This January 6, 2026 marks 12 years since the murder of Mónica Spear, Miss Venezuela 2004, and her husband Henry Thomas Berry, a crime that shocked Venezuela and the world and became one of the most painful events of violence in the country.
The actress and model, who resided in Miami, had returned to Venezuela with her family to celebrate the New Year and enjoy a short vacation while preparing to start a new film project. Nothing foreshadowed that the trip would end in tragedy.
On the night of January 6, 2014, the car in which Mónica Spear, her husband, and her daughter were traveling suffered an accident on the Valencia–Puerto Cabello highway near the El Cambur sector, in Carabobo state. While the vehicle was being towed by a tow truck, a group of armed criminals intercepted them with the intention of robbing them.
The assault turned violent and the attackers opened fire on the family. Mónica Spear, 29, died after receiving multiple shots, while Henry Thomas Berry, 39, died after being hit by a projectile in the chest. Their daughter Maya, just five years old, survived with a leg wound.
The minor managed to survive because she was in the back seat of the vehicle and was initially taken to a hospital in Puerto Cabello, before being taken to Caracas to continue her recovery. After the crime, she was left in the care of her maternal grandparents in the United States and later her uncle and his wife.
Investigations allowed to identify and capture those responsible. The shooter who caused the death of Mónica Spear, Gerardo José Contreras Álvarez, was arrested in 2015 and sentenced to 26 years in prison for homicide, in a case that generated great public outrage.
Twelve years after her death, the memory of Mónica Spear remains alive among her followers and in the collective memory of Venezuela, not only for her career as a beauty queen and actress, but because her murder marked a before and after in the discussion about the insecurity and violence that plague the country.
