Rod Covlin who 'killed' Jewish wife went against family's wishes in her burial

A man identified as a suspect in the murder of his estranged money-manager wife in her Upper West Side apartment initially insisted that she be buried in Israel -- which her rabbi says would have thwarted her exhumation and a resulting autopsy ruling that said she’d been strangled, The Post has learned.

The rabbi and brother-in-law of slain Shele Danishefsky also accused her hubby, Rod Covlin, of pouring salt into her grieving family’s wounds by placing a stone marker on her grave reading “Beloved mother and wife” — despite the fact she’d obtained a religious divorce, or get, from him before her 2009 slaying.

“Oh, no, he did it!” screamed Danishefsky’s sister, Eve Karstaedt, on Jan. 8 after seeing her sibling's grave marker for the first time in a Westchester County cemetery, according to Eve's husband, Marc Karstaedt.

“Eve wept hysterically, and I tried to comfort her, but there were no words,” Marc said.

He noted that Covlin had placed a stone that made no mention of Danishefsky’s parents or siblings, as they had wanted and asked him to allow them to do for more than a year.

“We stood there together, shattered, incredulous that anyone would contemplate such a despicable act — let alone act on it,” said Marc, who was visiting the Jewish cemetery site with his wife on the second Hebrew calendar anniversary of Danishefksy’s murder.

Rabbi Shaul Robinson, a confidante of the dead woman, added of the grave marker, “I knew that was absolutely not what Shele would have wanted on her grave. I cannot tell you how strongly she didn’t want to have anything to do with [Covlin].

“It was very wrong to maintain or imply that there was a loving marital relationship when she died, because there was not.”

The revelations come after a recent series of events that have ratcheted up pressure on Covlin, an unemployed backgammon whiz who remains the focus of a murder probe by the Manhattan DA’s office.

Covlin's high-powered lawyer, Robert Gottlieb, strongly denies that his 38-year-old client killed Danishefsky.

Danishefsky, 47, was found dead by her and Covlin's then-9-year-old daughter, Anna, on New Year’s Eve Day 2009 in the bathroom of her West 68th Street apartment — just across the hall from Covlin’s apartment. The mother of two, who was suing Covlin for civil divorce and had a restraining order against him, was scheduled to meet the next day with her lawyer to remove him from her will.

As Danishefsky’s devastated family gathered at her home that day, Covlin “began talking about that his wife had always expressed an interest in being buried in Israel,” said Rabbi Robinson, who was there. “He insisted that was her wish.”
“The rest of the family found that strange, and they had no recollection of her wanting to do it,” Robinson said.

“I was surprised by it,” Robinson said, noting that he knew that Danishefsky and Covlin’s had twin girls, who died at birth, who were in the Hawthorne, NY, cemetery plot where Shele was eventually buried and that neither Anna nor their son Myles would be able to visit her grave if she was buried in Israel.

Robinson also said that if Danishefsky had been buried in Israel, religious law there would have almost certainly have barred any exhumation. And even if an autopsy would have been allowed, it would have been “even more difficult” because corpses there are buried in a shroud, without a coffin that would slow the effects of decomposition.

Karstaedt, the brother-in-law, said, “We found it unbelievable that Shele would have shared that wish with [Covlin] ... and not with other family members with whom she was so close.”

Covlin soon dropped the issue, and it was agreed that Danishefsky would be buried next to her twin girls.

Still, because of Orthodox Jewish practice, which typically does not allow autopsies unless authorities request it because of suspicions of foul play, Shele was buried without an autopsy being performed.

But within weeks, suspicion by the family that Danishefksy had falen victim to foul play led to them to agree to a rare exhumation and autopsy — which ruled that she had been murdered by strangulation.

Since then, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office has investigated the case and considers Covlin the prime suspect, sources said.

Two insurance companies have refused to pay out more than $1 million in Danishefsky's life insurance, amid concerns that Covlin will eventually be ruled ineligible to collect on them if he is convicted of killing her.

Danishefsky’s family, represented by top-notch matrimonial lawyer Marilyn Chinitz, is trying to get custody of her kids, Anna and Myles, away from Covlin’s parents, who live with him in Scarsdale, NY.

Last month, in a stunning, unusual move, the New York County Public Administrator, which oversees estates, sued Covlin in civil court, accusing him of murdering his wife, and seeking to bar him from inheriting her estate.

That suit charges that “Roderick Covlin did intentionally, deliberately, willfully, wantonly, maliciously, brutally and without provocation or just cause did strangle, choke, strike, injure, assault, abuse, beat and murder” the mother of his two children.

Within days of that suit, prompted by a Post exposé, a Westchester County judge suspended Covlin's control of a separate $1.6 million life insurance payout from a third Danishefsky policy to their kids because of the possibility that he had misled the judge in his bid for guardianship of the funds.

Covlin’s criminal-defense lawyer, Gottlieb, blasted Danishefsky's family, saying they have “chosen not to respect her by honoring her wishes” involving her burial.

“There’s no question that Shele told Rod, her husband, that she wanted to be buried in Israel. In 2008, they visited Israel, they visited her family’s area, where members of her family are buried" on Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, Gottlieb said.

Gottlieb said that after Danishefsky’s family objected to an Israel burial, Colvin consulted with his daughter Anna, and “Rod . . . agreed to have Shele buried here.”

He also said that contrary to claims by Danishefsky’s brother-in-law, her family never proposed specific language for the stone marker for her grave.

The lawyer said Covlin and his daughter Anna felt it “was appropriate” to note Danishefsky’s roles as a mother and wife on the marker the husband had placed there.

“As I understand it, they weren’t divorced at the time, and Anna, who again is a very mature 11-year-old, wanted that,” Gottlieb said. “To attack what’s written on the stone is just grossly inappropriate, and very sad.”

But Rabbi Robinson scoffed at the idea that Danishefsky, regardless of the civil legal status of her marriage, considered herself in any way to be Covlin’s wife.

“At the time, there was a complete breakdown in their marriage . . . and there was tremendous animosity between the two of them,” Robinson said.