Alleged Wife Killer Accused Of Plotting 13-Year-Old Daughter's Marriage To Access Her Inheritance

The stock trader-turned-backgammon federation founder arrested for killing his wife in 2009 has been barred from talking to anyone except for his lawyer, as prosecutors suggest that he was trying to "kidnap his teen daughter and marry her off in a diabolical bid to access her inheritance."

Roderick Covlin was indicted last week for the murder of his estranged wife Shele Danishefsky Covlin. The couple was in the middle of an acrimonious divorce—she had a restraining order against him—but lived across the hall in the same Upper West Side apartment building. On December 31, 2009, their young daughter discovered Danishefsky Covlin's unconscious body in a bathtub. It was initially believed that she slipped and fell, but an autopsy showed she was killed: According to the NY Times, she died during a struggle, "Her neck had been squeezed with such force that it fractured the hyoid bone. There was bleeding in her right eye. Two ribs were dislocated."

Apparently Danishefsky Covlin was scheduled to meet with a lawyer to cut Covlin out of her will; her estate is worth a reported $4 million. While he was always a suspect, Covlin was arrested nearly six years after the crime, after his girlfriend allegedly went to the authorities.

At a hearing yesterday, prosecutor Matthew Bogdanos said, "He 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 she’ll no longer be a minor and he’ll get access to the money."

The prosecutor then played a 2013 audio recording of the suspect talking ​on the phone ​to an unidentified person about the marital scheme.

“I have a passport for Anna,” he can be heard saying. “I’m not sure that for 10,000, there’s not some 18- year-old who would be willing to marry her and remain married and obviously not live with her but like whatever and like sign a pre-nup or whatever.”

He then discusses hiring a Mexican law firm “to make sure it’s done properly.”...

In another sick twist, Bogdanos told Justice Bonnie Wittner that Covlin had “poked” several adolescent girls as young as 11 on Facebook in 2012.

“Please stop poking me or I will report you as a pedophile so watch out!” one girl replied.

Covlin's defense attorney Robert Gottlieb called the evidence "weak" and "circumstantial," and said that even if he was able to access his children's inheritance, he would only be allowed the $30,000-50,000/year in interest and said of the Mexican marriage scheme, "It was not to gain money, it was not to kidnap somebody, it was not to leave the jurisdiction, it was to protect his children."

The children are currently in the custody of Covlin's parents.

Still, Justice Bonnie G. Wittner ruled Covlin remain held without bail—and that he can only have contact with Gottlieb, "Who else had the motive? Who else had the opportunity? If you credit the medical examiner’s findings at autopsy, it’s a very powerful case."