MURDER ON BROADWAY (The Death of Adrienne Shelly)

one of new york's most beloved actresses was found in a tragic turn of events one day when she was found to have taken her own life or did she on a closer look at the crime scene evidence police quickly discovered that maybe not everything is as it seems in true crime cases so today's video is going to be another solved true crime kiss today we're going to be talking about the death of actress adrian shelley but before we get into it i do just want to thank our sponsor for making today's video possible carestify kirstify have been my go-to for phone cases for years now they are so protective so strong so cute like i have never had my phone smash while i've had a case to fight case on it if you've just got the new iphone 13 or if you're planning on getting it for like christmas or whatever please make sure that you are ultimately protected because that's an expensive phone very expensive fun you don't want to smash it within the first few weeks of having it with chi-tech 2.0 technology 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merch is still on sale right now at eleanorneal.shop there'll be a link down below in the description anyway all that being said i do just want to give my usual disclaimer that i mean absolutely no disrespect to anyone that i talk about in this case this video is for educational purposes and everything that i am about to say is just information that i have found on the internet and i'm compiling into one video a couple of brief content warnings before we get into this one this one doesn't have as many there are brief mentions of suicide and sexual assault or rape although none of those things actually take place in this case it's just mentions of them but still if any of that is something that you feel you can't watch right now please do click out of this video and look after yourself that is the most important thing i'm sure i can see you again at some other point with a different case but for now look after yourself bye-bye and let's get into the case this one takes place in manhattan new york city in late 2006 which is where actress screenwriter and director adrian shelley lived with her husband and her two-year-old daughter sophie adrian shelley was born adrian levine on june 24 1966 she was originally from queens new york she lived there with her parents sheldon and elaine levine and her two brothers mark and jeff but they were only in queens for a couple of years when adrian was still very young they moved out to long island new york and then that was where she was raised she spent her whole childhood in long island and adrian was just a very happy normal girl growing up she worked hard in school she got good grades she had a lot of friends i say she had a lot of friends she was easy to get along with she preferred to keep her actual close friends group smaller i think she had like three close friends that were like her group but she was friends with everyone else in the school in an interview looking back on her childhood adrian said i always had close friends i was at all the parties and i was acquainted with all the popular people i only had three close friends and they were my life adrian had always loved performing as a child like from very very young she was putting on shows when she was like a toddler when i say putting on shows i mean just for her parents and her friends and family and whatever she was so passionate about this that when she turned 10 years old her parents were like okay fine let's put her in a stage school since clearly this is her passion so when she was 10 years old adrian levine was enrolled in the stage dorm manor performing arts training center which is quite a well a very prestigious and very respected acting school for a 10 year old to be a part of it's one of the best in the world it has a really really good reputation there's actors like leah michelle and ansel elgort did robert downey jr go there i mean big big names they get a lot of very talented people studying there and adrian was one of them and it was around this time when adrian was 10 years old that she landed her first big acting role well big her first proper acting role and she was an orphan in a production of annie this was like her first ever professional proper acting job that wasn't just through her school i think and as soon as she did this she just fell even further in love with acting and theater and this whole world this whole industry she was more into theater acting than any other kind of acting she loved all like musicals and putting on a show rather than just like an acting performance she wanted to put on shows she always like all the way through her life she was still doing these shows for friends and family at home and stuff i mean adrian had been very very happy and very happy-go-lucky all her life nothing bad had ever really happened but when she was 12 years old her family got some devastating news when adrian's father passed away and her father sheldon had always helped adrian so much with her career she was only 12 but i mean he was helping her build a career he believed in her he wanted her to go and do well in this chosen field he really believed in adrian and he really wanted to see her grow and go on to become this famous actress that she always wanted to be and so when he passed adrian made it her duty to go on and do that for her father she was gonna do it in his memory and she wanted to find a way to bring her father along on this journey with her and so when she was still very young adrian levine decided to change her stage name to adrian shelley the shelley in reference to her father sheldon so now her father could be with her on every single job that she did so adrian was in this acting school for the rest of her teenage years she was doing so well she really enjoyed it and then when she turned 18 obviously it was time to graduate school and she needed to go on for further education so she was looking at other acting programs like college but for acting um she was looking at some of the best in the country because she'd come from staged all manner stage door manor students could get into any acting program they really wanted because they had that reputation they had the benefit of going to such a great school and so many of these acting programs were so interested in having adrian levine on their course adrian shelley she had so much experience loads of different theater jobs all the way through her teenage years and then of course she went to stage door mana so people were like fighting over andrea and shelly they all wanted her in their acting programs but not everyone was for this idea it was at this point that adrian's mother elaine had to burst her bubble because she wasn't entirely comfortable or happy with her daughter going down this career path as an only option at least she wanted her daughter to have something a bit more practical to fall back on rather than just hoping to make it in the entertainment industry so elaine told adrian that because she was the person that would be paying the tuition fees to whatever college adrian went to ultimately her mother had the final decision on whether adrian should go there or whether she should do that course or this course and her mother told her that she wanted her to do something academic and go to a proper college adrian was heartbroken at this i mean acting really was her passion and she was so talented at it and it really looked like especially with all these places fighting over her that she could make a name for herself in this industry but ultimately she understood what her mother was saying you would have to be quite delusional to think that it would be an easy journey to just go and become a famous well-paid actor and have that as your full-time job forever like it's such a hard industry to get into and maintain as well she understood why her mother wanted her to take a more academic path and sir adrian decided to just go with it so adrian moved to massachusetts and enrolled in boston university doing journalism i mean she liked it she was all right with it but acting acting was always in adrian's heart and eventually she actually found a way to involve acting in her degree at the end of her first year she majored in film production so that she could like do a little bit of acting here and there and at the end of this year she kind of sat down and looked at the last year of her life and she was like yeah it's good i'm doing well i'm getting an education but i'm not happy i'm not doing what i want to be on this earth to do and that was acting she just knew that journalism was not her calling in life film production was not her calling in life acting was and she wanted to be true to herself and so after her first year of university adrian shelley dropped out and she was going to pursue acting full-time so adrian moved back to new york and there she found three girls to move in with one of them was another aspiring actress the other two were strippers and all four of these girls got this like apartment in new york together it was really fun and they were all just kind of working on themselves they were all doing their thing it was a really productive really exciting thing for adrian to be a part of and finally she was starting to live her dream or work her way up to living her dream she took a slight detour with the whole university journalism film production kind of thing but now she was back on track over the years adrian shelley was cast in over 20 off-broadway shows in most of these shows she'd be the lead as well because she was so talented she had all this experience she was from stage door manor but adrian shelley's big break the one that really helped to set up her career happened in 1989 when she met a director named hal hartley hal hartley was currently working on a film called the unbelievable truth and he was trying to cast the lead role of this woman called audrey he'd been trying to cast it for so long and he just could not find the perfect actress to play this character that he'd made in his head all these women were coming in to audition and none of them were good enough none of them could personify this character the way he wanted that was until he met adrian shelley in fact he didn't even meet her scratch that the first impression that hal hartley even got of adrian shelley was a picture of her he saw a picture of her when he was looking for other women to call in for this audition he saw her he was like she's perfect get her in so adrian came down she did a quick script read and honestly hal hartley just fell in love with this woman as an actress she was amazing she was perfect for this part that he was trying to cast so she was cast then and there the unbelievable truth the movie was filmed adrian was brilliant as audrey the film went out and it was a huge hit everyone loved her especially hal hartley the director of this film he was so proud of what he'd put out and he was so proud of adrian shelley as audrey he genuinely felt like he'd struck gold finding this actress he said that her acting was just amazing she was so sweet and innocent and calm but also she had this like feisty side on screen she could do both so well and in such a subtle way that everyone just loved her and hal hartley loved adrian shelley so much that he actually wrote his next film called truth with her in mind so he wrote a whole film around adrian shelley playing the main part because he just loved working with her so much so truth was written and filmed and put out and again that was a huge hit and quickly hal hartley and adrian shelley became kind of like a jeweler kind of a little bit like tim burton and is it helena bonham carter that he he casts in like every single film just because she's perfect for his style i'm lying i forgot that they were married adrian shelley and hal hartley were never in a romantic relationship at all but they did become kind of like a duo if it's a hal hartley film it's probably got adrian shelley in it you know what i mean kind of like the timber ones but anyway after those two films that they made together hal hartley and adrian shelley continued to put out film after film after film and with each one of these they just kept doing better and better every time and people were just falling in love with andrea and shelley she was gaining traction all over america at this point even in hollywood hollywood directors were very aware of who adrian shelley was and they wanted her she got so many offers for different tv series different hollywood films but surprisingly she turned every single one down she was not interested in hollywood or la or that kind of scene at all she loved new york she loved her roots she loved being around her family she just loved where she lived and she was not gonna give that up just for a higher paying acting job in l.a not at all she was staying in new york she was working in new york adrian herself even said the opportunity to go to hollywood was certainly there i'd been offered a lot of different television series which would have made me very wealthy and established in a particular way i didn't want to be established in that way adrian continued to thrive in new york city she was cast for 24 films five tv shows and most importantly she was happy she was happy she was successful she was living her dream life that she'd always wanted right from being a toddler when she was putting on shows in the house to her friends and family and bear in mind the time frame of this case as well it was in the 1990s which is when a lot of women in the entertainment industry especially actresses were overlooked they were underrated they were seen as not as important to the production as their male counterparts but adrian just had something about her that people couldn't ignore people couldn't forget people couldn't overlook her people couldn't underrate her she was very feisty she asked for what she wanted she went and got what she wanted she wasn't feisty in a way that would jeopardize her work because that often happens in this kind of industry you get referred to as a diva and then you won't get any jobs she wasn't rude about it she wasn't mean about it but she was making sure that she got what she deserved just like any man would in that job so yeah as the years go by adrian shelley is just becoming more and more of a household name and then in 1999 she starred in a film called i'll take you there and this film won so many awards she was flown out all over america even to europe i think to go and accept these awards on behalf of the film and she was a star she was but little did she know that things were about to get even better because up until this point adrian shelley had been and i mean this in the most loving and respectful way she had been unlucky in love she hadn't found a man that she liked that liked her that was good she just hadn't been swept off her feet yet and for a very career-focused woman that is what she needed she was not gonna settle for any kind of mediocre man she wanted to be swept off her feet so in the meantime she was focusing on on her career until that man could come along then in 2001 when adrian shelley was in her mid-30s that man finally came along and swept her off her feet his name was andy ostroi andy was the chairman and ceo of a marketing company named baladi ostroi maybe if i got that right but he was a very very dedicated businessman entrepreneur and he was just as dedicated to his work as adrian was with hers and she loved that about him adrian was so attracted to andy he actually had three children to a previous relationship and she loved that about him as well that he was so good with kids he was brilliant with his children and i think adrian knew that she wanted a child herself at some point and so to be able to see that andy is already a good dad she was just she really was swept off her feet she really was over the coming months adrian and andy just fell head over heels for each other they were so in love they were besotted with each other i have a quote here from andy he said i didn't really know what to make of her at first she was like no one had ever met before but i knew right away that she was special there are very few people in this world who are really unique and she touched you in a way that meant you would never forget her it's hard to explain she had a big smile and a genius iq after a year of dating adrian and andy tied the knot in 2002 in a very private wedding ceremony i think they only had like friends and family there and not long after that adrian actually fell pregnant with andy's baby they were gonna have a baby together and they were over the moon but then adrian was very quickly hit with the realities of pregnancy i personally haven't been through it myself but those of you that have probably relate to what adrian is feeling right now and that is the pregnancy is nothing like how it is portrayed in the media or in movies or films tv shows it's almost always described as this like beautiful journey between a mother and her child and the life growing in her womb and she's got this pregnant glow and like it's all magical in reality it is the most stressful and horrendous nine months of a woman's life tv shows and movies back then in the 90s didn't show the negative sides of pregnancy kind of like what we see in tv shows now now they do it especially when it's like for comedic purposes like back pain and grouchiness and morning sickness and this this and that like films back then only wanted to focus on the nice magical part of pregnancy and then adrian fell pregnant and she was like what the hell is happening to my body she just found it quite unbelievable actually being an actress herself in the film industry that pregnancy is just so terribly portrayed it's portrayed as if it's just all fun and happy and and rainbows and unicorns it's absolutely not and so she felt like she now had this responsibility to other women to portray a pregnancy as this very natural very normal very realistic thing that it is she wanted so badly for someone to make a film where pregnancy and childbirth is portrayed accurately and if no one else was gonna make it adrian shelley was gonna make it herself and so adrian shelley got to work writing a film called waitress and in waitress she just channeled all of these raw emotions and thoughts and feelings through the characters there were a lot of deep things that adrian addressed in this film that no one else was really addressing or like feelings that she was addressing that no one else had ever really shown in films such as like the fear that women have when they fall pregnant that their life is never going to be the same again or that maybe their child is going to impact their career or you know all these feelings that women don't ever really want to admit because it seems selfish or this that and the other but they're very real feelings that almost every single woman will have during her pregnancy and adrian wanted to show that adrian completed the first draft of this movie waitress when she was eight months pregnant with her daughter so she was ready to pop and she said she later described the film waitress as a love letter to her daughter and of course just a month after that she gave birth to a beautiful baby girl named sophie ostroi and after the birth adrian was so proud of waitress this first draft that she'd put together she didn't even waste any time she was right back working as soon as she gave birth because she was like i want to get this finished i want to get this out into the world so she neatened up all the writing and then it came to actually filming waitress and she knew that her family had been such an influence in how she'd created this film her husband andy had been so supportive through the pregnancy of course her daughter sophie had been the pregnancy so she wanted to get her involved somehow and so adrian actually came up with two little cameos throughout the film that her husband andy could have and her daughter sophie so andy was just some guy called cake man like like an extra kind of thing and sophie at the end was a girl called lulu so they both got very brief little um cameos in this film that adrian had worked so hard on and been so inspired by them to create adrian herself actually starred in her own film she was a waitress called dawn in 2006 the film was all finished completed finalized and adrian shelley submitted the film waitress into sundance festival sundance festival if you haven't heard of it it is a big deal in the film world it is it's all for like independent writers and producers and creators obviously it's a film festival did i mention that they get like 5 000 submissions every year and from those 5 000 submissions of different independent creators films just like adrian shelley they have to narrow that 5 000 down to just over 100. that is insane adrian knew that the chances of her film being selected and approved to be shown at sundance festival were very very small from 5 000 to 100 films she knew that the chances were unlikely but she had a lot of faith in this film she was so proud of it and so she was hopeful anyway it would take her a while to get news back on whether her film had been approved or accepted or not so i mean i think it takes months actually because obviously they've got to watch all 5 000 films so in the meantime as she was waiting to hear back adrian just got on with some other work i think she started a new project or something she was working from home and of course she had her daughter at home with her and working from home is difficult at the best of times you've got a lot of distractions around you it's hard to get stuff done but especially when you've got a newborn baby daughter there as well she was very very distracted she was finding it so hard to get anything done working from home and so adrian shelley made the decision to actually hire out some office space but it wasn't actually an office she actually hired out a whole other apartment in a completely different apartment block so that she could go to work in a different home so she was like still working from home but it was a different home where all her distractions were not this second apartment that she got to work in was in the abingdon square apartment block in manhattan's west village and she was so happy i mean it was perfect it was perfect for what she needed she really enjoyed this situation she likes like getting up in the morning and leaving for work she spent all of her working hours there in that apartment when she wasn't filming i mean she was filming quite a lot but any working hours where she was writing or just doing admin work she would be at that apartment and adrian and andy formulated this whole routine around adrian going to this other house they would get up they would all have breakfast together as a family and then andy would i think they would drop off sophie at daycare or whatever and then andy would take adrian to her work apartment drop her off there andy would go to work and then at the end of the day adrian would give him a text or a call and be like can you come pick me up now and then he'd go and pick her up and they'd all go home together so they fell into this routine adrian was getting so much more work done now that she wasn't at home everyone was happy and they were finally like this proper nice little family unit having these little family breakfast and then all going off to work it was so it was so cute but then on november 1st 2006 this routine didn't quite go to plan well i mean it started off just as any other day so andy dropped off adrian at her work apartment at about 9 30 a.m that morning he kissed a goodbye and watched as she walked into the building and went off to her little workspace and so he went off to work too but then as the day went on andy noticed that adrian hadn't text him all day which was quite unusual for her she liked a good update she liked a good update text here in there and to be fair she would normally update him on like actual things like what time she's thinking she's going to be finished for the day because remember he picked her up so he kind of needed these updates as the day went on so he could expect a time but there were none there were no texts that he got all day and he was like well this is weird i normally would have had a few by now but he didn't think too much into it maybe she was just like super into her work that day i think he tried to call or text her or something a couple of times but she didn't pick up and so he thought well maybe she just left her phone at home and then eventually 5 30 p.m rolls around and this is around the time that adrian would usually want picking up it was normally different every night but she never normally stayed past six and andy checked his phone and still there was no text no updates no nothing from adrian and so he tried to call her again again she didn't pick up and so he's thinking well if she has left her phone at home and that's why i can't get in touch with her that'll be why i've got no texts and that'll also mean that she has no way of getting her because she can't contact him to say can you come and pick me up now and so this is when andy started to panic a little bit he looked outside it was already dark because it was november it was only half five and it was pitch black outside and he was like oh my god i hope she doesn't try to walk home alone so he got in his car and he sped down to the apartment block where she worked to hopefully bump into her on the way out so that he could give her a lift home and they'd be safe so andy arrived at the apartment building at about 5 45 pm that day and he walked into the lobby of the building obviously he didn't have a key adrian was the only person that had a key for her work apartment so he walked over to the doorman kind of explained the situation he explained who he was that he was adrian's husband and that she kind of rented out an apartment to work in the doorman actually recognized andy from when he dropped adrian off every single morning the doorman had seen him giving her a goodbye kiss every single day he knew who andy was and so he trusted him the doorman told andy that he had a master key for every single apartment and so he was more than happy to take him up to adrian's apartment to check on her so the two men went up in the lift they got to adrian's floor and then the doorman goes to take out his key and as he goes to put it in the door the door just pushes open it was unlocked and that was when andy really started to panic because adrian was not the type to leave the doors unlocked around her she would always lock the door whenever she left anywhere or whenever she came into anywhere she didn't like being on her own so already andy's thinking that's weird something's wrong the doorman just pushed open the door and he was like do you want to go in he offered to wait outside for andy he could go in and check on adrian and if he needed anything he could always just call out to the doorman if he needed help sir andy thanked the doorman for all of his help and he turned to go inside adrian's apartment on a first impression as soon as he looked through the doorway nothing seemed to miss everything seemed like it was in its usual place just as adrian always kept it but it was as andy entered the hallway that things started to get concerning because in there was all of adrian's stuff her shoes were just neatly placed to the side her bag was still hung up her coat was still hung up and i mean this was where she always kept them when she was working she always took her shoes off when she entered the apartment and left them neatly at the side she would always leave her bag on the hook and her cut on the hook as she was working and so andy called out into the room he was calling adrian's name thinking well she's clearly in here she's clearly working but there was no response adrian didn't shout back to him and sir andy continued through the apartment he's checking in all these different rooms and she's not in there nothing seemed weird about any of the rooms either that was until he got to the bathroom it was the last room for him to check and when he swung open the door he found the most traumatizing scene in there was adrian shelley hanging from the shower rail she had a bed sheet tied around her neck and tied around the shower rail her body was hanging there and her face was just pale white andy grabbed her body and started screaming and crying as soon as the doorman heard this he rushed in they were both trying to untie adrian get her down but it was too late adrian's body was already cold she was already dead so andy called the police to come over and assess the scene and after a quick look around her apartment they quickly ruled her death a suicide an autopsy was done on adrian shelley and it came back that her cause of death was from compression to the neck it all seemed like maybe she had just taken her own life it was so unexpected it was so sudden and now all of her family are left grieving thinking what more could we have done could we have helped her if we'd have known that she was struggling could we have saved her life but her husband andy the father of her child the love of her life the man who knew her better than anyone else on this whole planet he had a really hard time accepting the suicide ruling because he knew that adrian wasn't depressed she wasn't unhappy with her life in fact she was so happy about life she was so excited about everything that was going on they just had their daughter she just finished waitress she was waiting to hear back from sundance festival everything was going on for her i mean there was always the chance that maybe she was depressed deep down inside i mean after all she was an actress for a living maybe she'd just been acting like she wasn't depressed to her friends and family for a long time maybe they just hadn't known andy just knew that adrian wouldn't want to take her own life and leave her daughter without a mother he just knew that she wasn't gonna do that but that wasn't the only reason that andy didn't believe this was a suicide there were also some actual suspicious pieces of evidence in this case as well like the fact that the door was unlocked adrian never left the door unlocked there was no suicide nerd i mean this kind of goes back to the fact that maybe she was like acting like she wasn't depressed but her husband thought that if she had taken her own life at least there would be a note to her daughter or to him somewhere because she wasn't the type to just give up and kind of leave without any prayer notice i suppose or final words or you know she would never do this to her family she loved them too much to just leave without saying anything but most importantly one of the most suspicious parts of this whole case is that adrian's purse that was found still hanging up in the hallway that andy himself had walked past that purse was found without any cash inside it and adrian always carried cash so did this mean that she'd been robbed had someone stolen the money out of adrian's bag in her hallway and to andy this was a clear indicator that someone must have killed adrian and stole her money along with the murder because these were just so many little things that were now adding up the fact that he didn't think that she was suicidal and the fact that she left the door unlocked and then her bag was robbed i mean it's all adding up he begged the police to look into this case further because he was not convinced that his wife had killed herself he thought that someone had murdered her and made it look like a suicide or tried to cover it up in some way and clearly it had worked and he was begging the police saying no i really don't think adrian would have done this i really don't think she did but they were refusing to them i mean i understand it from the police's point of view as well this looked like a suicide and the autopsy even came back to confirm that but andy did not stop he kept begging them he kept campaigning like doing like public campaigns to try and get the public on his side to get police to reopen this case finally after a while of battling with them they did they decided to reopen this case so the first thing that police decided to do now that this case was reopened was go down to the apartment where adrian shelley worked where her body was found because this is now a potential crime scene if andy's right and she was murdered then that is a crime scene and for that exact reason actually andy himself hadn't been back to that apartment in months since the day that he found adrian's body he has not stepped foot back in that apartment because he was too scared to contaminate or affect any potential evidence that could be in there so police went into this apartment and they're looking around and upon a closer inspection of the bathroom where adrian's body was found they found a shoe print on the toilet lid the toilet was right next to the shower in this bathroom and so the nypd theorized that this shoe print had been left when someone had obviously used a foot up to be able to tie the bed sheet on the shower rail where adrian was found hanging so if the suicide theory the suicide ruling the official ruling is correct that adrian tied that sheet herself to kill herself then how has she left a shoe print because if you remember adrian took her shoes off every time she entered her own apartment and they were there andy even walked past them when he went to go and find her body police tried to compare her shoes with this footprint but they just weren't matching up there wasn't a single pair of shoes in that whole apartment that matched the shoe print on the toilet so it can't have been adrian's someone else must have stood on that toilet to tie the bed sheet to the shower rail and then probably tie the other end to adrian shelley maybe her husband was right it was now looking like adrian shelley was murdered so straight away police reopened this case now as a murder inquiry and their biggest lead obviously their only lead as well at this point in time was this shoe print so forensic tests were done on this shoe print and it was concluded that the print was made in gypsum dust and gypsum dust is a very specific type of dust it's usually found or made on construction sites usually when people are putting up drywall you know when it gets really dusty on a construction site it's that kind of dust whoever had made this footprint on adrian shelley's toilet had stood in some gypsum dust which told police quite a lot about their suspect that maybe he was a construction worker so police had a quick look around the area to see if any construction was being done and believe it or not the construction was being done in the exact same building actually on the floor below adrian shelley's work apartment there was construction going on right underneath adrian shelley's apartment on the day that she was murdered so this told police everything they needed to know so police went to that apartment underneath adrian shelley's that was being constructed on to go and see who was there what was going on and there were those same gypsum dust footprints all over this room they knew that their guy must be close they went inside this apartment that was being worked on and inside there was one man and on the soles of his shoes was all this dust this man's name was diego pilker he was the one working on the construction in that building and so police just asked him if they could come and speak with them for a moment and when diego stood up they noticed that he had scratches all over his face police asked him how he'd got these scratches but he couldn't really give them an answer he just kind of shrugged it off and didn't really explain and again that was a big red flag for police so right now there's so many red flags about this man and they've only just met him matching shoe prints scratches potential self-defense scratches all over his face police decided then and there to just arrest this man so this man like i said was named diego pilker he was actually 19 years old very young he was an illegal immigrant originally from ecuador he'd been smuggled over to the us quite recently i think before this case and he was actually in a fair bit of debt twelve thousand dollars to the person that had smuggled him over he like owed him that money for bringing him over and so he was working as a construction worker to pay off that debt he got a job with a contracting company called bradford general contractors and they were a semi-shady business themselves they knew that diego was an illegal immigrant or maybe they turned a blind eye i don't know but um they kept their background checks very minimal for this exact reason because they knew that they were hiring a lot of illegal immigrants most of their workforce were illegal immigrants but they were willing to give these people jobs they were willing to turn a blind eye if these people were willing to work for cheap so it worked for both parties i suppose very exploitative from the company's perspective but i mean it you know so diego was given a job through this contracting company he was actually given accommodation with it as well so not only did he have a job and money but he also now had a place to stay he was staying in a basement of a different building that was owned by the company so now police are faced with this 19 year old boy diego pilker that could be a murderer and so they decided to take him into an interrogation room they put all the cameras on all the audio tape recording equipment and they interviewed him one of the first questions they asked diego was did you kill adrian shelley and quite surprisingly diego just looked up at them and confessed he said he killed her but he insisted that he wasn't a bad person for doing it diego says that the first time he met adrian shelley was earlier on the day that she died she came downstairs to him from her apartment to the one underneath to complain about the construction noise because he was doing construction work he was noisy he was drilling he was banging and adrian told him that she couldn't concentrate on her work she couldn't get anything done while he's making that much noise and so she asked him if he could hold off for a while she asked him if all the noisy bits could wear and supposedly this angered diego pilker he found adrian very annoying and entitled and she was talking as though her work was more important than his and so in his anger at what she just said to him he was just trying to get her to leave he didn't want her in his construction site any longer and so he picked up a hammer and threw it in her direction now i don't know if he was trying to throw it at her and trying to hit her with it and hurt her or if he was just throwing it her way just to be like go away either way it didn't hit her but obviously it was enough to scare her i mean she'd just been physically threatened well almost hit with a hammer and sir adrian starts shouting at diego like what do you think you're doing i'm gonna call the police you just tried to attack me and so she turns round and walks back over to the lift she presses the button on the lift she's waiting for it to come she's gonna go back up to her apartment grab her phone and call the police and report diego pilker for assaulting her for throwing this hammer at her and this mention of the police terrified diego pelker remember he is an illegal immigrant if police come down to the scene and they meet this guy that's not on the system he's not registered they're gonna find out is an illegal immigrant and he's gonna get deported he cannot let adrian shelly call the police so he ran over to her where she was waiting for the lift and he was trying to calm her down and trying to apologize and just trying to like defuse the situation but she wasn't having it and i mean quite rightly so this man had just thrown a hammer at her adrian just didn't want to hear it she was just standing there waiting for the lift but diego knew that he could not let her go through with this he had to stop this plan for her to call the police somehow and so he came up with plan b and plan b was for him to take the stairs adrian was waiting for the lift he decided to run up the stairwell to her floor he knew that she lived on the floor above because she told him i mean she came to complain about the noise saying that she lives above so he knew where to go he ran up the stairwell and hid on adrian shelley's floor waited for her to get the lift up waited for her to get out of the lift walk over to her apartment and open the door as she did diego ran up to her grabbed her arm and again started pleading with her please don't call the police please don't call the police but this only scared adrian even more i mean this man that had just thrown a hammer at her had now run up the stairs and was now physically grabbing her not letting her go into her own apartment she was terrified she didn't know what this man was gonna try and do to her in that moment adrian's fight or flight instinct kicked in she knew she couldn't run away from this man i mean he had hold of her arm so her only other option was to fight and so she starts hitting him she starts scratching him trying to get him off her she was screaming and shouting screaming for help but for some reason maybe no one else lived on her floor but no one heard her no one heard her screams for help diego told the police that when adrian started hitting him and scratching him and everything this only made him even more angry because he threw a hammer at her and it didn't even hit her and she's threatening to call the police but why when it's the other way around and she's hitting him why is that okay i mean it's naff logic from him but he says that that's why he was mad he was mad that she was now hitting him when she had such a problem with him almost hitting her i mean they are two very different situations i don't know why he doesn't understand that and the differences between these situations when he threw a hammer at a woman that was not a danger to him and she's just acting in self-defense anywhere he said that as soon as she started hitting him it made him really angry and so he decided to just turn to her and punch her square in the face and that one punch in the face knocked adrian shelley out she collapsed to the ground and when she hit the ground her head smacked the floor so hard it made such a loud noise that diego pilker froze and he thought that he just killed her he hadn't killed her he'd knocked her unconscious but he didn't know that and so from this point on he's acting as though he's already killed adrian shelley and he knew he needed to do something about it he knew he needed to get rid of this murder victim in any way that he could and then he got the idea to cover this up as a suicide so diego ran around the apartment for a minute trying to find something to tie adrian up with he already had this plan in his brain that he was going to make it look like she hung herself eventually he found this bed sheet and so he took it and then dragged adrian's body to the bathroom he used the toilet to stand on to get up to the shower rail to tie one end of the bed sheet and then he tied the other end around adrian's neck he described doing this what he did to adrian as the way you strung up pigs back home in ecuador and once he'd finished once he had tied adrian in place to where this would look like a suicide diego pilker just left he left adrian's apartment closed the door behind him went downstairs and continued working on his little construction site as if nothing had ever happened as if he hadn't just killed a woman upstairs little did he know adrian actually wasn't dead at this point which is one of the most horrifying aspects of this case i think is that she could have lived had he not tried to cover this up as a fake suicide and tied her up and then killed her she would have survived but instead she just hung there from the shower rail for minutes until she eventually was strangled to death by this bedsheet and that is how she died i can't imagine what it would have been like if she did wake up because obviously she was knocked out i don't know if she did come back to consciousness before she died or if she was still passed out when she died but if she did wake up from being knocked out by this guy and then she looks around and she's tied up in the bathroom hanging from the shower rail i can't imagine the horror but like i said if diego pilker had left when he just punched her just injured her then she would have survived in fact the head injury that she sustained when she fell to the floor wasn't even that serious it wasn't that bad it must have just sounded serious to diego i guess in fact the coroner that did the autopsy on adrian shelley said that the head injury was so minor he was actually surprised it knocked her out so anyway police have this full confession from diego pilker now which is obviously the best form of evidence that they can get but they did want some supporting evidence alongside it they didn't want to just go to court with a confession and nothing more so together some supporting statements the police went back to the apartment building and they went and interviewed all the neighbors on that same floor where diego was working on this apartment just to get people's kind of impressions of him what kind of guy was he what kind of presence was he in that building none of the neighbors had ever really spoken to diego nothing more than just like a passing high in the hallway so none of them could really say much to police but there was this one woman that lived on that on that floor and she told the police that diego pilker had a bit of a staring problem it was with the young women in the apartment building of course it was he would stare at them as they passed in corridors he would watch them as they left their apartments and went and waited at the lift like he would just stop his work and just like stare at them as they were waiting for the lift really weird he never made a pass at anyone he never made comments or anything like that never wolf whistled or like tried to pull any of these women he just stared it was just weird and creepy in fact this one neighbor that was telling the police about this that diego is really weird and scary she told them that she actually intentionally stopped leaving her apartment when she knew that diego was working out there because she just she felt so uncomfortable so that gave them a better idea of what kind of person diego was well not what kind of person but what kind of energy and presence he had in this building a lot of people felt that he was weird towards women meanwhile as police were doing these interviews with all the other residents other police were up in adrian shelley's apartment doing forensic tests although there was very very little if anything in the way of forensic evidence there were no fingerprints there were no hairs no fibers no dna nothing to link diego pilker to adrian shelley's murder literally nothing other than the footprint and it was around this time that police noticed something odd about diego pilker's story that he told so he told the police that this whole thing took place this whole interaction between him and adrian shelley started that day because adrian came downstairs from her apartment to come and tell him off about the noise tell him to stop drilling so that she could get on with her work so if she went down to that construction site would she not have her shoes on remember her shoes were found neatly placed in the hallway as they always were when she was working so she hadn't put her shoes on she hadn't moved her shoes at all there was no dust on them they weren't like laying around because if she had died in a struggle like diego is trying to say that she did then surely her shoes wouldn't be neatly placed by the wall where she always kept them surely she would have put them on to go down and see this construction site and then when she died in the struggle they would have come off i suppose you could argue that maybe she didn't even put her shoes on when she left for the construction site maybe she went down to talk to diego didn't even put her shoes on when she went down in the lift but then she would have that dust on her socks she didn't have that dust on her socks there was no dust anywhere in adrian's apartment apart from this footprint there weren't even any traces of gypsum dust in her hair or on her clothes or on her skin it was as if she was never even at the construction site it just did not line up with diego's version of events and also remember the one big thing that led andy to believe that his wife was murdered was that money was stolen out of her bag and diego pilker's story doesn't mention anything about adrian's purse so how and when had her money been stolen had he stolen her money after he finished framing her murder as a suicide like had he just walked back through the hallway and just taking the money on the way out i think if you just murdered someone by accident you'd be so shook up that the last thing you're thinking of doing is robbing your accidental murder victim why is he going out of his way to steal money from this woman that he didn't mean to kill on his way out of her apartment another thing about diego's story that doesn't quite add up is the scratches all over his face as far as he has told the police this altercation between him and adrian was just like a one punch and she was knocked out kind of thing she didn't have that much time to be assaulting him and scratching him as badly as he was it seemed to police that the altercation between adrian and diego must have been a lot longer than diego was admitting because he had a lot of scratches on his face it wasn't just like a little thing that happened police could just tell at this point in time that they weren't getting the full truthful story from diego pilker they didn't know what he was hiding or what he was changing or what he was covering up they didn't know the details that he wasn't giving over right now but they knew that there were details that they didn't have but the only person that knows what happened is diego pilker it was going to be so hard for them to differentiate what is fact and what is just a lie from him that was until this case went to court in 2008 when diego pilker stood trial for the murder of adrian shelley he stood up there on the dock and gave an entirely different sequence of events than the one that he confessed to police he said that he actually bumped into adrian that day not when she came down to complain about the noise he said that he'd gone on his lunch break and as he was walking back to the building adrian was also coming back inside the building so they kind of met up outside on their way in maybe she'd been out for her lunch too but the two of them went inside the building and he recognized her actually from her films he knew that she was adrian shelley he knew that she was a successful famous actress and that she probably had a lot of money or at least more money than him anywhere and in that moment he got the idea to rob her to rob adrian shelley so diego waited for adrian to press the button on the lift and get inside and he followed in after her he acted very unsuspicious at this point in time he acted like nothing was even happening they went up to adrian's floor in the lift and then adrian got out and walked over to her apartment thinking that this guy was going to continue in the lift to whatever his flaw was but he didn't diego didn't press a button in the lift so the lift wasn't going anywhere he just stood in there and watched adrian just watched what she did next adrian walked over to her own apartment she unlocked the door and her hands were full of bags she'd just been out for like lunch or whatever and so she didn't actually close the door behind her this wasn't something she did often but her hands were full she walked into a different room in the apartment to go and put her bags down and left the front door of the apartment wide open and diego saw his opportunity he approached adrian's apartment and snuck inside he creeped into the hallway which is where adrian kept her bag and her cut and everything and he opened up her bag he's starting to go through it grabbing all the cash that he can find and in that moment when he's holding the bag in his hand he's grabbing all the cash out putting it in his pockets adrian walks back into the hallway and she's startled by him she screams there's a man in her house so diego's fumbling about he's trying to put the money in his pocket and just run for it but then he sees adrian pick up her phone and she shouts i'm gonna call the police and he freezes again diego knew that he could not let adrian call the police on him because if the police come they will find out he's an illegal immigrant they'll deport him he owes all this money he doesn't want that to happen he can't let adrian call the police so diego ran at her and tried to physically grab the phone out of her hand so that she couldn't call the police and of course this terrified adrian shelley not only was this a man that was trying to break in and steal her stuff but now she's being physically assaulted by this man she doesn't know what he's gonna try and do to her so she's screaming she's trying to fight back as much as she can diego said she was slapping him she was scratching him that's where all the scratches on his face came from it was from this altercation and diego said that halfway through this he realized that adrian was being very loud like she was screaming really loud obviously screaming for help screaming to get this man off of her but he realized that if she kept screaming this would be drawing attention to them and it would obviously end in the police again he needed to stop the police from coming in any way that he could he knew he needed to shut up adrian shelley i have a quote here from diego himself he said out of desperation i got scared and covered her mouth when i noticed she fell to the floor i was very scared when she fell to the floor i saw a sheet and i decided to choke her that's what happened it was when adrian started screaming that diego knew he needed to stop her so he put his hand over her mouth and smothered her although we know that this didn't kill her so it's believed that this actually knocked her out like she passed out from lack of oxygen or something like that and from there that is when diego dragged adrian shelley's body to the bathroom to cover up his crime again from here on it's the same as the other story this part doesn't change where he stood up on the toilet tied the bed sheet tied it to adrian and then left and carried on with his work dare so it's pretty much the same story in terms of how adrian died it's just kind of the little details and the run-up to the murder that make more sense now it fits with the forensic evidence better now but this still means that it was the suicide cover-up that actually killed adrian shelley still whatever he did to her didn't kill her he still killed her when she was hanging from that shower rail but even though we have this second more accurate version of events some of you are gonna hate me for saying this we still don't know if that's actually what happened because it is just diego pilco's word against diego pilco's other word there is absolutely no way for us to know exactly what happened in that apartment that day because the only person that does know is diego and it seems that he likes to change his story all the time it's entirely possible that maybe this second story isn't true either but maybe he came up with this second story to explain the inconsistencies in his first story so maybe neither of them are true maybe we do we still don't know why he killed adrian shelley maybe it was for one of those reasons maybe it was entirely different her husband andy thinks that diego pilco is just a cold-hearted killer and that he wanted to kill adrian it wasn't an accident police are very much unsure whether robbery was his initial motive or not he says it was he says that he saw adrian recognized her from the films and then wanted to rob her because he knew that she would have money but is that true we don't know some police think that maybe there was a sexual motive maybe he tried to get sex out of adrian she refused and that's why he killed her and maybe he just grabbed the money from her purse on his way out maybe that wasn't the sole motive maybe it was just you know a byproduct of the murder that he wanted to commit on march 13th 2008 diego pilker pled guilty to first degree manslaughter and for that he was sentenced to 25 years in prison without the possibility of parole after that 25-year sentence is up he will actually be deported to ecuador immediately at his sentencing hearing diego actually tried to speak with adrian's family the family of the woman that he murdered and he tried to beg for forgiveness from them of course they declined and the judge actually turned to diego and said i don't think you'll get that sir also at the sentencing adrian's family were given the opportunity to speak directly to him to diego and andy said you are nothing more than a cold-blooded killer and he hopes that diego rots in jail he said to him i want you to suffer like she suffered to live a life of fear the same fear that she felt when she realized that she was about to die and diego pilker responded to andy ostroi saying i came with a purpose here to the u.s to work and to help my family out but my life has changed i left my house with the purpose of working not to hurt anyone and this is what i deserve saying that prison is what he deserves one really bittersweet aspect of this case was that following adrian shelley's death in 2007 waitress was accepted into the sundance festival lineup thing just like she'd hoped at sundance festival the films are normally presented by the director so it would have been adrian but of course she wasn't there to present her own film anymore and sir andy went up and did it for her waitress turned out to be adrian shelley's most successful piece of work ever it was up for 16 different awards and won six of those oh wait no it was nominated for 16 and one a further six so that's what 22 in total 22. waitress the film was purchased by 21st century fox for about four or five million dollars which is insane by the way adrian did so well with this piece and it later went on to have a box office draw of 19 million dollars she was so successful with this film in 2015 waitress was adapted into a musical format and oh my god it's been everywhere it's been on broadway it's been on the west end in london it's been on some of the most famous stages in the world and you might be familiar with waitress as a musical because even a couple of youtubers have been in those productions joe sugg was in it on the west end in london he played like the love interest in it i think colleen ballinger aka miranda sings she was on it on broadway and colleen actually played adrian's character in it she was dawn the waitress just like adrian was in 2007 adrian's husband andy ostroi opened the adrian shelley foundation and this foundation helps to source funding for scholarships or grants for any female filmmakers or producers people just like adrian shelley that had this passion for the industry and for acting and for writing and creating that maybe can't afford to follow these dreams the foundation helps to put these people on the right track give them the right education to get there andy ostroi following adrian's death has actually tried to take bradford general contractors to court saying that they are partly liable for adrian's death because they hired diego pilco and didn't run any background checks like they could have been hiring anyone they didn't know who this guy was and they were just letting him go and you know construct in a residential building putting all those people in that building in danger he tried to say that had they done proper background checks they might have found something and then they might not have hired him had they not hired him adrian would still be alive today but there is one problem with this argument i understand what he's trying to say but at the same time diego pilker didn't have a previous criminal record he'd never committed a crime before this and so you know even if the company had done a background check on him nothing scary would have come up i mean they wouldn't have had any reason to think that he was too dangerous to work in that building that day you know the only thing that would have come up if they'd run a background check was the fact that he was an illegal immigrant but that has nothing to do with the murder or his i don't know potential to be dangerous ever since the death of his wife adrian andy has never been the same he's he's never moved on he's never remarried gotten another girlfriend or anything like that no one compares to adrian to him adrian was the love of his life i didn't really want to end the video on this note but i don't know where else to put this but we are about to talk about donald trump so if that's something you don't want to listen to feel free to click out girl whilst he was at the peak of his power donald trump when he was president was trying to use adrian shelley as a poster girl essentially for anti-immigration laws saying that diego pilker was an illegal immigrant and letting him into the country allowed for the murder to take place he said that if immigration laws were stricter then adrian shelley would still be alive today and while this probably is true yes at the same time i think it's quite disgusting to turn a murder into this whole political anti-immigration thing and andy felt the same way adrian's husband was disgusted to hear that his wife's name was being brought up as a political prop he called it so he came out and he did a bunch of different statements saying that adrian shelley was not murdered by an illegal immigrant she was murdered by a bad man it was nothing about where diego was from where he ended up where he lived where he was raised none of that made him a murderer the fact that he was in the country illegally did not make him a murderer the fact that he was a horrible person made him a murderer but that is all i have for this case thank you so so much for watching and thanks again to caresta5 for sponsoring this video if you want to get 15 off of your order on case to fi you can go through the link down below in the description of this video which is justcastify.com forward slash eleanor the 15 discount code will be applied automatically to checkout so don't even worry girl a huge huge thank you to all of my channel members for supporting me and helping decide the cases that i cover especially my tier 2 members whose names are all on screen right now if you want to become a channel member you can click the link to do so in the description or you can click the join button if you're on a desktop thank you so so much for watching this video if you enjoyed please leave a thumbs up down below because that would really help me out if you want to subscribe there's a link to do so right here if you want to subscribe to my second channel there's a 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Channel: Eleanor Neale

Views: 981,018

Keywords: eleanor, neale, eleanor neale, eleanor neale true crime, mystery, unsolved, unsolved mystery, true crime, solved, documentary, killer, murder, serial killer, buzzfeed unsolved, podcast, true crime podcast, netflix, storytime, interview, news, adrienne shelly, adrienne shelley, adrien shelly, adrienne, shelly, shelley, waitress, hal hartley, andy ostroy, waitress musical, west end, broadway, show, theatre, murder on broadway, 2021, actress, actor, model, hollywood, new york, true crime daily

Id: YjadsgAX8Jg

Length: 64min 18sec (3858 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 19 2021