film director murdered by illegal alien
By http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=2395
http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=1445
Adrienne Shelly was an independent film director whose first big film “Waitress” opened to excellent reviews last year after her death at the hands of an http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=2990.
The killer’s story has changed in the time since Shelly’s death, which Diego Pillco made to look like a suicide. Her family had to convince the police that the happily married mother whose career was on the upswing absolutely did not kill herself.
“A construction worker admitted in chilling detail today that he strangled indie-actress Adrienne Shelly in the Greenwich Village apartment where she worked because she caught him trying to rob her.”In his courtroom confession, Diego Pillco, an illegal immigrant from Ecuador, recounted how he choked the wife and mother with a sheet, strung her body up from a shower rod and fled — hoping to make the murder look like a suicide.
“Pillco, 20, will get 25 years in prison — almost certainly followed by deportation — as a result of today’s Manhattan Supreme Court guilty plea to first degree manslaughter.
“The confession differed radically from what Pillco had long told cops — that he sparred verbally with Shelly after she came downstairs to complain of construction noise.”
I’m not a lawyer, but I don’t see how the crime is manslaughter and not murder. Pillco knocked her out and then hanged her from a shower rod. It’s another weak plea deal from the court system, and a real disappointment. The guy should never see the light of day again.
Update: When researching this story yesterday, it didn’t occur to me to look at the New York Times coverage, because of the paper’s blatant bias. But the Times is getting worse, if such a thing is possible.
In a new level of gutter-scraping journalism, the piece started by blaming the victim for a couple paragraphs and essentially taking the side of the illegal alien murderer: In Guilty Plea, Actress’s Killer Changes Story to Robbery (Feb 15).
“His original confession had the ring of truth: He was an illegal immigrant working on a renovation job in a Greenwich Village building when the imperious woman upstairs confronted him over construction noise.
“They argued. She scratched him. Panicked that she would call the police and that he would be deported, he punched her and pushed her to the floor. Mistakenly thinking he had killed her, he hanged her from the shower rod of her bathroom, in a staged suicide.
Pillco’s original confession did not have the “ring of truth” to me. The New York Post reported (Nov 7, 2006): “Pillco, who is from Ecuador and speaks only Spanish, also claimed that Shelly slapped him first.”
A woman (a serious indie film director) supposedly goes to complain about noise and immediately slaps the guy? Didn’t pass the credible test, particularly when she was dead and he was trying to save his skin.
Later in the piece, the Times at least added some explanation about why the killer was not prosecuted for murder. The prosecutor decided to go for a plea deal of 25 years that would prevent a possible lesser sentence.
“If he had gone to trial, the official said, Mr. Pillco probably would have stuck by his original story, which might have convinced a jury that Ms. Shelly’s death was merely reckless, even though the prosecution would have argued otherwise.
“In that case, if convicted he could have received a maximum sentence of 15 years. It appeared that the defense may have feared the opposite outcome, that Mr. Pillco would be convicted of murder and sentenced to life. Mr. Pillco’s lawyer, Thomas Klein, of the Legal Aid Society, declined to comment on his strategy.”