California farmer arrested on suspicion of murder in wife's death in Arizona

A prominent California farmer was arrested Tuesday on suspicion of murder in the shooting death of his estranged wife in a remote mountain community in Arizona, the Navajo County Sheriff's Office said.

Michael Abatti, 63, was arrested in El Centro and booked into jail on a first-degree murder charge. He is awaiting extradition to Arizona.

Authorities say they believe he drove to Arizona on Nov. 20 and fatally shot Kerri Ann Abatti, 59, before returning home to California. She was found dead in her family’s tree-shrouded vacation home in Pinetop, Arizona, where she moved after splitting with her husband.

An attorney for Michael Abatti didn’t immediately respond to an email and text message seeking comment.

Authorities searched his home in far Southern California on Dec. 2 as part of the investigation into his wife's death.

El Centro is a city of 44,000 people just minutes from the Mexican border in the crop-rich Imperial Valley, which is the biggest user of Colorado River water and known for growing leafy greens, melons and forage crops.

Michael Abatti comes from a long line of farmers in the region bordering Arizona, and his grandfather, an Italian immigrant, was among the region’s early settlers. His father, Ben, helped start the Imperial Valley Vegetable Growers Association, and the Abatti name is known throughout the region and tied to farming enterprises, scholarship funds and leadership in local boards and groups.

Michael Abatti has grown onions, broccoli, cantaloupes and other crops in the Imperial Valley and served on the board of the powerful Imperial Irrigation District from 2006 to 2010.

Michael and Kerri Abatti were married in 1992 and had three children.

Kerri Abatti is a descendant of one of the first Latter-day Saints families to settle Pinetop in the 1880s. The community, located 190 miles (305 kilometers) northeast of Phoenix in the White Mountains, was briefly called Penrodville after Kerri’s forbearers before adopting the Pinetop name.

The couple split in 2023 and Kerri Abatti filed for divorce in proceedings that were pending in California at the time of her death.

The Abattis were sparring over finances with Kerri telling the court the couple had lived an upper-class lifestyle during more than three decades of marriage. They owned a large home in California, a vacation home in Pinetop and ranch land in Wyoming and vacationed in Switzerland, Italy and Hawaii while sending their children to private school, she said.

After the split, Kerri was granted $5,000 a month in temporary spousal support but last year asked for an increase to $30,000, saying she couldn’t maintain her standard of living as she quit her job as a bookkeeper and office manager for the family farm in 1999 to stay home with the couple’s three children. Kerri, who previously held a real estate license in Arizona, also asked for an additional $100,000 in attorney’s fees, court filings show.

“I am barely scraping by each month, am handling all of the manual labor on our large property in Arizona and continuing its upkeep,” she wrote in court filings earlier this year, adding she was living near her elderly parents. Kerri said she also needed to buy a newer car because her 2011 vehicle had more than 280,000 miles (450,600 kilometers) on it and sorely needed repairs.

Michael Abatti said in a legal filing that he couldn’t afford the increase after two bad farming years took a toll on his monthly income. He said European shifts in crop-buying to support war-plagued Ukrainian farmers and rising shipping costs were to blame along with an unusually cold and wet winter.

He said in mid-2024 it cost $1,000 to grow an acre of wheat that he could sell for $700, and that he was receiving about $22,000 a month to run the farm as the business struggled to pay its creditors in full.

“The income available at this time does not warrant any increase in the amount to which the parties stipulated, let alone an increase to $30,000 per month,” Lee Hejmanowski, Michael Abatti’s family law attorney, wrote in court papers.

Days later, Michael Abatti agreed to increase temporary spousal support payments to $6,400 a month, court filings show.

He studied in the agricultural business management program at Colorado State University in Fort Collins before returning to California, according to a 2023 book about water issues written by his college friend, Craig Morgan, titled “The Morality of Deceit.”

In 2009, Michael Abatti almost died from an infection caused by a flesh-eating bacteria and was hospitalized and placed in a medically induced coma for treatment, Morgan wrote in the book.

The home of Michael Abatti is seen Friday, Dec. 12, 2025, in El Centro, Calif. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)

The home of Michael Abatti is seen Friday, Dec. 12, 2025, in El Centro, Calif. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)

Water droplets from sprinklers cover an irrigated field Friday, Dec. 12, 2025, in El Centro, Calif. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)

Water sits in a ditch Friday, Dec. 12, 2025, in El Centro, Calif. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)

Water sits in a canal alongside irrigated fields Friday, Dec. 12, 2025, near El Centro, Calif. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — England's managing director of men's cricket Rob Key says he will investigate the drinking habits of the England team following reports that their mid-Ashes beach resort break may have involved over-indulging of alcohol.

England lost each of the first three tests to allow Australia to retain the Ashes in just 11 days of on-field action.

The England squad visited the resort town of Noosa on the Sunshine Coast north of Brisbane between the second and third tests, a long-planned part of the itinerary designed to help players relax and unwind on the long tour.

A video emerged on Tuesday which appeared to show England's opening batter Ben Duckett unable to remember how to get back to the hotel.

In the video posted on X, Duckett was apparently talking with a group of people. When a woman asked if he knew how to get home, he allegedly replied “No" and the conversation then continues with Duckett appearing disorientated.

Another video posted on social media showed batter Jacob Bethell dancing in a club. Bethell, however, has not played in the test series so far.

According to multiple reports, the England and Wales Cricket Board said in a statement that it was aware of content circulating online but that it would not comment further until it had established the facts.

England captain and star allrounder Ben Stokes said at a media conference Wednesday that the mental health of the English players was his top priority.

"It’s never a nice place to be in when, not only the media world but also the social media world, is just piling on top of you. It’s a very tough place to be in as an individual,” Stokes said.

“When you’re 3-0 down and you’ve lost the series, everything you say, everything you do gets scrutinized — and rightly so. You don’t really have a leg to stand on when you’ve lost three games in a huge series like this. When you win, everything’s great, when you’re losing, it’s not.”

Duckett has been one of test cricket's most productive openers in the past couple of years at test level and in the shorter one day international format.

He entered the series with six test hundreds and was touted by some observers to make an impact in Australia with his crisp and decisive stroke-making. But his tendency to rarely leave the ball coincided with his form dipping considerably during the Ashes series, with a top score of 29 from six innings.

In the third test, Duckett was finding his free-flowing form with 29 scored from 30 balls before being bowled by premier spinner Nathan Lyon playing a somewhat defensive shot.

In the second innings, with England trying to save the match and the series, Duckett lasted two balls. He hit a fine four off Pat Cummins and was then caught off the next delivery from Cummins when he played a shot well away from his body.

Key, who did not join the players in Noosa, earlier said he had no problem with the break, but would not be happy if he found evidence of over-indulging.

“If there’s things where people are saying that our players went out and drank excessively, then of course we’ll be looking into that,” he said Tuesday in Melbourne, where the fourth test begins Friday.

“Drinking excessive amounts of alcohol for an international cricket team is not something that I’d expect to see at any stage and it would be a fault not to look into what happened there. From everything that I’ve heard so far, they actually were pretty well behaved. Very well behaved.”

He added: “We’ve got enough ways of finding out exactly what happened and everything that I’ve heard so far that they sat down, had lunch, had dinner, didn’t go out late, all of that, had the odd drink. I don’t mind that. If it goes past that, then that’s an issue as far as I’m concerned."

Key also said he had previously looked into reports that players had been spotted drinking the night before a match in New Zealand shortly before the Ashes.

A short clip of white-ball captain Harry Brook and Bethell was shared by a member of the public on social media, said to have been taken while they were out in Wellington before the third one-day international on Nov. 1.

“I didn’t feel like that was worthy of formal warnings, but it was probably worthy of informal ones,” he said.

“I think that was a bit of a wake-up call actually for what they’re going into. I don’t mind players having a glass of wine over dinner. Anything more than that, I think is ridiculous, really.”

AP cricket: https://apnews.com/hub/cricket

Australian players celebrate the dismissal of England's Jamie Smith during play on the final day of the third Ashes cricket test between England and Australia in Adelaide, Australia, Sunday, Dec. 21, 2025. (AP Photo/James Elsby)