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To get this episode of Forensic Tales ad-free, please visit patreon.com slash Forensic Tales. You know the stories, but have you ever stopped to ask yourself, why? Why would someone holster a semi-automatic rifle to begin a heartless shooting rampage? Why do serial killers methodically single out their next helpless victim? Why are thousands of innocent lives taken instantly? Why?
So far this year, over 300 mass shootings have occurred in the United States. Some experts believe over 2,000 serial killers are operating in the U.S. today. Unfortunately, these events happen so frequently that we've become numb. Behind every massacre, there lies a reason.
Sometimes they're obvious. Many mass murderers have similar traits. Sensation-seeking, lack of remorse, impulsivity, need for control, and predatory behavior. But other times, massacres are almost impossible to explain. This is Anatomy of a Massacre, Rockefeller Audio's newest podcast series.
Anatomy of a Massacre is a true crime podcast investigating the most notorious massacres in human history. From serial killers to mass shooters to genocides, there lies a new horrid reason to expose in each episode. Join your host, Courtney Fretwell, a forensic psychologist, as she dives deep into the psychology, criminal theories, and policy implications behind each tragedy.
New episodes of Anatomy of a Massacre are available right now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your favorite shows. You know what happened? Now, let's uncover why. Forensic Tales discusses topics that some listeners may find disturbing. The contents of this episode may not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised. Adrienne Shelley had big dreams of becoming an actor, screenwriter, and producer.
Hollywood's newest star began having success, but she wanted more. She wanted love and a family of her own. She found both. Adrienne Shelley was living a dream life, a fairytale Hollywood story. Then one tragic night in New York, Adrienne was found hanging from her neck in her own bedsheets.
This is Forensic Tales, episode number 146, The Adrienne Shelley Story. ♪♪
Welcome to Forensic Tales. I'm your host, Courtney Fretwell-Ariola.
Forensic Tales is a weekly true crime podcast covering real, spine-tingling stories with a forensic science twist. Some cases have been solved with forensic science, while others have turned cold. Every remarkable story sends us a chilling reminder that not all stories have happy endings.
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To support Forensic Tales, please visit patreon.com slash Forensic Tales, or simply click the link in the show notes. You can also support the show by leaving a positive rating with a review. Now, let's get to this week's episode. Just before 6pm on November 1st, 2006, the New York City Police Department received a phone call.
The call came in about a female body found inside an Arbington Square apartment in Manhattan's West Village. When the NYPD officers arrived at the apartment, they found a woman inside the bathroom hanging from the shower rod with a bed sheet tied around her neck. The woman appeared to have hung herself in an apparent suicide.
The man who called the police was Andy Ostroy, the chairman and CEO of the marketing firm Bilardi Ostroy. Andy told the police that the woman found hanging from the shower rod was his wife, 40-year-old Adrienne Shelley. The NYPD police officers instantly recognized the name.
Adrienne Levine was a successful actress, screenwriter, and director, better known by the stage name Adrienne Shelley. Born in Queens, New York, Adrienne Shelley grew up with her parents, Elaine Langbaum and Sheldon Levine. When Adrienne was only 12 years old, her father, Sheldon Levine, suddenly died from a heart attack.
His death was extremely difficult for Adrienne. The two were very close, and her father was only 40 years old. After losing her father, Adrienne began to see the world from a new lens. The death made her realize how short life can be. His loss taught her to live life to the fullest because she knew that tomorrow wasn't guaranteed.
After graduating high school in New York, Adrienne enrolled at classes at Boston University, where she planned on studying journalism. But she quickly changed her major from journalism to film production. Her time at Boston University only lasted a couple of years.
By her junior year in 1987, Adrienne decided to drop out of college and move to Manhattan, New York, to pursue her dreams of becoming an actress. She knew it would be difficult, but she was determined to do whatever it took to become a full-time actress. And if it meant dropping out of college, moving, and working multiple jobs to make ends meet, she was willing to do it.
Not long after she got to Manhattan, she started making a name for herself in several independent films. First was her 1989 role in The Unbelievable Truth, and then her 1999 role in the movie Trust. By 1991, Adrienne was listed as one of the 12 most promising actors in John Willis's 43rd volume of Screen World.
People were instantly drawn to Adrienne on screen because of her presence. Her passion and love for acting shined through when she starred in a film. Viewers instantly fell in love with Adrienne. But becoming an actor wasn't Adrienne Shelley's only dream. She also wanted to make a name for herself behind the camera. So as much as she loved performing in front of the camera, she also had a passion for storytelling.
She began pursuing opportunities as a producer and screenwriter. By 2001, Adrienne's film career was starting to take off. She had become successful as an actor and was beginning to take on more significant roles behind the camera. But one part of Adrienne's life was still lacking, her love life. Adrienne was tired of dating other actors and guys involved in the industry.
She would meet a guy, go on a couple dates with them, and then realize he wasn't the one. So after going on countless dates with actors and producers, Adrienne decided she needed a change. If she wanted to meet a guy who was different than anyone else she had dated in the past, she knew she needed to try something different. So she did what many singles did in the early 2000s. She signed up for Match.com.
In 1995, Match.com revolutionized the dating world. Before Match.com arrived, people were limited to who they met to date. You met people at bars, or maybe were set up on a blind date by coworkers. But when Match.com came around in 1995, people began dating people they would have never met before.
So when Adrienne created her profile on Match.com, she hoped to meet a guy she had never dated. She wanted someone different than an actor or a producer. Here, she met Andy Ostroy. After connecting on Match.com, Adrienne and Andy went on their first date, instantly hitting it off. Andy was just the kind of guy Adrienne hoped to meet online.
One year after their first date, Andy proposed to Adrienne while vacationing in Paris together in 2002. One year after their wedding, Adrienne and Andy welcomed their first child in 2003. It was a little girl they named Sophie. Finally, everything in Adrienne's life seemed to be perfect.
She had a successful career in film, she was in a happy marriage, and she became a mom to a young girl she absolutely adored. When NYPD detectives arrived at the apartment on November 1, 2006, they questioned Adrian's husband Andy for hours. They didn't believe he had anything to do with Adrian's death because all signs pointed to a suicide. Adrian had a bedsheet tied around her neck.
She was found hanging from the curtain rod inside the bathroom. There were no signs of forced entry, and nothing was missing from the apartment. Andy told NYPD detectives that the morning of November 1, 2006, was a typical day for them. The night before, Halloween, Adrian threw a party for their two-year-old daughter, Sophie. And later that night, they took her trick-or-treating in the neighborhood, dressed as Cinderella.
Andy told the investigators that his wife was happy. He explained that at the time of her death, Adrienne had just finished writing her screenplay Waitress, and she was waiting to find out if Waitress would be selected for the Sundance Festival.
Andy told the police she was incredibly excited to find out because if Waitress made it to the Sundance Festival, that would have been a huge step forward in her screenwriting career. While Adrienne was pregnant with Sophie, she began writing her first screenplay, Waitress. It was a movie about a female waitress who loves making pies.
She's married to an awful guy and goes to see this handsome and charming doctor when she becomes pregnant. It's sort of a fun and quirky film. Adrienne wasn't the main star. Instead, she gave herself a secondary role, and the film starred Keri Russell and Nathan Fillon.
Waitress was a project that Adrienne was incredibly proud of. It marked her first major film that she wrote and produced. According to Andy, the morning of November 1st was like any other morning. Adrienne and Andy woke up, ate breakfast, and got Sophie ready for daycare. Andy said that around 9.30 a.m., he dropped Adrienne off at her apartment in the West Village.
The one-bedroom apartment served as an office for Adrienne. It was a place where she could go right without having distractions at home. Andy said that after he dropped Adrienne off outside the apartment, he watched her greet the doorman and go inside. Then he drove across the city to his office while their daughter Sophie was at daycare. After Andy dropped Adrienne off at the office, he tried calling her.
Andy told the NYPD detectives that he and Adrian talked on and off all day long. They either called each other every few hours or sent each other emails. But Andy said he didn't get a response every time he called or emailed Adrian. He told the investigators that this was extremely out of character for Adrian because they usually chatted several times throughout the day.
According to Andy, he never heard from Adrienne after he dropped her off at the apartment that morning. Around 5.45 p.m., Andy left the office and drove straight to the apartment. He and the doorman went up to Adrienne's apartment, apartment 47, and noticed that the front door was left unlocked.
Initially, Andy didn't see anything unusual inside the apartment, but he knew that something was wrong. The TV was on low in the living room, and there wasn't any sign of Adrian anywhere until Andy got to the bathroom. That's the moment he discovered his wife hanging from the curtain rod with a bed sheet tied tightly around her neck.
When paramedics arrived at the apartment, there wasn't anything they could do. Adrienne Shelley was pronounced dead at the scene, and the first assumption was that she committed suicide. There were no signs of a forced entry, no other visible wounds on her body, and no one inside the entire apartment building heard or saw anything unusual that morning. Besides there not being a suicide note, everything seemed to suggest that's what happened.
So the police had no reason to suspect that this was anything but an open and shut case of suicide. And the media quickly began running stories that the famous actress Adrienne Shelley killed herself. But Andy and Adrienne's friends disagreed. The Adrienne Shelley they knew wouldn't kill herself. At the time of her death, everything was perfect in her life.
She was in a happy marriage. She was waiting to find out if waitress would be accepted at the Sundance Festival. And then there was her daughter, Sophie. According to Adrian's loved ones, she would have never left Sophie behind without a mother. Adrian's autopsy was performed the following day.
The chief medical examiner who performed the autopsy found that she died as a result of neck compression, an injury that is highly consistent with hangings. But despite the chief medical examiner's findings, something about Adrienne's apparent suicide just didn't make sense. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp.
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Never skip therapy day with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash tails to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash tails. By Saturday, November 4th, Adrienne's husband Andy and her family were adamantly disputing the suicide claims in the media. In an interview with reporters, Andy told the press, quote,
I am doing everything I can, everything humanly possible, to find out exactly what happened. But the police stuck to their original theory. According to them, all of the evidence pointed towards suicide. NYPD detectives knew it wasn't uncommon for family members of someone who committed suicide not to want to believe what happened.
It can be difficult for someone to accept that their loved one took their own life, so it's not uncommon for family members to disagree with the police findings. But still, Andy and her family continue to press the NYPD to do something. Frustrated that the police weren't taking their claims seriously, Adrian's husband and family decided to start their own investigation.
They wanted to quash this rumor that Adrienne had killed herself, so they hired Dr. Michael Bodden. Dr. Bodden is a world-renowned forensic pathologist who has consulted on many high-profile criminal cases. Some of the cases he's worked on include the O.J. Simpson murder trial and the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.,
He was also involved in other high-profile cases like the deaths of Jeffrey Epstein and the murder of George Floyd. Besides his name appearing alongside high-profile celebrity deaths, Dr. Michael Bodden was also the chief medical examiner of New York from 1978 until 1979. Adrian's family hired Dr. Baden to see if he could find anything to suggest her death was anything other than a suicide.
They wanted a fresh set of experienced eyes to examine the evidence that the NYPD might have missed. And they wanted this done by someone completely independent from the police department. Dr. Bodden performed Adrian's second autopsy on Saturday, November 4th, as two detectives from the NYPD stood nearby at the funeral home. And based on his observations, this second autopsy
He believed that Adrian was murdered. This case wasn't a suicide. It was a homicide. Dr. Bodden found injuries and bruising on Adrian's body that he didn't believe were consistent with a suicide. Instead, according to him, the injuries to her body were more consistent with Adrian being involved in a physical struggle with someone shortly before her death.
He found a lot of bruising on Adrienne's face, especially around one of her eyes. And he also found small cuts on her hands, suggesting they might be defensive wounds, like she had been in a fight with someone. Almost everything Dr. Bodden found during the second autopsy was at odds with what the first medical examiner found.
In the first autopsy, the examiner didn't find any injuries or evidence of a struggle. But according to Dr. Bodden's findings, Adrian was in a physical battle shortly before her death. Once his findings were released, NYPD detectives decided to look deeper into the case. They needed to find out what really happened to Adrian.
The detectives decided to bring Adrian's husband, Andy, back in for questioning. They asked Andy about the particular knot used to tie the bedsheet around her neck. Investigators preserved the knot and showed it to Andy. And they asked him if Adrian had any experience tying knots. He said no. Adrian had zero experience with any type of knot.
In most suicide cases, a person will tie a knot they're familiar with. The knot used in Adrian's case was rather complicated. As investigators looked through the apartment for the second time, they noticed a footprint on the top of the toilet lid they hadn't seen before. They also found two more footprints, one on the floor and the other on the edge of the bathtub.
The footprints were compared to Adrienne's shoe size, and they didn't match. The footprints were much larger than her feet. The prints also didn't match anyone who would have been inside the apartment, including Andy and including all of the first responding officers.
investigators decided that the footprints were suspicious enough to hire an expert to look at them. And the expert concluded that the prints came from a Reebok sneaker. On November 5th, four days after Adrian's death, detectives returned to the apartment looking for clues that might lead them to the owner of that Reebok sneaker.
When they got there, they noticed there was an unusual dust just outside Adrian's apartment in the hallway. The dust was strange because it was only outside Adrian's apartment and it wasn't found in front of any of the other apartments on the floor. When the detectives looked at the dust closer, they saw another footprint.
So they compared the footprint found just outside of Adrian's apartment to the three footprints in the bathroom. And when the results came back, the footprints all matched. They all came from the same Reebok sneaker. The first thing investigators wanted to find out was where the dust came from. And why was it only found on the floor just outside Adrian's apartment?
The police discovered a renovation happening in apartment 37, the unit directly below Adrian's apartment. Investigators went down to the apartment to see if they could find any footprints in the dust. They discovered yet another footprint, a print left behind by the same Reebok.
The investigation shifted from finding more footprints to finding the person who owned that particular pair of shoes. And if they found them, that could tell investigators who was inside Adrian's apartment. A few NYPD detectives reached out to the apartment building owners to see if they could get a list of people who worked on the renovation project in the apartment below Adrian's.
This led investigators to a basement apartment in Brooklyn, New York. Minutes before midnight on November 5th, the police arrived at an apartment in Park Slope, Brooklyn, a part of the city known for its street-lined trees and historic brownstones. When they got to the apartment, they found several people living there, including a few construction workers working inside Adrian's building.
Everyone inside the apartment was cooperative with the police. They all agreed to answer any questions, and some even let the police look through their belongings. One of the items the police looked through was a backpack. Inside the backpack, they found a pair of men's Reebok sneakers.
When the police flipped the shoe over and looked at the bottom, they thought it had a similar tread and was a similar size shoe to the Reebok found inside Adrian's apartment. The backpack and pair of shoes belonged to 19-year-old Diego Pilko. The police learned that Diego, his brother, and one of his cousins all lived inside the apartment.
They were living with their boss, the guy that owned the construction company that performed renovations at Adrian's apartment building in Manhattan. Originally from Ecuador, Diego Pilko was illegally living in the United States. He and his brother illegally immigrated to the U.S. after their parents paid people to get them across the border.
Diego and his family owed over $13,000 to the people who brought them to the States. So in 2006, Diego and his brother were working for the construction company and sending money home to their parents in Ecuador to pay these people off. Once the police saw the pair of Reebok sneakers inside Diego's backpack, they immediately brought him down to the NYPD's 6th Pring Sink for questioning.
When they got to the police station, Diego told the police that he worked on the construction project in apartment 37, the one right below Adrian's. But he denied knowing anything about the murder. He told investigators that he had no idea who Adrian was and that he was never inside her apartment.
Based on the suspicion that the Reeboks found inside Diego's backpack might be the shoes found at the apartment, the police had enough to detain him for further questioning. The detectives began asking him about his whereabouts on November 1st, the day Adrian died. Initially, he admitted to working inside apartment 37 that morning.
He told the investigators he wasn't at Adrian's apartment building long that day because he had a stomach ache. And not long after he got there, he left the building and went to a local pharmacy to get medicine. His boss was waiting outside when he got back to the apartment building. And his boss told him they needed his help with a different project at a different building.
So according to Diego, he left Adrian's apartment building and went to work on another renovation project for the rest of the day. Detectives asked him if he had met Adrian while working in the apartment below hers. He said no. They also asked him if he had ever been inside her apartment. Once again, his answer was no.
He denied having anything to do with her death, and he continued to claim he had no idea who she was. But the detectives weren't buying his story. One of the lead detectives assigned to the case noticed something about Diego as she questioned him. She noticed he was holding a prayer card in his hands as he was being questioned. This signaled to the detective that Diego was religious.
So she decided to use this against him. The detective asked Diego if he had any children. He said no. He was only 19 years old and had just gotten to the United States. Then she asked if he had any young nieces or nephews. This question got his attention because he said yes. He said he had a few young nieces. One of them was around the same age as Adrian's daughter, Sophie.
That's the exact moment when the lead detective knew she had him. She started to use Diego's religious spirit against him. She told him that if he had done anything bad to Adrian, his niece would pay. She tried appealing to both his religion and his love for his young nieces. After hearing that, Diego Pilko instantly cracked.
He proceeded to make a full confession to Adrian Shelley's murder. Diego may have confessed, but he also had a story. In his first confession to the police, he told investigators that while he was working in the apartment below Adrian's, she came downstairs to complain about the noise.
He said that Adrian was extremely angry and told him that she couldn't get her work done because of all the construction noise. He said she was screaming at him for several minutes. He also confessed to throwing a hammer in her direction. Worried that Adrian would call the police and he would be deported back to Ecuador, he said he followed her upstairs to her apartment.
When they got to the door, Diego said Adrian turned around and slapped him across the face. He then punched her in the face, causing her to fall backward. And when she fell, she hit her head on a table. He said the fall was so bad that she was knocked unconscious when she hit her head. At that point, Diego said he thought Adrian was dead.
believing that she was dead, he made it look like a suicide. He took the bed sheet from the bed, tied the knot around Adrian's neck to make her death look like a suicide. The knot on the bed sheet was the same type of knot he used on his family's farm in Ecuador to tie up the pigs.
NYPD detectives were happy they had a confession, but they weren't convinced about his story. Number one, they didn't believe that Adrian would go downstairs and scream at Diego as he said. They also didn't believe Adrian would slap him. Anyone who spent any amount of time around Adrian knew the kind of person she was.
She wasn't the type of person to scream at someone or to threaten to call the police and deport them. Number two were the injuries to Adrienne's body. Dr. Bodden, the medical examiner who performed the second autopsy, found injuries and bruises all over her body, suggesting that she had been in a struggle shortly before her death.
He also found defensive wounds on her hands, which indicate she was in a fight. Again, these injuries didn't match Diego's story. Finally, number three was the cause of death. The medical examiner determined that Adrian's cause of death was due to neck compression. The injuries to her neck suggested that she had been strangled before being hung from the bedsheet.
Diego Pilko was arrested and charged with Adrian's murder, and in 2008, two years after her death, he stood trial. Diego changed his story at trial from the first one he told the police. This time, he said he returned to work after lunch when he saw Adrian walking toward her apartment. When he saw her, he decided that he was going to rob her. So he followed her from behind until they got to her apartment.
He said he waited around the corner until she walked inside and closed the door. He waited in the hallway for a few minutes, then pulled on the front door to see if she left it unlocked. Once he realized she did and the door was unlocked, he said he went inside. He said he looked for her purse, but before he could find it, Adrian caught him. His plan to simply rob her went sideways.
Once he realized he'd been caught, he knew he had to kill her. If he didn't, she would call the police and he would be deported. Instead of letting that happen, he tried choking her. But Adrienne didn't go down easy. She fought back as she struggled to choke her, causing the defensive wounds on her hands and the bruising across her body. Finally, after several minutes of fighting, Adrienne was left unconscious.
Believing that she was dead, he decided to stage her death to make it look like a suicide. He grabbed the bed sheet and tied her to the top of the shower. But Adrian wasn't dead. Evidence collected from both of her autopsies suggested that she was very much alive when she was hung.
If Diego hadn't decided to stage it to look like a suicide, Adrian might have survived. Diego Pilko eventually agreed to plead guilty to first-degree manslaughter. It wasn't the first-degree charge prosecutors and Adrian's family hoped for, but it was something. Following his guilty plea, Diego was sentenced to 25 years in prison without the possibility of parole.
And after he serves his 25-year sentence, he's scheduled to be deported back to Ecuador. At his sentencing hearing, Adrian's husband, Andy Ostroy, made a statement in part that read, quote,
a bright light with an affectious laugh and huge smile that radiated her inner and outer beauty. She was my best friend and the person with whom I was supposed to grow old, end quote. He went on to kill his wife's killer, Diego Pilko, a quote, nothing but a cold-blooded killer, end quote.
After Diego Pilko's conviction, Andy Ostroy sued Bradford General Contractors, the company that hired Diego. His lawsuit alleged that Adrian would still be alive today had they not hired him. Andy also pursued lawsuits against the owners and management of the apartment building.
This lawsuit alleged that the building's owners knowingly hired illegal immigrants to perform renovation work inside the building. In July 2011, the lawsuits were dismissed by a New York judge. The judge alleged that Andy hadn't established legal grounds to hold the contractor or the building's owners liable for Adrian's death.
In the court's ruling, the judge didn't believe the contractor or the owners had any reason to think that Diego was a dangerous person capable of committing a crime like this. And simply because he was illegally living in the United States, the building's owners did nothing wrong. Shortly after Adrian's murder, Andy established the Adrian Shelley Foundation, which
It's a non-profit organization that awards grants and scholarships to women in the film production industry, a cause that meant a lot to Adrienne. As a female film producer and screenwriter herself, he knew this was the least he could do in her honor. Adrienne's film Waitress was accepted into the 2007 Sundance Film Festival.
Waitress went on to receive five film awards and received many other nominations. In August 2015, the musical Waitress debuted at the American Repertory Theater at Harvard University. The production closed in January 2020 after 33 previews and 1,500 performances.
Years after her murder, the legacy of Adrienne Shelley and her contributions to the film industry live on. If a second autopsy wasn't performed and new forensic evidence wasn't discovered, Adrienne Shelley's murder may have gone down as a suicide, and her killer might have gotten away.
but the discovery of several Reebok sneaker shoe impressions inside Adrienne's bathroom led the police straight to her killer. To share your thoughts on the murder of Adrienne Shelley, be sure to follow the show on Instagram and Facebook. To find out what I think about the case, sign up to become a patron at patreon.com slash forensic tales.
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Thank you so much for joining me this week. Please join me next week. We'll have a brand new story and a brand new case to talk about. Until then, remember, not all stories have happy endings. Forensic Tales is a Rockefeller Audio Production.
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If you'd like to become a producer of the show, head over to our Patreon page or send me an email at Courtney at ForensicTales.com to find out how you can become involved. For a complete list of sources used in this episode, please visit ForensicTales.com. Thank you for listening. I'll see you next week. Until then, remember, not all stories have happy endings.
