Murder victim's photo
STAR'S SUICIDE WAS KILLER COVER-UP
WORKER ADMITS SLAY: COPS
By LARRY CELONA, MURRAY WEISS and DAN MANGAN
SHOCK: Cops say Adrienne Shelly, initially thought to have killed herself, was slain by laborer Diego Pillco, who allegedly struck the actress and hanged her to make it look like a suicide.
November 7, 2006 -- In a stunning turnaround, a construction worker yesterday confessed to killing indie actress Adrienne Shelly, whose death in a Greenwich Village apartment last week was first thought to be suicide, cops said.
"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.
Pillco, who is from Ecuador and speaks only Spanish, also claimed that Shelly slapped him first.
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. The medical examiner has not yet released autopsy results.
Shelly's marketing-exec husband, Andrew Ostroy, found her body just before 6 that evening.
Pillco was nabbed early yesterday at his Brooklyn apartment after detectives matched several Reebok sneaker prints from the toilet seat in Shelly's bathroom to a print they found in the apartment downstairs.
Pillco's boss told detectives the laborer had been wearing sneakers while working.
Reebok Allen Iverson-model sneakers found at Pillco's home matched the prints, sources said.
The suspect's stunned boss, contractor Louis Hernandez, called his employee "a good kid."
"I don't know what happened. I don't think he did it," he said.
But investigators said Pillco was sly enough to try to mask his deadly deed.
"He tried to cover his tracks, but he ended up leaving his tracks," one police source said of Pillco, who entered the United States from Ecuador on July 7, and who now is charged with second-degree murder. "It was the tenacity of the investigators that led to an arrest. It had all the appearances of a suicide, but they didn't give up."
Shelly's family and friends had insisted all along that the loving wife and mother had no reason to kill herself.
"The entire family knew this was a murder from the outset," one relative said yesterday.
Shelly's family had been so convinced that they had hired renowned forensic pathologist Dr. Michael Baden, who performed a second autopsy on her Saturday at a funeral home, under the watch of two detectives.
After yesterday's development, Ostroy said in a statement: "We are incredibly grateful to the New York City Police Department for their dedication, professionalism and tenacity in following up on every lead in this case. We hope everyone will respect that this is a difficult and private time for our families."
Ostroy and Shelly, a TriBeCa resident who first gained notice for her performances in two classic independent films - "The Unbelievable Truth" and "Trust" - have a 3-year-old daughter, Sophie.
Earlier this year, Shelly, a Long Island native, appeared in the film "Factotum" with Matt Dillon, and at the time of her death was on the verge of releasing a movie called "Waitress," which she directed and wrote.
