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| “ | Stay away from my case, Max. Stay away for your own good! | „ |
| ~ Valerie Winterson to Max Payne. |
Detective Valerie Winterson is the secondary antagonist of the 2003 video game Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne. She was an NYPD Homicide detective, who was secretly the lover of Russian mobster Vladimir Lem, and acted as a double agent of his during his attempted take-over of the Inner Circle.
She was voiced by Jennifer Server, and portrayed by Andrea Leigh.
Biography[]
Background[]
Not much is known about Winterson's background. What is known is that at some point, she joined the New York Police Department and eventually became a Homicide detective. She would also marry and give birth to a blind son, only to later be divorced and leaving her the single mother of a child. At some point, Winterson would meet Max Payne, a fellow detective, and it is hinted that she had once felt an attraction to him, but eventually started seeing Vladimir Lem, head of the Russian Mob in New York City, due to him being affectionate towards her son and generously donating to the Brooklyn School for the Blind, where her son went to school, and would do her best to hide Lem's identity from her colleagues.
Sometime after Max's re-instatement into the NYPD in the aftermath of his vendetta against Nicole Horne and the Aesir Corporation in 2001, the two of them paired up to catch the "Silent Hunter," a serial killer who targeted newlyweds. While briefly taken hostage, the two ultimate managed to bring the killer down.
Cleaner Case[]
In 2003, Winterson was seen arriving the police backup at a gun workshop run by an associate of Lem's, Annie Finn. Max had called for the back-up while in the middle of a shoot-out with the Cleaner commandos, who were secretly sent by Lem to frame Punchinello Underboss Vinnie Gognitti. She pulled Max away from a Cleaner van, saving his life.
Later that night, after she and Max were debrief about the shooting by Jim Bravura, she received a murder case concerning New York Senator Sebastian Gate. A lone witness would identify Winterson's prime suspect as contract killer Mona Sax. Unbeknownst to her, Max had a run-in with Mona during the warehouse shoot-out, something he deliberately chose to not disclose to his colleague for the time being. On that same night, Lem's Vodka restaurant was assaulted by Punchinello mobster led by Gognitti. She would call Lem during the shoot-out who assured that everything would be fine. Max would find Lem's side of the call during his time in Vodka, but was, at the time, unaware of who he was calling.
Sometime later, she received a call from Max, informing her about his apartment being stormed by the Cleaners, including a sniper that was positioned outside his window. He would kill most of his attackers, with the rest of them feeling before the police arrived. She would meet with him at the police station later that night, but he suddenly left to secretly meet with Mona at her address, having found a note with it on his desk. Winterson warned him not to do "anything stupid," as she had begun suspecting that her colleague was communicating with Mona. This suspicion was ultimately proven correct, as she later found, and arrested, the two in the luxurious Upper East Side apartments, where they had been engaged in a firefight against the Cleaners while trying to investigate their killings of Inner Circle members.
Bringing them to the station, Winterson scolded Max for compromsing her case and demanded to Bravura that he punish him accordingly. She was later seen having the witness she was talking to earlier identify Mona as Senator Gate's murderer. After this procedure, Max caught Winterson talking to a third party on the phone (heavily implied to be Lem), and during the call, she mentioned that Max and Mona would both be "taking the fall." Max accused her of disclosing classified information, but Winterson angrily denies this, and once against storms into Bravura's office. Moments later, the Cleaner commandos stormed the police station to kill Mona, but both of them escaped the assault.
Later that night, Winterson received a tip-off about Max and Mona's activities at the Castling Construction Site. She quickly drove to the location, and talked to Lem on her phone alone, where she agreed to kill the two whenever she had the chance. Arriving at the site before other officers, Winterson indeed found the two there, in the aftermath of their offensive on the Cleaners' operatiing base. She pointed her gun at Mona and demanded that she surrendered. Mona told Max that Winterson was only there to kill her, and he attempted to mediate the situation, only for it to get more tense. When it appeared that Winterson was about to fire her pistol, Max instectively shot first, shocking all three of them as Winterson collapsed. Max shouted for Mona to run before other officers arrived, but the mortally wounded Winterson suddenly fired at him, causing him to tumble and fall into a pit. Policemen arrived at the scene and called for an amulance, but Winterson would be pronounced dead-on-arrival, while Max would be resucitated at the same hospital, and went on to kill Lem.
Legacy[]
| “ | The truth was, it was her or Mona, and I made a very bad call. This was one decision of mine I buried deeper than all the others. | „ |
| ~ Max at Winterson's grave. |
After Winterson's death, Max revealed her betrayal of the NYPD and her working for Lem to Jim Bravura. While using this reason to justify his killing of her, she was, in reality, murdered for Mona's sake. As a result of this incident, Max was forced to resign from the NYPD. Her killing made up a part of Max's guilt complex, as he saw it as a betrayal of his duty, all because of his love for Mona. Her phone calls did not help either, as the relationship between her and Lem proved to be not so different to that of Max and Mona, and that he had left her son orphaned with both of their deaths.
Years later, during Max's feud with Anthony DeMarco and his Mob, he revisited Winterson's grave, and lamented his decision to kill her.
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- Winterson is the third, and final, woman to be killed by Max Payne, the first being Candy Dawn, and Nicole Horne being the second.
External Links[]
- Valerie Winterson on the Max Payne Wiki
[]
 Villains
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Max Payne Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne Max Payne 3 Max Payne (film) See Also | ||