Sunday, July 19, 2009
SAO PAULO (AP) — An autopsy indicates former boxing champion Arturo Gatti may have committed suicide, been accidentally killed or murdered, according to a Brazilian newspaper that said it obtained a copy of the coroner’s initial findings.
Police have said they are certain Gatti’s 23-year-old wife strangled the boxer with her purse strap as he drunkenly slept July 11, but the autopsy report raises some doubts.
Gatti was found dead in the apartment he was renting with wife Amanda Rodrigues in the Brazilian seaside resort of Porto de Galinhas in the northeastern state of Pernambuco.
In the state capital of Recife, the Jornal do Comercio newspaper reported Saturday that the autopsy findings it obtained stated Gatti’s body was “suspended and hanged, indicating he may have committed suicide.”
The autopsy report, according to the newspaper, also said that “murder or accidental death” could not be ruled out. There was no explanation for “accidental death.”
Paula Cysneiros, the spokeswoman for the medical examiners office that performed the autopsy, would not confirm the newspaper’s report.
Police arrested Rodrigues on suspicion of murdering the former two-division champion. She maintains her innocence and is being held in a prison in Recife. She has not been charged — according to Brazilian law, police have until this Wednesday to hand over their findings to prosecutors, who will decide if charges are to be filed.
A visitation for Gatti is scheduled for today at Maison Funeraire Magnus Poirier in his adopted hometown of Montreal, with a funeral on Monday at Notre Dame De La Defense.
Rodrigues told investigators she awoke July 11 and found her husband’s body about 9 a.m. She then called police.