The 37-year-old Mexican drug kingpin wasn’t always a thug
When Mexican authorities arrested Edgar Valdez Villarreal after a massive gun battle last month, they hailed it as a decisive blow in their ongoing war with the drug cartels. But the 37-year-old known as La Barbie, for his blond looks, wasn’t always a thug. Twenty years ago he was a star high school football player in the Texas border town of Laredo. And his transformation from middle class American kid to Mexican drug lord is probably destined to become a movie.