A prominent California farmer was arrested Tuesday on suspicion of murder in the shooting death 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 and booked into jail on a first-degree murder charge. He is awaiting extradition to Arizona.

Authorities say they believe he drove to Arizona on Nov. 20 and fatally shot Kerri Ann Abatti, 59, before returning home to California. She was found dead in her family’s tree-shrouded vacation home in Pinetop, Arizona, where she moved after splitting with her husband.

An attorney for Michael Abatti didn’t immediately respond to an email and text message seeking comment.

Authorities searched his home in far Southern California on Dec. 2 as part of the investigation into his wife’s death.

El Centro is a city of 44,000 people just minutes from the Mexican border in the crop-rich Imperial Valley, which is the biggest user of Colorado River water and known for growing leafy greens, melons and forage crops.

Michael Abatti comes from a long line of farmers in the region bordering Arizona, and his grandfather, an Italian immigrant, was among the region’s early settlers. His father, Ben, helped start the Imperial Valley Vegetable Growers Association, and the Abatti name is known throughout the region and tied to farming enterprises, scholarship funds and leadership in local boards and groups.

Michael Abatti has grown 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 were married in 1992 and had three children.

Kerri Abatti is a descendant of one of the first Latter-day Saints families to settle Pinetop in the 1880s. The community, located 190 miles (305 kilometers) northeast of Phoenix in the White Mountains, was briefly called Penrodville after Kerri’s forbearers before adopting the Pinetop name.

The couple split in 2023 and Kerri Abatti filed for divorce in proceedings that were pending in California at the time of her death.

The Abattis were sparring over finances with Kerri telling the court the couple had lived an upper-class lifestyle during more than three decades of marriage. They owned a large home in California, a vacation home in Pinetop and ranch land in Wyoming and vacationed in Switzerland, Italy and Hawaii while sending their children to private school, she said.

After the split, Kerri was granted $5,000 a month in temporary spousal support but last year asked for an increase to $30,000, saying she couldn’t maintain her standard of living as she quit her job as a bookkeeper and office manager for the family farm in 1999 to stay home with the couple’s three children. Kerri, who previously held a real estate license in Arizona, also asked for an additional $100,000 in attorney’s fees, court filings show.

“I am barely scraping by each month, am handling all of the manual labor on our large property in Arizona and continuing its upkeep,” she wrote in court filings earlier this year, adding she was living near her elderly parents. Kerri said she also needed to buy a newer car because her 2011 vehicle had more than 280,000 miles (450,600 kilometers) on it and sorely needed repairs.

Michael Abatti said in a legal filing that he couldn’t afford the increase after two bad farming years took a toll on his monthly income. He said European shifts in crop-buying to support war-plagued Ukrainian farmers and rising shipping costs were to blame along with an unusually cold and wet winter.

He said in mid-2024 it cost $1,000 to grow an acre of wheat that he could sell for $700, and that he was receiving about $22,000 a month to run the farm as the business struggled to pay its creditors in full.

“The income available at this time does not warrant any increase in the amount to which the parties stipulated, let alone an increase to $30,000 per month,” Lee Hejmanowski, Michael Abatti’s family law attorney, wrote in court papers.

Days later, Michael Abatti agreed to increase temporary spousal support payments to $6,400 a month, court filings show.

He studied in the agricultural business management program at Colorado State University in Fort Collins before returning to California, according to a 2023 book about water issues written by his college friend, Craig Morgan, titled “The Morality of Deceit.”

In 2009, Michael Abatti almost died from an infection caused by a flesh-eating bacteria and was hospitalized and placed in a medically induced coma for treatment, Morgan wrote in the book.

Melodee Buzzard, the 9-year-old whose disappearance was reported by Santa Barbara County educators in October, has been found dead, a relative confirmed to The Times on Tuesday.

Melodee vanished during an unusual road trip with her mother earlier this year, sparking a months-long investigation.

Her disappearance captivated and confounded true crime watchers around the nation as FBI investigators and armchair detectives alike tried to solve the puzzle of what happened.

On Tuesday, Melodee’s paternal grandmother confirmed to The Times that her body has been found by investigators.

“The detective called me this morning to let me know that they found the baby and the baby is with her dad,” said Melodee’s grandmother Lilly Denes. “I knew he was telling me that the baby is dead.”

Melodee’s father, Rubiell “Pinoy” Meza, died in a motorcycle accident in 2016.

Local TV news station KSBY captured video of Melodee’s mother Ashlee Buzzard being taken into custody shortly before 7:45 a.m. Tuesday. During the road trip earlier this year, Buzzard changed out the license plates on her rental car and wore wigs in what detectives described as possible attempts to avoid detection, according to the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office.

The Sheriff’s Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but has planned a 2 p.m. news conference to provide updates on the case. Here is what we know about the events that led up to Tuesday’s tragic discovery.

Ashlee Buzzard’s ‘hard knock’ childhood

When Ashlee Buzzard was just 9 years old — the same age as her daughter Melodee when she went missing — she and her mother, Lori Miranda, became homeless after fleeing Buzzard’s abusive father, Miranda told the Santa Maria Times in 1995.

The article, titled “Lessons From the School of Hard Knocks,” describes how Miranda and her daughter arrived on the streets of Santa Maria with no job, home or car and only $40 to support them.

They had previously moved from place to place to get away from Miranda’s husband, who she said struggled with substance use and episodes of violence. In June 1994, Miranda decided to take her daughter from Orange County to the Central Coast to be farther away from him, and they briefly lived at the Good Samaritan Shelter in Santa Maria before moving into an apartment.

“I was so scared,” Ashlee told the paper, describing her early days in Santa Maria. “I knew no one [here]. I felt very uncomfortable.”

According to Melodee’s paternal relatives, Buzzard had a contentious relationship with her mother.

When Buzzard was in the 11th grade at Santa Maria High School, she filed a petition to be emancipated from Miranda, according to court records. The judge rejected the petition, noting that Buzzard was still living with her mother and had not submitted adequate information pertaining to her income and expenses.

A birth and a sudden death

Melodee was born Feb. 10, 2016, to Buzzard and Meza. Six months later, Meza died.

In Melodee’s early years, Meza’s family continued to have a relationship with the girl, according to Denes. She was a lovable child, always smiling and well-behaved, Denes said.

In 2021, another of Denes’ sons took care of Melodee while Buzzard was hospitalized for several weeks, she said.

During this period, Denes said she was working with social services to gain custody of Melodee as she was concerned about Buzzard’s ability to care for the child. But before Denes had finished the background check process, Buzzard was discharged from the hospital, picked up her daughter from school and left Santa Maria, Denes said.

After that, Buzzard relocated to the nearby neighborhood of Vandenberg Village and refused to let the girl’s paternal relatives see her. She did, however, occasionally visit Denes to ask for money over the years, Denes said.

Federal court records show that Buzzard filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in 2017. She’s also had five collections and one small claims lawsuit for alleged unpaid debts filed against her in Santa Barbara County Superior Court, the most recent of which was filed by Capital One Bank in May.

In August, Buzzard enrolled Melodee in an independent study program at the Lompoc Unified School District. Sheriff’s detectives believe that she had previously been homeschooling the girl for several years, but the California Department of Education has no record of her submitting the required paperwork to do so, according to a department spokesperson.

A strange cross-country road trip

Melodee Buzzard was captured on surveillance camera apparently wearing a wig at a car rental location in Lompoc on Oct. 7.

(Santa Barbara County Sheriff)

On Oct. 7, Buzzard and Melodee left their Vandenberg Village home and traveled to Nebraska, according to the Sheriff’s Office. During the trip, Buzzard switched out the California license plates (9MNG101) on the car with New York plates (HCG9677). When she returned home Oct. 10, the original plates were reaffixed, according to the Sheriff’s Office.

Both Melodee and Buzzard were apparently wearing wigs during the journey and the mother reportedly changed wigs throughout, according to the Sheriff’s Office. The last confirmed sighting of Melodee was on Oct. 9, when she was seen on surveillance video near the Utah-Colorado border.

The investigation

On Oct. 14, school administrators reported Melodee’s prolonged absence from her independent study program to the Sheriff’s Office.

Investigators then visited Buzzard’s home, where the mother refused to answer questions about her daughter’s whereabouts, according to the Sheriff’s Office.

On Oct. 30, the FBI joined the case and assisted the Sheriff’s Office in serving search warrants for Buzzard’s home, the rental car and a storage locker.

Detectives then mapped out Buzzard’s road trip route and focused on the return route, from where Melodee was last seen in Utah to Vandenberg Village.

Investigators believe that Buzzard traveled through the following areas on or around Oct. 9: Green River, Utah; Panguitch, Utah; Northwest Arizona; Primm, Nev.; Rancho Cucamonga.

(Santa Barbara County Sheriff)

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During October, relatives and concerned community members often gathered around Buzzard’s home, chanting, “Where is Melodee” and leaving posters with messages such as “Bring her home.” The investigation became a national sensation, with videos produced by true crime sleuths racking up thousands of views on TikTok and Instagram.

Buzzard arrested following accusations of false imprisonment

Buzzard was arrested Nov. 7 in an incident unrelated to the investigation into her daughters disappearance, according to the Sheriff’s Office.

She was accused of unlawfully violating the personal liberty of Tyler S. Brewer after disclosing sensitive information to him.

Brewer, a paralegal and acquaintance of Buzzard, said in a statement that he visited Buzzard at her home to offer assistance in the search for the missing girl, and that the situation quickly escalated.

But at a hearing in November, a Santa Barbara County Superior Court judge dismissed the case after new evidence came to light that called his version of events into question.

“After the initial report to law enforcement and the filing of the complaint, further investigation yielded additional evidence that was contradictory to the information that was initially provided to detectives,” said Amber Frost, a spokesperson for the Santa Barbara district attorney’s office.

“That evidence was brought out at the hearing and inconsistencies were examined by both sides. Ultimately, it was determined that the evidence was not sufficient to move this case forward to trial,” Frost said.

Times staff writer Terry Castleman contributed to this report.

PLACER COUNTY, Calif. (KGO) — Heavy rain and flooding impacted Northern California over the weekend, leading to rescues and evacuations throughout the region.

In Placer County, emergency crews carefully and slowly rescued a baby in a carrier, sliding it on a ladder over a rushing river.

The raging South Yuba River overtook the home, where nine people were rescued by the Truckee Fire Protection District.

As of Monday morning, the Placer County Sheriff’s Office said an evacuation warning continues to be in effect for areas along the South Yuba River between Donner Pass Road and Cisco Road.

The storm is also swamping parts of Humboldt County, where the sheriff’s office shared pictures of goats stranded on someone’s doorstep.

This is near the Freshwater area – near Arcata, where high water forced several evacuations.

Crews arrived in jet skis to assist residents.

In Redding, one person died after major flooding.

Water took over streets and entire neighborhoods.

Several people had to be rescued, and Interstate 5 was also flooded, impacting holiday drivers.

LIVE UPDATES: Storms flood parts of NorCal with heavy rain as alerts expand to entire Bay Area

In Mendocino County, Willits received more than 6 inches of rain in 48 hours, flooding parks in the area.

With more rain in the forecast, rescue crews are prepared and people are reminded not to ever drive through standing water.