A woman scheduled to be sentenced Wednesday for her husband’s murder was found dead in her Connecticut home.
Connecticut State Police went to Linda Kosuda-Bigazzi’s home in Burlington shortly after 10:30 a.m. after someone reported they were unable to contact her, The Associated Press reported. Troopers were also unable contact anyone inside, and they entered the home, with assistance from the fire department.
“An unresponsive individual was located within the residence, who was subsequently pronounced deceased at the scene,” state police said. “Based upon initial findings, this incident has been categorized as an untimely death investigation.”
Kosuda-Bigazzi, 76, pleaded guilty to manslaughter and larceny charges in March in the 2017 death of her husband, 84-year-old UConn Health pathology professor Pierluigi Bigazzi.
Bigazzi’s body was found inside the couple’s home on February 5, 2018, after colleagues at the University of Connecticut became concerned by his absence of several months, as reported on CrimeOnline. A medical examiner ruled that he died from blunt trauma to the head in July 2017.
Kosuda-Bigazzi was also a scientist at the university and worked with her husband, collaborating on more than a dozen journal articles.
She was set to be sentenced Wednesday afternoon to 13 years in prison, the AP said. Her attorney, Patrick Tomasiewicz, said her death was “not anticipated.”
“We were honored to be her legal counsel and did our very best to defend her in a complex case for the past six years,” Tomasiewicz said. “She was a very independent woman who was always in control of her own destiny.”
Kosuda-Bigazzi said she killed her husband in self-defense prior to her guilty plea. The larceny charge was because she deposited her husband’s paychecks into their joint account after his death.
Officials have not released a cause of death.
