Slain wife of Imperial Valley farmer was adored in her hometown; a violinist, friend and beauty queen
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PINETOP-LAKESIDE, Ariz. — Before Kerri married Mike Abatti in 1992, before she moved to California and raised three children in the Imperial Valley, before she left her husband of 31 years and before she was shot and killed in her 7,000-square-foot Arizona mountain home, she was Kerri Ann Penrod: a talented and beloved member of Arizona’s tight-knit Pinetop-Lakeside community.“She was one of those people who radiated light,” said her cousin Cathy Penrod.
“I don’t know how else to describe her.She was love and she was light.”Local, state and federal law enforcement are investigating Kerri’s death.
Earlier this month, they expanded their investigation from the couple’s 14-acre Pinetop home to their shared properties and businesses in Imperial County.A visit to Pinetop — the town where Kerri was born and which is more than 400 miles from the couple’s primary residence in El Centro — leaves the impression that she came here not only to escape from an unhappy marriage, but to rediscover the familiar joy and comfort this place once provided her.Kerri “always had a smile and a big wave” when she drove down the short, gravel-dirt road known as Bruin Way and passed by her neighbor Rebecca Lopez, a retired high school administrator.
“She even asked her guests to keep their speed down so they wouldn’t cover my cars and house with dust when they drove by.She was just a really nice lady.”Kerri, who was found dead from a gunshot wound the night of Nov.
20, had returned to her hometown — a place her ancestors found and settled in the 1880s.Her divorce filings say she returned to Pinetop to help her ailing parents, but the hardscrabble town 7,000 feet high in Arizona’s eastern White Mountains is also where she was once considered a rising star, where culture is steeped in tradition and religion, and where familial bonds are staked in blood ties.Accord...