her that you couldn't pay me, did you? Yes or no? None. But as the trial focuses even more on exactly what happened in that bathroom, what will a video recorded in jail reveal? Today, Rod Covelain seemed days as he sat in a courtroom charged with second-degree murder. Nothing. Absolutely nothing was done on December 31 when they were there. They were inside the apartment. I think that the testimony about the police investigation was really stunning to a lot of people. Did you make any handwritten notes of any of the interviews you took that day? I don't believe so. While you were there, you didn't have any indication that Mr. Covent would not speak with you, did you? No, sir. Is it fair to say that you considered that this could potentially be a homicide? Yes, sir. No. The lack of investigation on December 31st, that's a legitimate complaint.

But what's the point? What would have been found? Remember, there was a delay before an autopsy was done, which the medical examiner, Dr. Jonathan Hayes, testifies concerned him. When I opened up the bag and saw her, I turned to my colleague and said she needs an autopsy. Because I was-Why did you say that? I was struck by injuries she had on her face. She had scratches on her face, which I considered suspicious. And then Dr. Hayes tells the jury about his findings during the autopsy and the conclusion he reached about Shelly's of death. The cause of death was neck compression, and this fit well with a chokehold. One of the more striking things was the scratches on her face. As the person is put into the chokehold, they're going to fight back, and they fight back by trying to claw the arm away from the neck. And in doing so, they will sometimes scratch their face. The hardest part is just to get underneath the chin. And that was a really significant part of the trial, is when this martial arts expert got up there and performed the chokehold on a skeleton. When I'm here, I could just put my hand under or over the top, depending upon which way you grab, and you could just start to pull back.

And it's really that simple. How you could have that neck compression and would be able to, he said, within 10 seconds, kill somebody. Rod Covlin had posted on Facebook that he had studied taekwondo for 11 years. But did he know how to do a chokehold? That's where a video becomes a key piece of evidence. You've seen this video before? Yes. Bogdanos introduces this recording from when Rod Covlin was in jail awaiting trial. That's him talking to another inmate. Watch what he does with his arms. Did you see that? Yes. He's making two distinct movements. He's not thinking with consistent or are you consistent with a chokehold and it's taught martial arts. It's consistent. It's taught in martial arts. It's a single-armed chokehold. I believe that was quite damning for the defense. Godly dismisses that take. All he is doing is demonstrating to this guy another inmate in jail a few months before the beginning of the trial. This is the way the DA is saying, I killed Shelly Covelain. But prosecutors have more. They bring in Shelly's estate attorney who tells the jury about those plans she was making to change her will just before she died.

She said, I need to change my will. I want to make sure that Rod doesn't get any part of my estate. And how would Rod have known about her communications with that lawyer? Rod's friend testifies that Rod told him he installed a keystroke logger on Shelly's computer, which allowed him to spy on her. On the very day, she is going to write the defendant out of a will for $5.2 million. On the very day, she has a fatal accident. Are you kidding me? The defense denies a keystroke log who was ever found on the computer. You are the final arbitrators of the facts. After prosecutors rest their case, who does the defense call to testify? No one. Then once you call a single witness, you change the entire dynamic of the jury deliberation. It's no longer an evaluation as to whether or not the government proved its case, as opposed to, do we believe the defense? So the trial moves straight to closing arguments. You may detest him. You may not even be able to stomach him. If the proof isn't there, it is right. It is noble to stand up and to stand up and to stand up and to stand up and to stand up and to stand up.

I'm trying to say, not guilty, even if it hurts, even if it's difficult. Justice has a single voice, and that voice tells you he is guilty. Not because I say so, but because he is. Thank you. As the jury heads off to deliberate, nobody knows what they're thinking, or that there is still a big shock ahead from none other than Shelly's daughter, Anna. A lot of us were very surprised by how quickly the jury came back. I couldn't breathe. I was terrified, really. House say this is the first counter of this indictment. Charging and defendant, Roderick Covelain, with the crime of murder in the second degree. Guilty or not guilty? Guilty. What was the first emotion for you? It was relief. It was justice for Shelly, and she can rest. And that guy is hopefully going behind bars, please God, for the rest of his life. And behind bars is where I talked with Rod Covelan, where even now, he maintains his innocence. You sit here convicted of murdering your wife. Correct. Did you kill your wife? No, I did not. I absolutely did not. But a jury of your peers are convinced that you did.

Why should people believe you? You don't have to believe me. You have to believe the actual evidence. There just isn't evidence that I did this thing. The murder 10 years ago, the conviction last month, the sentencing today for 45-year-old Roderick Coughlin. And at that sentencing hearing, a surprise. I'm going to be reading this for Anna. Rod's mother, Carol, reads a statement from his daughter, Anna, who by then is 18 years old. I love my mom, and I will always love my mom. My father has never hurt anyone, nor has he committed a murder. My mom passed away. My dad has been taken away for so long already. Please let us know that it will come to an end. What was that moment like for you to hear your daughter essentially defend you? It was overwhelming. She's the only person in the world who knows for a fact what happened that night. The only person. And she knows that I didn't do this. The judge sentences Rodd. It's 25 years to life in prison. I mean, the appeal was voluminous. It was over 350 pages, and there were many independent bases for the appeal. There were some prosecutorial misconduct.

There was the admission of the video from prison, which should not have been permitted. The character assassination. It was impossible for Rodd to receive a fair trial. The district attorney's office rejected those claims, and in May of 2022, that appeal is denied. District attorney Alvin Bragg says he hopes that it'll bring closure to the family. But Anna then sends him a follow-up letter saying, I am Shelly's family. My brother is Shelly's family, and this decision has not brought us closure. My grief is not aided by the malicious, unjust imprisonment of my father. That is an open wound caused by your office. How worried are you for Miles and Anna going forward? My concerns are for them to grow up, to have wonderful lives. I think it's important for the kids and for the world to know. She had a tremendous mission in this world between the way she cared for her kids with every fiber of herself and just a good, honorable person. She was someone who had that light and spread that light in this world. And that's what makes the tragedy that much greater. Difficult for the family. During my prison interview with Rod Covelin, he told me that he speaks to his son, Miles, every day that's possible.

And we've also learned that his daughter, Anna, has gotten married. On the legal front, we should mention that Rod Covelan's lawyer tells us they have filed a motion to vacate his murder conviction. We'll stay on the story. In the meantime, that is our program for tonight. I'm David Muir. And I'm Deborah Roberts from all of us here at 2020 and ABC News. Good night.