Adrienne Shelly, R.I.P.

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What an odd, sad tale.

On November 1st, actress and director Adrienne Shelly was found dead in her Greenwich Village office. It was an apparent suicide as she was found hanging in the shower. But the police didn't close the case right away, and five days later the report came out that it was in fact a murder and an arrest had been made, including a confession.

She was busy editing a film at her office, which is in a Manhattan apartment building. There is construction going on at the address, and apparently Shelly complained about the noise. I guess she complained to the wrong guy on the wrong day, because the ninteen-year-old construction worker who confessed to the crime says he hit her; so brutally that it killed her. He then took the body back upstairs to her office and staged the suicide.

Ick.



I had always liked Adrienne on screen since she burst onto the independent scene in a couple of Hal Hartley's movies in the early 1990s: The Unbelievable Truth (1989) and Trust (1990). I really love her in both of those movies, especially Trust where she plays a weird pregnant teenageer who latches on to Martin Donovan's principled loner.


Unlike some of her contemporaries such as Parker Posey, Catherine Keener, and Lili Taylor, Shelly never really broke out from the small indie projects. But she did work steadily, including Sleep with Me (1994), The Road Killers (1994), Revolution #9 (2001) and this year's Factotum (2006) as well as a string of guest appearances on television series like NBC's "Law & Order" and HBO's "Oz". You can also see her as herself in Searching for Debra Winger (2002), actress Rosanna Arquette's documentary about how the film industry treats actresses as they age. She moved behind the camera to become a producer, writer and director as well, helming the independendt features Sudden Manhattan (1997) and I'll Take You There (1999). She was in the editing process on her latest, Waitress, starring Keri Russell, Nathan Fillion, Jeremy Sisto, Cheryl Hines and Andy Griffith when she was murdered. No word yet in the wake of the tragedy on what will happen to that project.



What an odd and awful end to her life. She had just turned forty this summer. R.I.P.

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"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra



And today the details on the murder get even worse: the original blow didn't kill Adrienne, it was the hanging afterward. Here's the story from The New York Times today...

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Actress Was Killed in Hanging Meant as Cover-Up, Officials Say

By THOMAS J. LUECK and AL BAKER
Published: November 8, 2006

He told detectives that he had hit her in the face and had thought she was dead. So, the police said, he wrapped a sheet around her neck and hanged her from a shower curtain rod, figuring that the police would think suicide. But he was wrong on both counts.

It was the hanging that killed Adrienne Shelly, a Manhattan actress and a mother, the authorities said yesterday. And it was the ruse of a fake suicide that ultimately led detectives to the man charged with killing her.

Such was the courtroom revelation at the arraignment of Diego Pillco, 19, an illegal immigrant from Ecuador who is charged with second-degree murder in the death of Ms. Shelly, 40, last week. The case has given pause to even the most experienced police investigators, who call it one of the most macabre killings in memory.

“This woman did not die from a strike to the head,” said Marit DeLozier, an assistant Manhattan district attorney, speaking at the arraignment before Judge Brenda S. Soloff in Manhattan Criminal Court.

“The medical examiner has made it crystal clear that the victim died from compression to the neck,” Ms. DeLozier said.

Ellen Borakove, a spokeswoman for the city medical examiner, said that a final determination of the cause of death would require further study. She said she was not contradicting what Ms. DeLozier said in court, but just pointing out that additional scientific analysis was necessary.

“As we frequently do in homicide investigations, we are providing guidance to the police and the prosecutors to enable them to determine what further steps they may need to take,” she said. She said that work may be completed as soon as today.

A veteran homicide investigator, who was not authorized to comment on the case and spoke on the condition of anonymity, said: “It’s really kind of bizarre. Usually, if it’s something they’re going to try to hide, they’re pretty sure the person is dead.

“And he almost got away with it, too,” the investigator said.

Mr. Pillco, a construction worker who speaks little English, entered no plea, and did not utter a word before Judge Soloff. A slight man, dressed in jeans, sneakers and a sweatshirt, he was remanded without bail to Rikers Island.

He was represented at the arraignment by Thomas Klein, a lawyer with the Legal Aid Society. After the hearing, Mr. Klein declined to comment on the case.

The court appearance came six days after the body of Ms. Shelly, who was also a screenwriter and director, was found by her husband in the bathroom of a West Village apartment that she used as an office. A bedsheet had been tied around her neck, and she had been hanged from a shower curtain rod.

Investigators at first suspected suicide, a theory rejected by Ms. Shelly’s family and friends, who said that her life was filled with promise and that she was devoted to her 3-year-old daughter.

Ultimately, investigators said, Mr. Pillco admitted under questioning by detectives that he had been working in a third-floor apartment beneath Ms. Shelly’s, that she had complained about construction noise, and that their confrontation had convulsed into violence, ending in Ms. Shelly’s death.

Yesterday, details of the case emerged, including the chain of events that detectives say was described to them by Mr. Pillco. They include Mr. Pillco’s account of being slapped by Ms. Shelly and pleading with her not to call the police before he hit her in the face, dragged her into the bathroom and strung her from the shower curtain rod.

Acquaintances of Mr. Pillco, who had been living in Greenwood Heights, Brooklyn, described him as an energetic and respectful young man who was struggling with the physical rigors of his job and the disorientation of his illegal immigrant status.

“I still don’t think he could do something like this,” said Frank Diaz, a resident of the building on Prospect Avenue where Mr. Pillco lived in a cramped basement space with two other Ecuadorean construction workers.

Ms. Shelly, a native of Queens, had appeared in several films, including “The Unbelievable Truth,” “Trust” and “Factotum,” and used the apartment where she was killed, at 15 Abingdon Square, as a base for film writing and other projects.

According to a law enforcement official, detectives responding to the scene of the killing last Wednesday saw no signs of a struggle, but seized upon one clue that could not be explained: a footprint on the cover of a toilet beneath the curtain rod where Ms. Shelly had been hanged.

The official said detectives thought the footprint might have been left by a firefighter or emergency responder, but no match could be found. After canvassing the building, and finding that the apartment below Ms. Shelly’s was being renovated, he said, the detectives encountered a worker who said he thought Mr. Pillco had been working there.

After tracking down Mr. Pillco, he said, the detectives found a Reebok sneaker in his apartment that matched the crime scene footprint, and brought him in for questioning.

According to Mr. Pillco’s account, the police official said, the confrontation with Ms. Shelly began about 9:30 a.m. after she went downstairs to complain about the noise. Sharp words were exchanged, and Mr. Pillco threw a hammer, but it did not hit Ms. Shelly, the official said.

Then, Ms. Shelly stormed up the stairs with Mr. Pillco following her, warning her not to call the police. At her door, Mr. Pillco grabbed Ms. Shelly, and she responded by slapping him in the face, the official said he told investigators.

When Mr. Pillco struck back, she fell, banging her head and losing consciousness. Then, Mr. Pillco took her into the bathroom and used a bedsheet to hang her, the official said.

“He tries to stage this thing because he is trying to make it go away,” the official said.

The police said yesterday that they did not believe that Mr. Pillco had a criminal record in Ecuador.

According to acquaintances in Brooklyn, Mr. Pillco was working for a construction contractor, Louis Hernandez, who owns the Prospect Avenue apartment building. The acquaintances said Mr. Pillco shared his basement quarters with his brother and a cousin.

They said the quarters had been hastily vacated, and all beds and furniture removed, before dawn on Monday. The two men who had lived with Mr. Pillco, also illegal immigrants from Ecuador, have not been seen since, the acquaintances said, apparently fearing they would be deported if they spoke to the police.

Mr. Hernandez, in a statement provided by a member of his staff, said yesterday that Mr. Pillco had been working for him “for the past few months as a construction helper.”

He said that Mr. Pillco, a part-time employee, and had demonstrated “respectful, well-mannered, decent and responsible behavior.”

Mr. Hernandez’s statement appeared to include an admission that he had illegally employed an undocumented immigrant. Marc Raimondi, a spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said he could not comment on the case.


Nina Bernstein, Daryl Khan and Colin Moynihan contributed reporting


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rhymes with Goebbels
That's awful : \

I only know her from Revolution #9, and even then I only very vaguely remember her. But god, that's really awful.
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A devilish combination of slightly bored and quite hungry





My favorite among the movies she was in is definitely Trust. And while The Unbelievable Truth is on R1 DVD, unfortunately Trust is not. That Hal Hartley flick did make it onto R4 Australian DVD and R2 French DVD (I've got he Aussie disc), but somehow never here in America.


Another movie she starred in that I really liked and is available on R1 DVD is Revolution #9 (2001). I bought it originally because it had a supporting role for one of my favorites, Spalding Gray, in one of the last few movies he made before the car accident that led to his depression and ultimately to his suicide in 2004. It's about a young man (Michael Risley) and his descent into schizophrenia. He starts to believe he's getting messages everywhere and that just about everybody is in on a conspiracy against him. Adrienne plays his fiancé who tries to deal with the situation and finds roadblocks getting him adequate treatment in the health care system, and Spalding is the director of a television commercial that he's become convinced has a coded message boring into his brain. It's a good look at the disease, its effects on the individual and those close to them. Risley, Shelly and Spalding are all great. The R1 DVD has an audio commentary track with Adrienne, Michael Risley and the writer/director Tim McCann (Desolation Angels).


Adrienne is also in an episode of one of my favorite TV shows from the '90s, "Homicide: Life on the Street". It's titled "A Many Splendored Thing" and aired in January of 1994 during the show's abbreviated second season. She plays the owner of a leather shop, and her friend and employee is the dead girl who's case Pembleton and Bayliss are working. She only has three scenes, but they're all good, including the gift she brings for Kyle Secor's Tim Bayliss in the squad room to end the episode.

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I am having a nervous breakdance
I loved Trust. What a sad way to go. R.I.P., Adrienne....
__________________
The novelist does not long to see the lion eat grass. He realizes that one and the same God created the wolf and the lamb, then smiled, "seeing that his work was good".

--------

They had temporarily escaped the factories, the warehouses, the slaughterhouses, the car washes - they'd be back in captivity the next day but
now they were out - they were wild with freedom. They weren't thinking about the slavery of poverty. Or the slavery of welfare and food stamps. The rest of us would be all right until the poor learned how to make atom bombs in their basements.



Trust is awesome, not the best Hal Hartley flick but definitely one of the better early ones. She's great in that and the Unbelievable Truth.

This news is so pathetic, attacked over something so stupid. how ****ed up.



A system of cells interlinked
My assistant designer here at the office went to school with Adrienne. He is shocked, crushed, and in quite a bit of distress over this whole thing. This one hit pretty close to home. While on lunch reading news, he randomly ran across the story a couple of days ago, and all the color drained from his face and he was just stunned. A terrible thing.
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“It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.” ― Thomas Sowell



I hadn't heard of her until this. That guy (Diego Pillco) should be hanged himself! No 40 year old beautiful actress should be murdered by a 19 year old illegal immigrant just for complaining about noise. Urgh.



Here's the conclusion to this tragedy, at least on the criminal justice end. From The New York Times...

--------------------------------------------------------
In Guilty Plea, Actress's Killer Changes Story to Robbery

By ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS
Published February 15, 2008


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.

But in a courtroom on Thursday, the construction worker, Diego Pillco, 20, told a very different story of how he killed the woman, Adrienne Shelly, a filmmaker, on November 1, 2006. Ms. Shelly, who was 40 and the mother of a 3-year-old daughter, had just finished a film, Waitress, which opened to warm reviews after her death.

Mr. Pillco, a short, boyish-looking man, speaking softly through a Spanish translator, told a judge in State Supreme Court in Manhattan that the argument had not been over noise, but over a robbery.

He told the judge that Ms. Shelly had caught him stealing money from her purse after he had slipped into the apartment at 15 Abingdon Square that she used as an office. When she picked up the phone to call the police, he said, he grabbed it and covered her mouth as she started to scream.

"When she fell to the floor I saw a sheet and decided to choke her, and that's what happened," Mr. Pillco said. The judge, Carol Berkman, prodded him: "And you tied a sheet around her neck and strung her up?" "Yes," Mr. Pillco replied, "and I made it look as if she committed suicide on her own."

It sounded like a straightforward confession to murder, which could have brought Mr. Pillco a sentence of 25 years to life in prison if he had been convicted by a jury. Instead, Mr. Pillco pleaded guilty to a lesser charge, first-degree manslaughter, and was promised a fixed sentence of 25 years in a deal negotiated with the Manhattan district attorney.

It was a hard choice dictated by the existence of the first confession, according to an official in the district attorney's office, who was not authorized to speak on the matter and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

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.

Ms. Shelly's husband, Andy Ostroy, her stepdaughter and other relatives sat quietly in the courtroom during the hearing and declined to comment afterward. But their grim faces conveyed what the judge said out loud: that their assent had been given reluctantly. "Well, I’m not going to ask whether they're happy with this," Justice Berkman said, after the lead prosecutor, Peter Casolaro, assured her that the family had agreed to the plea.

There was little about Mr. Pillco's first confession that added up, according to prosecutors. He told detectives five days after the killing that Ms. Shelly had confronted him in the apartment where he was working. The floor of that apartment was covered in gypsum dust, the prosecutor said, yet Ms. Shelly's shoes, socks and the hems of her pants were clean. Rather, it was Mr. Pillco's shoeprints, traced in construction dust on the toilet and the rim of the bathtub where Ms. Shelly’s husband found her hanging, that gave him away.

Mr. Pillco, an illegal immigrant from Ecuador, had come to the United States 8 to 10 months before the murder, the official said.

Ms. Shelly, who was born in Queens as Adrienne Levine, had just finished Waitress, a film about an unhappily married, pregnant waitress who finds joy in baking pies (and having an affair) that she wrote, directed and appeared in. The film was later shown at the Sundance Film Festival and then went into wider release.

Ms. Shelly was best known for her roles in Hal Hartley's dark comedies The Unbelievable Truth and Trust. She also appeared in more than two dozen Off Broadway plays and in television shows.

In court on Thursday, after Justice Berkman asked, "What happened?" Mr. Pillco gave this account. He had been returning from lunch in the basement of the building when he saw Ms. Shelly in an elevator. "The lady was coming up in the elevator," he said. "So when I saw her, I decided to rob her."

He waited on an upstairs landing and watched her go into her apartment. She left the door open, he said, and he slipped in, took her purse, and removed money; he did not say how much.

After describing the fight for the phone and the struggle that ensued, he stopped his recitation. After a conversation with his lawyer, he added one last sentence. Mr. Pillco's final words to the court were, "I just want to ask forgiveness to her family." The judge replied, "I doubt that you will get that, sir."


http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/15/nyregion/15actress.html
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And anybody who's rented or bought Waitress on DVD might have already been aware of this, but a foundation has been set up in Adrienne's name. Their official website is HERE.


The Adrienne Shelly Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated in loving memory to the uniquely gifted actor and filmmaker Adrienne Shelly, whose highly accomplished life was tragically cut short November 1, 2006.

Those who knew Adrienne knew her as wonderfully funky, spirited, funny, silly and smart. She believed in spreading love wherever she went. She was a truly kind and beautiful soul, whose infectious smile illuminated everything around her. There was no one else like her.

Adrienne first became known as an actor for her teaming with director Hal Hartley on the acclaimed The Unbelievable Truth and Trust. She appeared in over twenty other films, the most recent being Factotum with Matt Dillon. She wrote, directed and acted in three feature films, Sudden Manhattan, I'll Take You There and Waitress, which premiered at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. Waitress was purchased by Fox Searchlight Films. It opened in theatres May 2nd.

Adrienne's passion in life was to make movies. She lived for her art; she never compromised her integrity or commitment to her vision. She always strived to help women obtain every opportunity possible to create their mark in film.

It is in the spirit of her passion and vision that The Adrienne Shelly Foundation has been established. We know that Adrienne would like us to do everything possible to help young women pursue their filmmaking dreams, and to assist others in making the same leap from acting to writing and directing as Adrienne had done so successfully.

In carrying out our mission, we've partnered with the industry's finest academic and filmmaking institutions to assist women in this journey with film school scholarships, production grants, finishing funds, and other invaluable resources. Other Foundation initiatives will be announced over time.

With your generous tax-deductible donation, you can honor Adrienne's memory, her talent, and help preserve her legacy, while affording others some of the same opportunities she was grateful in life to have experienced.

Adrienne, we love you and will never, ever forget you.
.
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Very sad story.... perhaps Mr. Justice will visit Pillco in prison....
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AiSv Nv wa do hi ya do...
(Walk in Peace)






Yesterday would have been Adrienne Shelly's forty-eighth birthday. This November will mark eight years, already, since her murder.

Back in 2009, a section of Abingdon Square Park in Greenwich Village, across the street from where her office was and she was killed, was dedicated as a memorial to her. Her husband, daughter, and the rest of her family and friends, including some of the famous ones, were on hand for the dedication.

Happily, Waitress was released, and it did quite well for a small indie, bringing in $19-million theatrically. It's a sweet yet dark and weird little movie. I like it a lot. Too bad Shelly wasn't able to enjoy that little taste of mainstream success, see what her next projects might have been.


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Sorry if I'm rude but I'm right
She was brilliant in both Hartley films.
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Look, I'm not judging you - after all, I'm posting here myself, but maybe, just maybe, if you spent less time here and more time watching films, maybe, and I stress, maybe your taste would be of some value. Just a thought, ya know.



For those who liked Shelly as much as I did and who are still saddened by the crime, her widower has put together a nice doc about her life, murder, and legacy for HBO. Interviews with friends, colleagues, and family including her daughter. It premiered this week. Really good.