"I was having a bad day," illegal immigrant Diego Pillco, 19, allegedly told cops. "I didn't mean to kill her. But I did kill her."Pillco told detectives that he punched Shelly, 40, last Wednesday afternoon outside the Abingdon Square apartment she was using as an office after she yelled at him about the noise he was making while working in a vacant apartment below. [...]
After seeing she was unconscious and believing she was dead, Pillco claimed, he dragged Shelly into her apartment, wrapped a bed sheet around her neck and attached it to a shower rod in the bathroom to make it appear she had hanged herself, sources said. [Star's Suicide Was Killer Cover-Up, New York Post, 10/7/06]
Shelly was discovered hanged in the shower of her Greenwich Village apartment/office on Nov. 1 by her husband Andy Ostroy. Police originally thought she might have been a suicide, but the family objected that her life was going too well for that, plus a sneaker print in the bathtub was from a stranger.
Adrienne Shelly had everything to live for. She had become more interested in writing and directing, and was looking forward to the release of her film "Waitress." She had a 3-year-old daughter, Sophie.
But her life meant nothing to an illegal alien who would do anything to protect himself.
Diego Pillco, a 19-year-old illegal immigrant who had been renovating the apartment below Shelly's office, told cops in a chilling confession that he was afraid of getting arrested and deported, sources said. [Killer staged her 'suicide', New York Daily News, 10/6/06]
To be clear, the medical examiner said that Shelly died from "compression to the neck" meaning she was alive when Diego Pillco hanged her to prevent her reporting him to immigration agents.