The construction worker who killed Adrienne Shelly in her West Village office pleaded guilty to manslaughter - and gave new details about why he killed the actress-director. Diego Pillco will receive 25 years in prison; as an illegal immigrant from Ecuador, the Post says his sentence will be "almost certainly followed by deportation." Originally, Pillco had told the police he killed Shelly in November of 2006, he was in a "bad mood" and picked a......

Last October, a fire was started outside the Engine 34/Ladder 21 firehouse on West 38th Street. The fire was put out, but upon investigation, it turned out the ones who set it were firefighters from different firehouses! A surveillance cameras actually captured Michael Izzo and Richard Capece purchasing the gasoline at a gas station and later splashing the stationhouse's garage door and igniting it, setting off what was described as a fireball. The pair were......

22-year-old Gregory Barnard was having a pretty sweet night with his bros at the Times Square nightclub Arena (pictured) one night over the summer. Fresh out of NYU, the kid spent the evening enjoying a reasonably priced $350 dollar bottle of vodka, watching the club’s far-out video projections, and allegedly getting a beatdown from bouncers for not buying enough booze! According to Barnard, it all started when the time came to settle the tab......

New Yorkers have been known to live in some pretty dismal conditions just to avoid the hassle of finding another apartment. Roaches, rats, mice, bedbugs, loud neighbors with thin walls, odd smelling hallways...but where does one draw the line? The Post has a story about a brother and sister who ran screaming from their new Greenwich Village digs after finding out it was above a clinic for sexual deviants.William and Amy Grace claim landlord Dr.......

It's all in an Upper West Side day for the Material Girl! The tabloids have reported that Madonna is suing her co-op, claiming the board blocked her attempt to buy a neighbor's apartment. Madonna has a 6,000 square foot apartment at Harperley Hall at 41 Central Park West - a duplex with hair salon and gym. The summons filed in Manhattan Supreme Court accuses the board and Midboro Management of "breach of contract...and orders......

Through some strange stroke of Manhattan Supreme Court scheduling, Ja Rule, Remy Ma, Lil Wayne and Busta Rhymes all appeared in court yesterday (at different times) to face various charges. Ja Rule and Lil Wayne faced gun possession charges from separate incidents on July 22. The pair, who collaborated on a song "Uh Oh," also shared the same attorney, Stacey Richman. Richman said that Lil Wayne couldn't be guilty, because when his tour bus......

It's the umpteenth story about an engagement gone sour and hardly the first one that has the would-be groom demanding the pricey engagement ring back. But it's the first that we can recall where the ex-fiancee is the granddaughter of a Gambino crime family head! Dean Kuehnen and Andria Castellano got engaged in December of 2006. Kuehnen gave her a 3.23 carat emerald-cut ring with 160 additional diamonds in the platinum setting. But then they......

One would think that dropping some serious cash at a high end auction house would be a safe bet. Today it's being reported that an art dealer in Chelsea did just that and ended up with a counterfeit piece! Christie's is now being faced with a $7 million lawsuit that charges them with knowingly selling the art dealer a fake Jean-Michel Basquiat painting. Page Six reports:Tony Shafrazi, who was Basquiat's primary dealer, says he bought......

Mayor Bloomberg will walk across the street from City Hall tomorrow morning to report for jury duty at Manhattan Supreme Court. It won't be his first stint in the jurors' box. Bloomberg reportedly has served state jury duty five times since 1981. The Daily News reports that he served in 2001 on his 59th birthday "when he was openly flirting with running for mayor but was not an official candidate." The Manhattan Supreme Court handles......

A former client services associate at the Melville, Long Island branch of Morgan Stanley filed a lawsuit in Manhattan Supreme Court claiming her old boss "tried to 'sexually assault her' with a pencil", stole her underwear, and complained to her about how his wife wouldn't give him oral sex. Lisa LaMacchia claims that a human resources official told her to "suck it up" after Richard Dorfman allegedly threw a file at her and called her......

No one likes getting a parking ticket, but it's those instances when tickets are handed down unfairly that really make people crazy and determined to beat them. Sanford Young, a lawyer, spent two years and an estimated $10,000 to beat a $65 ticket in Manhattan Supreme Court. From The Post:Young got the ticket on Nov. 29, 2005, after he parked on First Avenue near East 70th Street to have dinner with a friend. He returned......

Last year, rapper Jayceon Taylor, aka The Game, was arrested for impersonating a police officer while "in a hurry" to get to the Westin Hotel for a meeting with Jay-Z. Just yesterday he told his side of the story while appearing in Manhattan Supreme Court, where prosecutors offered him a plea deal with time served. But like Busta before him, The Game turned it down. A quick recap: The Game apparently told a cabbie he......

Yesterday, the man suspected of raping and torturing a 23-year-old woman in her apartment pleaded not guilty to the attack. However, police say that they have DNA evidence linking ex-con Robert Williams to the scene. The victim, a graduate student at Columbia's Journalism School, remembered that the attacker wore one of her T-shirts, which was thrown into a wastebasket, and the police have DNA from Williams' spit (he spat into a station house wastebasket). Williams......

Well, this is a sad, but almost predictable result of sudden fame. Wesley Autrey, the subway superhero, is now suing his lawyers. Autrey claims that his lawyer, a movie agent, and the agent's production company pressured him into signing a contract. From the Daily News: According to the lawsuit filed in Manhattan Supreme Court, Kleiman dropped in last month on a Waldorf-Astoria reception where Autrey was a guest of honor and offered free legal services......

Some fun website fun related to 47 East 3rd Street. The owners, Alistair and Catherine Economakis, have wanted to convert the 60-room, 11,575 square foot East Village tenement into a single-family residence since 2005, but there have been obstacles called tenants. And not just any tenants - these are rent-stabilized tenants (the 15 units rent for $600-1200/month) - and soon the two sides were embroiled in a 2+ year court dispute. To catch you......

A state appeals court ruled that a couple can evict tenants at 47 East Third Street so they can turn the 11,575 square foot building into their private home. A five bedroom home with library, gym, and nanny's suite. The five-story building had 15 units, with many tenants that had rent-stabilized rents of $600-1200 a month, and last year, a Manhattan Supreme Court judge found there would be an "inescapable consequence" of converting the building......

A condo on the Upper East Side has slapped a $500,000 lawsuit against the owner of a Subway franchise. The condo board of The Waterford, located at 300 93rd St, complained that the Subway, which opened two weeks ago around corner at 1776 Second Ave., caused the building to be "inundated with strong and nauseating food odors," and affected the value of their property. Welcome to New York! The lawsuit, filed in Manhattan Supreme Court,......

Yesterday was supposed to be the start of jury selection in the murder trial of Paul Cortez. But lawyers for Cortez, a personal trainer and yoga instructor accused of killing his girlfriend, didn't even show up. Instead, defense attorneys Laura Miranda and Dawn Florio faxed an excuse to Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Carol Berkman, who then said, "I'm supposed to believe this" and later "I'll have [Miranda] arrested." Apparently Miranda's excuse was that her mother......

The two page blackmail letter that Yoko Ono's driver, Koral Karsan, wrote in hopes of receiving $2M from her, was released yesterday. Karsan's lawyer, Robert Gottlieb, filed it with Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Daniel FitzGerald. In the letter, Karsan accused Ono of sexually harrassing him, and vowed to call Sean Lennon (along with his ex, Bijou Phillips), "Paul", and Rolling Stone's Jann Wenner to testify on his behalf. He also wrote down that Sean Lennon......

See, not all dog fights have to do with dogs off-leash. Some dog owners on the Upper East Side are arguing about an incident where leashes were problematic. The Post reports that Alida Rubin is suing Eva Karasthasis for "ignoring her warnings and approaching her and Punim, her Shih Tzu, causing the dog to tangle her in the leash and landing her on the sidewalk on Sutton Place." Rubin said she told Karastathis to keep......

A former partner at a law firm is suing his old colleagues for discrimination. Steven Behar had been hired to head the securities division of at Wollmuth, Maher & Deutsch, but was later fired from his job after a series of incidents. Behar was struck with a number of physical problems (high blood pressure, bad headaches, sensitivity to light and noise) after starting the job, and that's when the alleged issues began. From the Daily......

When it comes to messing up perfectly good cults, it always comes down to money doesn't it? Take for instance the Hare Krishnas. According to today's Post everyone's favorite singing and parading orange robed cultists are having some serious internal problems. The group "is in the middle of a civil war following a string of lawsuits and a fistfight in its East Village temple in recent months, court papers show." At the core of......

- The guy who stabbed a 10-month-old baby in Washington Heights last September has been found mentally unfit to stand trail - The drug-dealing boyfriend of Tiesha Sargent, the bright and beautiful young woman (truly, we met her back when she was at Brearley) who was murdered in cold blood last weekend, has decided he won't take a lie-detector test after all. - Spitzer gave back $124,445 to an indicted lawfirm yesterday. - The......

The 11,000 square foot mansion dreams of a couple that owns 47 East 3rd Street in the East Village have been stalled for now, as a judge ruled that Catherine and Alistair Economakis did not get permission to cancel their tenants' leases. The buliding has 15 rent-stabilized apartments (totaling 60 rooms) which range from from $600 to $1200, and the Economakises asked the tenants to hit the road when they were expecting a baby. And......

Obviously hurting for some Fake Firefighter Perv coverage, the Post breaks the story that Peter Braunstein has gotten a new haircut! Unfortunately, the online version didn't provide a picture or illustration, so we had to mock up our own ideas, seen above. The Post's description: Braunstein showed up for a routine Manhattan Supreme Court appearance yesterday sporting a shaggy new beard. It's the fourth makeover in as many court appearances. Since his arrest in......

Some good news for photobloggers and fans of street photography: a Manhattan judge has ruled photographer Philip-Lorca diCorcia was well within his rights to sell copies of this photograph of an Orthodox gentleman. The shot was taken as part of diCorcia's "Heads" project, which involved shooting pictures using a concealed camera. The Post reports: ...Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Judith Gische ruled that the head shot showing Nussenzweig, with a white beard, a black hat......

Sad news from the New York Post today: the 157-year old St. Brigid church on Avenue B and 7th Street will be razed. A Manhattan Supreme Court judge refused to block the demolition, so short of a miracle, nothing is going to save this beautiful building. The archdiocese is saying they don't have the seven million dollars required to bring the building up to code-- despite neighborhood claims that the true price tag is......

Last February, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Doris Ling-Cohan said that gay and lesbian couples should have equal access to marriage. This gave Mayor Bloomberg some problems, as he (and the city) was trying to keep gay marriage from being something the city would have to deal with - he would have preferred it to be a NY State constitutional issue. Yesterday, the Mayor's gay marriage headache subsided at the Appelate Court ruled that gay and......

If you're thinking of having a Vermont civil union and then living in the city, it might be time to think again about what rights you may or may not have, as a Brooklyn appellate court ruled that the partner of a man who was died of injuries sustained in a notorious hit-and-run cannot sue St. Vincent's Hospital for malpractice. Neal Spicehandler was one of the victims after Ronald Popadich ran his car into midtown......

Folks, if you're trying to convince your significant other to stop stalling and marry you because that's the only way you can get an apartment, watch out: A couple is suing one apartment building's co-op board for discriminating against unmarried couples. Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Emily Jane Goodman ruled that Andrew Jorgensen and Lisa Latoni can sue the board at the Sherman Square building (201 West 70th Street) for discrimination. Jorgensen and Latoni wanted to......