A 76-year-old woman who killed her doctor husband and hid his body for seven months while on the payroll of the University of Connecticut was found dead Wednesday, just hours before she was due to be sentenced for the cold-blooded murder.
Police discovered Linda Kosda Bigazzi’s body just after 10:30 a.m. state police said.
The convicted murderer was scheduled to appear in Hartford Superior Court at 2 p.m. to be formally sentenced to 13 years in prison for the 2017 murder of her husband, Dr. Pierluigi Bigazzi, 84.
Her lawyer, Patrick Tomasiewicz, said her death was “unexpected” but eerily suggested that Kosda Bigazzi may have had a hand in her fate.
“We have been honored to serve as her legal counsel and have done our best to defend her in this complex case over the past six years,” he said in a statement.
“She was a very independent woman and always took control of her own destiny.”
It is still under investigation as to when Kosda Bigazzi died and what the cause of his death was, but the National Guard described the incident as an “untimely death investigation.”
She pleaded guilty in March to manslaughter and theft in connection with the killing of Bigazzi, a professor of clinical laboratory science and pathology at the University of Connecticut Health School.
Kosda Bigazzi, also a scientist who worked with her husband, was arrested after his body was discovered in February 2018 but agreed to wear an ankle monitoring bracelet and was free on house arrest on $1.5 million bail.
In documents found at her home, Kosda Bigazzi admitted to killing her husband with a hammer in July 2017 but claimed she acted in self-defense.
Bigazzi wrote that an argument began when his wife said the backyard deck needed repairs, and he lunged at her with a hammer, Kosda-Bigazzi alleges that his wife wrestled the weapon away from him and smashed it into his skull.
“I swung the hammer in any direction and hit him and he went quiet for a few seconds and then stopped breathing,” she wrote, according to investigators.
“I just wanted to slow him down. I sat on the floor by the kitchen cupboard across from the stove. I sat next to him for a long time.”
Kosda Bigazzi wrapped her husband’s body in a plastic bag and hid it in the basement of her home, where it was discovered seven months later during a medical examination ordered by colleagues at the University of Connecticut Medical Center.
Investigators said the doctor had not been seen since the summer, but his checks had been deposited into the couple’s joint account until his body was discovered.
With post wire
