After protest commentaries flooded social media and then were picked up by radio, television, and print media commentators, the Dominican Professional Baseball League (Lidom) reported at the end of last week that they were postponing, without any future date, the activity they had programmed to announce the dedication of this year’s winter league baseball tournament to the former President of the league Leonardo Matos Berrido. The Lidom used the terms “understandable reasons” but did not name Matos Berrido.
The massive rejection of Matos Berrido came in rejection to his being honored by the baseball tournament when on 31 October 1982, he killed his wife, Edith Gomez, in the parking lot of the Embajador Hotel. She died of a bullet wound in the back of her neck. At the time, he was convicted of the crime and sentenced to but 15 months in jail, a decision that had always been rejected.
TV host Mariasela Alvarez aired a video whereby she carried statements by the oldest daughter of Edith Gomez, the murdered wife of Matos Berrido, who had chosen to remain quiet all these years in the name of her brother and sister, off spring of Matos Berrido with her mother. The daughter was a first daughter of her mother by another marriage. The full interview did not air after her half siblings again convinced the sister to keep a low profile. But Mariasela read a summary of the interview, recalling the tragedy that happened 36 years ago.
Despite the murder, Matos Berrido would go on to enjoy major positions in government at the Central Electoral Board and the National Housing Bank (BNV), from where he would receive a millionaire pension. Afterwards he was named to head the Dominican Professional Winter League, where he was in charge for 26 years. As reported, his severance from the Lidom was RD$13 million.
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1 October 2018
