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Lauren Pazienza, a Long Island event planner, pleaded guilty on Wednesday to stabbing veteran Broadway singing coach Barbara Maier Gustern to death in an unprovoked attack last year.
Pazienza, 27, attacked the 87-year-old vocal coach last March on a pavement in Chelsea, forcibly pushing her to the ground.
She is expected to serve an eight-year sentence for the murder, significantly less than the 25-year sentence she faced at trial. She will be officially sentenced on September 29.
Pazienza, who is heiress to a large cesspool draining empire on Long Island, has been detained at Rikers Island for more than a year since the seemingly wanton attack.
Lauren Pazienza pleaded guilty to manslaughter in Manhattan Supreme Court on Wednesday for pushing Barbara Maier Gustern to death in an unprovoked attack.
Broadway singing coach Barbara Maier Gustern died in a hospital five days after the random stampede attack in March 2022.
Gustern died five days after being admitted with serious head injuries from the pushing.
It was later revealed that Pazienza, who did not know his victim, ran across the street and called the singing teacher ab**** before pushing her.
Prior to the seemingly random attack, Pazienza had drunk several glasses of wine with her fiancé as she celebrated 100 days of their marriage. She may have also taken a Xanax.
“She had done drugs, she had maybe two bottles of wine and a ton of marijuana,” defense attorney Arthur Aidala said in Manhattan criminal court in June.
She had been kicked out of Chelsea Park, which was about to close, when she strode across the street and attacked Gustern.
Pazienza, who has no criminal record, was represented by Arthur Aidala, who previously represented disgraced director Harvey Weinstein in his 2020 Manhattan trial.
Pazienza’s top lawyer Arthur Aidala (left) and his parents (right)
Pazienza, held at Rikers since she turned herself in last year, will be sentenced on September 29.
Police released this footage of Pazienza, claiming they were responsible for the attack. She surrendered two days later
Gustern’s grandson, AJ (left), said Pazienza was lucky to be able to afford such a competent lawyer.
Pazienza is seated in tears next to her lawyer on Wednesday. She accepted a plea deal that will put her behind bars for eight years.
According to prosecutors, Pazienza’s fiancee had previously revealed that she had consumed “several glasses of wine” before the attack, while the couple celebrated their engagement.
When told the park was closing, she reportedly became furious and charged Gustern down the street, pushing the 87-year-old to the ground and calling her a “bitch”.
She then reportedly saw an ambulance crew take the frail elderly woman away, with blood pouring from her head.
Pazienza, prosecutors say, then spent the next two weeks trying to cover his tracks. She quit her job, deleted her social media pages and even hid her cell phone at her aunt’s home on Long Island after fleeing her apartment in Astoria, where she lives with her Microsoft employee fiancé.
After several weeks, she finally turned herself in to the NYPD after police released footage of her as a suspect in the attack.
Her former friends said it was “not surprising” to see Pazienza charged with the disturbing crime.
“What pissed me off the most was seeing that her lawyer said she was overcharged and that she was a good and moral person. It’s not,” said one.
“I got to know her very well at school and she was pure trouble.”
“She had done drugs, she had maybe two bottles of wine and a ton of marijuana,” defense attorney Arthur Aidala said outside a Manhattan criminal court in June.
Pazienza, seen on a family vacation as a teenager, appears to have lived a privileged, then glamorous life in New York’s high society before landing behind bars.
Pazienza is currently imprisoned on Rikers Island, but grew up in a wealthy family on Long Island and enjoyed Manhattan high society. She is seen above in photos from her teenage years
According to the former classmate: “She is the epitome of white privilege. She never suffered any consequences in her life. She was empowered by her parents who took her out of everything, but she called them stupid and basic.
An acquaintance also said that she had a tendency to make fun of people and spoke in a derogatory way, “fat and deaf… anyone”.
Footage shared with DailyMail.com also showed the 27-year-old mocking deaf people, twisting her face while shouting and posing as a disabled person.