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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