NYDailyNews Reports
Brazilian cops put the bloody purse strap and knife that killed Arturo Gatti on display Monday as his wife's lawyer insisted she's too "fragile, young and skinny" to kill a boxing champ.
Police said there's no way anyone but Gatti's 23-year-old wife, ex-stripper Amanda Rodrigues, was inside the couple's luxurious rental apartment when the former champ was killed.
"It was technically impossible for a third person to have been in the flat," lead investigator Moises Teixeira said Monday. "She did this alone."
There were no signs of forced entry. Electronic locks indicated no one else had entered the room.
Rodrigues' lawyer Celio Avelino said her client "is fragile, young and skinny. How could she kill a boxing champion?"
Police believe Rodrigues was capable of strangling her husband because he was drunk - and she stabbed him in the back of the head with a knife.
She then used her nylon purse strap to strangle the passed-out fighter, cops said.
Gatti's distraught sister Anna-Maria Gatti told CTV News Montreal that Rodrigues always provoked fights. "She always said, 'I'm gonna kill you, I'm gonna kill you,'" said Gatti.
"My mother told him to leave her. The only reason that he didn't want to leave her was the boy," she added, referring to the couple's 10-month-old son.
The boxer, his wife and Arturo Jr. were to fly to Florida this week for Anna-Maria Gatti's wedding.
Rodrigues was arrested Sunday. She is being held near Porto de Galinhas, the seaside resort town where the couple went for a second honeymoon.
Rodrigues told cops she and Gatti had a fight Friday night at a bar, and that her husband pushed her, causing minor injuries to her elbow and chin.
Later on Friday night, they both made it back to the rental apartment, where they slept in separate rooms.
Rodrigues told police she slept in the bedroom with her son, while Gatti slept in the living room.
She said she awoke at 6 a.m. to feed her son and three hours later realized Gatti was dead. He had been dead for hours.
"When [Rodrigues] awoke, she presumed he had committed suicide. But she had nothing to do with it," her lawyer said.
Witnesses told a different story.
They said Gatti left his son to sleep in the apartment, then returned to the city center to find his wife.
She arrived at the apartment before he returned and waited for him, cops said, and they went upstairs together.
Gatti's brother Fabrizzio was on his way to Brazil yesterday to claim the body, the boxer's former manager said.
"They were getting divorced around a year ago, and somehow she lured him back in," Pat Lynch said.
"They were having problems from the beginning, almost from day one. I saw it, his family saw it, everyone saw it except him. It was just horrible.
"She was an evil person. She has no soul. Someone who's capable of doing this - I hope she rots in hell."
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The wife of slain quarterback Steve McNair may have only learned about the gridiron star's affair with a gorgeous young woman after the clandestine couple's grisly deaths, sources close to the football player said Sunday.
"She's blindsided by this," one source said of Mechelle McNair, who was holed up in her family's home just 6 miles from the condo her husband used to bed his mistress. "She's crushed. Her whole world is shattered."
Nashville cops confirmed that Steve McNair, 36, was killed by four bullets fired at close range, two of which hit him in the head, and ruled his death a homicide.
His lover, Sahel Kazemi, 20, died of a single gunshot from the same semiautomatic found on the floor under her body, police also said.
They stopped short of calling the slayings a murder-suicide carried out by Kazemi, but said they are not looking for any suspects.
Cops ruled McNair's death a homicide and have not ruled on Kazemi's death, citing the need for more tests.
Kazemi and McNair, a dad of four boys, were dating for several months, friends told cops; McNair apparently kept the affair a secret from his wife.
Photos obtained by TMZ.com show a smiling McNair parasailing on a recent tropical vacation with the curvy Kazemi, whom he met as she waitressed at a Dave & Buster's sports bar.
"He started to talk to her a little," Kazemi's aunt Sepideh Salmani told The Tennessean newspaper. "They exchanged phone numbers, and started dating from there."
Salmani said her beautiful, raven-haired niece believed that McNair was in the process of getting a divorce.
Kazemi's sister told The Florida Times-Union of Jacksonville that Kazemi had expected to wed McNair.
"She said they were planning to get married," Soheyla Kazemi told the paper."
County records do not indicate that a divorce is pending, but the McNair family home is up for sale for $3 million.
Investigators said McNair had been drinking at a pair of Nashville bars - Blue Moon Lagoon Bar and Loser's Bar - into the early-morning hours of Saturday and then returned to the downtown condo he shared with a pal.
Although neighbors have not reported hearing gunshots, cops believe McNair and Kazemi died about 2 a.m., nearly 12 hours before their bodies were found.
There was no sign of forced entry at the condo, and investigators are checking whether the couple had been having a "lovers' quarrel," cops said.
It was not immediately known whom the pistol belonged to, although McNair did have a permit to carry a gun, police said.
Kazemi, who was raised by an aunt in Florida after her parents were killed in Iran, moved to Nashville with her ex-boyfriend, Keith Norfleet.
Norfleet, whom investigators want to interview, had a "volatile" relationship with Kazemi but was trying to win her back from McNair, Norfleet's stepmother said.
"They had a lot of jealousy in their relationship and they'd fight and break up a lot," said Trudie Norfleet. "He loved her. ... He's awful torn up about it."
The quarterback, renowned in Nashville for his extensive work in the community, rented the condo overlooking the Titans stadium with sporting goods dealer Wayne Neeley, who called McNair's best friend after seeing the bodies sprawled on a couch.
"It's a picture I'll never get out of my head," a weeping Robert Gaddy told the Daily News. "It's the most terrible sight I've ever seen."
"This was a great man, a man who'd do anything for you," said Gaddy, who had been friends with the Heisman finalist since meeting him at Alcorn State University.
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