Jurors were shown a gruesome crime scene photo of UBS banker Shele Danishefsky’s nude body on her bathroom floor — with her long blond hair soaked with blood Wednesday in Manhattan court.
Danishefsky, 47, is positioned on her back with her left arm covering her left breast. Her eyes are closed, her mouth is slightly agape and there are bright red scratches on her face.
The grisly image was shown at the murder trial of her ex-husband Rod Covlin, who’s accused of snapping her neck to land her multimillion-dollar life insurance policies.
In the haunting photo, a comforter covers her legs and a pair of maroon pants is balled up near her head. A child’s training potty floats in the tub, which is half filled with blood-tinted water.
Retired FDNY Lt. Matthew Casey testified that he and other firemen were the first on the scene after responding to a 911 call at 7:14 a.m. on New Year’s Eve 2009.
Casey said Danishefsky’s 9-year-old daughter answered the apartment door and directed them to her mother’s bathroom — where they found Covlin kneeling beside his dead wife.
“Do something!” Covlin demanded. But it was too late. Rigor mortis had already set in and her limbs had stiffened.
“She had been dead a while,” Casey testified Wednesday.
Another firefighter, William Rix, told jurors that he had “grabbed her [Danishefsky] by the wrist to try to pull it away and it was locked.”
Covlin told arriving police officer William Irwin that his daughter found her mom in the tub and ran to his apartment across the hall, where he had been living since the couple’s separation.
Covlin said he pulled Danishefsy from the lukewarm water, covered her with a comforter and performed CPR.
Assistant DA Matthew Bogdanos asked Irwin whether he’d noticed anything unusual about Covlin’s clothing.
“Yes, they were dry,” Irwin replied. “Completely dry.”
He said Covlin was wearing a white T-shirt and a dark pair of sweats, which had no blood on them.
On cross-examination, defense lawyer Robert Gottlieb grilled Irwin on whether he had asked Covlin if his clothes were wet or suggested he take them off for analysis.
“No, I did not,” he said, sheepishly.
Although Danishefsky had a restraining order against Covlin and bright red scratches on her face, police initially called her death an accident.