- A movie talent about to hit big time...
- She was a writer, she was a director,
And she was an actress,
A triple threat in the industry, which is rare.
- Found dead in her greenwich village office bathroom.
- Police sources say there was something around her neck.
- The case appears cut and dried...
- No forced entry, nothing was missing,
Nothing was really disturbed.
You're gonna have to put it down as a suicide.
- But family and friends refuse to believe it.
- I was like, what the hell are you talking about?
She had so much to live for.
- It's an unsettling mystery
That rattles all of new york city and the film industry.
- Everybody's under pressure to solve it,
And to solve it quickly.
- With an ending so twisted, no one saw it coming.
- It's awfully cold. It's awfully calculating.
Sometimes things are not what they appear to be.
♪ ♪
[tense bassy music]
♪ ♪
[siren wailing]
- Over my decades with the nypd,
I saw thousands of open-and-shut cases,
What we call ground balls.
There was a body, and it's obvious what happened.
But sometimes, you get this nagging feeling
That maybe you got it all wrong.
Maybe the truth is not what it appears to be.
One of these cases happened in 2006
In the famous neighborhood of greenwich village,
Where actress and filmmaker adrienne shelly
Was found dead just as her career was about to take off.
[siren wailing]
- November 1st, 2006, at approximately 5:45,
The sixth precinct got a call of a possible suicide,
A woman found unresponsive by her husband
In greenwich village.
Greenwich village encompasses
The lower west side of manhattan.
- Greenwich village is home to
Thousands of students from nyu.
It's a wealthy enclave
Known more for celebrity sightings than violent crimes.
- It is a refuge for the art-minded people.
Hollywood is the place where stars are born.
Greenwich village is the place where
Writers and artists are born.
- We don't have a lot of cases down in greenwich village,
Such as homicides or suicides,
But occasionally, it does happen.
♪ ♪
We responded to 15 abingdon square,
Apartment 47.
♪ ♪
We entered the apartment.
We went into the bathroom, where we found
A white female with blonde hair,
Middle-aged, fully clothed,
Hanging from a sheet
That was tied to a shower curtain rod.
♪ ♪
We examined the body.
- The degree of rigor mortis
Gives detectives an estimated time of death.
- It appeared she had been deceased for at least
Five or six hours.
We noticed a mark over her right eye,
As well as some marks on her cheeks.
♪ ♪
The cause of death appeared to be a suicide,
But I thought that with the marks left on her face,
That something was off.
Something needed to be further investigated.
♪ ♪
- The husband, marketing executive andy ostroy,
Is devastated.
He tells detectives his wife is
40-year-old adrienne shelly.
- Adrienne was a successful actor and director.
She was known for her breakthrough role
In the 1989 film "unbelievable truth."
- She was a writer, she was a director,
And she was an actress.
She was a triple threat in the industry, which is rare.
- The couple lived nearby with their two-year-old daughter.
- Adrienne was madly in love with her baby.
She was the light of her life.
Being a mother was like a superpower for adrienne.
After she got married,
Adrienne kept her former apartment to use as an office.
Adrienne took her writing time very seriously.
And this space was her space,
Her private sanctuary
Where she could concentrate on realizing her vision.
And this was the place of her death.
♪ ♪
- This may look like a suicide,
But because of the scratches on her face,
We can't be totally sure.
- One of the things that the police need to do
Is to look at the people who are close to her
Because you're trying to figure out
Adrienne's reason to end her life.
- You have to try to find her frame of mind.
Was she suicidal? Was she depressed?
Anything else going on?
- Detectives take andy to the nearby
Sixth precinct station house,
Where he describes the events of the day.
- At around 9:30 in the morning,
Andy drops adrienne off at the creative apartment.
The whole day went by, and he hadn't heard a word.
♪ ♪
It was highly unusual for them
To go the whole day without communicating,
But that's exactly what happened.
- As the day went on, his level of anxiety
Got higher and higher.
And as soon as he could, he pulled away from work.
He went down to her workspace at the apartment there
To see why he hadn't heard from her.
And then he walks into the bathroom,
Discovered, you know, this horrible, grisly scene.
♪ ♪
- But andy refuses to believe this was suicide in the least.
♪ ♪
- He tells them there's no suicide note,
That she had no sign of depression
Or any other reason to end her life.
They had a happy marriage.
- He explains to the detectives that two days previous,
That the two of them threw a Halloween party
For their two-year-old child.
♪ ♪
- She had so much to live for.
Adrienne was on the precipice
Of all the dreams coming true;
The husband who loved her,
The beautiful, beautiful baby,
And her other baby, "waitress."
- "waitress" was a movie that she wrote and directed
And appeared in, but it had not been released yet.
- "waitress" is about a young woman
Who builds a better life,
A more beautiful life for herself
Through her creativity, through her baking,
And being a mother.
"waitress" was kind of the realization
Of all of her dreams.
I feel like so much of her heart went into it.
And she worked really, really hard to make it
What she envisioned it to be.
- Adrienne was only days away from learning
If her film had been accepted into the prestigious
Sundance film festival.
- She was more excited than she's ever been
About people seeing her film.
I couldn't imagine that a woman
Who was waiting by the phone to hear from sundance
Felt it was her time to go.
♪ ♪
- Andy and her friends' refusal to believe
Adrienne committed suicide
Does not come as a surprise to the detectives.
- Where it's a possible suicide,
Unless there's a direct note or a direct reason,
The spouse, friends never want to believe
The decedent took their own life.
♪ ♪
My personal feeling is because they would feel responsible.
- We don't know what goes on
In the recesses of somebody's mind.
- Even in apparent suicides,
We still investigate to see if anything points to
A different conclusion,
Especially when everything's not quite adding up.
- Whenever someone dies in the home,
Whether it's an actual suicide or something other,
The body goes to the me for an autopsy.
- Once they did that,
We document the scene the way we see it,
Noting where certain types of evidence are,
What type of evidence it is.
[indistinct radio chatter]
Her belongings were undisturbed.
Nothing seemed out of place.
There was a computer,
As well as her wallet.
The apartment was not ransacked.
- There was no evidence that the door had been jimmied.
There was no evidence of forced entry.
There was no apparent evidence of a struggle.
It appeared nothing had been stolen.
♪ ♪
- Detectives canvass that apartment building,
Knocking on doors.
"did you hear anything, see anything?
Where were you at this time?"
Not one person said they heard anything unusual
Or saw anything out of the ordinary.
♪ ♪
- But then, crime scene investigators
Make a strange discovery.
- So as detectives are examining the bedsheet
That's tied around the curtain rod,
They see something literally hiding in plain sight.
- It had an intricate knot.
And I kept thinking,
If this person was committing suicide,
It seemed to me that they would just
Put a knot together very quickly.
But this knot seemed to be
A little more intricate than that.
It just didn't make sense to me.
♪ ♪
I had a gut feeling that there could be
A little bit more to this story.
♪ ♪
- Coming up...
- This crime scene just didn't add up.
- I was looking at the toilet seat,
I could see the outline faintly of a shoe.
- That's a little weird.
Now where did this print come from?
♪ ♪
[tense bassy music]
♪ ♪
- Actor and filmmaker adrienne shelly has been found dead,
Hanging from a sheet tied to a shower curtain rod.
With no obvious signs of foul play,
It appears to be a textbook suicide,
But there are several details that stick out to detectives.
- As I was looking at the knot that was used,
I immediately thought that something was off.
♪ ♪
- It wasn't a sailor's knot. It wasn't a square knot.
It wasn't a typical hangman's knot.
- It's a unique knot,
Something that adrienne wouldn't know or
Even be interested in knowing.
- And then the case takes another turn.
- As I was looking at the toilet seat,
I could see the outline, faintly, of a shoe.
This particular print was a latent print,
"latent" meaning hidden,
And that's why we used magnet powder.
♪ ♪
Magnet powder is these metal flakes that adhere
To any type of sticky substance
To bring about the actual print that's there.
♪ ♪
As I was doing that, a shoeprint appeared.
♪ ♪
- You can tell it was a sneaker.
How many times are you gonna see a shoeprint
On top of a toilet bowl?
That's a little weird.
- I immediately thought that this was gonna be
Very important to the case
Because the victim didn't have any shoes on.
They were in the living room.
And it didn't match her shoes.
- Where did this print come from?
Who does it belong to?
- At this point,
We need to rule out the possibility
Of it being an innocent print,
That it belonged to anybody else
Who had any business there.
- The husband came back to the scene.
We wanted to see the pattern of his shoes.
♪ ♪
Didn't match.
♪ ♪
- Officers responding to the scene
Could have stood on it
To try to cut her down.
♪ ♪
Ems could have done it trying to save her life,
And not thinking about preserving
Any type of crime scene at the time.
♪ ♪
- Detectives ask all responding uniformed officers
And ems personnel to return to the apartment.
♪ ♪
- And they were not a match.
- They were wearing mostly construction type shoes
To protect their feet from different locations they go to.
This was a sneaker.
♪ ♪
- Now the theory that adrienne took her own life
Is increasingly being called into question.
- There were things about this crime scene
That just didn't add up.
At first glance, it looks like it's likely a suicide,
A young woman who had assumedly hanged herself,
Because it is nearly impossible for somebody to, one-on-one,
To hang somebody who doesn't want to be hanged.
No signs of struggle.
No signs of forced entry.
- There are also no obvious defensive wounds
On adrienne's body.
- But we have a knot that doesn't fit with
Anything she knows.
There's a shoeprint on the toilet seat
That clearly doesn't belong there.
It could mean there was somebody else in that apartment
Who didn't belong there.
♪ ♪
- Detectives are hoping the medical examiner's findings
Will clarify the manner of death.
♪ ♪
The next day, the preliminary autopsy results come in.
- From the autopsy, the medical examiner said
It was death by neck compression.
- While neck compression is consistent with a hanging,
It's not the only possible manner of death.
- But neck compression, it could also be from
Somebody manually restricting the airflow,
Meaning it could have been a homicide.
♪ ♪
- The possibility of homicide
Is enough for our team to follow their instincts
That an investigation is essential.
- You need to take a really close look at everything
And figure out what we have.
- They turned to the only lead they have,
The shoeprint found in adrienne's bathroom.
- Detectives need to find out the size, make, and model.
Is it an expensive shoe?
Is it something unique enough
That will help profile who owns these sneakers?
♪ ♪
- A lot of people watch "csi,"
A lot of crime shows that are on tv.
Making a match with a shoeprint,
It's more difficult than you might believe.
♪ ♪
- Armed with a forensically reconstructed sneaker print,
Detectives visit the sporting goods and shoe stores nearby.
- We learned that it was a reebok, size eight,
Allen iverson type shoe.
- It's a popular model, sold all over the city.
- Making a match to a particular shoe model is
One piece in a 2,000-piece jigsaw puzzle.
And it gets you one step closer to finishing the puzzle,
But you're not quite there yet.
- New york city, with over 8 million people,
It could be anybody.
♪ ♪
- With the shoeprint lead going nowhere,
Detectives renew their efforts
To identify potential suspects.
- We look into her closest friends and associates.
They all had to be eliminated.
Obviously, you're going to include andy.
- But andy's alibi checks out.
His colleagues confirm that he was at the office
At the time of adrienne's death.
Detectives turn to adrienne's work circle.
♪ ♪
- As an actress and filmmaker,
Adrienne had a lot of interests and a lot of different projects
Going on all at once.
People in the entertainment industry are very passionate--
High highs, low lows--
So it wouldn't be out of the ordinary
For artists to be in conflict.
- Speaking with a producer friend,
Detectives get a lead on a writer
Who was pestering adrienne to read his screenplay.
- Adrienne was busy, wasn't necessarily interested.
♪ ♪
She had a nickname for this pseudo screenwriter,
And that was wannabe.
"I wanna be a screenwriter.
I wanna be this. I wanna be that."
It seems that he was very frustrated with adrienne,
Constantly trying to get her attention,
But she wasn't having any of it.
♪ ♪
They track down mr. Wannabe, they find out who he is,
And they go to his apartment.
They get into contact with a representative
From the building,
And they find out
Mr. Wannabe is gone.
♪ ♪
He's left the country.
♪ ♪
[tense bassy music]
♪ ♪
[tense bassy music]
♪ ♪
- In the mysterious hanging death of adrienne shelly,
The police are beginning to investigate the possibility
That her apparent suicide might actually be a murder.
Now we've got a lead on a possible suspect,
A wannabe screenwriter who had apparently been
Harassing adrienne.
♪ ♪
- He was anxious for adrienne to read one of his manuscripts.
Apparently, she hadn't done it.
She didn't want to do it.
There may have been discord.
- So detectives pay this gentleman a visit.
♪ ♪
They find out that he's moved out,
Not only of the apartment,
But out of the country.
They look at his flight records.
- They find out that he had left before adrienne's death.
♪ ♪
- So this gentleman is officially ruled out
As a suspect.
♪ ♪
- As detectives dig deeper into adrienne's world,
They don't find anyone who had a reason to harm her.
- Adrienne didn't have enemies.
She wasn't someone who incited conflict.
She was one of those girls who would break up with someone
And still be good friends with them.
I couldn't envision anyone who knew her
Having hard feelings against her.
♪ ♪
- It's been two days since her death,
And before we can figure out the next move,
The new york city media gets wind of it.
- Nypd investigators are looking into
The mysterious death of actress adrienne shelly.
Police sources say there was something around her neck.
- It was possibly a murder in greenwich village.
It was a big deal.
When you have a popular indie film actress,
A successful film director,
A person a little more well-to-do
Than the normal, average person
Gets killed in her apartment,
That made a lot of people worried.
It even makes the hardened new yorker stop and wonder,
"could I be next?"
- The media gets on the mayor.
They want to know why the city he says is safe
Is now dangerous, particularly in greenwich village,
Where people love to be entertained and congregate.
And everybody's under pressure to solve it,
And to solve it quickly,
Not just because it's the right thing to do,
But it's because it's new york. It's what everybody expects.
- But detectives are out of leads.
- When you've got nothing else,
When you don't know where else to look,
You need to start from square one.
♪ ♪
- Four days into the investigation,
Detectives return to the original crime scene
To follow up on one thing that's been bugging them
From the very beginning.
- There was no sign of forced entry.
The doors and the windows hadn't been jimmied or damaged.
- So that needs to be explained.
How was entry gained?
- The first canvass revealed nothing,
Which is not unusual.
But where you have an unusual crime like this,
Canvasses should be done several times.
Go back. Knock on doors again. Talk to the super.
Talk to the owner of the building.
They need to find out who had access
To the general area of that building,
And perhaps access to the apartment.
Who could have been in the hallway without--
Without raising suspicion?
♪ ♪
On their second visit,
They found that there was construction going on
On a different floor in a nearby apartment.
- It was apartment number 37,
Which is directly below apartment 47,
Where the victim was found.
So they went downstairs.
- The door to apartment 37 is ajar,
So detectives knock and enter,
Hoping to talk to the workers.
But it's the weekend, so there's no one around.
- When they walked in,
They noticed construction paper laid out on the floor.
- There's construction, so there's a lot of dust.
- As the detective's walking around,
He noticed a shoeprint
On this construction paper.
He realized that it sort of matched
The footprint that was on top of the toilet in apartment 47.
When I got to the scene,
The detective brought us into the apartment.
As I looked down and I saw the shoeprint,
I basically said, "wow, ok, that's the same print."
♪ ♪
The reebok, size eight, allen iverson.
The first thought is, "this is not a suicide.
This is a homicide."
[siren wailing]
- Coming up...
- Detectives knock on his door.
Lo and behold, the door opens.
What do they see?
There it is. There's the shoe.
It's the golden slipper.
- This is a major break in the case.
♪ ♪
[tense bassy music]
♪ ♪
[tense bassy music]
♪ ♪
- As new york city is abuzz
With adrienne shelly's unexplained death,
Detectives have finally got the break
We've been looking for.
In the apartment underneath hers,
We found a sneaker print
Like the one found in her bathroom.
- Even though I'm not a shoe expert,
You can see that it was the same pattern,
The same size, the same shoe.
♪ ♪
A reebok, allen iverson, size eight.
♪ ♪
I collected it very carefully
Because it could be a key piece of evidence.
♪ ♪
That particular print did match the print
On top of the toilet seat.
♪ ♪
How did this footprint get into apartment number 47?
Even though we didn't have the story
Of what actually happened,
You can look at it and say the person that's inside
The apartment under construction was upstairs
In the victim's apartment.
We have to find out who wore that shoe.
♪ ♪
It's a sneaker print,
So you're not really thinking construction worker,
Because construction workers don't wear sneakers.
They wear boots.
But you're not gonna rule it out.
- Construction crew likely had the ability
To walk throughout the building,
To bring equipment up and down,
To bring supplies up and down.
There may have been somebody on this construction crew
Who found their way into adrienne's apartment.
♪ ♪
Could that have been the agent of death?
♪ ♪
- They need to see who worked there, when, and what time.
- After talking to the people who owned
The construction firm,
We identified the foreman who was working the job.
- A gentleman named wilson pillco.
♪ ♪
So detectives are off to brooklyn,
To where mr. Pillco lives.
- Hopefully you find out if particular workers
Are wearing this type of shoes.
Then you're gonna go look for that worker.
♪ ♪
- They go to the foreman's house.
They knock on his door.
Lo and behold, the door opens.
♪ ♪
And what do they see?
- There was a backpack on the floor.
Detectives are surprised by what's poking out of it.
♪ ♪
- Reebok sneakers.
- The foreman agrees to let detectives come inside
And take a closer look at the sneakers.
♪ ♪
- It's a men, size eight, allen iverson.
- There it is. There's the shoe.
It's the golden slipper.
They asked the foreman, "who does that belong to?
Is that your shoe?"
- He says no, they're not his,
"they're my brother diego's."
- And he tells them, "he works with me. He's right here."
♪ ♪
- Detectives ask diego,
"would you be willing to come down to the station house?"
He says, "yeah."
- He agreed to be interviewed.
♪ ♪
- Now you really don't know
If he was in the victim's apartment
Until the lab can determine
That this actually is the shoe
That made the print on top of the toilet bowl.
- Subsequent to diego coming down to the station house,
Detectives were able to secure a search warrant.
Those sneakers were taken into evidence.
- Detectives ask the crime lab to fast-track
Its analysis of the shoe.
It doesn't take long for the results to come back.
- The lab did a comparison
With the shoeprint
That was recovered on the toilet seat,
And it was a match.
♪ ♪
- This is a major break in the case.
- This is possibly the person that killed adrienne.
♪ ♪
- Diego pillco was a 19-year-old
Construction worker from ecuador.
He came to this country illegally,
And he was working,
Trying to send money back home to his family.
- Diego pillco is a baby-faced teen,
Not exactly someone who makes you think
A cold-blooded killer.
- They don't know when he was there.
They don't know why he was there.
- He may have a right to have been inside that apartment
For whatever reason.
Maybe he was there to help her to do a handyman thing,
Sort of like fixing the plumbing.
And it could have happened
Days ago, weeks ago, months ago. You do not know.
- Diego readily admits to working in adrienne's building
The day she was found dead.
Detectives show him her photo.
- Diego tells detectives he never saw her before.
- Then detectives catch diego in a lie.
- He tells them he's never been in adrienne's apartment.
♪ ♪
That's when they knew he might be involved in the homicide.
♪ ♪
- Coming up...
- There was no dust on her shoes.
Adrienne shelly was never in that apartment.
People lie, but physical evidence doesn't lie.
♪ ♪
[tense bassy music]
♪ ♪
[tense bassy music]
♪ ♪
- Detectives have in custody
The man who left the shoeprint
Found in adrienne shelly's bathroom,
19-year-old diego pillco,
Who was doing construction work
In the apartment below hers.
♪ ♪
- Diego pillco is now their prime suspect.
But what do they have here?
They know he was in the apartment.
And that's really all they have right now.
- Without direct evidence that diego murdered adrienne,
Detectives need a confession.
♪ ♪
Getting suspects to come clean
Is one of the hardest parts of being a homicide detective.
There is an art to coaxing out a confession.
And sometimes, it's as simple
As looking real close at your suspect across the table.
♪ ♪
- During the course of his interrogation,
A very savvy detective across the table from him
Sees that he's--he's fidgeting with a prayer card.
And she does what any good detective tries to do,
To establish some sort of a rapport with him.
The detective starts to question him about family,
About faith,
And whether he has any children.
And diego pillco tells her that, no,
He doesn't have children, but he has a niece.
"really? How old is your niece?"
And the niece is four years old.
And the detective tells him,
"you know, god acts in mysterious ways,
And sometimes he doesn't punish us for what we've done,
But he can punish somebody that you may love instead.
♪ ♪
And then he says he doesn't want his sins to be
Delivered upon the child.
And at that point, diego gives it up.
♪ ♪
- In an about-face,
Diego says he did see adrienne the day she died.
He says the rest of the crew
Was on the first floor of the building,
So he was alone in the apartment that morning.
- Diego tells detectives
Adrienne shelly came downstairs to complain about the noise.
♪ ♪
- He says adrienne was very agitated
Because of all the work that was going down.
They got into a heated argument.
Diego lost his temper.
♪ ♪
- He said that he slammed the door.
[loud thud]
She then opened the door
And slapped him in the face.
♪ ♪
- She threatened to call the police,
And he was afraid that he would be deported.
♪ ♪
- He followed adrienne shelly up to her apartment.
♪ ♪
- Diego claims he pleaded with adrienne not to report him.
♪ ♪
Then, he saw her grab the phone.
- He said he was a peaceful person,
But that was a trigger for him. That was a real trigger.
It flipped some sort of an emotional switch in him.
- He says he hit her, knocking her to the ground.
♪ ♪
When he saw she wasn't moving, he thought he killed her.
- When he realized what he had done,
He decided to make it look like a suicide.
♪ ♪
- He dragged her into the bathroom,
Wrapped a bedsheet around her neck,
And hung her.
♪ ♪
Diego admits that he got the idea
For the suicide cover-up by something he saw
On a spanish novella back in ecuador.
♪ ♪
He used a hogtie knot that he was familiar with
'cause he used it to tie pigs in his home country.
♪ ♪
- The smoking gun in terms of evidence,
Some people might say it's the footprint.
But for me, it's that knot.
It gives him the knowledge and the skill that's necessary
To carry out what he thought was his cover-up.
♪ ♪
- In my 22 years on the police department,
I never saw a homicide which was
Made to look like a suicide.
♪ ♪
- It's awfully cold. It's awfully calculating.
He hangs her, and he tries to blame it on her,
And have her family, her children, her husband,
Live with that lie for the rest of their lives.
♪ ♪
- In any investigation,
There is a lot of luck that's involved.
And in this case, we did get lucky.
If he had thrown those shoes away,
Diego pillco may have been able to cover up his homicide.
- Pillco's confession about what happened
Also explains the marks found on adrienne's face.
- 19-year-old diego pillco is charged with
Second-degree murder.
Sources say that he admitted
Punching the movie actress in the face
During an argument, causing her to fall.
- When we found out she had been murdered,
I wasn't shocked that it was a random stranger,
Only because I couldn't imagine it was someone that she knew.
But when the "daily news" were saying that
Adrienne got into an altercation
With this stranger and given him a hard time,
I was like, "what the hell are you talking about?"
I knew that couldn't be true.
She was not confrontational.
She was not someone who would argue.
It just wasn't her.
- Adrienne's friends aren't alone in thinking
Diego's story doesn't make sense.
- There were things about his story
That just didn't add up. His story is that
She came downstairs because they were making noise.
- He tells them that she came into
His apartment where he was doing work.
- But detectives had taken note of the construction dust
All over the apartment floor.
- There was no dust on her shoes.
Adrienne shelly was never in that apartment.
♪ ♪
Oftentimes, people lie,
But physical evidence doesn't lie.
It's either there or it isn't there.
- Diego is not telling the true story of
What happened in that apartment that day.
- But diego pillco didn't realize that he was going up
Against investigators who, that's their job,
To find the truth.
♪ ♪
[tense bassy music]
♪ ♪
[tense bassy music]
♪ ♪
- We arrested 19-year-old construction worker
Diego pillco for adrienne shelly's murder.
But the case wasn't over yet.
♪ ♪
- Detectives feel they didn't get
The full or complete story.
- This becomes even harder for the family.
Here, they might be questioning,
Will we ever really know what happened that day?
- Charged with second-degree murder,
Diego is looking at a possible life sentence if convicted.
His defense lawyer and the da negotiate a plea deal.
- He pleads guilty to manslaughter
In the first degree,
And he's sentenced by the court
To 25 years, no parole.
- As part of the plea agreement,
Diego has to come clean about
What really happened the day of adrienne's murder
In front of adrienne's family and friends
Gathered in the courtroom.
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- Ultimately, the account that he gave was that
He owed a lot of money to the people
Who had brought him here from ecuador
And was trying to earn money,
Find money, steal money, from what I understand,
Any way that he could.
- Diego now admits that there was never
A noise complaint from adrienne.
Instead...
He first saw her in the elevator that morning.
And when she got off on her floor,
He decided to rob her.
- The door was open. It was ajar.
He saw the purse on the table...
And went in there to take money out of the purse
And run.
- And she walked in and caught him.
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Said she was going to call the police.
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He put his hand around her mouth
And then knocked her to the ground.
- And at that point, he strangled her...
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And he decided to make it look like a suicide.
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Sometimes things are not what they appear to be
And that's what this case was.
- Diego pillco thought he could outsmart
The new york city police department.
But he was up against
The greatest detectives in the world.
Our duties are to find the truth
And we found the truth.
- This could have been ruled a suicide,
And the family would have never gotten closure.
Now they know what happened,
Now they can finally put her to rest.
- There was a memorial service for her at riverside chapel
Where family gave testimonies
To describe what a great person she was
And how sorely she'll be missed.
- Many of the world's most notable voices in the industry
Live, work, and find inspiration here,
And they gathered to mourn the loss
Of one of their most talented colleagues.
- Over 700 people showed up.
It was a tremendous outpouring.
- We were all at adrienne and andy's wedding together.
We were all at adrienne's funeral together.
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Adrienne's death was devastating
For everyone who had worked with her.
The world lost a beautiful, talented, strong,
Funny, loving woman.
She had something to say, not only as an actress,
But as a writer and as a director.
She was this tiny little firecracker.
She was this little thing,
But she had so much power and so much presence.
When she was going about making "waitress,"
At first they didn't want her to direct.
And then they didn't want her to act in it.
And she just said no.
She really believed in her vision.
Sadly, the true acknowledgment of adrienne's talent
Came posthumously.
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- The day that diego pillco was arrested
For adrienne shelly's murder,
Her film, "waitress,"
Was accepted into the sundance film festival.
[inspiring electronic music]
- It was received so beautifully.
The reviews were fantastic.
"waitress" not only went to sundance
And became a success as a film,
It went on to be a broadway show,
Which was also a huge success, and continues to tour.
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I so wish I could have seen what else she could've created.
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[somber music]
- Across the street from where adrienne created
Some of her greatest work,
They erected a garden in her memorial.
- I believe adrienne would be
So proud of the legacy that she left behind.
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