A work scrutinizes a puzzling celebrity case with precision and proficiency.
This fourth installment of the Hamilcar Noir series examines the questions and controversy surrounding the 2009 death of a former world champion boxer.
Amanda Gatti discovered her husband, Arturo, dead on the morning of July 11, 2009. The couple had been staying at a resort in Pernambuco, Brazil, with their infant son, Arturo Junior. As the ex-boxer initially appeared dead by strangulation and there were no signs of a break-in, cops arrested Amanda on suspicion of murder. But they subsequently released her when the autopsy ruled the death a suicide. According to the report, Gatti hanged himself from the staircase using a strap from his wife’s purse. The report further stated he’d hung there for hours before the strap broke and he fell to the floor, where Amanda found him. But members of Gatti’s family and his friends refused to believe he killed himself. The former boxer, who retired two years before, had a reputation for not giving up in fights. He would take scores of punishing hits before coming back in a later round to secure the victory. The Gatti family asked for a second autopsy. Some members of the family filed suit over Gatti’s estate, as his will named Amanda the sole beneficiary. Gatti’s manager, Pat Lynch, hoped to prove that the death was not a suicide by hiring experts to investigate and reconstruct the crime scene. All the while, the feud between members of Gatti’s family and his wife persisted. And what happened to Gatti on that July night may be a question that lingers indefinitely.
Tobin’s debut book delivers a concise, well-researched true-crime story. His sources consist of TV interviews, Associated Press reports, journals, and numerous websites as well as his own interview with Kathy Duva, CEO of the boxing promotion company Main Events. Along with meticulous coverage of the death and its aftermath, the author spotlights much of Gatti’s career, from a title-winning match in 1995 to his final fight in 2007. Tobin’s kinetic descriptions of Gatti’s matches are akin to action scenes: “Ruelas saw his chance and snapped a series of uppercuts into Gatti’s chin, the last of which spun Gatti’s head. Wobbled, Gatti backed away with Ruelas in pursuit. But true to form, Gatti sought only enough room to answer back.” Despite the favorable recounting of Gatti and his boxing days, the book unbiasedly provides details on the man’s death. For example, the experts’ investigation uncovered potential flaws in the Brazilian authorities’ probe, like the specific place where Gatti’s body fell. But Tobin notes the problematic aspects of the crime-scene re-creation that do not convincingly point to murder. For good measure, the author addresses chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a condition stemming from a brain injury and to which boxers are susceptible. With symptoms like substance abuse and suicidal behavior, Gatti may have been affected by CTE. Nevertheless, Tobin astutely looks at the varying possibilities that would have led to Gatti’s death. Such an approach intelligently and respectfully piques interest in a real-life mystery that has left Gatti’s fans and family in need of both solace and satisfactory answers.
A work scrutinizes a puzzling celebrity case with precision and proficiency. (acknowledgments, author bio)Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-949590-26-5
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Hamilcar Publications
Review Posted Online: April 28, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
None
This memoir of a childhood acquaintance who became a peripheral casualty of social turmoil is affecting despite a curious remoteness. Loizeaux (Anna: A Daughter's Life, 1993) revisits the suburban New Jersey of his childhood to exhume the story of a charismatic schoolmate of mixed race, William ``Rabbit'' Wells, mistakenly shot and killed by a young police officer, William Sorgie, in 1973. This account of Wells's life and death is indisputably a structural marvel, nimbly flitting back and forth in time in a way that should be confusing but isn't, thanks to his unfailingly clear prose and his eye for the detail that instantly impresses a scene on the mind. Piecing together a fragmented image of Wells—and, much less distinctly, the still-living Sorgie—Loizeaux flirts again and again with the circumstances of Jan. 13, 1973, but leaves the heart of the matter to a powerful climactic narrative. But while precise, Loizeaux's style also exhibits a sort of contrived-sounding hauntedness. For despite apposite autobiographical touches, the book doesn't really establish the source of the author's depth of feeling for Wells, as manifested in sometimes almost incantatory writing and heavy-handed symbolism. And while the transitory presence Wells had, even for those who became closest to him, understandably makes for a dearth of solid facts 25 years later, Loizeaux's rather flat novelistic reconstructions of speculative events become unwelcome as they mount up, repetitively signaled by phrases like ``I can imagine . . .'' or ``I suppose. . . .'' Ultimately, the wounds seem to have healed long ago (albeit with visible scar tissue) and been overtaken by broader upheavals. Thus, this story's power resides in its careful reckoning of a personal loss, not in the ``echoes of our national life''— Vietnam, urban rioting—that he perfunctorily refers to. Still, a quietly heroic rescue of a pointlessly stolen life, and an evocative snapshot of an extraordinary moment in an ordinary place.
None NonePub Date: Jan. 1, 1998
ISBN: 1-55970-380-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Arcade
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1997
A haunting look at the phenomenon of missing persons. Scottish journalist O'Hagan explored the United Kingdom in search of stories of people who have vanished. He begins with his own grandfather, a sailor lost at sea, and continues the search through the ugly tenements where he grew up—and where several boys were lost. He interviews the families of these children, and their agony is horribly vivid. One father happened upon a look-alike of his missing son and almost begged the boy to move to his house and pretend to be his son. Other parents obsessively flip through photographs of their missing children, forever frozen in time at the age they were when taken. The police call the vanished ``mispers,'' for missing persons, and are only now beginning to compile records on the subject. O'Hagan also visits a grim center for homeless teens, where the residents do their best to sever any remaining familial ties. He follows the trail of a number of lost girls to the home of Fred West, who killed at least 25 female boarders and buried them in his backyard. These stories are unrelenting, and O'Hagan presents solid insights into both the minds of the families and those of some who've deliberately disappeared. But the grisly litany would have been better served by the presence of real insight into why people vanish. He revisits the murder scene of James Bulger, a young boy killed by two 10-year-olds, and recounts episodes of his own cruelty, as a child, toward other children. But while O'Hagan raises the fascinating specter of child sadism, he doesn't speculate on its causes, quickly dropping the matter. Though somewhat lacking in a sense of the big picture, this is a powerfully observed and often heartbreaking portrait in miniature of those who disappear and the effect on those they leave behind.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1996
ISBN: 1-56584-335-5
Page Count: 224
Publisher: The New Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
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