Gatti’s record was 40-9 with 31 KOs and he won world championships in the junior, and super lightweight divisions. He participated in four of Ring Magazine’s ‘Fight of the Year’ and is remembered all over the world for his epic trilogy with Mickey Ward.
When it was announced back on July 11, 2009 that Gatti had been found dead in his Brazilian hotel room while on his second honeymoon, it shocked millions of boxing fans around the world. Most of them assumed he might have died from drugs or alcohol accidentally, but none of them would have guessed he’d taken his own life.
Word quickly spread that the 37-year-old Gatti had been murdered by his then 23-year-old Brazilian wife Amanda Rodrigues even though he was found hanged in his room. She said she had found the Italian- born and Canadian-raised Gatti dead when she came out of her room 10 hours later.
Rodrigues, an ex-stripper, was charged with murder by strangulation, but she was released by the Brazilian authorities and all charges were dropped. They concluded that Gatti had died by hanging himself. However, many people felt Brazilian police were just protecting one of their own or were paid off and just brushed the whole incident under the carpet.
One person who was adamant that Gatti didn’t kill himself was his manger Pat Lynch, who hired private investigators to thoroughly look into his death. After months of working on the case they said it’s pretty clear it wasn’t a suicide and a press conference will be held on Aug. 30th to discuss their findings.
Paul Ciolino, a private investigator out of Chicago, said he and his partner Joseph Moura have interviewed people and experts in Canada, America, and Brazil and he’ll hold the press conference at the Global Boxing Gym in North Bergen at 11 am on the 30th. He said he’ll also release an animation to show it wasn’t physically possible for Gatti to have killed himself, based on the theories of the Brazilian police. Ciolino said that expert scientific witnesses will give short presentations as well during the conference.
But Brazilian authorities said that Gatti was upset over the state of his marriage and drunk at the time. They said he hung himself with his wife’s purse strap while she was asleep in an upstairs room with their son. Ciolino said that theory didn’t make sense and the Brazilian police held a half-assed investigation. He also said the autopsy wasn’t complete and they just did several things that weren’t acceptable procedures anywhere in the world.
Ciolino said there was only one other person in the apartment the night of Gatti’s death, so he doesn’t have to accuse anybody of his murder as it’s obvious who is responsible.
