A prominent California farmer was arrested Tuesday on suspicion of murder in the fatal shooting 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, California and booked into jail on a charge of first-degree murder. He is awaiting extradition to Arizona.
Authorities said they believe he drove to Arizona on Nov. 20 and shot 59-year-old Kerri Ann Abatti before returning home to California. She was found dead at her family’s tree-lined vacation home in Pinetop, Arizona, where she moved after splitting from her husband.
Lawyers for Michael Abati did not immediately respond to emails and text messages seeking comment.
On December 2, authorities searched his home in a remote area of Southern California as part of an investigation into his wife’s death.
Michael Abati’s home in El Centro, California, on December 12, 2025/Photo credit: Gregory Bull/Associated Press
A Navajo County grand jury indicted Michael on Tuesday and deputies served a warrant for his arrest, CBS Phoenix affiliate KPHO-TV reported.
El Centro, a city of 44,000 just minutes from the Mexican border in the crop-rich Imperial Valley, is the largest user of Colorado River water and is known for growing leafy greens, melons and forage crops.
Michael Abatti was born into a family of farmers in the Arizona border area. His grandfather was an Italian immigrant and one of the area’s early settlers. His father, Ben, helped found the Imperial Valley Vegetable Growers Association, and Abatti’s name became a household name throughout the region, connected with agribusiness, scholarship funds and leadership of local boards and groups.
Michael Abatti grew 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 married in 1992 and have three children.
Kerri Abatti is a descendant of one of the first Latter-day Saint families to settle in Pinetop in the 1880s. The community, located 190 miles northeast of Phoenix in the White Mountains, was known simply as Penrodville, after Kerri’s ancestor, before adopting the Pinetop name.
The couple split in 2023 and Kerri Abatti filed for divorce, which was pending in California at the time of her death.
The Abatis had argued over finances and Kerry told the court the couple had lived a high-society lifestyle for more than three decades of marriage. She said they owned a large house in California, a vacation home in Pinetop, a ranch in Wyoming and vacationed in Switzerland, Italy and Hawaii while sending their children to private schools.
After the split, Kerri was awarded $5,000 a month in temporary spousal support, but last year asked for it to be increased to $30,000, saying she was unable to maintain her standard of living because she quit her job as a bookkeeper and office manager at the family farm in 1999 to stay home and care for the couple’s three children. Court documents show Kerri, who previously held an Arizona real estate license, is also seeking an additional $100,000 in attorney fees.
“I make ends meet each month doing all the manual labor on our large property in Arizona and continuing to maintain it,” she wrote in court documents earlier this year, adding that she lives near her elderly parents. Kerri said she also needed to buy a newer car because her 2011 car had more than 280,000 miles on it and was in dire need of repairs.
Michael Abatti said in a legal filing that he could not afford the price increase after two years of poor farming conditions affected his monthly income. He said changes in the way Europe buys crops to support farmers in war-torn Ukraine, rising transport costs and an unusually cold and wet winter were to blame.
He said it costs $1,000 to grow an acre of wheat by mid-2024, which he could sell for $700, and he receives about $22,000 a month in farm operating fees as the company struggles to repay creditors in full.
“Current income does not warrant an increase to the amount specified by the parties, much less an increase to $30,000 per month,” Lee Hejmanowski, Michael Abati’s family law attorney, wrote in court documents.
Days later, Michael Abati agreed to increase temporary spousal support to $6,400 per month, court documents show.
He studied in the agribusiness management program at Colorado State University in Fort Collins before returning to California, according to a 2023 book on water issues titled “The Ethics of Deception” by his college friend Craig Morgan.
Morgan writes in the book that in 2009, Michael Abati nearly died from an infection caused by flesh-eating bacteria and was taken to the hospital where he was treated in a medically induced coma.
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