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Part I
Birth of a Nightmare
Few things are sadder than the truly monstrous.
—Nathanael West, The Day of the Locust.
During the early morning hours of Sunday, April 18, 2010, in the lobby of a hotel in Valencia, Carabobo, one of the best fighters Venezuela had ever produced spoke quietly with his wife. He was a celebrity in his country, a fiercely patriotic man, a proud father of two. Though the couple presented a relaxed picture, the poor woman was probably shaking with worry. Edwin Valero, twenty-eight, had for weeks seemed hell-bent on killing her.
The hotel staff may have sensed that Valero's circuitry wasn't quite right, and hadn't been for a long time. The feelings of paranoia that had jabbed at him in recent times were now wading in with more withering volleys: the suspicion that his wife was having an affair; the fear that people meant to do him harm; and the fear that police,