Corey McGarrahan and his wife were watching television in their rural Arizona home a little past 9 p.m. when they heard what sounded like a propane explosion outside.
“We paused the television and looked at each other and said, ‘Did you hear that?’” McGarrahan told The Times in a phone interview Monday.
As the couple would later come to find out, that explosion was a gunshot. Their neighbor Kerri Ann Abatti, a daughter of the Pinetop, Ariz., community, had been killed.
At a news conference Monday, detectives with the Navajo County Sheriff’s Office and Pinetop Police Department shed light on the investigation into Abatti’s killing and what led them to arrest her estranged husband, powerful Imperial Valley farmer Michael Abatti, on suspicion of murder.
Kerri Ann Abatti was killed the night of Nov. 20. Authorities on Monday said their investigation led them to focus on her husband’s whereabouts that day and the day after. And although they did not disclose what evidence they had gathered, Navajo County Sheriff David Clouse told reporters his detectives “had strong reason to believe that Mr. Abatti had traveled from El Centro, Calif., on Nov. 20 to Pinetop, Ariz., committed the homicide and traveled back to California.”
According to Michael Abatti’s San Diego-based attorneys, Danielle Iredale and Owen Roth, Abatti plans to plead not guilty.
The team said he surrendered in Imperial County and “now he awaits his day in court in Arizona.”
Abatti cannot post bail until he has been extradited.
According to Clouse, Kerri Ann Abatti was found by her nephew in her home on the night of Nov. 20.
Michael Abatti, pictured in an Imperial County Sheriff’s Office booking mugshot, is awaiting extradition to Arizona.
(Imperial County Sheriff’s Office)
At the time she was shot, Abatti, 59, had been embroiled in a bitter divorce with her 63-year-old husband, with the amount of financial support she was owed at the heart of the disagreement, according to the couple’s divorce filings.
Kerri Ann Abatti’s nephew, who was living on the property, found his aunt on the dining room floor near the kitchen counter, bleeding from the head and face and unconscious, according to the Navajo County medical examiner’s investigative report. He thought she had fallen from counter height, according to the report. Law enforcement agencies were tied up on other calls in the area, so there was an extended wait for an officer, the report states.
First responders showed up 10 to 15 minutes after the loud pop that may have been a gunshot, said Corey McGarrahan. The Abatti house is on 14 acres and tucked away from the road, where it is not visible to cars or emergency vehicles.
According to the autopsy report, the emergency crew noted that Kerri’s injuries were consistent with a gunshot wound to the head. She was pronounced dead in the emergency room, the report states.
When investigators searched the home for clues, they found a broken window and determined the shot had been fired from outside in the backyard.
Also, a bystander had called police that night to report a boom consistent with a large-caliber firearm, and Abatti’s nephew told police he’d heard a loud noise before he found his aunt, the report states.
Once it was clear a crime had been committed, investigators from the Navajo County Sheriff’s Office and Pinetop police secured the scene, acquired a search warrant and canvassed the neighborhood, according to Clouse.
“We were looking for all eyewitnesses, anybody that was home at the time,” he said. They gathered evidence from home surveillance technology, such as doorbell cameras, and interviewed her friends and family — including her three adult children — so they could build a timeline of her activities in the days before her death.
McGarrahan said that he does not have a camera at the house. He also said he did not hear any cars on the street until the emergency vehicles arrived.
According to court documents, Kerri Ann Abatti moved to the 7,000-square-foot property in her hometown in the eastern White Mountains in 2023 after leaving her husband and initiating divorce proceedings.
As part of their homicide investigation, detectives “looked for anything that was out of the norm” around the time of the woman’s killing, Clouse said. They soon learned about the contentious divorce.
On Nov. 23, Clouse said the investigation moved to the Imperial Valley, where they executed search warrants at three different locations, including the Abattis’ home in El Centro and Michael Abatti’s business properties.
In the Imperial Valley, the Abatti name carries weight. Michael Abatti served as a board member of the Imperial Irrigation District from 2006 to 2010 and once sued the district in a dispute over water rights. He owns a large farming operation that grows sugar beets, alfalfa and melons and is one of the largest operators in the area.
The sign in front of Michael Abatti’s farm shop in El Centro bears the name of his late father.
(Hayne Palmour IV / For The Times)
Divorce filings show that Kerri Ann Abatti accused her husband 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.
As part of their investigation, detectives interviewed the Abattis’ friends, family and business associates in Arizona and Southern California.
Once enough information was gathered, the team cross-referenced all of their intelligence, looking for inconsistencies and flags, and provided their findings to the Navajo County district attorney’s office, Clouse said.
On Dec. 23, that information was presented to a grand jury in Navajo County, and an arrest warrant was issued for Michael Abatti.
The Imperial County Sheriff’s Office arrested Abatti in El Centro that same day. He is awaiting extradition to Arizona.
“We have received orders for a pickup, he has been placed in our transport queue … and the date and time will be released once he’s back in Navajo County,” Clouse said. “We will notify everybody … once he is secured back in Navajo County jail.”