Boxer Arturo Gatti flew to Brazil on Friday to meet his estranged wife, Amanda Rodriguez, and their 10-month old son. He had hoped to be reconciled with his jealous wife and give their tempestuous marriage another chance. Then he planned to fly out the next day to attend his sister’s wedding in Canada.
But Rodriguez’s jealous fits extended even to his own family members. She forbade him to attend his own sister’s wedding. After a night of arguing and drinking, Rodriguez waited until Arturo fell into a drunken stupor before stabbing and choking him with her purse strap.
Brazilian authorities then say the ruthless Rodriguez called Gatti’s sister, Anna Maria Gatti — on her wedding day — to tell her that her brother was dead.
“Can you imagine? On her wedding day, it’s unbelievable,” said Gerardo Di Francesco, Arturo and Anna-Marias’s stepfather. Di Francesco revealed that Gatti and his wife had separated and he was living with his mother instead of in the Montreal condo that he shared with Rodriguez.
“At the beginning, he had his condominium, the penthouse up top on Jarry [Street],” said Di Francesco. “But then, the fighting started. They were separated. He was coming here to sleep. And she would come here to yell at him, ‘Why don’t you come back to the house?’ It was quite the drama…”
Family members say Rodriguez dominated and controlled her husband to the point where she even demanded that he stop seeing his daughter by another woman.
According to Erika Rivera, the mother of Arturo Gatti’s 3-year-old daughter Sophia, Rodriguez requested to meet with her and then afterwards she told Gatti to cut ties with Rivera and their daughter.
“She told him: ‘You cannot see your daughter. She was holding him back. How could you do that as a mother? Children are innocent,” Rivera told the New York Daily News. “Now she’s left my daughter without a daddy.”
Rivera believes Gatti didn’t understand women, but wanted attractive females in his life. “He did the right thing since the day she was born. He had a trust fund and a college fund for her [Sophia],” said Rivera.
Rodriguez was arrested Sunday in Brazil and charged with murder. Gatti’s 10-month-old son remains in Brazil with Rodriguez’s family, but Gatti’s family members say they will fight for custody of the boy.
