ACTRESS SET OFF ILLEGAL'S 'KILLER' RAGE BY CALLING HIM 'S.O.B.'
By LARRY CELONA, MURRAY WEISS and DAN MANGAN
November 8, 2006 -- A 19-year-old construction worker flipped out,
hitting and strangling indie actress Adrienne Shelly with a bed sheet
because she dared to call him a "*****," police sources said
yesterday.
Ecuadorian illegal immigrant Diego Pillco told cops he took that insult
literally and became enraged during a confrontation with the pint-sized
actress last week over noise he was making in the apartment below her
Greenwich Village office, sources said.
Police also revealed that Shelly, 40, desperately tried to fight off
the baby-faced worker during the attack, leaving scratch marks on his
face.
"She didn't go easily," said a law-enforcement source.
Those and other details about Shelly's killing emerged as Pillco was
ordered held without bail on a charge of second-degree murder. On
Monday, he allegedly confessed to the shocking crime and admitted
staging it to look like she had hanged herself in her bathroom.
Pillco himself was placed on suicide watch at his lawyer's request
during an arraignment in Manhattan Supreme Court, where Assistant
District Attorney Marit DeLozier said an autopsy determined that Shelly
died "from compression to the neck."
Shelly's family and friends sat shiva yesterday in her TriBeCa
apartment, where one distraught pal said, "You can't believe someone
would rip her away."
A native of the city of Cuenca, Pillco arrived in the United States in
the summer of 2005 after paying smugglers $12,000 to sneak him over the
Mexican border, law-enforcement sources said.
Pillco eventually made his way to Brooklyn, where he moved into a
basement apartment with his brother Wilson - who had arrived months
earlier - at 328 Prospect Ave., where a cousin also lived.
His landlord, Louis Hernandez, hired Pillco to work as a part-time
helper for his construction company, even though - by his own admission
- he knew the immigrant did not have legal working papers.
Still, Pillco "demonstrated a respectful, well-mannered, decent and
responsible behavior toward our client, co-workers and within our
business," Hernandez said in a prepared statement. "He just seemed to
be another hardworking immigrant."
Pillco's cousin told The Post that the accused killer was "quiet and
peaceful. He didn't have a temper," and was working to pay off his
smuggling debt, and to support his parents and five siblings back in
Ecuador.
Recently, Hernandez was hired to renovate apartment 37 at 15 Abingdon
Square in Greenwich Village, a rental unit that had become vacant after
its tenant's death.
On Nov. 1, Pillco and two other workers were doing spackling and other
work there.
The unit is directly under unit 47, which Shelly both sublet and used
as an office for her film-production work when that tenant was away.
Shelly was in apartment 47 that morning after her marketing-executive
husband, Andrew Ostroy, dropped her off. Just before 9:30 a.m., Shelly
became annoyed by noise from the work in the apartment below, and
walked downstairs to complain, sources said.
Although there were two other workers there, Shelly saw only Pillco,
who was standing on a ladder.
The actress told Pillco - who speaks little English - to be quiet by
putting a finger to her mouth and saying, "Shhhh," a source said.
Pillco yelled at her in Spanish to get out, descended from the ladder,
picked up a hammer and pounded the floor with it before again ordering
her to leave.
Pillco, who is at most an inch taller than the 5-foot-2 Shelly, then
shoved her out of the apartment and closed the door. But Shelly
reopened the door and slapped his face before heading back upstairs,
sources said.
Pillco followed Shelly upstairs into her apartment, where she yelled at
him to leave, and called him a "*****."
He responded by punching Shelly, knocking her to the ground, sources
said. Law-enforcement sources said he may have hit her several times,
and that she became unconscious.
Pillco told police he put his head to Shelly's chest, and could not
hear her breathing.
Fearing he had killed her, and that he would be deported, he wrapped a
bed sheet around her neck and dragged her body into the bathroom, where
he attached one end of the sheet to a shower-curtain rod, sources said.
It is not clear whether Shelly died from the sheet being wrapped around
her neck, from being dragged with it or from being hanged. An autopsy
ruled she did not die from a blow to her head.
Pillco left Shelley's apartment, but did not return to work in the
apartment below for several hours. When he did, he was sporting a cut
on his face, which he told co-workers occurred when he got into a fight
with some movers.
Shelly's husband, Ostroy, discovered her dead later that afternoon.
Police initially were inclined to believe that she had killed herself,
but were concerned about several mysterious Reebok sneaker prints they
found on the toilet seat in Shelly's bathroom.
On Sunday, when detectives returned to the apartment to collect
Shelly's computer and wallet, they stopped by apartment 37, whose door
was open. On the floor, on sheets of dusty construction paper, they saw
a sneaker print that matched the ones in police photos from Shelly's
bathroom.
Cops soon tracked down Hernandez's workers, who told them Pillco had
been wearing sneakers.
Pillco was picked up by detectives at his home early Monday morning,
and brought to the 6th Precinct station house in Manhattan for
questioning.
At first, he denied any knowledge of Shelly's death.
"He was acting like nothing happened," one source said. "He was like
ice."
But after about a half-hour of interrogation, Pillco began confessing
to the murder in a matter-of-fact manner, the source said.
His admission and the fact that police matched his Allen Iverson-model
Reeboks to the prints found in Shelly's bathroom, led to his arrest
Monday.
Additional reporting by Dareh Gregorian, John Doyle, Douglas Montero,
Laura Blue, Philip Messing, Tatiana Deligiannakis and Kieran Crowley
http://www.nypost.com/seven/11082006/news/regionalnews/actress_set_off_i
llegals_killer_rage_by_calling_him_s_o_b__regionalnews_larry_celona__mur
ray_weiss_and_dan_mangan.htm?page=0
--
PLEASE EMAIL THESE LINKS TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW:
www.predatoryaliens.com www.immigrationshumancost.org
www.daylaborers.org www.AmericanPatrol.com
'The Illegal-Alien Crime Wave' by Heather MacDonald @
www.city-journal.org/html/14_1_the_illegal_alien.html
See the colossal $$COSTS$$ of illegal aliens to the American taxpayer @
www.immigrationcounters.com
www.SaveOurState.org www.escapingjustice.com
http://grassfire.org/
www.newnation.com/index2.html http://idexer.com
http://reportillegals.com
Just two of MANY U.S. cops murdered by illegal aliens:
www.deputydavidmarch.com www.kriseggle.org
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