At Any Cost: A Father’s Betrayal, A Wife’s Murder, and a Ten-Year War for Justice

Journalists Rosenberg and Algar take a chilling plunge into the mind of a psychopath in this riveting account. On New Year’s Eve, 2009, Shele Covlin, a wealth manager at a New York City bank, was found floating in the bathtub of her Upper West Side apartment by her nine-year-old daughter and three-year-old son. The children called their father, Rod Covlin, Shele’s estranged husband, to tell him what had happened. Rod later told the police Shele fell in the bathtub and drowned. The medical examiner ruled the death an accident, and the family refused an autopsy on religious grounds, but that didn’t stop family and cops from digging. Rod, 11 years younger than Shele, was an abusive, philandering freeloader. After his wife’s death, Rod bragged that he would get the kids and $5 million in insurance money. Years of legal wrangling stripped Rod of his children and the money and drove him to devise plans to kill his parents, have his then 14-year-old daughter accuse her grandfather of rape, and frame the daughter for Shele’s murder. He was arrested in 2015 for Shele’s murder, and in 2019 was convicted and sentenced to 25 years to life. Vivid prose bolsters this tale of justice delayed but finally triumphant. True crime fans will be enthralled. Agent: Jane Dystel, Dystel, Goderich & Bourret. (Apr.)