for the tabloids. >> you have this beautiful woman, a tall handsome guy. greed, infidelity. >> he's sleeping around with other women. >> a failing marriage with millions at stake. >> he didn't have anybody of his own. >> this is getting ugly. >> yes. she said we're broken, and she cried. >> was it a fall on the top or a husband's fall from grace? >> we believe it was a staged accident. >> he was adamant about his innocence. >> the case bothered me for a long time. >> he said to me, you have to help me kill my parents. >> you can't even think of the magnitude of it all. >> hello and welcome to dateline. shelly and rod coveland met and married in a matter of months. soon they had two young children, a nest egg worth millions. and then on the brink of a new year, tragedy struck. pointing to a diabolical truth that would tear two families apart. here is endgame. >> normally full of lights with people rushing somewhere or nowhere. take a short walk uptown maybe, 25 minutes on foot. >> i started my own family here on the upper west side just steps from central park. during the day, this neighborhood is buzzing with families. at night, it's quiet and safe. but just two blocks from where i lived in the early morning hours of new year's eve, 2009, something terrible touched this neighborhood. it happened inside this pricey apartment building on west 68th street. around 7:00 a.m., a man named rod covlin called 911 to say his 9-year-old daughter, anna, found his wife, shele, unconscious in the bathtub. rebecca rosenberg, then a reporter for the new york post, covered the case. >> he sees his wife in the tub. he pulls her out, puts her face up on the ground and starts performing cpr. and then he calls 911, and they tell him to keep performing cpr. >> this is a horrible scene? >> i would imagine absolutely devastating for their daughter. >> the emts arrived in minutes. they found no pulse. 47-year-old shele covlin was beyond help. >> the police come to the scene, eventually a detective comes to the scene. >> detectives found a tub full of bloody water and shele wrapped in comforter on it next to her. above the tub, a cabinet. they believe she grabbed it and landed hard in the tub. and so investigators began the difficult process of deconstructing a life that had just come to a sad and mysterious end. the police would soon learn that shele covlin was larger than life. nobody admired her more than her sister, eve and brother-in- law, mark carstadt. >> we would have a blast and laugh a lot. she was a lot of fun. >> she graduated with a marketing degree. and then my dad had asked her if she wanted to come and work with him at merrill lynch. >> shele eventually became a wealth manager. the money was good and so was the prestige. >> shele was fancy. she was smart, she was educated. >> reporter: shele's friend, stephanie goldman, remembers the day they took her to the friars club. >> it was wintertime, she was wearing her fur coat, her mink coat. men just came over to her. it was like being swept off her feet. >> she's got the finance job, the style, i mean it sounds like she was kind of the classic new york city woman? >> absolutely. absolutely. she was. >> in february of 1998, shele went to a jewish singles mixer in manhattan, where sparks flew with a guy she met there. his name, rod covlin. she called her sister that night with an outrageous announcement. >> she was all giggles, and she said i met a guy, really nice guy. and she said we're on our way to the airport to elope. she was laughing. and i said shele, please don't do this. >> eve talked her sister out of it that night, but shele was serious and so was rod. shele was 11 years older than him, but that didn't seem to matter. his parents, dave and carol covlin said he adored her right from the start. >> he told us he has a girlfriend, and we have to meet her. i said okay, passover is coming up. we don't have time right now. no, you have to meet her. >> a brunette back then, shele married rod six months later and reality set in as they settled down to life as a couple. it wasn't exactly bliss because while shele was a stunning overachiever, rod was, well, not in the same league. he was a stock trader of middle end success. >> what i did see was a guy who really had a lot of big ideas, and was unable to execute on any of them. >> but he had a couple of talents, martial arts. >> and he won money. >> two years after she married rod, shele gave birth to baby anna. >> she was inseparable from anna. she was doting on that child. she was an incredible mom. >> a second pregnancy followed, twins, but that ended in tragedy. >> so they were born prematurely, and then they died. >> oh my gosh. >> one at childbirth and one like a few hours later. >> how did she handle that? how do you support her? >> devastating. >> the entire year was a nightmare for her. >> then in 2006, shele had a baby boy. she and rod named their son, miles. but now three years later, shele was dead, and the scene inside that apartment on the upper west side was chaos. mark says eve could barely function. >> when i first saw her, she walked down the corridor, and she was as white as a sheet. she was in terrible shock. >> karl was an nypd detective. he was there too, pondering various scenarios. >> i've been to places where people have fallen in a tub and anything is possible. >> in this case, that would be an understatement. this mystery is about to heat up. turns out the covlins seemingly perfect marriage was anything, but. coming up, a whirlwind romance that ended in a storm. >> she said he doesn't get a job and he is just hanging around the house. she was very frustrated. she said he's driving me crazy. >> and it might get worse. >> when shele told me he was going to be living across the hall, my first instinct was i don't think this is a good idea. >> when dateline continues. y®. and some lost over 46 pounds. ♪ ♪ and i'm keeping the weight off. wegovy® helps you lose weight and keep it off. i'm reducing my risk. wegovy® is the only fda-approved weight-management medicine that's proven to reduce risk of major cardiovascular events in adults with known heart disease and with either obesity or overweight. wegovy® shouldn't be used with semaglutide or glp-1 medicines. don't take wegovy® if you or your family had medullary thyroid cancer, multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2, or if allergic to it. stop wegovy® and get medical help right away if you get a lump or swelling in your neck, severe stomach pain, or an allergic reaction. serious side effects may happen, including pancreatitis and gallbladder problems. wegovy® may cause low blood sugar in people with diabetes, especially if you take medicines to treat diabetes. tell your provider about vision problems or changes, or if you feel your heart racing while at rest. depression or thoughts of suicide may occur. call your provider right away if you have any mental changes. common side effects like nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea may lead to dehydration, which may cause kidney problems. with wegovy®, i'm losing weight, i'm keeping it off. and i'm lowering my cv risk. that's the power of we. ♪ ♪ check your cost and coverage before talking to your health care professional about wegovy®. ♪ you're the one that i want ♪ nexgard® combo is the only monthly topical that protects against fleas, ticks, tapeworms, and more. use with caution in cats with a history of seizures or neurologic disorders. nexgard combo,... ♪ you're the one that i want ♪ ...the monthly one-and-done you want. introducing new advil targeted relief. the only topical pain reliever with 4 powerful pain-fighting ingredients that start working on contact to target tough pain at the source. for up to 8 hours of powerful relief. new advil targeted relief. 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>> right. you can't even think about the magnitude of it all. >> shele's in-laws, cheryl and david covlin were also shocked. their son, rod, called with the news. >> did you get any details? >> nothing. >> when you arrived, what's going on? >> roderick was sitting on the couch. i have never seen my son shell shocked and speechless in my life. >> the next few days were a blur. for religious reasons, the family decided not to have an autopsy performed. >> he went with his rabbi who said don't do the autopsy. >> it was only as friends and family gathered for the jewish period of mourning that they had time to think about the vibrant woman they just lost. >> she was an incredibly devoted mother. she was an incredible person. >> but what was also on their minds was dark and troubling. shele's rocky marriage to rod. >> she says he doesn't get a job. he goes to the gym twice a day, and he is just hanging around the house. and she was very frustrated. she said he's driving me crazy. >> in 2009, shele confessed to her sister that her marriage was in serious trouble. >> and she said we're broken and we just have to part ways. and she cried. she wept to me. >> one thing, mark and eve say came between the couple was rod's dramatic mood swings. >> rod has and always has a violent explosive temp iter. he could be sitting very calmly in the chair and something could set him off and in seconds, he'll literally explode. >> shele also complained about his obsession with back gamon. >> did he ever say why? >> i think he forged relationships in the bakeapple monocommunity. i said you've got a family. >> the covlin's saw changes in shele, ones they thought was equally damaging to the marriage. >> she started going to the friars club from once a week, it became much more frequent than that. >> the couple seemed to be living separate lives in what had to be a painful moment. shele told her sister it wasn't the backgammon or the fact that rod wasn't pulling his weight that pushed her to separate. it was rod's cheating. >> she believes he left an e- mail up, so she would purposely see it from another woman. and she confronted him and he said that yes, he's sleeping around with other women, and he wants an open marriage. he still loves her and wants an open marriage. >> most women don't want to go along with the open marriage concept. >> right. she was one of those who said absolutely no. >> by june, rod had moved out, and he didn't go far. shele arranged for him to live for free in an apartment across the hall to make it easy for the kids. her close friend, stephanie goldman, wasn't happy with the arrangement. >> when shele told me he was going to be living across the hall, my first instinct was my goodness, i don't think this is a good idea. >> nevertheless shele was moving on, and so was rod. >> he was very charming, intelligent, funny, in a quirky sort of way. i really enjoyed playing backgammon with him. >> deborah met rod at a backgammon tournament. months later their relationship became romantic. >> i wasn't looking for any sort of a relationship. and he was, you know, pretty aggressive. i'm considerably older than rod. and so it never occurred to me that he would be interested in me in that way. >> so it surprised you? >> it surprised me. and of course, it made me feel good, a younger man, being attracted to me. >> meanwhile shele was working with divorce attorney lance meyer. >> we talked about all the problems she was having with her husband and the concern she had about herself, her children, and she was really trying to figure out the best way to go about proceeding with a divorce case. >> by fall she was dipping her toe in the dating pool again. >> she was on jay date, she had met some gentleman. >> j date, the jewish dating website? >> yeah, yeah. >> shele seemed on track to make a fresh start in 2010 until that fresh start ended in with a seemed like a deadly accident. >> when i heard she slipped and fell in the tub, my initial reaction was she wouldn't even take a bath. >> and now shele's friends and family were wondering about the story rod told police that his daughter, anna, called him that morning in a panic and let him into the apartments because he didn't have a key. >> i was very suspicious. >> suspicions that only deepened when mark learned the medical examiner wasn't sure either. >> i'm reading the death certificate and i saw the cause of death was undetermined. >> shele's loved ones aren't the only ones without doubt. coming up. >> she had bruising to her lip, appeared to have some scratch marks. she had bruising to her right hand. >> and rod said he had pulled shele's wet body out of the tub, so why wasn't he wet? 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from the moment shele covlin's family heard the story of her death, a slip and fall in a bathtub full of water, they felt it just didn't make sense. htthe moment shele covlin's family heard about the death, they felt it didn't make sense. >> how do you fall in a bathtub? i started thinking and thought shele takes a bath? she showers, you know. she's not taking a bath. >> plus shele had gotten a keratin hair straightening treatment the morning. she wasn't suppose to get her hair wet for several days. >> they say don't wash your hair for 72 hours. not even go to the gym. >> it had is the legally blonde moment that any woman who knows about a keratin treatment is not going to expose your hair like that. >> her death did not sit right with lead detective either. while she felt her death could have been an accident, details at the scene bothered him. the way that cabinet door had been yanked down. the blood in the tub, and marks on shele's body. >> she had bruising to her lip, appeared to have some scratch marks, and she had bruising to her right hand. >> what the detective would learn later cast suspicion on rod. rod told an officer he had to pull her wet body out of the tub, yet his clothes were bone dry. and then new york post reporter rebecca rosenberg. >> two officers found this unusual and noted this. how did you not get wet? he wasn't wet at all and it wasn't consistent with the story he had told. >> and their doorman remember rod doing something early that morning that was highly unusual for him. he stopped by the front desk to get a snack, even bought the doorman a snickers bar. >> the doorman thought it was weird because rod covlin usually wasn't chatty in all the years he had been there and never offered to bring him anything back. >> suspicious details indeed. the detective was hoping more clues would emerge from an autopsy, but remember, shele's family didn't have one done for religious reasons. >> if that is what the family wanted. you want to try to help the family as best as you can. >> there wasn't much he could do and her family hired a private investigator. >> so you're not satisfied? >> not at all. >> he started talking to friends of shele's. we had a flood of information that was extremely suspicious. people were telling us things that were very worrying. >> including things that confirmed what the family had seen for themselves. shele's divorce attorney, lance meyer. >> he would belittle her, call her ugly, he would make fun of her looks, so he was a demeaning person, and he would go low. >> so low, in fact, that at one point during their divorce, rod tried to undermine her at work. he called her company to report she was on drugs, unstable, and depleting their joint bank account. >> he was trying to get her to lose her job and it was obviously, she worked in a family operation within ubs, so it was a very serious thing, trying to part her and her family. >> the 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 play backgammon. something he blamed on shele. >> she was taking away the thing he cared about the most. >> and her family took their private investigator over to her apartment to check out the scene. something caught their eye. the cabinet she supposedly grabbed, the screws had been pulled out of the wall. he thought that would have talken more force. >> it would have taken a lot of strength to pull the door off. >> something shele wouldn't be able to do? >> most likely. >> no doubt in your mind this is a staged accident? >> we believe it was a staged accident. >> but none of this was the smoking gun. the only way to know for sure was to do an autopsy. two months after her death at the family's urging, her body was pulled out of the grave and re-examined. detective was in the room with the medical examiner. >> what are you seeing and thinking? >>