The murder-suicide involving professional wrestling star Chris Benoit and his wife Nancy and young son Daniel has to rank as one of the most horrifying things Ive ever heard about. Us pro wrestling fans get really attached to our favourites. We identify with them: we live vicariously through their victories and their defeats, their highs and their lows. On the night of Sunday 24th July, Benoit was supposed to be wrestling CM Punk for the ECW Championship at the Vengeance: Night Of Champions pay-per-view in Houston. However, we'd be disappointed - it was announced that Benoit had had to fly home for personal reasons. We'd have no way of knowing that this was a work. Benoit hadnt gone home: he hadnt even shown up in Houston, and had no-showed the previous nights house show in Beaumont, too. By the time of the Vengeance event, Chris Benoit had already killed his wife and his seven-year-old son, and hanged himself from his weights machine. Well never really know what happened over that weekend - what caused him to snap, tie Nancys hands and feet and choke her to death, his knee in her back. Well never know what was going through his head in the nearly two days that followed, before he sedated his son and then smothered him. The messages he left, the texts he sent in his final hours informing colleagues of his home address and where the family dogs were kept well never know what he intended by them, whether he was hoping to be found by a friend instead of by the police when they stopped by the house in Fayetteville, Georgia to check on the family. Benoit and his wife had had marital difficulties a few years earlier had their issues reared up again? Autopsy results show that repeated, untreated concussions over a twenty-two year career working an intense, committed, stiff style in the ring had resulted in brain damage akin to an 85-year-old Alzheimers patient, and its been speculated that he suffered from an advanced form of dementia that caused depressive, harmful mood swings. Similar findings have characterised the lives of four NFL players where the effects from repeated concussions have caused them to act in a violent manner. The events of that weekend brought an industry to crisis, changed the way that WWE and others view and treat concussions and the ongoing care thats provided: recently, promising developmental prospect Corey Graves had his in-ring career ended due to one concussion too many, as have veterans Christian and, potentially, Daniel Bryan. A decade earlier, these men would still be wrestling in that condition, putting their long term mental and physical health at significant risk. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuRqFny5KV0 Its something but its not enough. No one who knew Chris Benoit can square the picture they have of the quiet, devoted family man with the man capable of the acts he committed: the man nicknamed 'the Rabid Wolverine' in the ring was the polar opposite of that in his private life. It's simply beyond understanding. Which other celebrity mysteries belong on this list? Share your suggestions below in the comments thread.
Professional writer, punk werewolf and nesting place for starfish. Obsessed with squid, spirals and story. I publish short weird fiction online at desincarne.com, and tweet nonsense under the name Jack The Bodiless. You can follow me all you like, just don't touch my stuff.
