The death of tragic former world boxing champion Arturo Gatti may have been murder and not suicide, his long-time manager Pat Lynch has claimed.
Gatti was found dead in a holiday apartment in the Brazilian resort of Porto Galinhas after a row with his wife Brazil in July of this year.
Gatti’s wife, former stripper Amanda Rodrigues Barbosa, was initially arrested for murder but the case was dropped when an autopsy ruled that Gatti had committed suicide by hanging himself off a banister with the strap of his wife’s handbag.
Gatti’s wife is now locked in a legal battle over Gatti’s $6m will.
However, Gatti’s family and former manager maintained that Gatti would never have taken his own life.
“Knowing his character there is no way he is going to hang himself with a handbag strap with his baby son in the room,” said Lynch.
Lynch hired eminent pathologist Dr Michael Baden to conduct a second autopsy and he believes the as yet unpublished results suggest that Gatti was murdered. “The second autopsy discovered that, among other things, his Adam’s apple was fractured, which is consistent with strangling and not hanging,” he said.
Lynch added that there were marks which suggested that Gatti had been beaten with a blunt instrument on the body and head.
He continued, “The handbag strap doesn’t match the ligature mark on his neck. There are so many unanswered questions.”
