NEW YORK – Linda Pugach, who was blinded in 1959 when her lover hired hit men to throw lye in her face – and became a media sensation after later marrying him – has died, her husband said Thursday. She was 75.

The infamous crime was detailed in the 2007 documentary “Crazy Love.”

Pugach, who hid behind dark glasses for the rest of her life, died Tuesday at Long Island Jewish Hospital in Queens. The cause was heart failure, said her husband, Burton Pugach, who spent 14 years in prison for hiring the thugs to attack his then-girlfriend, Linda Riss, after she spurned him. He was married at the time, and the heinous attack became an instant tabloid sensation.

After his release, Pugach divorced his first wife and persuaded Riss to marry him in 1974. He proposed to her on live television.

“This was a very fairy tale romance,” a sobbing Pugach told The Associated Press on Thursday.

After the release of “Crazy Love,” Pugach praised filmmaker Dan Klores for revealing a story that for the first time “has colors – it was no longer black and white.”

Two decades after his release from prison, Pugach was accused in another case with chilling similarities but acquitted in 1997.

Linda Pugach testified at that trial, describing her husband as a good man.

“He was a naughty little boy and he was caught,” she said as she left the courtroom on his arm. She said he was an adulterer, not a criminal.

Pugach said his wife went into the hospital Dec. 26, two days before they had scheduled a trip to Florida to buy a property.

“I don’t know how I’m going to go on without her,” he said.

On Thursday, he again denied that he was ever involved in the attack.