By Sue Montgomery

Just months before champion boxer Arturo Gatti was found dead in Brazil, his wife vowed to friends that she would show him what kind of bitch she could be and kill him, witnesses told Quebec Superior Court, where a battle over the dead man’s multimillion dollar estate is playing out.

Two friends of the Gatti family - Marisa and Gisela Minero - told court Wednesday that after having dinner with Amanada Rodrigues in November, 2008, the three women returned to the Jarry St. penthouse that Rodrigues, 23 at the time, shared with her husband Gatti, then 37.

Rodrigues received a text from Gatti and “snapped,” Gisela Minero testified.

“She said ‘If he thinks his exes were bitches, I’ll show him. I’m going to be the biggest bitch. I’m going to kill him,’” she said, adding that she didn’t think Rodrigues was really going to kill Gatti.

As Minero testified, Rodrigues sat to her right, feverishly taking notes and passing them to her lawyer. On the witness’s left sat Gatti’s mother, Ida, and his brother Fabrizio.

Gatti was found dead July 11, 2009 in a vacation home in Brazil and authorities, after questioning and releasing Rodrigues, ruled it was a suicide. But the Gatti family doesn’t buy that version of events and want the will, which leaves everything to Rodrigues, annulled.

Results of a private investigation - paid for by the family - were announced Wednesday in New Jersey and conclude that Gatti suffered a blow to the head, then was strangled.

Just weeks before their trip to Brazil, and allegedly after the couple had broken up, Gatti and Rodrigues had their wills drawn up by a notary, leaving everything to each other in case of death.

The Minero sisters also testified Wednesday that during their dinner with Rodrigues, she criticized everyone in the Gatti family, saying their father, who died many years ago, was a violent drunk, and the brothers were lazy and just wanted Arturo Gatti’s money.

“I wasn’t comfortable because I’d known these people for a long time,” Gisela Minero testified. “It bugged me that she couldn’t see anything positive.”

Marisa Minero said she was taken aback by the comments because she’d known the Gattis since she was young and thought they were a nice, normal family.

“She said if Arturo died one day, they’d all fight for his money and she wasn’t going to let that happen,” she testified.

The two sisters said they witnessed Rodrigues’s “diva” behaviour on other occasions, when she’d complain about the service in restaurants or insisted on getting into bars as a VIP. In January, 2009, they both decided not to see Rodrigues again, saying they were tired of her public outbursts.

Sue Montgomery is a reporter for the Montreal Gazette