Diego Pillco, the admitted murderer of director-actress Adrienne Shelley, has passed along some particulars. Manhattan district attorney Robert Morgenthau says the 11.1.06 tragedy resulted from Shelley catching Pillco “stealing her wallet,” which led to her reaching for the phone to call police “but [Pillco] grabbed it and a fight ensued. He covered the victim’s mouth and nose with his hand until she passed out. He then took a sheet, choked her to death, and made it look like a suicide.”
What a ghastly sequence of events. Awful, horrific…but I have to say something. If there was any question about the basic character of a perpetrator, I would never pick up a phone in order to call the cops with the perp standing a few feet away. I’d never do this because it forces the offender to make a decision — run for the hills or stop the phone call from being made. I’d like to think that most people aren’t violent or sociopathic or confrontational, but a certain percentage are. Pick up the phone and you’re basically gambling that the perpetrator won’t try to take the phone away or physically overpower you or worse.
I would never take that chance if I was a smaller-framed woman. I would get the bad guy to leave the apartment or I would leave myself and then I’d call the cops.
A terrible, terrible thing, this. Reading this story made me go back to it.