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
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
"There's got to be something wrong with somebody who'd do a thing like that." This is Perry Edward Smith, talking about himself. "Deal me out, baby...I'm a normal." This is Richard Eugene Hickock, talking about himself. They're as sick a pair as Leopold and Loeb and together they killed a mother, a father, a pretty 17-year-old and her brother, none of whom they'd seen before, in cold blood. A couple of days before they had bought a 100 foot rope to garrote them—enough for ten people if necessary. This small pogrom took place in Holcomb, Kansas, a lonesome town on a flat, limitless landscape: a depot, a store, a cafe, two filling stations, 270 inhabitants. The natives refer to it as "out there." It occurred in 1959 and Capote has spent five years, almost all of the time which has since elapsed, in following up this crime which made no sense, had no motive, left few clues—just a footprint and a remembered conversation. Capote's alternating dossier Shifts from the victims, the Clutter family, to the boy who had loved Nancy Clutter, and her best friend, to the neighbors, and to the recently paroled perpetrators: Perry, with a stunted child's legs and a changeling's face, and Dick, who had one squinting eye but a "smile that works." They had been cellmates at the Kansas State Penitentiary where another prisoner had told them about the Clutters—he'd hired out once on Mr. Clutter's farm and thought that Mr. Clutter was perhaps rich. And this is the lead which finally broke the case after Perry and Dick had drifted down to Mexico, back to the midwest, been seen in Kansas City, and were finally picked up in Las Vegas. The last, even more terrible chapters, deal with their confessions, the law man who wanted to see them hanged, back to back, the trial begun in 1960, the post-ponements of the execution, and finally the walk to "The Corner" and Perry's soft-spoken words—"It would be meaningless to apologize for what I did. Even inappropriate. But I do. I apologize." It's a magnificent job—this American tragedy—with the incomparable Capote touches throughout. There may never have been a perfect crime, but if there ever has been a perfect reconstruction of one, surely this must be it.
Pub Date: Jan. 7, 1965
ISBN: 0375507906
Page Count: 343
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1965
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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