Dateline NBC - Endgame

Episode Date: June 16, 2020

Rod Covlin calls 911 after his young daughter finds his estranged wife, Shele Danishefsky, unconscious in the bathtub. Soon after her mysterious death, Shele’s loved ones would come to suspect that what happened was no accident. Andrea Canning reports. Originally aired on NBC on June 12, 2020.

Tonight on Dateline. Rod Copland calls 911 and says that his wife appears dead. He said that Anna found her in the bathtub. I've never seen my son shell-shocked. I'm reading the death certificate and I saw that the cause of death was undetermined. This is a really sensational case and you have this beautiful woman, a tall, handsome guy, greed, infidelity. People were telling us things that were very worrying. He's sleeping around with other women. We believed it was a staged accident. Case bothered me for a long time. He was adamant about his innocence.

They just don't have direct evidence. A New Year's Eve mystery that would take the next nine years to solve. First thing I thought of was, she can finally rest. I'm Lester Holt and this is Dateline. Here's Andrea Canning with Endgame. If you had to pick one place that screams New York City, it's usually this. Times Square is the city's heart and soul, and normally full of noise and lights and people rushing somewhere, or nowhere. Take a short walk uptown, however, maybe 25 minutes on foot, and the endless racket of tourist hotspots and commerce gives way to a quieter vibe. Here, you find the tree-lined streets and cozy apartments of the Upper West Side.

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 a.m., a man named Rod Kovlin called 911 to say his nine-year-old daughter Anna found his wife Shelly unconscious in the bathtub. Rebecca Rosenberg covered the case for the New York Post and knows

it inside and out. He sees his wife in the tub. He pulls her out, puts her face up on the ground and starts performing CPR. Then he calls 911 and they tell him to keep performing CPR. This is a horrible scene. And I would imagine absolutely devastating for their daughter. The EMTs arrived in minutes. They found no pulse. 47-year-old Shelly 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 Shelly wrapped in a comforter on the floor next to it. Above the tub, a cabinet with a door hanging off its hinge. They surmised Shelly had grabbed it as she fell 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 Shelly Daniszewski-Kovlin was larger than life. Nobody admired her more than her sister Eve and brother-in-law Mark Karstadt. We would have a blast. We would 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. Shelly eventually became a private wealth manager. The money was good. So was the prestige. Shelly was fancy. She was smart. She was educated.

Shelly's friend, Stephanie Goldman, remembers the day She Shelley took her to the upscale 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 kind of was the classic New York City woman. Absolutely. Absolutely, she was. In February of 1998, Shelley went to a Jewish singles mixer in Manhattan,

where sparks flew with a guy she met there. His name? Rod Kovlin. She called her sister that night with an outrageous announcement. She was all giggles, and she said, I met a guy, a really nice guy, and she said, we're on our way to the airport to Elope. She was laughing, and I said, Shelley, please don't do this. Eve talked her sister out of it that night,

but Shelley was serious, and so was Rod. Shelley was 11 years older than him, but that didn't seem to matter. His parents, Dave and Carol Covlin, say he adored her right from the start. He told us he has a girlfriend, and we have to meet her. And I said, okay, Passover's coming up, we don't have time right now. No, you have to meet her. A brunette back then, Shelly 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 Shelley was a stunning overachiever, Rod was, well, not in the same league. He was a stock trader of middling success. What I did see was a guy that 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 backgammon. And when he sat down and played, he won. And he won money. Two years after she married Rod, Shelley gave birth to baby Anna. She was inseparable from Anna.

She was doting on that child. 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. I think at childbirth and one, like, a few hours later.

How did she handle that? How did you support her? It's just such an awful thing. Devastating. The entire year was a nightmare for her. Then, in 2006, Shelley had a baby boy. She and Rod named their son Miles. But now, three years later, Shelley 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. NYPD detective Carl Rotermel was there too, pondering various scenarios. I've been to places where people have fallen in a tub and anything's possible. In this case, that would be an understatement. Coming up, a whirlwind romance that ended in a storm.

She said he doesn't get a job and he's just hanging around the house. And she was very frustrated. She said he's driving me crazy. And it might get worse. When Shelly told me that he was going to be living across the hall my first instinct was I don't Apple is usually a happy time. Celebrations everywhere and the promise of fresh starts and new dreams. But for those who knew and loved Shelley Covland 2010, began with sadness. Shelley's sister Eve and her husband Mark couldn't believe the mother of two was gone. Did it kind of hit you later, the more emotional side of things,

as you think about your life without her? Right, exactly. And the children without her. Right. You can't even think about the magnitude of it all. Shelley's in-laws, David and Carol Covlin, were also in shock. Their son, Rod, called with the news. He says, Shelley's dead. I don't think I've ever made it to Manhattan faster in my life. Did you get any details? No. In that first phone call? Nothing. No, he just said, Shelley's dead. When you arrive, what's going on? Roderick was sitting on the couch. He was in shock. Honestly, I've 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. My father-in-law obviously made the final decision. He went by his rabbi who said, don't do the autopsy. It was only as friends and family gathered to sit shiva, the Jewish period of mourning, that they had time to think about the vibrant woman they'd just lost.

She was an incredibly devoted mother. She was an incredibly devoted mother. She was an incredible person. But what was also on their minds was dark and troubling. Shelly's rocky marriage to Rod. She said he doesn't get a job. He goes to the gym twice a day, and he's just hanging around the house. And she was very frustrated. She said, he's driving me crazy.

In 2009, Shelley 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 has always had a violent, explosive temper. He could be sitting very calmly in a chair and something can set him off and in seconds he will literally explode. Shelley also complained about Rod's growing obsession with that gammon. It became a passion and then an obsession for him. Did he ever say why? I think he had forged relationships in the backgammon community that he really liked. Even Rod's parents felt their son was spending too much time on the game.

I told him that he was being a little ridiculous with the backgammon and, you know, going to backgammon too much. I said, you've got a family. The Kovlans say they saw changes in Shelley, too. Ones they felt were equally damaging to the marriage. She started going to the Friars Club. From a 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. Shelly 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 that he left an email 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. She was one of those who said absolutely no. By June, Rod had moved out, and he didn't go far. Shelly 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 Shelly told me that 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, Shelley was moving on, and so was Rod. He was very charming, intelligent, funny in a quirky sort of way, and I really enjoyed playing backgammon with him. Deborah Oles met Rod at a backgammon tournament. Months later, their relationship became romantic. I wasn't looking for any sort of relationship. And he was, you know, he's pretty aggressive. And I think I was naive in the fact that I'm considerably older than Rod. So it never occurred to me that he would be interested in me in that way. So it surprised you when he made an overture?

Right. And of course, it made me feel good, a younger man being attracted to me. Meanwhile, Shelley 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 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 J-Date. She had met some gentlemen. J-Date, the Jewish dating website? Yeah, yeah. Shelly seemed on track to make a fresh start in 2010, until that fresh start ended in what seemed like a deadly accident.

When I heard that she slipped and fell in the tub, my initial reaction was, she wouldn't even take a bath. And now Shelly'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 apartment 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 that the cause of death was undetermined.

Coming up, Rod said he had pulled Shelley's wet body out of the tub. So why wasn't he wet? Two officers found this unusual and noted this. How would you not get wet? When Dateline continues. From the moment Shelley 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. How do you fall in a bathtub? And then I started thinking, and I said,

Shelley takes a bath? She showers. You know, she's not taking a bath. Plus, Shelly had gotten a keratin hair straightening treatment the previous morning. She wasn't supposed to get her hair wet for several days. They say don't wash your hair for... 72 hours. Yeah. Not even supposed to go to the gym.

This is what's been sort of labeled the legally blonde moment. Yeah. That any woman who knows about a keratin treatment to straighten your hair is not going to expose your hair like that. Shelley's death didn't sit right with lead detective Carl Rotermel either. While he felt her death could have been an accident. Details of the scene bothered him. The way that cabinet door had been yanked down, the blood in the tub, and marks on Shelly's body. She had bruising to her lip.

She appeared to have some scratch marks, and she had bruising to her right hand. And what the detective would learn later cast suspicion directly on Rod. Rod told an officer that he had to pull Shelly's wet body out of the tub, yet his clothes were bone dry. Reporter Rebecca Rosenberg. Two officers found this unusual and noted this. How would you not get wet? He was wearing a light-colored shirt. He just wasn't wet at all, and it wasn't consistent with the story he had told.

And their doorman remembered Rod doing something early that morning that was highly unusual for him. He stopped by the front desk on his way out of the building to get a snack, even bought the doorman a Snickers bar. The doorman thought this was weird because Rod Kavalin usually wasn't chatty and had, in all the years he'd been there, never offered to bring him anything back. Suspicious details indeed. The detective was hoping more clues would emerge from an autopsy. But remember, Shelley's family didn't have one done for religious reasons. How did you feel about that?

I was uncomfortable. But if that's what the family wanted, I mean, you always want to try to help the family the best you can. It's a hard time. But without autopsy results, he says there wasn't much he could do. So, less than a week after Shelly died, her family hired a private investigator. So you're not satisfied? Not at all. The private investigator had started talking to friends of Shelley's, and 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 already seen for themselves. Shelley's divorce attorney, Lance Meyer. He would belittle her. He would yell at her. He'd call her ugly. He would make fun of her looks. So he was a demeaning person. 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 that Shelley 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. He was trying to hurt her and her family. The company determined Shelley 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 Shelly. He was beyond angry. She was taking away the thing he apparently cared about the most. A couple of weeks after

Shelly's death, her family took their private investigator over to her apartment to check out the scene. Something caught the investigator's eye. The cabinet that Shelly had supposedly grabbed as she fell? The screws had been pulled out of the wall. He thought that would have taken more force than the 5'4", 132-pound Shelley could muster. That it would have taken a lot of strength to pull the actual door of the cabinet off. Something that Shelley wouldn't have been able to do, he didn't believe? Most likely.

So there's 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 Shelly died was to exhume her body and do an autopsy. Two months after Shelly's death, at the family's urging, her body was pulled out of its grave and re-examined. Detective Rotermel was in the room with the medical examiner. What are you seeing? What are you thinking?

Pretty much near the end of it, he looked at us. He showed us the hyoid bone that was broken. That's in the neck? Inside the neck area. And he says it was going to be a homicide. Wow. Shelly had been choked to death. Coming up, a trial of lies, secrets, and surprises. death. Shelly Kovlin had been found dead in her bathtub in December 2009.

Investigators had long believed her husband Rod had killed her, but they didn't have enough evidence to prove it. Then, after nearly six years of slowly building a case, prosecutors finally became convinced they had enough to persuade a jury. In November 2015, Shelley's sister Eve got word from the district attorney's office. She said, we're about to arrest Rod Kovlin for the murder of Shelley Kovlin. So I started to get very emotional and she says to me, are you okay? And I said, I've just been waiting a really long time to hear those words.

It would take three more years for Rod's trial to begin. The people of the state of New York versus Rodgers-Hoblin. After waiting so long for justice, Eve and her husband Mark steeled themselves. Why was it important for you to be there? So I can tell you that on December 31, I said, I'm not leaving until they take Shelly's body out. And then when it came to the trial, I said, I will be there every single day so she knows that I'm there for her, along with the rest of the family. There's only one person. Prosecutor Matthew Bogdanos described Rod Kovlin as a cold-blooded killer, determined to get his wife out of his life,

take their children, and seize her assets at any cost. Only one person had the motive, the opportunity, and the means to have done this. Prosecutors admitted their case wasn't a tidy one ready for CSI. But they put a lot of circumstantial evidence in front of the jury. We know it's a circumstantial case. But what do they have going for them with this jury? What they have going for them is that obviously Kovlin had access. He was right across the hall.

He had motive. And he is not a sympathetic guy. Prosecutors presented witnesses who said Rod didn't even try to hide his abuse of his wife. The family nanny told the jury that at one point he had become enraged and violent. She said to me, said, Rod, throw her down on the floor. And when he asked her to go into the bedroom, she said she was scared of going in there with him because she don't know what he'll do. The prosecutor described Shelley as a textbook victim of domestic abuse. The question was never, is he going to kill Shelley? The question was never, is he going to kill Shelly? The question was always, when?

Shelly was living in fear, prosecutors said, because her estranged husband was boiling with rage in their custody battle. Shelly's divorce attorney, Lance Meyer, took the stand to say how Rod had even used his son as a weapon. Mr. Coblin took the children and accused Shelly of abusing Miles. It turns out that he took them to the hospital and made allegations that Shelly had sexually abused their son. Wow, so this is getting ugly.

Yes. Prosecutors said those disturbing and false accusations were just one example of how Rod was becoming unhinged. He was also obsessively tracking Shelley's every move with secretly installed software on her computer. Rod told this co-worker that it enabled him to read her emails. He was reading through things, and he was upset with the number of people that she was

talking to, and he was upset about the way he was being portrayed in her emails. By late 2009, he was also deeply in debt, with virtually no income. Still, even with their divorce pending, he believed he would gain control of her $5 million estate if she died. But then Rod found some emails Shelly sent just two days before her death. She reaches out to an attorney and also tells several people that she wants to change her will and essentially write Rod Kovlin out of her will. The state said that's when Rod snapped and hatched his plan. The night of December 30th, her friend Melissa Fields saw her and sensed something was wrong. Shelly was nervous when we first met up and she was looking around quite a bit and I did ask her

what the problem, if something was wrong. She was worried that her ex-husband was following her. On what would turn out to be her last night alive, Shelly remained in fear. It was all heavy on her mind when she got home to her apartment that night at 7.51, caught here on security cameras. Later, she logged on to her online dating profile at 10.13, the last activity on any of her devices. Rod, meanwhile, was across the hall. He was usually online playing backgammon late into

the night, but suddenly his online presence stopped at 1.03 a.m. No sign of him until he popped up on that surveillance video in the lobby at 4.13 a.m. The allegation was that he wanted to be seen on camera. Yes, he wanted to make an alibi. That this was like his way of sort of building an alibi. The prosecution called the New York State Medical Examiner. In the autopsy, he had noticed those scratches on her face and that fractured bone in her neck. My conclusion was that she had died as the result of neck compression

and I classified her death as a homicide. Strangulation, not an accidental fall. And in another sinister twist, prosecutors believe that three and a half years after Shelley's death, Rod drafted a note composed from his 12-year-old daughter's email account, pretending to be her. It read, I lied. She didn't 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 hit the tabloids after it was filed with the court. What father does that? Who does that to a child? Right. Who basically frames a child?

Right. On their own. Prosecutors didn't get that note admitted into trial, but they were about to bring forward a star witness whose explosive allegations would rock the courtroom. Coming up. What was it like walking into that courtroom and seeing Rod Kovlin in there? Terrifying. She fell in love with one Rod Kovlin. Then she says she met the other. He said, you have to help me kill my parents. When Dateline continues...

When Dateline continues... Continues. Veteran prosecutors will tell you that once they've built their case for the jury, they try to put a closer on the stand. A witness who buttons everything up with a riveting tale. Nothing but the truth? Yes. Thank you, ma'am. In the trial of Rod Kovlin, the closer turned out to be none other than Deborah Oles, Rod's backgammon buddy and his former lover. Taking the stand, sunglasses on. What was it

like walking into that courtroom and seeing Rod Kovlin in there? Terrifying. I had to look at him one time, once, just to point him out and say that's who he is. Deborah testified that she got a late night call from Rod on that fateful New Year's Day. He told me that his wife had an accident and died. My very first thought was, that's a really weird coincidence and timing. and that really basically solves all his problems. But then I felt guilty about thinking that because he said it was an accident, and then the paper said it was an accident. You're saying coincidence like he needed money. Right. They've broken up, and then she dies.

Yeah. So it makes Rod's life easier? Right. But then he was very adamant about his innocence, always. After that, their long-distance relationship progressed in fits and starts. They'd often play backgammon online. Deborah would drive from her home down south to tournaments, sometimes picking up Rod in New York and taking him with her.

Then, one day in 2010, the police paid her a surprise visit. I answered all their questions and offered to give them a copy of the games, the Gregeman games that we played, so they'd have exact times that we played. Man, that was it. Did they tell you why they were there? They thought he was guilty. They said he was a really bad person, and I didn't believe them at the time. You had gotten to know him pretty well at this point too. Right. I never saw the monster that I eventually came to know until later. But the monster was lurking. As Deborah told the court, over time she began to see just how volatile Rod could be. He had a mercurial temper. It didn't take much to set him off.

She also saw terrible fights that he had with his parents. By 2012, Rod and his children were living with his parents in a New York City suburb, and the fighting was constant. One time during one of these fights, Rod had brought his arms back,

and he shoved his father as hard as he could. His father went flying into the room, hit his head on the floor. Eventually, Rod's parents evicted him and kept his kids. Rod was determined to strike back. Deborah says he hatched bizarre plots to kill his parents. She told the court about one he dreamt up when Superstorm Sandy struck the East Coast. He said that because there was no electricity, the alarm would not be on. He wanted to go through a window in the basement, kill his parents, and set his house

on fire. I was, you know, just stunned. He was going to? He wanted to go over there. Set fire? Kill his parents, set fire to the house, and somehow get Anna and Miles out safely. And, you know, I discussed it with him for like 15 minutes or so. I'm like, no, you're not going to do this.

And then finally I said, just how are you going to explain miraculously that you just happened to be there to save your children? And finally that, you know. So he backed out. He finally backed down. Then, she said, there was the poison plot that called for his young daughter Anna to participate. You wanted her to like put rat poison in their food or sugar for their tea or whatever. Why don't you leave him at this point? How am I supposed to protect his parents

if I don't know what he's plotting? I can't be there and protect them. If I'm not there, he won't confide in me and let me know what's going on. You're helping the situation as to be the voice of reason for Rod? Either try and talk him out of it or have enough definitive proof where I can go to the police. By this time, Deborah had rented an apartment for herself and Rod to live in, just north of New York City. But she says she was growing weary of his anger and exasperated by his lurid schemes. One day, she testified, things came to a head.

We were in the car driving, and he said to me, you have to help me kill my parents. And I said, I am not going to help you kill your parents. And he asked me like four or five times, and I finally, I just like, I'm not going to help you kill your parents. And even if I wanted to, which I don't, you'd kill me too. And he had this kind of creepy laugh. And he looked at me in a way that like, oh, you're just now figuring this out. And then he said, quote, no, I only want to kill the people who try to take my children away from me. Did you believe now that Rod killed Shelly? There was no question, susceptible of doubt in my mind that he killed her at that point. Finally, Rod and Deborah split.

In August 2014, she called investigators and told them everything she knew. Now, four and a half years later, she had told a jury. And she was about to get grilled by Rod Kovlin's defense attorneys. Coming up. So is it fair to say, yes or no, you were jealous? No, I was mad at him. Questions, and after nine years, unanswered. How hard was it waiting for the verdict? Oh my gosh, that was so painful. I had such butterflies. Carol Kovlin sat behind her son during the long weeks of trial.

Why was it so important for you to be there? He's my son, and I think any mother would do that for their child. You had to listen to your son being called a philanderer, a bum, an abuser, and a killer. How did you handle that? You really wanted to get up and scream at them and call them liars, but you can't. One of the most explosive pieces of testimony was Deborah Oles alleging that Rod had wanted to kill you. And in grand fashion, we're talking arsenic, rat poison. Rod's dad, Dave, says Deborah's claims were laughable.

Rod's defense attorney, Robert Gottlieb, agreed. During a testy cross-examination, he tried to poke holes in Deborah's testimony, starting with her story of those plots. Were you scared? Yes. Did you call the police? Yes or no? Yes. Did you call the police? Yes or no? No. Gottlieb says Debra's stories of Rod's temper didn't add up either. Time and time again, when she is saying that she felt bullied by Rod, she was afraid of him. The only thing she ever says in her emails is, I love you, dear, I love

you, over and over again. Despite her denials, Gottlieb said Debra had been crushed when the relationship ended. Her testimony, he said, was nothing more than the words of a woman scorned. So is it fair to say, yes or no, you were jealous? No, I was mad at him. I was mad at him for a lot of reasons. It's fair to say that you have a history and have admitted to being an habitual liar. That is disgusting and false. That is not true. The defense conceded Rod wasn't always a stand-up guy, but he said that didn't make him a murderer. You may despise him. You may not even be able to look at him.

You may want to convict him to convict somebody of murder. There's got to be proof. There was none, Gottlieb said. Zero evidence there'd been foul play. No signs of a struggle. He said Rod couldn't have slipped into Shelley's apartment and killed her, like the prosecution argued, because there was no evidence he even had a key. Remember, Rod said little Anna had let him in that morning.

There's been no evidence that Mr. Coughlin was ever in the apartment on December 30 or December 31 before 7 a.m. No evidence either, Gottlieb said, about what had caused Shelley's injuries. He suggested one explanation, the exhumation. They used backhoes to exhume. They used shovels to get to the coffin. Carroll said there was nothing she heard in court that convinced her Shelly's death was anything but a tragic accident. If you see those photos, it doesn't look like she just slipped and fell. It looks like someone did something to her. Not really. If you look at

her face, if she slipped and fell and hit her face into the bathtub. So where did her scratches come from then? I mean, you don't get scratches falling in a bathtub. It depends on what's in there, how they took her out. I have no idea. I just, you know, again, you are left with a conundrum. A conundrum that would never be solved, the defense argued, because of bungling by investigators. And you do not have any notes for any of those interviews on December 31, correct? Not that I recall, sir. Investigators hadn't dusted for fingerprints or collected DNA samples. There was a long list, Gottlieb said, of what investigators hadn't done at the scene. Every single viewer would know that that's not the way

you investigate a suspicious scene. If there's even a remote possibility that it could be a homicide, it was disgraceful. Then, in a bold move, the defense rested without calling any witnesses. After more than eight weeks of testimony, it was up to the jury to decide. Was this an accident or a cold-blooded murder? How hard was it waiting for the verdict? Oh my gosh, that was so painful.

And I had such butterflies. Oh my gosh, that was bad. They didn't have to wait long. After only a day of deliberations, the jury was back. I'll say this is the first count of this indictment, charging the defendant, Roderick Hovland, with the crime of murder in the second degree.

Guilty or not guilty? Guilty. Judge, I don't go to the second count. Do you want to poll the jurors? Poll the guilty? Guilty. Judge, I'm going to go to the second count. Do you want to pull the jurors over here? Guilty. I've been through a lot of trials and I don't know that I've ever seen that much emotion from a family and that many hugs and that many tears. I mean, it was pretty incredible to watch your family. It wasn't a moment of celebration. It was a moment of relief. For fear of what would have been if the wrong verdict came down. And outside the courthouse, family and friends gathered.

Finally! After all this time, they felt like they could breathe again. First thing I thought of was, it's justice for Shelly, and she can finally rest. Deborah Oles hopes she can rest now, too. The prosecution's star witness is happy the jury believed her. It was like a huge weight has been lifted off of me, I'm finally like completely you know it's it's done do you regret the day you met Rod I do I really do how are the children doing they're holding it together as best they could

Shelly's children are young adults now they don't have much contact with Shelly's side of the family. Is there anything that you want the children to know about their mother and how you feel about them? Their mother, with every breath she took and every ounce of her, she adored them. That's all for this edition of Dateline. We'll see you again Thursday at 10, 9 central. And of course, I'll see you each weeknight for NBC Nightly News. I'm Lester Holt.

For all of us at NBC News, good night.