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1 article from 2008

14 March 2008 5:34 AM, PDT | From wenn.com | See recent WENN news

The husband of murdered actress/director Adrienne Shelly lost his composure in a New York court on Thursday - telling his wife's killer to "rot" in jail following his 25-year sentence.

Andy Ostroy couldn't contain his fury as Ecuadorian construction worker Diego Pillco was jailed for strangling the Waitress filmmaker in November 2006 after she caught him trying to rob her apartment.

Appearing in Manhattan's State Supreme Court, he ranted at Pillco, "You deserve no mercy. I want you to rot in that cell.

"For the last 499 days, I have been consumed by unfathomable grief. I will spend the rest of my days hating you with every fiber of my being for what you have done."

In an emotional speech, Shelly's mother Elaine Lang-Baum also spoke of the irreparable grief suffered by her family: "Now, I know sadness as I have never, ever known it before. You have taken her from us, and for that there can never be any forgiveness."

She added Shelly's own daughter, Sophie, who was just two-and-a-half years old when her mother was found dead, "will never again hold her mother's hand, kiss her mother's face, or feel her mother's hug".

During his testimony, Pillco, 20, confessed to punching Shelly, knocking her unconscious. Thinking he had killed her, he then hung the 40-year-old to make her death look like a suicide.

The labourer, an illegal immigrant in the U.S., was renovating an apartment in the same West Village building where Shelly had an office. He said he panicked when Shelly discovered him stealing from her purse and threatened to call the police.

Pillco entered his guilty plea on charges of manslaughter in February as part of a deal with prosecutors. Authorities decided to reduce the original charge of second degree murder to manslaughter after fearing he would be acquitted if he continued to claim Shelly's death was a tragic accident.

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1 article from 2008