March 24, 2012 11:24 PM

How did boxer Arturo Gatti die?

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Arturo and Amanda Gatti on their second honeymoon in Europe in June 2009. (Amanda Gatti)

The trip to Europe in June 2009 was not just a second honeymoon says Amanda Gatti... it was a second chance.

Asked how she would describe the couple's relationship at that time, Amanda called it "beautiful" and "perfect."

Well, maybe not perfect. According to Arturo's friend, Tony Rizzo, a phone message left by Arturo during the trip made him wonder:

It's a f-----g nightmare. ... I'll talk to you later, alright? ...Ciao!

"He was just fed up," Tony said. "He knew it had to come to an end."

But if Arturo had misgivings about the marriage, it didn't stop him -- right after the trip in Europe -- from picking up the baby and meeting Amanda in Brazil.

On July 10, 2009, the Gattis arrived at a resort in the beach town of Porto de Galinhas.

This was the first time Amanda talked publicly about the night that so dramatically changed her life... and forever put her under a cloud of suspicion.

It started as a family dinner out, Amanda says, but ended as too many other nights had before - with Arturo drunk and mean.

"I told him...' OK, you gonna stay, but I'm gonna go because I couldn't stay more...and that's when the fight started," she told Erin Moriarty.

"When you say 'fight,' how serious was this fight?" Moriarty asked.

"It was an ugly fight!"

A crowd soon gathered. According to police reports, Arturo threw her to the ground. Police video shows the injuries to her arm and chin.

"Did he hit you?" Moriarty asked.

"He didn't hit me, but he threw me on the floor. And I hurt my arms," Amanda replied.

"How did he throw you?"

"I don't want to talk about that," she said.

In a flash, Arturo took their 10-month-old baby... and took off.

"He took the stroller and he went to another direction," she said.

"So they just left you?"

"They just left me."

When he returned minutes later to look for his wife, the angry crowd began throwing things at him. Witnesses say he got hit in the head with a rock and even a bicycle. Bleeding from his head and shoulder - and furious - Arturo fought back. People described him as "The Incredible Hulk."

"I believe it was around two, two in the morning..." Amanda continued.

Amanda made her way back to the condo. When Arturo and the baby caught up with her, she says she noticed a cut on the back of her husband's head.

"He was like, 'Look what happened to me. I got in a fight with four people in the street, four guys,'" she said.

But by now the storm had passed and Arturo saw for the first time what he had done to his wife.

"He was not angry," Amanda explained. "It seems like the other Arturo, my husband, was there. ...and he was like, 'Who did this to you?' And I was like, 'You did that to me Arturo.'"

According to Amanda, she had finally had enough and took their son with her to bed. "Before I got in the stairs, he look at me...and he was sad. And he just say... 'So I guess it's over, huh?' And I look at him and I say, 'It's over.' I couldn't take that anymore."

"So what's the next thing you remember?" Moriarty asked.

"So I wake up...junior was already woke up. It was time for him to have his bottle. And I went downstairs and Arturo was on the floor."

Amanda says she was not alarmed. "So I look at him, he looks like he was sleeping."

He had often passed out on the floor, she says, so she just left Arturo there and never said anything to him.

Unaware that anything was wrong, she says she came downstairs about two hours later. Still so upset, she was ready to say goodbye.

"When I touch him, he was cold. And at that time, I knew something was wrong," she said. "I wanted to believe that he was just pass[ed] out, so I started shaking him... I was calling his name. I say, 'Arturo I forgive you, please wake up!"

Amanda says she began to panic. "So I open the door and I started screaming. I say, 'My husband is dead, my husband is dead! Please someone help me.' I was going crazy," she said in tears.

On the floor nearby was a broken strap from Amanda's own purse.

Asked if she knew what happened to Arturo at that point, Amanda told Moriarty, "Yes, I knew. I knew.... My husband kill himself! Oh my God, my husband killed himself."

But to the Brazilian police, things just didn't look or sound quite right. Arturo's body was on the floor face down in a pool of blood. How did he get a deep gash on the back of his head? And why was a knife lying nearby? More important, why didn't Amanda call police the first time she saw Arturo on the floor?

"Didn't you have to walk right past him to get to the... refrigerator?" Moriarty asked.

"No. ...Here's the living room, and here's the kitchen. So here's the stairs...I walked through here," Amanda pointed out.

"You didn't see any blood?"

"There was no blood there at that time," she said.

But when security systems showed that no one else had entered the apartment during the night, the police reached one conclusion. Amanda was arrested and jailed.

But almost three weeks later, she was suddenly freed. After an autopsy, Brazilian investigators concluded Arturo Gatti hanged himself. His friends and family refuse to accept it.

"Coming out with...these big glasses like she's a movie star, with a smile from ear to ear," said John Lynch, Arturo's lawyer, of Amanda's release from jail. "Grinning like a Cheshire cat," added Pat Lynch, Arturo's former manager.

"She's been described as a black widow, is that the way you see her?" Moriarty asked the brothers.

"Yeah, I'd say so," said Pat.

The story doesn't make sense to the Lynch brothers. So they are sending a pair of private detectives to Brazil to investigate.

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Arturo Gatti's life and career

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