Thread: IA worker pleads guilty in actress' Manhattan slaying

Construction worker pleads guilty in actress' Manhattan slaying
By DIANE GOLDIE | Staff Writer
4:37 PM EST, February 14, 2008

NEW YORK - A construction worker who admitted he strangled an actress while robbing her in her apartment and then hanged her to make the death look like a suicide pleaded guilty Thursday to manslaughter.

Diego Pillco, 20, admitted he killed Adrienne Shelly, 40, in her

Manhattan flat after going through her purse. He was promised a sentence on March 6 of 25 years in prison.

State Supreme Court Justice Carol Berkman said Pillco, who is from Ecuador, South America, and is in the United States illegally, is subject to immediate deportation upon release from prison.

Shelly, born Adrienne Levine, appeared in the 2005 movie "Factotum" with Matt Dillon. She made her directorial debut with "Sudden Manhattan" in 1996, and she wrote, directed and co-starred in "Waitress," which also featured Keri Russell.

With Shelly's mother, brothers, other relatives and friends present, Pillco explained to the court how he killed her on Nov. 1, 2006. His story differed considerably from the account he initially gave police.

The defendant first said he was renovating a third-floor apartment in Greenwich Village when Shelly came down and complained that he was making too much noise. Shelly used the apartment in that building as an office.

Pillco initially said she called him names, they fought and he killed her accidentally. He said he then hanged her with a bed sheet to make her death look like suicide.

On Thursday, Pillco admitted to the court that he was in fact robbing her when he killed her. He said he had eaten his lunch in the basement and was walking back up the stairs to resume working when he saw Shelly going up to her flat.

"When I saw her I decided to rob her," Pillco told the court.

He said he saw her fourth-floor apartment door was open so he stepped in and grabbed her purse.

"When I was trying to put back the purse, the lady came out of the room," Pillco said through a Spanish language interpreter. "I don't speak English, but the lady was signing that I give back her purse."

He said she went through the purse and saw something was missing and she was going to call the police.

"I took the phone from her," he said. "Out of desperation I covered her mouth. I was scared and didn't realize what was happening. I saw a sheet, and I decided to choke her."

The judge asked, "And you tied the sheet around her neck and strung her up?"

"Yes," Pillco replied, "and I made it look as if she had committed suicide."

Pillco was arrested in Brooklyn after witnesses told police they had seen him working near Shelley's apartment in the building.

"I just want to ask forgiveness from her family," the defendant said.

"I doubt if you'll get that, sir," the judge said.

Shelly's relatives didn't speak in court and declined to comment after the proceeding.

Shelly also appeared in "The Unbelievable Truth" in 1989 and "Trust" in 1990.
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/ ... 1436.story

Why was this scum promised 25 years? You deliberately take a life then yours needs to be taken, whether life in prison on a chain gang or the electric chair... but the firing squad would be best. Impotent sissies and madmen rule our legal system.

Doesn't NY have the felony murder rule? This murder was committed during the commission of a dangerous felony. This scum bag should have received the death penalty, or life in prison withour the possibility of parole.

What the news keeps leaving out is that she was alive when he hanged her. It was that which ultimately killed her after some time. Sometimes they don't even print that he was here illegally.

Justice not forgiveness. Let's just make sure that he does get deported upon release.

Entertainment

Adrienne Shelly's killer sentenced in N.Y.

Published: March 14, 2008 at 2:05 PM

NEW YORK, March 14 (UPI) -- The husband of slain filmmaker Adrienne Shelly spoke at her killer's sentencing in New York, telling him he had taken away "the love of my life."

Andrew Ostroy, with whom Shelly had a young daughter, Sophie, addressed Diego Pillco, 21, who was sentenced in State Supreme Court in Manhattan to 25 years in prison, The New York Times said Friday.

Ostroy, speaking at the sentencing Thursday, called the "Waitress" filmmaker the"love of my life" and said Pillco sentenced their daughter "to a lifetime of anguish and sadness and questions and feelings of what could've been," the Times reported.

"No sentence would be enough for you," he said. "I want you to suffer like she suffered, to live a life of fear, the same fear she felt when she realized she was about to die."

Shelly's mother, Elaine Levine, also expressed her heartbreak and told Pillco she couldn't forgive him for what he had done.

Pillco, an illegal immigrant from Ecuador confessed he strangled Shelly in 2006 when she caught him stealing money out of her purse in a Manhattan apartment she used as an office.

The sentence was part of a deal in which Pillco agreed last month to plead guilty to manslaughter.


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http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Entertainm ... n_ny/9528/

"No sentence would be enough for you," he said. "I want you to suffer like she suffered, to live a life of fear, the same fear she felt when she realized she was about to die."

Thanks for the update....I feel for this man and the woman's mother. Hopefully BUBBA and his badasses with teach Diego what it feels like.

I don't know how many bubbas there'll be upstate, but I wouldn't mind seeing this creature meet the same end as wannabe cop-killer/drug dealer Larry Davis.

BTW, I'm not quite sure whether his initial crime, if we take him at his word, would have been been a felony, although it does sound like one, i.e. breaking and entering/home invasion.