Defense lawyers for the philandering hubby charged with snapping his estranged wife’s neck to land her $5 million fortune showed jurors haunting photos of the bathtub where she was discovered.
The pictures, taken by victim Shele Danishefsky’s family two weeks after the 2009 murder, depict a deep, soaking tub with a cabinet above the spout torn from its hinges.
A small baseball-themed child’s potty sits on the bathtub’s ledge.
Defendant Rod Covlin told police at the time that he thought his wife, with whom he was in the midst of a nasty divorce, had fallen and ripped the cabinet from its upper hinge when she tried to brace herself.
There was no visible blood in the bathroom photos and it’s unclear if it had been cleaned.
Prosecutors say that Covlin, who was living across the hall from his estranged wife and their two kids, used a martial arts hold to break Danishefsky’s neck and left her bloodied corpse in the tub for their 9-year-old daughter to find.
Danishefsky’s sister, Eve Karstaedt, was on the stand in Manhattan Supreme Court during the photo display. Later in her testimony, she burst into tears when she explained why her Orthodox Jewish family waived an autopsy on the advice of a rabbi.
”I thought 100 percent that it was not an accident. It was foul play by the defendant,” Karstaedt said, but, out of respect for her father and religion, she said she accepted the rabbi’s ruling.
“Have you ever regretted that decision?” asked Assistant DA Matthew Bogdanos, but before she could answer, Justice Ruth Pickholz sustained the defense’s objection.
John Alex, Danishefsky’s boss at UBS, where she was a wealth manager, testified that about eight months before the slaying, Covlin called the bank and falsely claimed that she was on drugs and stealing money from him.
Alex called her into his office and told her of the allegations. “Shele was a very poised, professional woman, and she basically collapsed emotionally,” he told jurors. His testimony continues this afternoon.
Prosecutors say Covlin brutally murdered his wife to get his hands on her money so he could pursue a backgammon career and womanizing.
Defense lawyer Robert Gottlieb has argued that Danishefsky could have slipped and broken her neck when she hit the tub.
Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. watched part of the morning’s proceedings from the gallery.