FARMINGTON — The state will recover money paid to a UConn professor whose wife is accused of killing him and hiding his body for months.
UConn Health issued a statement Thursday that it had recovered $50,040.85 that was paid to Dr. Pierluigi Bigazzi after his death.
“Linda Kosuda Bigazzi, Dr. Bigazzi’s wife, paid the money to the university through her attorney following discussions between the attorney and UConn Health’s counsel. The total represents the wages added to Dr. Bigazzi’s bank account by automatic deposit from Aug. 4, 2017, through Jan. 18, 2018, the last payroll period for which he was paid as a UConn faculty member. The amount paid also recoups the amount that UConn paid for its employer portion of taxes, all net of vacation time owed,” said the school in a statement.
Linda Kosuda-Bigazzi wrote that Pierluigi Bigazzi came at her with a hammer during a fight over home repairs, and she wrestled it away from him and struck him with it several times.
Kosuda-Bigazzi is charged with murdering her 84-year-old husband, a professor of laboratory science and pathology at UConn Health. Investigators say his body might have been inside their Burlington house for eight months before it was discovered Feb. 5.
UConn said additional money will be repaid if the date of death is determined to be earlier.
“The full reimbursement of all salary paid to Dr. Bigazzi after Aug. 3, 2017, in concert with UConn Health’s recent review and modification of its process for monitoring off-campus work and projects, underscores our commitment to fiscal accountability and our diligence in recouping all state funds inappropriately disbursed after the employee’s undisclosed death,” said Chris Hyers, UConn Health’s chief communications officer.
The funds will be returned to UConn Health’s central budget.
UConn also distributed an accounting of every full time faculty member at UConn Health, listing type of work, precisely, they are doing (research, clinical, teaching, mixed and the last contact with faculty member
UConn President Susan Herbst issued a statement that said in part:
All department heads must have regular contact with their reporting faculty members. We expect that each of you will always know where your faculty members are working and what type of work they are engaged in… Faculty work product must be rigorously assessed by each of you on a regular basis to ensure it meets your standards and the university’s.
