Roderick Covlin talking with his lawyers in Manhattan Supreme Court after a hearing on child visitation rights for his in-laws on Friday. Covlin maintains he had nothing to do with the mysterious 2009 death of his wife. (Photo by Jefferson Siegel/NY Daily News via Getty Images)
A New York man was convicted Wednesday in the 2009 strangulation murder of his wealthy, estranged wife just before she was reportedly going to cut him out of her will.
Rodrick Covlin, a 46-year-old unemployed stockbroker, was found guilty of second-degree murder in the death of then-47-year-old Shele Danishefsky in a bathtub inside her Manhattan apartment on Dec. 31, 2009, the New York Times reported.
"The wheels of justice turn very slowly, and we always had confidence that ultimately this day would come,” her brother-in-law Marc Karstaedt told the New York Daily News.
"The wheels of justice turn very slowly, and we always had confidence that ultimately this day would come.”
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Prosecutors alleged that Covlin’s primary motive was “pure unadulterated greed,” the Times reported.
Danishefsky, who was a money manager at UBS, was scheduled to meet with a lawyer on Jan. 1. 2010 — the day after she died — to remove Covlin from her will. He stood to get half her roughly $4 million estate, with the rest going to their children.
Investigators initially thought Danishefsky had slipped and fallen. Her Orthodox Jewish family objected to an autopsy for religious reasons, resulting in the cause of her death to be listed as undetermined.
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But as an investigation began, her body was exhumed and autopsied with her family's permission. Medical examiners concluded in April 2010 she had been strangled.
Prosecutors alleged Covlin had tried to cover his tracks by posing as his then-12-year-old daughter in June 2013, writing a note as a false confession in her mother’s death.
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His other plans to secure the fortune included having his daughter accuse her grandfather of rape and a plot to kidnap and marry his daughter off in Mexico to emancipate her from her grandparents, the Times reported. Neither plan had come to fruition.
Covlin will be sentenced April 10.
Fox News' Nicole Darrah contributed to this report.
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