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Welcome to the f vdW group.
NOPERD is't necessary if we were privited by low see Terms and Convisions eighteen plus.
You are now listening to True Murder the most shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that have written about them. Gacy Bundy, Dahmer The night Stalker VTK every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
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address ZipRecruiter dot com murder. Once again, remember to go to this unique place ZipRecruiter dot com slash murder. Zip recruiter the smartest way to hire. Wealthy, beautiful and brilliant Shell Danishevsky had fulfillment at her fingertips. Having conquered Wall Street. She was eager to build a family with her much younger husband, promising Ivy League graduate Rod Coblin, But when his hidden vice's surface, marital harmony gave way to a
merciless divorce. Rod had long depended on Shell's income to fund his tastes for high stakes backgammon and infidelity. And she finally vowed to sever him from her will. In late December two thousand and nine, Shell made an appointment with her lawyer to block him from her millions. She would never make it to that meeting. Two days later, on New Year's Eve, Shell was found dead in the
bathtub of her Upper West Side apartment. Police ruled it in an accident, and Shell's deeply orthodox Jewish family quickly buried her without an autopsy on religious grounds. Rod had a clear path to his ex wife's fortune, but suspicions about her death lingered. As the two families warred over
custody of Shell's children and their inheritance. Rod concocted a series of increasingly demented schemes, even plotting to kill his own parents to secure the treasure, and as investigators closed in, Rod committed a final desperate act to frame his own daughter for her mother's death. Journalists Rebecca Rosenberg and Selim Algar reconstruct the ten years that passed between the day's Shell was found dead and the day her killer faced justice.
In this riveting account of how one man's irrepressible greed devolved into obsession, manipulation, and murder. The book that we're featuring this evening is at any cost, with my special guest, Salim Algar. Welcome to the program, and thank you very much for this interview. Salim Algar, thank you for having me Dan, I appreciate it. I apologize that we didn't have time to get the proper pronunciations of a certain name. So is there any name in that opening description synopsis that I missed?
Now it's Shelley Shelley Danishevski and Rod Kopp, and those are the two main players in the book.
The right Okay, thank you for that correction. I thought that might be the case, and we didn't have time for me to get that straightened out. Let's start by how you came and co author Rebecca Rosenberg, your wife, to how you both came to this story. Tell us about your journalistic background and why this story in particular, and you felt the need to write this book at any connest.
Well, it's a pretty straightforward origin, Dan my life. Rebecca covers Manhattan Criminal Court for New York Post and she covered the trial from gabble to gabble, and I'm also a reporter at the same newspaper. At the Post, I cover the New York City Department of Education, and my focus is on education issues. But when she was considering this topic for a book, we sort of quickly realized, or she did, that it would be easier with we have two so it might be a bit more manageable
with a helping hand. And so I was enlisted in the effort, and we had a pretty quick turnaround on the deadline. And so two sets of hands on the laptops were better than one, I suppose. So that's how would be end great.
Now, you take us to you as you do in the book, to New Year's Eve two thousand and nine, and a young girl named Anna Coblin, nine years old, and her brother Miles who's three, and Shelley, their mother, And this is in the middle of the night. So as you do in the book, take us to this scene where young Anna gets up and wants to know where her mother is and goes looking.
It was early morning and the sun was not yet up, and but Anna heard some water. She was awakened by the sound of rushing water nearby. She was in bed with her younger brother who's still sleeping. But when she awoke, she noticed that she wasn't that her mother, who she climbed into bed with, was no longer in the bed, so, obviously, as little kids aren't want to do, she went to look for her. And her brother Miles eventually joined her because her sort of activity awoke him, and they went
to the bathroom in there. It's an apartment in Manhattan where they lived, and she looked in peered into the into the bathroom and saw her mom and with her back towards her, and just thought that she was taking a night bath to sort of distress Shelley. Her mother was a hard working and accomplished woman, and Anna thought that she was just taking a night bath, so went
back to bed. But then when they woke up a few hours later, now the sun is up, she went back in to the bathroom and saw her mother in the bathtub with red and water and clearly not moving in an obvious state of I guess, not distress, but it was obvious that something was wrong.
Now she has a situation where her father is living across the hall in a studio apartment, but she has permission to call her father if there's anything gone wrong or anything happened, So she does call that number and call so what happens with that phone call? What does she tell her father and what does he do?
So her mother Shelley, and her father Rod were in the midst of a divorced but like many couples who were in that situation, they sought to make it as easy as possible on the kids, and so he took up residence across the hall and in an apartment in order to, you know, whenever there was visitation, he could just come over and see them. So it was at a convenience. So obviously Anna knew that her dad was
across the way and called him. He goes roughly seven o'clock in the morning at this point and told him that something's wrong with mommy, and obviously, hearing that, he darted over across the hall and came into the apartment.
So he performed some CPR as you write, and shortly after calls nine one one. The operator guides him through more steps of CPR before he dispenses with that. What else does he do while he's waiting? You know, many people are familiar with someone having the wherewithal to not touch a crime scene because they've watched televisi and then the procedure and the things that could happen. So but what does he do?
He, like you recounted, he attempted to perform CPR and he was He called the nine to one one and the dispatcher tried to guide him through it. But it was pretty clear early on that these attempts were futile and that point it was a little more to do than to await the emergency crews to arrive. And he put the kid in a separate bedroom to sort of shield them from what was taking place. And initially when he went into the into the bathroom, he lifted her.
He lifted Shelley out of the water and placed her on the bathroom floor before you know, trying to administer CPR and calling nine to one one. So he pretty it was clear that she she had likely passed at that point, and there was little more for him to do than just to await the emergency crews, the FDNY and the NYPD who were on route to the sea.
You're right about EMS four EMS members and then people from the firefighters as well. So there was a person named Casey. What did first responders two of them William Rick's a firefighter, and Casey a member named casey, what did they notice about Shelley initially right on the floor and where was Rod when they came to the scene.
So when they came in, he was in the bathroom near Shelley. And you know, these are veteran, big city New York City first responders. You have members of FDNY and members of NYPD, so it's not obviously they deal with extreme situations every day. So they pretty quickly recognized that Shelley was likely dead after you know, the acceptor for rigor mortis and she the limbs had set at this point and it was clear to them what had taken place. And then that's sort of when the police
take over. The FDN, Y left, the firefighters who come to really most emergency scenes are left, and the investigations sort of began at that point. And the first person who arrived there was a firefighter and so sort of a pointed scene. You know, he opens this door and he looks down and sees a little girl looking at him, and you know, he asks her, you know, what's happening, and she just points down the hallway. She doesn't say anything, and that's when he comes upon Rod and Shelley.
You right too, that Rod directs New York Police Department officers to a cabinet in the bathroom above the faucet that has been partially ripped from its hinges, and he immediately is again has the wherewithal to say, I think she may have grabbed a piece of wood from the cabinet and fell and hit her head. So he's offering what happened, and also offering and suggesting that this was purely an accident. So he tells these first responders that
and says, I can't believe this is happening. And he also tells him that his wife had taken out a restraining order against him, and then that he had lived close to be near the children. However, with this information that the NYPD get what else do police do at that crime scene at that time?
So, right, this was sort of obviously early on one of the major aspects of the case that they had sort of a rough sense of the situation in that they were in the middle of a divorce, there was a restraining order in place, that he lived across the hall, and obviously in those circumstances, people would assume that they would train their sort of focus on him in case there was indeed any foul play or anything suspicious about the circumstances, but he sort of preempted a lot of that,
it seems, by offering rather quickly this explanation. There was a cabinet in the bathroom that had been dislodged from the wall, and he told them that perhaps she had lost her balance or slipped in some manner, and doing so sort of grasped this fixture and ripped it off.
The hinge fell and hit her head. But it was obviously a a heavy critique early on of the detectives and the police officers at the scene for not sort of doing a more thorough pro baid into the entertained fouth play really as an option early on, and that would sort of play at the trial. They would play a major role at trial.
There's another important character. There's been a nanny that's been with the family right since the birth of Anna, and she's nine years old, so she's been with the family for nine years and is the principal caregiver for this family. And her name is Hyacinth reed Or, she goes by the name Rose, and she's a Jamaican woman. And she gets arrives at the apartment just after eight with her grandson to play with the children as well, her grandson JJ.
She asked right away where the kids are and asked where Shelley was, and the police are there as well, and Rod is there, and what is the response to her questions? And then what does she have to say?
So high Or Rhodes was an integral part of this family, their day to day routine. She would take the kids to school, and Shelley came to really rely on her for a lot of fundamental things, especially once the relationship dissolved, and so she sort of knew, she knew the lay of the land in terms of the deterioration of the of the family and the relationship. And so when she comes that day, as she approaches the front door of the apartment with her grandson, she can sort of odd
to her that the door's open. She can hear some murmuring within the apartment, and then obviously once she sees the police officers inside, that was a clear sign that something was amiss. So she asked rather quickly, you know, where's Shelley, what's going on? And initially there was no response until finally Rod stoked and told her that Shelley
was gone, and she was stunned. Obviously, this is someone that she had been with the night before, she'd been with the kids, you know, just the previous evening, and she had a cup of coffee in her hand from McDonald's. It was a cold day, and that fell from her hands and it's splat across the wall, and she collapsed along with it and began crying. And after a while when she sort of took stock and gathered herself and sort of to speak, she said, it's non an accident.
So obviously that was suggestive early on that there were suspicions as to what had taken place. Shelley was young and vibrant. For her to die in such a sudden and abrupt manner in the bathtub was extraordinary. To put him mildly at that point, you talk.
Now, we go back and give the background of Shelley Minna Danishevski born in July nineteen sixty two. Her dad, Joel, wife Jayleen, Polish immigrants living in Elizabeth, New Jersey, and father of Joel is a rabbi muls butcher, and he had a love of finance. Her sister that she's very close to his eve. Tell us about the family, tell us about briefly about the accident that scarred Shelley and where she is at the time that she meets Rod Coughlin in her life.
So, Shelley was born to a religious Orthodox Jewish family and sort of the patriarch was Joel, her father. He sort of came up the hard way. He initially became a butcher. He was a Jewish butcher, a coach butcher on which actually required some sort of particular set of skills in order to in order to perform that function in that culture. And he also, while doing so, he was his father was a rabbi, and he had always hoped to follow in his footsteps and was a very
religious man. But the work was difficult to find in the religious religious capacity. So he was sort of compelled to serve in this butcher role. But he sort of tied of that, and he would when his day was over, he would walk around downtown Elizabeth and there are banks there, and in most banks, especially back then, there was a
stock ticker. And so here's this sort of this young man who had just come from butchering meat consumption, and he sees this rush of picker numbers and he sort of intrigued by it, and that would sort of spark an interest in finance. And you know, he obviously had to acknowledge that this was this was related to Wall Street and there were people made their made their fortunes
in this manner one way or another. So he pursued that and would eventually earn a degree to that end and quickly applied his what what a pre exist things of the facility with numbers in maths, and he would earn a job on Wall Stream and start doing very
well there. Meanwhile, he since as his financial prospects were improving, he and his wife, Jayleen, had children, and Shelley was one of his two beloved daughters, and they were a very close knit family, very sort of traditional Orthodox Jewish family. He was never one for a sort of lavish luxury instead, you know, he had the money to do it, but instead he really tried to instill in his kids sort of an in a sense of industry and work ethic and piety and family sort of as the as the
bedrock of their of their lives and their foundation. And as as far as we could discern, he had succeeded in doing so. This is a very Talina family. And this Shelley had did have an accident which Joel would blame himself for. When she was a little girl. They were having a dinner on a religious occasion at a friend's house and there is traditionally there's a an urn kept with hot water, and she tipped it over onto
herself while the adults were in another room. And this it's called the samovar, and it's filled with scalding hot water that's normally used for teen and it splashed all across her torso and would end up scarring her very badly. And Joel, her other relatives would tell us, often blamed
himself for this. I mean she she had to undergo skin grass and there was a lot of permanent scar so it wasn't sort of a brief episode in their life, something that would sort of plagued her and her sense of self esteem, you know well and for her into her teens and even sort of early sort of college years. And Joe well for that reason, since he did blame himself for not sort of protecting his little girl against this accident, unlike his other kids, who he was very
demanding of in terms of their academic performance. He was a little more lax, was Shelley, and so her performance in school wasn't as good. But they were reluctant to get on her about it, because again there was a sort of underlying guilt, and his main concern was that she was comfortable and she was happy. And sometimes his hands can tell you that could lead, you, know, that being to some bad habits because you're a little too permissive,
and that has a negative consequence. But Shelley was. She was also a little bit overweight because of this issue to self esteem issue and sort of sense of inadequacy. So in her high school years, you know, she wasn't quite in the popular crowd. But once she got to college in Manhattan, she went to Pace University. Once she got there, she shed a lot of these issues, and she lost a lot of weight, and she looked more
sociable men. Partially, one can assume that perhaps it's because she was sort of no longer in the parental under primal watch, and like anyone who's starting off in college, she was able to spread her wings a little bit, so she adjusted well. She was she accepted her this scarring from this burn as just sort of something she can deal with and then you know, make manageable. She lost live weight and her beauty, her dormant beauty sort of burst of the four and she was well on
her way. She graduated in financed and slowly worked her way up with some with her father's help in that world on Wall Street, but she did have a difficulty with sort of finding a suitable mate. Her sister Eve would eventually get married and have a child, and to a man they both really respected, but she in that department she was running into some complications and the relationships would come and go, and her family would It was
fun to get a little concerned. She was getting older, into her later twenties and early thirties, and very still that the husband had not yet appeared at this point, and she really again because of her own family background, you know, children and that model was really prized and there was a sense of enough death graces too strong a word, but she knew that this was a void in her life that she really wanted to fill, especially with her older siblings married and she was the only
one at this point who wasn't and she would date frequently, but the mates weren't always on the highest caliber. That's what her family progress. And then one night she went to an event in the city and.
Rod, yes, you talk about February fifteenth, nineteen ninety eight, Shelley calls her sister Eve and says, I've met my soulmate and we're going to Vegas to get married.
Now.
Eve knows that she hasn't had much luck and then hasn't had the best choices in men either. Kind of ridiculous dates that she has witnessed, but she's She pleads with her to say, listen, don't do this to her parents, you know, think of mom and Dad will break their heart. So she reassures Eve that she's not going to go get married to him in Vegas that night, but she tells him about this guy six foot two, muscular, martial arts blue eyes, raised as a traditional Jewish person and
engineer degree. So he presented himself as a really good catch and a budding tech entrepreneur. So she was very very excited about Rod Kablin, wasn't she But this as an opportunity just to stop for a second for the messages from our sponsor, which is fab Fit Fun, Fat Fit Fun. Spring Box is centered around the theme grow forth, supporting self care and self growth in the new season ahead.
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Versos Superiserum. When you customize, use coupon code murder at www dot fabfitfund dot com for ten dollars off your first box. That's used code murder at www dot fabfitfun dot com for ten dollars off your first box. Now, Selim, we were talking about she finally meets this person that she believes is her soulmate as she described to her sister. But right away when the sisters meet this dream guy, Rod, what is their first impression and why?
So Eve thought that odd? But again, the entire family was rooting for her to sort of finally settle down and have children, and she had sold his attributes with such enthusiasm to everyone that she was willing to sort of overlook it and chalk it up to maybe, you know, he's having a bad day or he's shy, something along those lines. So her initial instincts were that there was something a bit off, but it's something that was that they could get through.
Now we have to compress this story to be able to explain this incredible twisting and turning story that it would seem from the introduction that we gave that the police, regardless of some of the evidence that they didn't collect and they didn't gather, and there's a suspicion that they didn't have that at some point they find out this information. So in this marriage, they have two children and it
lasts over ten years. But right from that very first impression of the family about Rod and his desire to be a good husband to their sister Shelley, there are signs right away. She's the breadwinner and he has some ideas about being a budding entrepreneur. However, he doesn't work and she works even harder. And those bad habits about him believing that he could be a backgammon champion tell us just a little bit about his character that very
very quickly comes into it. The sight and even the family notices some of the things that are just playing wrong about Rod Coughlin.
So on paper, he was impressive, he had all the right degree he was a charge, he was a good conversationalist, he was witty. So on that surface level, he had promised, and is what Shelley had always assumed, is that he would put these degrees to use as an IVY League graduate and that he would eventually make it somewhere in the tech field. That's where his interests were. And so the assumption was that at some point he would bring
these talents to bear. But slowly, as the marriage progressed, she would notice that, you know, there's very little enthusiasm for full time work. Now she, like I said prior, she was now working on Wall Street in a various sort of lucrative positions. She worked alongside her father and her sibling, and so she was bringing plenty of money
and they lived comfortably. But again the dpcheck's work only coming from her from her end, and he was increasingly focused not on gainful employment but developing his skills in the gaming backgen which played sort of a which was an undercurrent through the book. He had a real affinity for the for the game, and there is a there's a professional circuit. A lot of people don't know that but it's something we discovered and sort of researching the book.
But there's actually a there's prize money to be had on the professional level, and so he would dedicate more and more of his time to pursuing that, and he was convinced that he would be able to produce sizeable income for the family once he attained the sort of back end and stardom. And at first, Shelley it sort of dismissed it as sort of a fancy that was
a sort of thing that would eventually subside. But more and more the months in the years pasted, it became something an obsession, and he would travel constantly to these tournaments. Uh and the obviously wasn't the winnings would occasional and large and significant. So the concern began to began to spiral in both Shelley and her family couldn't help noticing from a she was the one working while he was the one indulging in recreation, and that's what concerns really started to service.
You talk about backgammon two, He used that as a premise to philander with other women online, and she soon found out whether he let her find out or she found out through an email that he was basically having affairs or consorting with prostitutes, but he was definitely stepping out from her in this marriage. Along with that, the family noticed, and she definitely noticed that he was berating
her about her looks. In the beginning, he was a real charmer, giving her flowers and nothing but compliments, but now there was nothing but criticism and so fast forward in this relationship. He really has a problem with looking at the obvious signs. As Eve tells her, look are you are you crazy taking this guy back, considering the things that he has done to her, that he said to her, that he's threatened her so over this so quickly.
But in that ten year period, this dream marriage turned into a nightmare for Shelley, and she tells other people friends, the nanny knows some things. She tells other friends. He confides in people, and she makes moves toward thinking that she needs to protect her children, to protect her finances, and to change her will. Now tell us about how he responds to all of this and what she does in response to what he does to try to thwart her efforts.
Shelley was reluctant to render the marriage for many reasons. They had the children, she really did want to establish, say harmonious home. But soon, you know, as the time kicked off, she realized that certain things weren't going to change, and obviously the situation became untenable for her once the intibelity came to light, and it was widespread and constant, and at one point he even suggested that they have
an open marriage. And these were things that obviously Shelley had no interest in, did nothing other than drive her away, and eventually she grew hired of a lot of this reverbal attacks, and Rob would yell at her for no on very limited grounds in public in front of her family, and her defenses warway, and she finally decided she'd had enough and that she Her concern at this point was
sort of expelling him, severing him from the will. She had a pretticizable life insurance policies and other assets, and her concern was that he would from a commandeer these funds at some point. So her goal was to meet with a lawyer and to write him out of her will, and then that would have actually free her from him completely and allow her to move on with her life. But obviously it didn't get that far right.
Now this is a New Year's even. Now you take this back to the crime scene, and also why there is a reasons for this investigation to eventually because the family again pushes and there was a interesting medical examiner named Hayes that goes against his superior name hersh and this won't let this case go because what we hadn't mentioned is that this mean and initially came to that
crime scene. What he was astonished at was there was red and some of them an inch and a half in length, scratches on the lower half of Shelley's face, as well as contusion on her lip and bruises on her elbow and arm in various places. And he stuck with this and was instrumental in helping this case because again another complication of this is the Orthodox Jewish religion and also the idea that unless there's some incredible reason for desecration, as they call it, of this body, that
they would not authorize an autopsy. So combined with I guess the persuasiveness of Rod Coblin and also what seemingly ineptitude by the New York Police Department that this idea that he had something to do with this This M. E. Hayes was instrumental in keeping that investigation and that information alive.
Wasn't me yes. So initially, after Shelley passed, they were faced with a decision. Her family was faced with a very serious decision and a very reaching decision. They obviously
had their suspicions about what took place that night. They knew the details of her personal life or relationship with Rod, so they had their sufficience, but that competed against their religious beliefs, which in the Orthodox tourist faith, autopsies are frowned upon because it's seen like you, like you had said, it's seen as a disturbance of the body prior to burial, and in order for the soul to transit to the afterlife in an orderly way, then you need the undisturbed
course in order to do so. An autopsy obviously is very invasive, and that procedure is in their mind, complicates that. So they had to deal with this issue, and Joel, Shelley's father, she sought out sort of higher religious authorities in another rabbi to counsel him on what to do. At first, you know, they since they had this it's
difficult decision to make. The rabbi initially agreed to do it because Joel explained the circumstances of Shelley's death and this this this other rabbi said, you know what, if there's any situation that would call for it, that this would be it. But there was yet another wrinkle in this case that would prevent that autosy from taking place. So before Hayes, who had been seeking to do it because he had a suspicion, paid the New York City
Medical Examiner before he could perform the procedure. There is a group in a Jewish Orthodox Jewish group called Masas Camp and their role is to assist Orthodox Jewish families in dealing with the aftermath of a death. So they assist with the grieving. So they helped us the grieving process. They really do whatever family needs and they they're seen a sort of a vital service. But they are especially opposed to autoxity's on religious grounds for the reasons that
I mentioned previously. And they had representatives who sort of held himself out as a rabbi member of the Sauce cam who was told about the death of Shelley and he knew that this was a member of the Orthodosteish community, and he went to the scene of the crime and he was admitted to it. And his role there as a representative of this group is to collect any sort of body fluids, anything that would that should be buried
along with Shelley. So he goes to the scene. Then that's a whole other complicating factor why he was given such free way to go in. But he managed to convince them that he was a religious representative and he was admitted. So once he had his rounds in the in the apartment of the crime scene, he called the family and once Joel told him that they would playing on an autopsy, he vigorously, vigorously opposed it and told him, no, no,
this was an accident. I talked to some of the detectives in the case and they assured me there's no foul play here. Don't do it, you know, don't do it. So Joel, and you can imagine how difficult decision this was for him, sitting there at his dining room table,
struggling with this. You know, on the one hand, his daughter is dead and he has his suspicions about her husband, and on the other hand, he has these religious pressures on the other side, So it was really a very difficult and challenging positions for him to be in, and he relented and he called it off. Hayes, the medical examiner was literally from what he said, a trial was about to make the initial decisions that you know, would
have maybe brought them closer to the truth. And he got a call and they said, no, put put it down, we eject, and he was bound to that.
Now we have to talk about Deborah OLiS because after this fatality, after Shelly's death, he goes on dating, meeting many people online and goes through journey's for a period of time anyway, but he meets somebody named Deborah OLiS, and he's foolish enough to confide in her along the way, and when it comes time for him to be indicted, she has some concerns about some of the things he has already said to her, so she starts recording some
of these conversations and eventually, eventually she goes to a detective that had initially spoken to her, and she has a pang of conscience and contacts this detective Mooney to say some things. We have to sort of jump ahead to the investigation that finally looks at the same evidence and then calls for an exhamation of the body. Tell us about that.
All throughout this process. So it's a long period of time here that we're talking about that obviously we're having to condense. But all throughout this period, the family has their suspicience, and especially Peve and her husband Mark, they were growing increasingly frustrated with what was happening. They had suspicions about rog involvement, and they are unrelenting in their pressure on the Manhattan District Attorney's Office and anyone they can talk to me NYPD to keep pressing and keep
pressing on the case. And finally there these efforts came to a head and again what was still a very difficult decision for the family. They decided that an eglamation was unavoidable at this point and that exlamation would allow for an autopsy. And more and more evidence leaked out as to sort of Rocks potential involvement in Lly's killing. It became too much for THEMPT to ignore, and the
examation was the agreed. Payse, who was sort of was struttled in his previous attempt to conduct the autopsy was now able to do.
So when he did that initial examination, he still could see it was two months later, but she was fairly it wasn't so decomposed because it had been winter. He could still see those scratches on her face. But a very very interesting thing happened. And as a break in the case, what did he find in his more thorough examination via the autopsy.
So the discovery that a sense he turned the case during the autopsy. During Hayes's autopsy was a broken highly the bone in the net, which is a very difficult bone to break instead of the random manner, and it's often suggestive of something else he's made. This made this discovery. There are some other signs too now that he was really able to conduct a comprehensive, you know, investigation, conferhensive autopsy.
They were marks in her eyes middle sort of that it's called the tech gid and they those are also suggestive indicative of it indicates the squeezing of the neck that pops vessels in the eyes. And these are very difficult theater, they're they're very small. So these are the These are two elements that Hayes found in his autopsy and at that point, the manner of death was changed on the death certificate, and and you know, in place
of whatever benign ward was there previously was replaced with homicide. Uh. And that is what really set things accelerated the entire the entire story at that point.
Now, once they had that, the same investigator is very interesting, a guy named a Roode Armatil maybe saying Rodermil. Yeah, this guy was instrumental in ignoring evidence at that crime scene and was adamant that this was an accident to certain people. And this guy has to go back and they have to look at and have to do a
search warrant again at the previous at Shelley's apartment. But they also and you can tell us what they find at the apartment, but also they did gather devices from from Deborah OLiS and also the recordings that he had made and any kind of messages between them. So the gathering of all kinds of cell phone information takes them
a year and a half to process and analyze all this. Meanwhile, Rod sits in jail on bail eventually or without bail, pardon me, eventually, So tell us what else they find at this interestingly, at the crime scene especially regarding I think an that's super important I thought was the issue of the door and him having any access door of that apartment that he was not supposed to be having any access to.
Yeah, there was one scene that Mark and Eve recalled soon after and when Rod was still free. They had gone the two ples home to the apartment and we're having trouble opening the lock. This is after the passing. Obviously they were having trouble opening the lock, and he came to He appeared because he was he was across the hall. He came and really quickly opened it, was
able to open it. So they obviously when they were in retrospect, they were surprised by this because how would he have such familiarity and ability to negotiate this this troublesome luck so that obviously in their mind and the system that they told us later was some had hidened
their suspicions. And you mentioned the detective Rotormail. So because the homicide determination was sort of belated because of the delayed autos and so forth, he had to sort of go and cover ground that really probably should have been covered initially. So this is really sort of basic steps from getting surveillance cameras from the building to talking to
people in the building. I mean, I think things that you would have thought would have been done in the first sort of forty eight hours after this happened, but they had to go back in essence because of this lengthy delay and go what they should have done previously. Now this would hamper the prosecution's case in court, because you know, a mishandled police investigation compromises the case pretty severely,
and so that was also an issue. But on the other hand, the prosecution benefited, as you said, from this trobe that they were provided by by Debra and came to trust her and would contride in her many many different things, and a lot of them would ultimately become damaging and probably pivotal at trial. And she turned over devices to NYPDS. She would said later. She said later that she she had her suspicions about Rod and she was angry also about some of the mistreatment that she
suffered at his hands. So the prosecutions that have had some benefits when this finally hit the courtroom, and they also had some some disadvantages.
It was interesting to you outline everything that goes on, and interestingly, the evidence that was immaterial and deemed prejudicial for the jury. And that's some things like and we had talked about it in the introduction about his daughter and his plans, but this was discussed with Deborah OLiS and about plans for Anna to accuse her g own
grandfather of raping her. And as we didn't mention in this at the very beginning of the book, Rod is successful with the same kind of baseless allegation to help his father out many many years before. So it's very interesting this pattern is repeated and a couple times here in his quest to try to made prosecution in this. But he definitely talks to Anna also about unbelievably confessing to the murder of her own mother because she won't
do much time. And so these kinds of things obviously are so prejudicial to a jury that they would be convicted just hearing these things. But all kinds of other damaging and incriminating evidence was allowed at this trial, wasn't it.
So in the end it was a largely circumstantial case, and the prosecution knew that there was no smoking gun.
There was the physical evidence who was very limited. So the prosecution was, you know, they had an ill decline, and in order to get them up that hill, they relied largely on this sort of secondary or unrelated material related to Rod's character and these various schemes that he asked in relations to his parents, to his daughter, and as you stated, these theither aspects of someone's character that would not help them in front of jury. And the
defense knew this and the prosecution knew this. So the case would eventually turn on what was admitted and what wasn't. And the prosecutor, Matthew bogdanos or that emant about getting in as much as he could in order to show the jury here was a man who had the capacity and the moral deficiencies to commit what he is accused of, and because he had to, because there's really not much
else that he could lean on the secure conviction. And on the other end, the defense attorney, Robert Gottlieb would argue that, you know, the you can't find someone guilty of murder because they are of poor character. And he leaned on this as best he could in making his arguments, but enough made it in we are he was sort of look at the final result that would convince the jury that he did it. What was his sentence, his
sentence second degree murdered. Also, yeah, he was convicted of murder and he got the twenty five years to life. He got what you get in New York for a crime of this magnitude. And that's where he.
Is now, his heart wrench being near the end of this book, because we forget, well I don't know if we forget, because we were reminded in your in your very very sensitive book, that Anna is one heck of a victim here obviously, and there's victim impact statements made by the Danishevski's about their loss of their daughter and sister friend. And but Anna makes her own heartfelt statement at court, doesn't she.
Yes, that was a pretty unforgettable moment during this trial. Now, you know, Anna was close to her father, and by many accounts, he's a good dad, and he was good not only to her but to her brother Miles, and was very involved with her life and was building and then helped them with their homework and did all the
things that you know and many parents will. But the question asked her position on the on his guilt, because she never appeared at trial, she was never in the gallery, and she was doing too sort of unsteady a witness, I think for either side to call her a stand So there was a question mark sort of hovering over the trial as to sort of Anna's position. She was never there, and finally it was revealed to court that she was going to have a statement read in court.
Statement was read by Rod's mother, so her grandmother. They also Rodg's parents also play pretty integrable in all this. But we only have an hour, so it's probably more than we can we can fit in. But yes, Anna spoke through a statement read by her by her grandmother. She completely guided with her father and said that she did not believe that he committed to back and was sponsorly defended him. And it was a pretty breathtaking moment during the trial. And it's one of the portions and
the reaction to the book. Thus father has really sort of has touched people and it's mine then it should pop up. And then I just want to thank you for getting us the opportunity here and do a really good job, so we appreciate it.
Thank you so much for this interview. It's an incredible book, and thank you so much for this interview. You have a great evening, good night, thank you them.
In twenty seventeen, when a trans woman disappears from the village, alarm bells go.
Off, girls go missing, girls end up dead.
So her friends decide enough is enough. This is the story of what happens when sex workers and trans people stand up to fight the system that failed them. I'm justin Laning and This is The Village Season two, available now on the CBC Listen app and everywhere you get your podcasts.