door of the cabinet off. something that shele would have been able to do, you didn t believe? most likely. so, there was no doubt in your minds now that this is a staged accident? we believed it was a staged accident. but none of this was a smoking gun. the only way to know for sure how shele died was to exam her body and do an autopsy. two months after shele s death, at the families urging, her body was pulled out of its grave and reexamined. detective was in the room with the medical examiner. what are you seeing? were you thinking? pretty much near the end of it, he looked at us, showed us the bone that it was broken. that s in that neck? inside the neck area. and he says, it s going to be a homicide. wow. shele had been choked to death. coming up the question was never is he going to kill shele? the question was always, when. what do they have going for them with this jury?
building an alibi. the prosecution called the new york state medical examiner. in the autopsy, he had noticed that there are scratches on her face, and that fractured bone in her neck. my conclusion was that she had and neck compression, i classify the death as a homicide. strangulation not an accidental fall. and in another sinister twist, prosecutors believe that we re in a half years after shele s death, rod drafted an ode composed from her 12-year-old s daughter email account, pretending to be her. it s read, i lied. she did just slip. i got so mad so i pushed her. i didn t mean to hurt her! i swear! it was never sent but it did in the tabloids after it was filed with the court. what father does that? who does that to a child? who basically finds the child right. prosecutors didn t get that note admitted into trial, but
it was wintertime, she was wearing her coat. men just came over to her. it was like being swept off her feet. he s got the finance job, the style she kind of was the classic new york city woman. absolutely. absolutely she was. in february of 1998, shele went to a jewish single mixer and manhattan were sparks through with a guy she met there. his name, roderick covlin. she called her sister that night with an outrageous she was all giggles and said i met a guy, really nice guy, and she says we are on our way to the airport. she was laughing, and i said shelley please don t do. this evening her sister out of it that night, but shelley was serious, and so was rod. shelley was 11 years older than
her family. that company determined shele was drug free and found that rod was taking much more money from their account than she was. the divorce got uglier. the two squabbled over child support. at one point, a judge told rod he could no longer plea backgammon, something he blamed on shele. he was beyond angry. she was taking away the thing he apparently cared about the most. a couple of weeks after shele s death, her family took their private investigator over to her apartment to check out the scene. something called the investigators i. the cabinet that shele had supposedly corrupt as she fell, the screws had been pulled out of the wall. he thought that would ve taken more force than the five foot four, 132-pound shele could muster. it would ve taken a lot of strength to pull the actual
and when he sort of was going to the bedroom, she said she was scared of going in there with him, because you don t know what he ll do. the prosecutor described shele as a textbook victim of domestic abuse. the question was never is he going to kill shelley? the question was always when? shele was living in fear, prosecutors said, because her estranged husband was boiling with rage in their custody battle. shele s diverse attorney lance myers took the stand to say how rod had even used his son as a weapon. rod coughlin took the children, and accused shelley of abusing miles. it turns out that he took them to the hospital, and made allegations that shele had sexually abuse their son. so this is getting ugly. yes. prosecutors said those disturbing and false accusations were just one