Berserk: The Shocking Life and Death of Edwin Valero. Don Stradley

up to 240 lightning strikes in an hour, was actually millions of fireflies trying to communicate with the earth. The image of these ruthless electrical storms suited Edwin, a restless boy embarking on his own stormy future, a boy born with lightning in his fists.

      The third child born to Eloisa and Antonio Domingo Valero, Edwin came into the world as Venezuela was enjoying an unprecedented boxing heyday, with Ernesto España and Antonio Esparragoza earning accolades and championships. Edwin learned that he, too, could fight. Even at a young age he was brawling in the streets, settling arguments by throwing punches.

      When Edwin was seven, his father left the family for another woman. For the rest of his life, Edwin would portray his father's departure as an apocalyptic event.

      Eloisa moved the brood north to La Palmita. She took a job in El Vigia as a dishwasher. Edwin and his older brother Edward worked selling fruit and spices in El Vigia's Railway Plaza.

      A vibrant city located on the Chama River, El Vigia's hallmarks included the magnificent Cathedral of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, plus factories, shopping plazas, universities, parks, and a baseball stadium. Being the second-largest city in Merida, El Vigia must have seemed to Edwin like a futuristic metropolis.

      The brothers also worked in a bicycle shop owned by a former fighter, Dimas Garcia. When Edwin said he would like to be a boxer someday, Garcia told him the business was too dangerous.

But Valero had known danger from a young age. Though El Vigia was a sophisticated city, it was a haven for pickpockets, kidnappers, and drug dealers. Like many poor boys from the country, Valero was drawn to the city's dark underbelly. When he wasn't selling fruit, Valero was running with kid gangs. He had become a little criminal. His mother couldn't control him. Edwin was a wild, dirty child, unwilling to bathe or wear shoes. Yet Eloisa never believed Edwin was as bad as his friends. She alleged that his new pals had even killed people. Edwin, she said, “was not a bad boy. Just a little bit off.”

      Valero started drinking at age nine and using drugs at eleven. At thirteen he dropped out of school and enrolled in a tae kwon do academy. When his mother claimed the classes were too expensive, he quit and went back to selling garlic. Valero would later describe these years as “work, work, work.”

      Sometimes he'd add his catchphrase: “I didn't have a normal childhood.”

      • • •

      Francisco “Morochito” Rodríguez was one of the country's most acclaimed amateur fighters. He remains the only Venezuelan boxer to ever win a gold medal at the Olympics, doing so at the 1968 Mexico games. Rodríguez used his fame to establish a small boxing gym in El Vigia. One day on his garlic route, Edwin noticed the place offered free boxing lessons. He convinced Edward that they should look into it.

      Oscar Ortega took pity on the boys. Ortega was a respected boxing coach in El Vigia. When he found out Edwin and Edward couldn't afford bus fare home and were sometimes sleeping on the streets, he let them sleep on the gym benches at night. He also made sure they were fed. Years later, Valero would ask Ortega to be his godfather.

      “Boxing just attracted me somehow,” Valero said, “and I decided to give it a try. One week later, I was living in the gym, where professor Oscar Ortega formed me as a fighter.”

Ortega liked this feisty little lefthander whose body seemed loaded with springs. Even at thirteen, Valero punched with unusual power. Ortega gave him keys to the place. Edwin would let himself in at night when he had nowhere else to go. Sleeping on hard benches wasn't ideal, but Edwin had a place to dream and think about the future.

      Ortega fretted over Valero. The kid was a bit of a loose cannon. Valero would tell his coach, “Don't worry professor. I have my feet on the ground.”

      Ortega tried to teach Valero that a boxer's life was difficult. One of the country's best, Vicente Paul Rondon, had recently died in a Caracas slum, destitute and forgotten.

      Valero had no use for cautionary tales. In fact, Valero was jailed over a dozen times before he was fifteen. (One police file cited forty arrests throughout his life.) Ortega would always bail him out. Valero bragged that he was given preferential treatment because he was an athlete. Still, he couldn't curb his taste for larceny.

      He robbed local university students, stealing small motorbikes and storing them in the gym. He later claimed his bike stealing got him six months in jail, which convinced him to get out of the criminal life. Other sources mention a seven-month stint for assaulting a woman at gunpoint. Valero is also believed to have shot and killed a rival over a stolen motorcycle. He hid out for weeks in Caracas like a fugitive.

      Many look back at Valero's young life and say he was simply a rebel who did as he pleased. But Valero's dual personality—diligent athlete by day, street hooligan by night—reflected Venezuela's own double nature.

      Venezuela is a country where luxury hotels are side by side with shanty­towns. It's an oil-rich country but has tottered for years on the brink of economic disaster. It was once the wealthiest country in Latin America, yet many homes are without floors or windows. The country is famous for beauty pageants, but its rate of violence against women is among the world's highest. The country is beautiful, known for mountains and lakes and religious statuary—a 153-foot concrete Virgin Mary stands on a hill in Trujillo like a bored sentinel—yet Venezuela is one the most crime-ridden countries in the world. Glossy tourist pamphlets advise visitors to not go out at night.

Venezuela's escalating crime rate was a result of the 1970s oil boom. Encouraged by the swift growth of the cities, a glut of country people drifted into urban areas. The result was overcrowding and a lot of unemployed young men. Boys who had been the sons of farmers became robbers. They formed kidnapping rings. This was Valero's world.

      Unlawful activities aside, Valero's life took another turn when he was seventeen. That's when he noticed a pretty girl whose aunt lived near the gym. She was Jennifer Carolina Viera Finol, a thirteen-year-old student at Simon Bolivar High School. She was of Portuguese descent, dark haired, dark eyed, willowy. She was a typical Venezuelan girl, one who imagined she would be a model or a pageant winner. Edwin told his buddies that Jennifer would someday be his wife. Jennifer's sister, Andreína, introduced them.

      Edwin and Jennifer grew close quickly. He picked her up at school every afternoon on his yellow Yamaha motorcycle. Jennifer's parents objected. Then they relented. They could see the pair were in love.

      By the time Jennifer turned fourteen, Valero had convinced her to be with him forever. It would be years before they were officially married, but they drove off in a banana truck to live together in Tovar, twenty-six miles west of Caracas.

      At the time, it probably seemed like the height of romance.

      • • •

      Young love didn't interrupt Valero's amateur boxing career. He won eighty-six bouts, losing only six. He won three consecutive national amateur championships. He'd found his calling.

      He journeyed to Argentina to qualify for the 2000 Olympics. He lost on points to Brazil's Valdemir Pereira. After that, he took the wrong bus home from the Caracas airport. He found himself in an unfamiliar neighborhood. Bandits took his passport, his money, even his silver qualifying medal. He cried for two weeks.

Valero would, however, win the 2000 Central America and Caribbean Championship in Caracas, defeating Francisco Bojado for the gold medal. Bojado would be Mexico's Olympic representative that year in Australia. Beating him must have given Valero some satisfaction. The fight was close, but Valero stunned Bojado in the final round. He impressed Bojado's trainer, Joe Hernandez. “He was,” Hernandez would say years later, “a monster.”

      As he entered manhood, Valero stood a bit over five feet six, and weighed around 126 pounds. He was the size of Antonio Esparragoza, the power-punching star from Cumaná. Esparragoza had represented Venezuela at the 1980 Moscow Olympics, turned pro the year Valero was born, and enjoyed a four-year reign as WBA featherweight champion. Valero admired Esparragoza but told his coach that he wanted to be even greater, to be world famous like Muhammad Ali.