A tragic but beautiful life cut short
On the little girl’s fifth birthday, her mother was murdered by a handyman. The killer in the 1979 crime in Queens was Juan Dones, who is in a state prison in Otisville. He repeatedly stabbed Yoselin Cambero, who was 21, after tying her hands and gagging her mouth. He then set fire to the fourstory yellow brick apartment building in an attempt to conceal the crime.
The girl, Elizabeth Valerio, was away with her grandparents at the time of the killing, and it was years before she understood what had happened to her mother. Her grandmother and grandfather, impoverished and deeply religious immigrants from the Dominican Republic, tried to keep the awful truth from the girl as they raised her.
Her father was Henry Valerio. Elizabeth would later tell friends that he kept in touch with her after the murder, winning her affection with gifts and money. Elizabeth begged to go live with him in central Massachusetts, but he said no, no, no — until the terrible day he finally said yes.
Terrible because the father began abusing Elizabeth, who was then 12 years old. When she told an aunt and uncle what was happening, they told Elizabeth that her only choice was to report the crimes to the police. That’s what she did.
Henry Valerio was convicted in Massachusetts in 1989 of charges including rape of a child and indecent assault on a child, according to published reports. But Elizabeth’s father wasn’t there when the jury rendered its decision. He had already fled while out on $25,000 cash bail. Elizabeth had mustered the
courage to turn her father in and he had vanished.
He wasn’t captured for 21 years; when authorities found him in the Dominican Republic, he had been working as a police officer, his lawyer said.
In 2010, Elizabeth came to the courtroom for his sentencing. As her father sat handcuffed and shackled at the defense table, she told the judge how she had spent 20 years fearing that Valerio would make good on his promise to kill her if she revealed his crimes, the Worcester Telegram & Gazette reported.
Elizabeth, who had grown up to be a model and an actress, also told the judge about the difficulties of her adult life. She spoke of the emotional and physical scars left by her father’s abuse, of the self-destructive impulses she struggled to control, about her fight with depression and posttraumatic stress disorder.
“He knows and I know what he did,” Elizabeth told the judge, who gave Valerio a prison sentence of 25 to 40 years. Valerio has repeatedly requested a new trial.
The unfairness of all this could have destroyed Elizabeth. If she had been a cruel or bitter person, it would have been understandable. How much can a person endure?
But while Elizabeth’s life was certainly difficult, it was also marked by grace and beauty. Her friends describe her as wonderfully generous and supportive, as a woman who loved fully and amply. For the people in her life, she was both champion and cheerleader.
“She had an immense capacity for enjoyment,” said Harry Diakoff, a close friend. “I have never known anyone who could take more immense pleasure in a greater variety of things — people, places, art, music, literature, language itself.”
Elizabeth lived much of her adult life in New York City, but in recent years, suffering from lupus and struggling with bills, she had been living in Diakoff’s home in Niskayuna. Last summer, Diakoff went on a business trip to Europe, leaving Elizabeth alone.
In early August, after Elizabeth hadn’t responded to Diakoff’s messages and emails for a few days, he called the police. Officers found her dead inside the house. Elizabeth had killed herself on Aug. 7, her 45th birthday and the 40th anniversary of her mother’s killing. In video recorded as she was dying, Elizabeth asked that New York state forever deny parole for Dones, the man convicted of killing her mother, and she asked that Massachusetts ensure that her father serve his full sentence — the final wishes of a woman who had endured so much pain.
“She probably had the hardest life out of anybody that we know,” said a friend at a memorial service held last month in New York City. “And I think she was one of the strongest people, too, because she made it 45 years knowing all this had happened to her.”
During the service, friend after friend told of how Elizabeth had changed their lives. They described her love for animals and the empathy she felt for all who are abused while weak and powerless. A second memorial service is planned for Saturday at 1:30 p.m. in Schenectady’s Unitarianuniversalist Church.
Diakoff said Elizabeth at times seemed obsessed with her mother’s killing and struggled with the anniversary. When visiting her mother’s Long Island grave, the daughter would throw herself down and say she wanted to join her.
Two weeks after she died, Elizabeth was buried next to her mother.