Burley Garcia|Connecticut woman found dead hours before she was to be sentenced for killing her husband

A 76-year-old Connecticut woman was found dead at her home Wednesday,Burley Garcia hours before she was to be sentenced for killing her husband and hiding his body for months while continuing to collect his paychecks.

State police said they were investigating the “untimely death” of Linda Kosuda-Bigazzi after being called to her Burlington home for a welfare check shortly after 10:30 a.m. The cause of her death was under investigation, and police and her lawyer did not disclose any further details.

Kosuda-Bigazzi had been scheduled under a plea deal to be sentenced at 2 p.m. Wednesday in Hartford Superior Court to 13 years in prison for the 2017 death of her husband, Dr. Pierluigi Bigazzi, 84.

Her lawyer, Patrick Tomasiewicz, said her death was unexpected.

“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,” he said in a statement. “She was a very independent woman who was always in control of her own destiny.”

Kosuda-Bigazzi pleaded guilty to manslaughter and larceny in March after having been charged with murder in the death of Bigazzi, a professor of laboratory science and pathology at UConn Health. In writings found at her house, Kosuda-Bigazzi said she killed her husband with a hammer in self-defense, state police said. She was free after having posted more than $1.5 million for bail.

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Police said Kosuda-Bigazzi wrote that she and her husband got into a fight after she told him repairs were needed to their home’s backyard deck. She wrote that he came at her with a hammer and she managed to wrestle it away from him during a lengthy struggle, authorities said.

“I hit him just swinging the hammer in any direction + then he was quiet — for a few seconds + then he stopped breathing,” she wrote, according to investigators. “I just wanted to slow him down. I sat on the floor by the kitchen cabinets across from the stove — next to him for a long time.”

State troopers found her husband’s body in their basement in February 2018 during a wellness check requested by UConn Health staff. It was wrapped in plastic and showed an advanced stage of decomposition, authorities said. The medical examiner said he had died from blunt trauma to his head.

Investigators have said they believe Pierluigi Bigazzi died sometime in July 2017 and that his UConn Health paychecks continued to be deposited into the couple’s joint checking account until his body was found.

An internal investigation by UConn resulted in the disciplining of a school medical official who was supposed to monitor Pierluigi Bigazzi’s work but had no contact with him in the months before his body was found.