At the age of 16, Pugach graduated from Evander Childs High School in New York City. He later received a Bachelor of Business Administration from City College of New York and a law degree from Brooklyn Law School, from which he graduated cum laude.
After being admitted to the New York State bar, Pugach and Herbert Weitz built the law firm of Weitz and Pugach. The firm, specializing in negligence cases, became highly influential. Its success, however, was short-lived.On November 19, 1958, the Special Committee on Professional Conduct charged Weitz and Pugach with engaging in fee splitting.
In 1959 Pugach began an infamous courtship of, a 21-year-old woman from the East Bronx.
Pugach then threatened to kill or hurt Riss if she left him, 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." Riss reported the threat to the New York Police Department to no avail. Upon hearing of her engagement to Larry Schwartz, Pugach hired three assailants to attack Riss.
The assailants threw lye in Riss"s face, leaving her blind in one eye, nearly blind in the other, and permanently scarred. Pugach was convicted of the crime and spent 14 years in prison, during which time he continually wrote to Riss.
In 1976 they co-wrote a book, A Very Different Love Story.
In 1997 Pugach was once again accused of threatening a woman with whom he was having an affair. Pugach died of heart failure on January 22, 2013, at the age of 75. In 2007 Dan Klores produced a documentary film about Burt and Linda Pugach.
