Arturo Gatti’s wife, accused of strangling the champion boxer with her purse strap, proclaims her innocence and love for her dead husband in a letter given to The Associated Press on Wednesday.
While declining to be interviewed from her jail cell in the northeastern Brazil city of Recife, Amanda Rodrigues did hand over a letter written on white, lined paper and penned in red ink.
“This is a pain that has become inexplicable and intolerable, this loss and this malicious accusation,” Rodrigues wrote. “I lost my husband!”
The 23-year-old Rodrigues told investigators she awoke on Saturday about 6am to find her husband’s body in the apartment they rented in Porto de Galinhas, a seaside resort in Pernambuco state. She then called police.
But investigators said she was the only suspect and they are certain she killed Gatti in the apartment where they and their 10-month-old son arrived for a second honeymoon last week. The boy was unhurt and was in the care of Rodrigues’ family.
“I’m innocent and I know that this will be proven in a few days,” Rodrigues wrote.
But those who knew Gatti and Rodrigues in the US and Canada have said their relationship was rocky at best.
“She was yelling all the time, they were always fighting and she’d say ‘I’m going to kill you!’ when they fought,” Gatti’s mother, Ida, told the AP by phone from Montreal.
According to records at the Court of Quebec’s criminal and penal division, Gatti was charged on April 16 for violating a restraining order that had been filed against him. The records didn’t indicate who filed the restraining order, but Gatti’s mother confirmed that it was Rodrigues who had taken one out against him. She offered no other details.
Gatti’s stepfather, Geraldo DiFrancesco, said the pair fought, but that he “was surprised” it went as far as Gatti’s death. “You can never expect something like that to happen.”
Chuck Zito, an actor and friend of Gatti who met the boxer 13 years ago and accompanied him to the ring for several of his most notable fights, said he knew the couple was having problems.
“Things were real rocky. They were rocky between them from the beginning,” Zito said. “He said they were probably going to get a divorce.”
Rodrigues, however, sketched a different picture in her letter.
“The people most important to my life, who know us, know the size of our love,” she wrote. “What hurts me is knowing the suffering of my family and friends. What hurts me is to know that my husband will not be in my house waiting for my return.”
In her letter, Rodrigues remained optimistic, writing to her son: “Junior — soon mama will be at home!”
An autopsy report on Gatti was due to be released within days.
Inter’s defense of their Italian Serie A title was hit with a setback on Sunday as they lost 1-0 at home to AS Roma, while Scott McTominay netted a brace as SSC Napoli beat Torino 2-0 to go top of the table. No fixtures were played on Friday or Saturday because of the funeral of Pope Francis in Rome, meaning the full round of Serie A matches took place on Sunday and yesterday. Matias Soule’s first-half strike for Roma knocked Inter off top spot earlier in the day before new Napoli opened up a three-point buffer with victory in Sunday’s
Ethiopia’s Tigst Assefa yesterday set a women’s only world record of 2 hours, 15 minutes, 50 seconds as she won the London Marathon, while Kenya’s Sabastian Sawe put a star-studded men’s field to the sword. For 28-year-old Assefa it was ample compensation for finishing runner-up in London and the Paris Olympics last year — especially as bitter Dutch rival, the Ethiopia-born Sifan Hassan, finished third. Assefa dropped Kenya’s Joyciline Jepkosgei as the race, played out in blazing sunshine and with thousands lining the route, entered its business end. She came home almost three minutes clear of the Kenyan. Hassan, who beat her in
FOCUS: ‘We came out here with a goal in mind ... to keep our foot on their throat and on their neck, and continue to play 48 minutes of basketball,’ Donovan Mitchell said The Cleveland Cavaliers on Monday thrashed the Miami Heat to cruise into the next round of the NBA playoffs as the Golden State Warriors battled past the Houston Rockets 109-106 to move to the brink of a series victory. After pounding Miami 124-87 in game three on Saturday, No.1 Eastern Conference seeds Cleveland once again piled on the misery for their outclassed opponents with a crushing 138-83 victory to complete a 4-0 series win. The 55-point drubbing was the largest series-clinching victory in NBA playoff history and sets up a series against either the Indiana Pacers or Milwaukee Bucks in
Canadian actor Ryan Reynolds said it felt like an “impossible dream” when fellow Hollywood A-lister Rob McElhenney first floated the idea of buying soccer club Wrexham, along with a pitch for a documentary. The ultimate goal was reaching the Premier League. Four years after they purchased the north Wales outfit, Wrexham are one league away from achieving their lofty goal after a 3-0 win over Charlton Athletic on Saturday saw them promoted for a record third consecutive time. “We were standing there doing a press conference four years ago, and said our goal is to make it to the Premier League, and
RSS