The illegal immigrant from Ecuador arrested by New York City police days after the death of actress-filmmaker Adrienne Shelly admitted in a New York courtroom on Thursday that he killed Shelly while trying to rob her.

Adrienne Shelly was found dead in her Greenwich Village home in November 2006, apparently having committed suicide. New York police officers were nevertheless suspicious from the very beginning of the investigation and soon arrested Diego Pillco.

The construction worker, an illegal immigrant from Ecuador barely 19 at the time, confessed he had killed Shelly after she complained about the noise he was making while working in the apartment below hers.

Thursday however, Pillco pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of the actress, confessing also that he killed Shelly when she caught him stealing her wallet.

He told a judge in State Supreme Court in Manhattan that Shelly caught him in the act of emptying her wallet and picked up the phone to call the police. He grabbed the phone from her hand and covered her mouth as she started to scream, the New York Times reports, after which he hanged her with a bed sheet, attempting to make it look like suicide.

Shelly was only 40. She was mother to a 3-year-old daughter with husband Andrew Ostroy.

Pillco will receive 25 years in prison when he is sentenced on March 6. He had come to the U. S. 8 to 10 months before the murder, the Times adds.

Shelly appeared in the movies “The Unbelievable Truth” in 1989 and “Trust” in 1990. She wrote, directed and co-starred in “Waitress,” which also featured Keri Russell, a film that premiered at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival with positive reviews.

She also appeared in more than two dozen off-Broadway plays and in television shows including “Law & Order” and “Oz.”

Husband Andrew Ostroy has founded The Adrienne Shelly Foundation to provide grants and scholarships to young female filmmakers.