A prominent California farmer has been arrested on suspicion of murdering his estranged wife in a remote Arizona mountain community, in a case that has shocked the agricultural community of the Imperial Valley.
A Cross-State Tragedy
Michael Abatti, 63, was arrested in El Centro, California, on Tuesday 24 December 2025 and booked into jail on a first-degree murder charge. He is now awaiting extradition to Arizona. Authorities from the Navajo County Sheriff's Office allege that he drove to Arizona on 20 November and fatally shot his 59-year-old estranged wife, Kerri Ann Abatti, before returning to his California home.
Kerri Ann Abatti was discovered deceased in her family's secluded, tree-shrouded vacation home in Pinetop, Arizona. She had moved to the property after separating from her husband. An attorney for Michael Abatti did not immediately respond to requests for comment regarding the arrest.
A Prominent Family and a Bitter Split
The Abatti name is well-known in the crop-rich Imperial Valley of far Southern California, a region which is the largest user of Colorado River water and famed for its leafy greens, melons and forage crops. Michael Abatti comes from a long line of farmers; his grandfather was an Italian immigrant among the area's early settlers, and his father, Ben, helped found the Imperial Valley Vegetable Growers Association.
Michael Abatti himself has grown onions, broccoli, and cantaloupes, and served on the board of the powerful Imperial Irrigation District from 2006 to 2010. He and Kerri were married in 1992 and had three children together before separating in 2023. Kerri filed for divorce, and proceedings were still pending in California at the time of her death.
Kerri Abatti was a descendant of one of the first Latter-day Saints families to settle Pinetop in the 1880s. The community, located 190 miles northeast of Phoenix, was briefly named Penrodville after her ancestors.
Financial Strains and Legal Disputes
Court documents reveal the couple were locked in a bitter financial dispute following their split. Kerri described an upper-class lifestyle during their more than three-decade marriage, involving a large California home, the Pinetop vacation property, ranch land in Wyoming, holidays in Switzerland, Italy, and Hawaii, and private schooling for their children.
After the separation, Kerri was initially granted $5,000 per month in temporary spousal support. However, in 2024, she petitioned the court for an increase to $30,000 monthly. She stated that she had quit her job as bookkeeper and office manager for the family farm in 1999 to raise their children and could not maintain her standard of living. She also requested an additional $100,000 for attorney's fees.
In court filings earlier this year, Kerri wrote, "I am barely scraping by each month, am handling all of the manual labour on our large property in Arizona and continuing its upkeep." She added that she was living near her elderly parents and needed a new car, as her 2011 vehicle had over 280,000 miles and required major repairs.
Michael Abatti contested the increase, citing severe financial hardship from two bad farming years. His legal filing blamed European shifts in crop-buying to support Ukrainian farmers, rising shipping costs, and an unusually cold, wet winter. He claimed it cost $1,000 to grow an acre of wheat he could only sell for $700, and that he received about $22,000 monthly to run the farm, which was struggling to pay creditors.
His family law attorney, Lee Hejmanowski, wrote that available income "does not warrant any increase... let alone an increase to $30,000 per month." Days later, Michael Abatti agreed to raise the temporary support to $6,400 monthly.
As part of the murder investigation, authorities searched Michael Abatti's home in El Centro on 2 December. The city, with a population of 44,000, lies minutes from the Mexican border.
The case has drawn attention to the dark undercurrents of a high-profile divorce, transforming a dispute over finances and lifestyle into a suspected homicide investigation that spans two US states.
