Her road to infamy began when as a 21-year-old working as a secretary, she began a relationship with Burton ‘Burt’ Pugach. However upon learning that he had a wife and child, she left him in 1959 and became engaged to another man.
Driven crazy with jealousy, Pugach threatened to kill her, saying: “If I can’t have you, no one else will have you, and when I get through with you, no one else will want you.”
Rather than slaying his lost love, the successful lawyer paid three assailants to throw lye (also know as sodium hydroxide or caustic soda) into her eyes, leaving her blinded and permanently scarred.
The high profile trial was as dramatic as the attack, with the defendant being declared insane three separate times, only to have the decisions reversed at his demand. At one point he removed a lens from his eyeglasses and slashed his wrists, crying: “Linda, I need you. Linda, I love you. Linda, I want you.”
