Linda Kosuda-Bigazzi, the wife of UConn Health Laboratory Science and Pathology Professor Dr. Pierluigi Bigazzi, pleaded guilty to killing her husband on March 11, six years after Bigazzi’s presumed death.
Bigazzi died of blunt-force trauma to the head and his death was ruled a homicide by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.
The initial case took place back in 2018 when Kosuda-Bigazzi was arrested on Feb. 5 after her husband’s body was found in the couple’s basement in Burlington, Connecticut. Prosecutors working on the case accused Kosuda-Bigazzi of wrapping her husband’s body in plastic and hiding it while continuously collecting his paychecks for roughly nine months.
Dr. Pierluigi Bigazzi worked for the University of Connecticut for over 40 years and conducted research within the School of Medicine, focusing on pathology and laboratory medicine. Linda Kosuda-Bigazzi was also a professor at UConn Health and worked from 1986 to 1998 as a science instructor and then assisted her husband through the summer of 2017.
According to the timeline investigators provided, Bigazzi is believed to have died sometime between July 2017 and February 2018 while his paychecks from UConn Health were being deposited into the couple’s joint checking account.
During this nine-month period, Bigazzi was assigned to update and create new instructional materials for the School of Medicine’s curriculum and develop resources for individualized courses. This sort of work can be done “from any location, and it was acceptable for him to work remotely,” UConn Health spokeswoman Lauren Woods explained in the statement she provided to ABC News in 2018. “This is why his absence from the campus would not have been noteworthy or cause for concern.”
Woods’ theory was corroborated with access records, as August 2017 was the last time Bigazzi’s key card was used to enter the UConn Health campus.
With Bigazzi being absent from the UConn Health campus, he was required to still respond to emails and phone calls from colleagues and students who were enrolled in his spring 2017 courses. It wasn’t until UConn officials were informed of his lack of responses on student work and were unable to reach him that local authorities were involved. Local police officers pursued a wellness check at his house where police found what appeared to be bloodstains throughout the floor, kitchen cabinets, and ceiling. There was enough “evidence that there had been attempts to clean up the blood,” which was determined by state police Detective Michael W. Fitzsimmon in an interview with CT Insider.
During this search, a handwritten journal including the name and initials of Linda Kosuda-Bigazzi was found. The journal had detailed passages describing the relationship between the couple where Kosuda-Bigazzi would describe how her husband would “just come at people, including a man he had asked for directions in Boston,” Detective Fitzsimmons continued. The pages also expressed an intense scuffle between the couple where Kosuda-Bigazzi wrote that her husband almost knocked her out by punching her and attempted to choke her.
As investigators continued analyzing the journal entries, another physical altercation that Kosuda-Bigazzi described took place on their deck while attempting to fix some of the nails. The writing continues, illustrating the two arguing and pulling the hammer from one another until Kosuda-Bigazzi swung it in all directions before striking Bigazzi.
“I hit him just swinging the hammer in any direction,” Kosuda-Bigazzi stated in her journal, according to Detective Fitzsimmons. Bigazzi “was quiet for a few seconds and then he stopped breathing.”
After searching the Burlington home and finding Dr. Pierluigi Bigazzi’s body and handwritten journal, Linda Kosuda-Bigazzi was arrested.
Kosuda-Bigazzi accepted a plea bargain in “state Superior Court in Hartford and was convicted of first-degree manslaughter in the death of her husband” as well as “first-degree larceny for continuing to receive his paychecks after his death,” reported CT Insider.
The plea was entered under the manslaughter charge under the Alford doctrine, meaning that Kosuda-Bigazzi acknowledged the evidence against her would lead to a conviction at trial without admitting guilt herself. The plea also calls for a 13-year prison sentence and three years of probation to follow.
Linda Kosuda-Bigazzi in Bristol Superior Court in 2018. Photo taken by Patrick Raycraft of the Hartford Courant.