Kerri Ann Abatti left her husband a note when she moved from their family home in the California farming town of El Centro to a house they owned in Arizona\u2019s White Mountains in August 2023.<\/p>\n
About a month and a half later, court records show, she texted her husband, Mike Abatti \u2014 a wealthy farmer from one of the most prominent families in the Imperial Valley \u2014 that she was filing for divorce.<\/p>\n
The divorce filings show the pair became embroiled in a contentious court battle. Kerri Ann accused Mike of stonewalling her attempts to learn the full picture of their income and real estate holdings while he made changes to their finances without consulting her or her attorney. Meanwhile, she contended, she was struggling to stay afloat on the several thousand dollars in monthly spousal support that the court temporarily awarded her as the proceedings stretched on for more than two years.<\/p>\n
But then last month, a relative found Kerri Ann Abatti inside her cavernous Pinetop, Ariz., home on 14 wooded acres, suffering from a gunshot wound, said Chief Deputy Brian Swanty of the Navajo County Sheriff\u2019s Office. Abatti died on the way to the hospital, he said.<\/p>\n
There have been no arrests in Abatti\u2019s killing, authorities said Friday. Detectives are working to rule out suspects and said they\u2019re aware of the victim\u2019s acrimonious divorce proceedings. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not sure if it\u2019s involved or not,\u201d Swanty said.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, detectives served search warrants <\/a>on the Abattis\u2019 El Centro home; vehicles and camp trailers belonging to the family; two structures on the Mike Abatti Farms property and electronic devices belonging to \u201ca multitude of people,\u201d Swanty said. Numerous pieces of potential evidence were seized, he said, but added that there was nothing he would consider to be \u201ca smoking gun.\u201d<\/p>\n Investigators, he said, will continue to cast a wide net to solve the case. \u201cThere are numerous things being looked at to try to find the truth and find facts and bring justice to this woman that was killed,\u201d Swanty said.<\/p>\n Repeated attempts by The Times to reach Mike Abatti through his company and attorneys have been unsuccessful.<\/p>\n News of the case has shaken the tight-knit community in the Imperial Valley, a swath of irrigated desert that\u2019s known as America\u2019s winter salad bowl for its ability to support crops like leafy greens and onions when other regions are too cold and where the Abatti name holds a great deal of influence.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s affected this community,\u201d said Wally Leimgruber, a former Imperial County supervisor.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Abattis are such a large family,\u201d he said. \u201cThis community knows that the Abatti family was one of the pioneers that came here.\u201d<\/p>\n Leimgruber is a distant cousin of Mike Abatti. His grandmother was the sister of Mike\u2019s maternal grandfather, John Studer, a prominent local farmer who in 1950 shot and killed his wife, Gertrude, after she filed for divorce, and then took his own life, according to an article in the Calexico Chronicle.<\/p>\n The family trace their roots to Battista and Antonia Abatti, Italian immigrants who started a dairy farm in Holtville, which neighbors El Centro, in the 1920s. Their sons, Ben and Tony, founded their own farm in 1956. They grew cantaloupe, onions, honeydew and asparagus, eventually cultivating 24,000 acres and employing 7,000 people, according to Ben Abatti\u2019s obituary.<\/p>\n Ben Abatti had five children with his wife, Loretta. All of them went into farming, the obituary states.<\/p>\n Today, prominent members of the Abatti family include Mike\u2019s brother, Jimmy Abatti, a onetime president of the Imperial County Farm Bureau who was recently honored<\/a> with the Chamber of Commerce for Greater Brawley\u2019s Branding Iron Award for his philanthropy. His other brother, Ben Abatti Jr., is on the board of the California Beet Growers Assn. and board president of the Holtville Unified School District.<\/p>\n Mike\u2019s cousins Freddi Abatti runs a company providing hay and seed products, and Alex Abatti Jr. runs companies that manufacture fertilizer, package hay and market seed and grain.<\/p>\n Together, the Abattis are among the largest landowners in the Imperial Valley, managing operations on thousands of acres, growing crops that include alfalfa, broccoli and melons. They\u2019re also among the region\u2019s largest water users, in 2022 using more water than the entire Las Vegas metropolitan area, according to estimates by ProPublica<\/a>.<\/p>\n In recent years, the family has been involved in legal disputes with the Imperial Irrigation District over water rights. Mike Abatti has accused the district of illegally limiting his water supply for irrigation and in 2021 took his case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to hear the petition.<\/p>\n