A 19-year-old construction worker who confessed to the police that he struck an actress in her Greenwich Village office and then left her hanging from a shower rod in her bathroom was ordered held without bail this morning pending a hearing next Tuesday.


Diego Pillco, the construction worker, appeared in State Supreme Court in Manhattan and was charged with second-degree murder in the death last week of Adrienne Shelly, which was initially believed to be a suicide.


Assistant District Attorney Marit Delozier said that Mr. Pillco made written and videotaped statements to the police that he had argued with Ms. Shelly after she complained about construction noise coming from an apartment below her office, at 15 Abingdon Square, in Greenwich Village.


"He admitted he fought with the victim," the prosecutor said at the brief hearing. "He tied a sheet around her neck and dragged her to the bathroom."


"This is an exceptionally egregious case."


After they argued, Mr. Pillco struck Ms. Shelly, leaving her unconscious, and then tried to cover up his crime by making it look like a suicide, Ms. Delozier said.


"This woman did not die from a strike to her head," Ms. Delozier told the court. "The medical examiner has made it clear, crystal clear, that the victim died from compression to the neck."


Mr. Pillco, a slightly-built man who was dressed in a gray and blue sweatshirt and jeans, said nothing during the hearing. His lawyer, Thomas Klein, asked that he be put under suicide watch.


Mr. Pillco, of Prospect Avenue in Greenwood Heights, Brooklyn, is a native of Ecuador who arrived in the city in July, police said. He had been working in a third-floor apartment directly beneath the one Ms. Shelly used as her office.


Ms. Shelly, 40, lived not far away on Varick Street with her husband, Andy Ostroy, and her daughter, Sophie. She used the Abingdon Square apartment as the base of a career that included leading or featured roles in two dozen Off Broadway plays as well as movies and television shows.


Ms. Delozier said that Ms. Shelly's husband dropped her off at the apartment that morning and did not speak to her all day. At 5:30 p.m., he went to meet her, and found her hanging from the shower rod.


Even though the death initially looked like a suicide, family members and friends were skeptical. Her show business career was thriving, they said, and she was a devoted mother to her 3-year-old daughter. They insisted that she would not have taken her own life.


"We have felt adamantly that what happened was not the result of suicide," Rachel Sheedy, Ms. Shelly's agent, said on Monday when she was informed of Mr. Pillco's arrest. "It is a great relief knowing that the police have taken us seriously."


Detectives from the Sixth Precinct in Greenwich Village found few signs of trauma or struggle, and initially the death looked like a suicide. But the investigation soon showed signs of foul play.


"It appeared to be a suicide -- he staged it as a suicide," one investigator said. But he said investigators "never just accepted it for what it was staged to be."


They were particularly troubled by an unexplained footprint found in the bathroom. They examined the shoes of everyone who had entered the apartment, including police officers and emergency workers, but found no match for the print.


They canvassed the building, and found that renovation work was under way in some apartments. The detectives matched the footprint from Ms. Shelly's bathroom to one they found at one of the work sites, and then used the match to track down Mr. Pillco, the authorities said.


Ms. Shelly first gained recognition for her film roles in Hal Hartley's dark comedies "The Unbelievable Truth" and "Trust." She was featured last year in the movie "Factotum," starring Matt Dillon, and she had recently finished directing "Waitress," which is under consideration for inclusion in the Sundance Film Festival.


Ms. Shelly, born Adrienne Levine, was a Queens native who started performing as a child in arts camps on Long Island and upstate. She dropped out of Boston University after her junior year and moved to Manhattan.


Mr. Pillco was picked up Sunday night and taken to the Sixth Precinct station house, where he made his admissions early on Monday, investigators said. Neighbors at Mr. Pillco's apartment building said he was hard-working and respectful. He lived in a basement apartment with his cousin and held a variety of odd jobs, they said.


"He sent money home to his mother and father," said Frank Lingo, a neighbor. "He minded his business. He never bothered me or anyone else near here. He seemed like a good kid. I've never seen him hang out."


Chris Pannhorse, another neighbor, said: "He was always respectful to me and my wife. He's a good kid. Because that is what he is to me, just a kid."


The arrest came after a memorial service for Ms. Shelly on Sunday that drew hundreds of mourners.


According to The New York Post, Mr. Ostroy spoke at the service, repeating his insistence that his wife would not have committed suicide.


"There's no way on this planet that she would have left that child," he said. "Nobody is ever going to tell me that woman walked away from Sophie."