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Killer in the family podcast
A true crime podcast exploring men who kill their families.
Killer in the family podcast
Episode 28 - The Benoit Family Part Two
In June 2007 Canadian professional wrestler Chris Benoit killed his wife and son and then took his own life. With allegations of domestic abuse in their marriage it could be that Chris finally killed his wife and son after years of abuse. However, some speculate that they many blows to his head he took during his wrestling career led to brain damage and could have caused Benoit to kill his wife and child. One thing is clear – the only person responsible for the murders of Nancy and Daniel Benoit is their husband and father Chris Benoit.
This is Part Two of the story of The Benoit Family
Information and support
· Samaritans UK Contact Us | Samaritans
· National Domestic Violence Helpline UK 0808 2000 247
· Advocacy After Fatal Domestic Abuse (AAFDA) Home - AAFDA
· Women’s Aid www.womensaid.org.uk
· Mental health support USA I'm looking for mental health help for myself | Mental Health America (mhanational.org)
· Domestic abuse helpline USA 1.800.799.SAFE Domestic Violence Support | National Domestic Violence Hotline (thehotline.org)
References
Daniel Christopher Benoit (2000-2007) - Find a Grave Memorial
Chris Benoit double-murder and suicide - Wikipedia
Ep304 – Chris Benoit Part 1 (truecrimeallthetime.com)
Dark Side of the Ring Dark Side Of The Ring Chris Benoit Part 1 - video Dailymotion
Top 15 Valets in Pro Wrestling History (thesportster.com)
Chris Nowinski, PhD | Concussion Legacy Foundation (concussionfoundation.org)
World Wrestling Entertainment Will Never #GiveD
Cold Case Western AustraliaListen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify
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https://www.buymeacoffee.com/clarelaxton
Hi there and welcome to Killer in the Family podcast. I'm your host, clare Luxton, so before we delve into this episode, I want to let you know what happened at the true crime awards last week. So, as you might have seen from the socials, um killer in the family podcast didn't win rookie podcast of the year, but I left the awards feeling so proud because even the podcast nominated for rookie podcast of the year had like production teams and more than just one person working on them. So you know, here I am a one-woman band delivering a podcast that I feel really passionate about week after week and competing with some much bigger teams and budgets, and still being nominated for an award in my first sort of seven months. So I feel really proud and thank you so much to everyone for all your support. The award ceremony itself was brilliant and like massive, and my husband, paul, came with me to support, and I also met some amazing people there too, so it was a really great experience all in all. So let's get into this episode. This is going to be a tough listen.
Speaker 1:In June 2007, canadian professional wrestler Chris Benoit killed his wife and son and then took his own life With allegations of domestic abuse in their marriage. It could be that Chris finally killed his wife and son after years of abuse. However, some speculate the many blows to his head he took during his wrestling career led to brain damage which could have caused Benoit to kill his wife and child. One thing is clear the only person responsible for the murders of Nancy and Daniel Benoit is their husband and father, chris Benoit. This is part two of the story of the Benoit family, so let's recap from part one, which I would definitely recommend listening to if you haven't already, and then come and catch up with part two. So we have a very successful professional wrestler in Chris Benoit, who's married to Nancy Benoit, and they have a child, daniel, together. They live in Fayette County, georgia, and Benoit is enjoying, as I said, a hugely successful career. Their marriage was not a happy one, however. Benoit was rarely at home and when he was, he proved himself to be abusive, violent and controlling towards Nancy. Over one weekend in June 2007, this violence reached its horrific conclusion. Now again for this episode. I've read lots of news reports and also listened to the True Crime All the Time podcast episodes on the story, as well as watching the two-part documentary Dark Side of the Ring and reading the book called Chris and Nancy the true story of the Benoit murder-suicide and pro-wrestling's cocktail of death by Irvin Muchnick. Again, it's a way too sensational title, but all sources, as usual, are listed in the episode notes, so we are going to dive straight in and talk about what happened on that weekend in June 2007. So this is going to be a really tough listen team.
Speaker 1:On monday, the 25th of june 2007, police were attending nancy and chris benoit's house for a welfare check. The check had been asked by a guy called dennis fagan who ran security for wwe. Now, as we know from part one, chris Benoit that weekend was actually due to appear at some WWE events and he didn't appear and he wasn't getting back to people. So that's when Dennis Fagan, who ran security, alerted police. Now, when the police arrived at the property, they couldn't enter because of the family's two German shepherds who, as we know old dogs, are very protective, so I'm sure they were protecting their property and family quite vociferously. So the police asked a neighbour, holly and we know Holly from part one. Her and Nancy often chatted and had a good relationship. But they asked her if she could help and Holly knew the dogs, so she put them away somewhere and made sure that the house was sort of secure for the police to go into. But the next thing the police officers knew, holly came out of the house screaming that Daniel was dead. The officers went in not knowing what they were going into and drew their weapons. And as soon as they entered the house they smelled that something wasn't right. They searched the house and what they found I'm sure still sits with them to this day. We've talked about this a lot on the podcast before. When police sort of make that initial entrance to a crime scene and to find, you know, a whole family murdered must really stay with all of them throughout the rest of their lives.
Speaker 1:Now, on the second floor, the police officers went into Daniel's bedroom. It was decorated with so much wrestling memorabilia. He absolutely loved wrestling and watching his dad wrestle. They found Daniel dead on his bed. He was wearing SpongeBob SquarePants pyjamas and had his cuddly Winnie the Pooh's next to him, as well as a Bible. They then found Nancy in the home office in the house. She was covered in a red rug and also had a Bible next to her. Nancy's hands and feet were actually bound with electrical cord and duct tape, and later on it was also discovered that she had a huge bruise on her back, which turned out to be from Benoit kneeling on her. The officers continued searching the house and eventually found Chris Benoit in the home gym in the basement. He was sat on his pull-down machine so those of you who are gym goers will know what that means and he had the machine cable around his neck stacking the weight so that he was able to take his own life. He had an empty bottle of red wine and a bible next to him. Police eventually found a note saying, quote I am ready to leave this earth.
Speaker 1:So let's talk through some of the detail about what actually happened to Nancy and Daniel that weekend. Again, this is going to be a very tough listen. So we heard in part one about how, on Friday, the 22nd of June, benoit and Daniel barbecued in the garden and spent some time together. Now, according to the Dark Side of the Ring documentary, nancy was killed that Friday night. The thinking is that Benoit and Nancy got into an argument and he restrained her with the electrical cords and duct tape and killed her. Nancy's autopsy showed that she died by strangulation and it's thought that Benoit used an electrical cord to do it Again. As I mentioned before, nancy had a huge bruise on her back which led police to believe that Benoit knelt on her back as he strangled her. I just can't imagine how terrified she must have been and probably how confused Daniel was the next day.
Speaker 1:So on that next day, saturday, the 23rd of June, benoit was supposed to be in Texas at a wrestling show and, as we discussed in part one, he was actually messaging people that day saying Nancy and Daniel were sick and he wouldn't be able to make the show, something he also told Holly, the neighbour. In fact, he said to Holly that they were both like really sick with food poisoning and that they were like vomiting blood. So, obviously trying to sort of cover the tracks of why maybe Nancy wasn't around that day, and it is believed that then sometime on Saturday, benoit gave Daniel some Xanax, which is a prescription medication, and then suffocated him. Later on that day he sent a very strange text to a few wrestling friends and exactly the same text from Nancy's phone as well, and the text read quote from Nancy's phone as well. And the text read quote my physical address is 130 Green Meadow Lane, fayetteville, georgia, 30215. The dogs are in the enclosed pool area. Garage side door is open.
Speaker 1:No one really knew what to make of this text, but clearly in hindsight it was sort of saying goodbye and giving directions to his house and how to get into the house. So on that Saturday, after he had killed both his wife, nancy and his seven-year-old son Daniel, he was messaging his wrestling colleague saying that he would try and make the show on Sunday. He obviously would never appear, though he apparently was also searching on the internet the best way to break your own neck, and then went to bed on the Saturday night. He went to bed with his dead wife and son surrounding him. I just can't imagine how awful it was for Holly and the police officers who found the family, but also for Nancy and Benoit's family and friends, and just how shocking it must have been. Nancy's sister, sandra, talked on the Dark Side of the Ring documentary about how she found out and she had to be sedated and taken to hospital because she was so distraught. And there's a really emotional moment on the documentary too, when Chris's older son, david, talked about finding out and how he punched the cop in the chest when he found out because he was so distressed and, in a slightly bizarre and early reaction to the news, the World Wrestling Federation and Vince McMahon, who was its director, hosted a three-hour tribute programme to Chris Benoit.
Speaker 1:It featured lots of professional wrestlers talking about Chris and how brilliant he was. Even Steve Austin was in it. Even Steve Austin was in it. They put a vast tribute on their website that talked about how beloved Chris was amongst his fans, how he always took great pride in his performance and showed respect for the business he loved. Now Jim Ross, a former WWE executive, told the Dark Side of the Ring documentary that on reflection, they got that wrong, as they put out that huge tribute without actually knowing the full story of what happened. Yeah, no shit, sherlock, that was. You did get that wrong. Indeed, 24 hours later, vince appeared again and said, now that the circumstances were known, they would not be mentioning Chris Benoit again, and all mentions of him were removed from the WWE and their website.
Speaker 1:Now, although I'm glad that the WWE took that decision when information about what happened came out, I really feel like they could have waited just for one day for the police investigation to find out what had really happened.
Speaker 1:If they had done then, they would have avoided a three-hour tribute show praising a murderer and, as we've seen so often before, media reporting of the story just really seemed to justify Benoit's actions, calling him a great dad and a great guy, and when I started this podcast, I talked a lot about how men who've killed their children are often described as great dads, and it does nothing but infuriate me. There was also the classic trope of this being a murder-suicide, which you know is a term that I really hate, because it implies that the people who were murdered were somehow in on the plan, and Nancy and Daniel definitely weren't. Why can't the media just describe what it was A familicide, a murder of a mother and her child. Father who killed his son, husband who killed his wife and then took his own life. Now there's still a lot of messaging coming out from the wrestling community about having this conflicted view of Chris Benoit, as he was a great wrestler but also a killer. Now I'm not really sure what the conflict is to be honest, he was a murderer.
Speaker 1:the end. Indeed. According to a blog called the Scarlet Woman, 10 years after Benoit killed Nancy and Daniel, wwe is still being criticised for supporting and enabling violent and misogynistic wrestlers who have assaulted and abused their partners or even killed women. It seems that they still have a load of work to do in that respect. In a telling section of the Dark Side of the Ring documentary, the interviewer asked Sandra, nancy's sister, who, from the wrestling community, provided support to her and her family. She laughs and asks if that's a joke. No one.
Speaker 1:So, as I talked a bit about before the break, the messaging and the media reaction to the murders of Nancy and Daniel once again showed a willful misunderstanding of the family annihilator and what he had done. Indeed, in our episode before with Jess Phillips, she talked about this fatal misunderstanding of the family annihilator, and you can see that here. Fatal misunderstanding of the family annihilator. And you can see that here. The media talked about Benoit as a conflicted character, still a great dad and a loving husband. No, I can't conceive how anyone can call someone a loving husband about a man who has just brutally murdered his wife and son. And just a final point about the media response was that many people talked about how much Benoit loved Nancy and Daniel. Really, he loved them so much that he murdered them quite horrifically, and the evidence of Benoit and Nancy's relationship says something very different to me and I don't buy this at all. Now the family of Nancy and Chris's son talk about the impact of the intense media reaction and how difficult it made it for them on the Dark Side of the Ring documentary, and I think we have to remember that there are family and friends that are living with this throughout that media reaction. So let's talk about some of the theories on what led Chris to do what he did. Now, just to be really clear here, I believe that he, and only he, is responsible for what he did and that his misogyny, rage and control caused what he did.
Speaker 1:But there are three main other theories behind his actions. The first one concerns something that happened a couple of years before Benoit killed Nancy and Daniel. It was the sudden death of his friend and fellow wrestler, eddie Guerrero, as we talked about in part one of this story. Benoit and Guerrero were really close friends and along with another wrestler, dean Malenko, they made up the three amigos. Benoit and Eddie wrestled together throughout their careers and had just such a close friendship. Now, on November, the 13th 2005, eddie was found dead in a hotel in Minneapolis. He was just 38 years old and died of acute heart failure.
Speaker 1:Now, eddie's sudden death demonstrated something quite sinister about wrestling at this point in time. According to the Dark Side of the Ring documentary, wrestlers at this point were 20 times more likely to die before 45 than professional football players. So there was a lot of premature and sudden death in wrestling in the 90s and noughties. Now we're not here to delve into this, but from what I've read about wrestling at this time, there could be a whole range of reasons for this, maybe including substance misuse. Anyway, the sudden death of Eddie had a huge impact on Benoit. He was absolutely distraught and much next book talks about how the usually antisocial Benoit became even more withdrawn and antisocial after the death of Eddie. It seems that he just never really got over it. It seems that he just never really got over it, and I wonder as well if the sort of macho environment of wrestling also meant that he never really sought help or talked about how he was feeling after the death of Eddie, so sort of kept it all inside, really.
Speaker 1:Now the second theory of what happened and why it happened was called was something called roid rage, stemming from the misuse of steroids from wrestlers. So apparently at this point in wrestling the use of steroids was widespread and overlooked, as we heard in part one nancy. In some of nancy's text messages to ch Benoit, she talked about how much he abused medication. Now, on the True Crime All the Time episodes they talked about how, after the murders, the police found out that on the Friday before he killed his family, chris got a steroid prescription from his usual doctor and that his prescription for one month or six weeks was actually 10 months worth of a usual steroid prescription. So that means that he was either selling them or seriously abusing steroids. As I said, we know that Nancy had called him out and that she had asked him to stop his misuse of this substance and according to the autopsy, benoit had 10 times the normal amounts of testosterone in his body as well. Now, I'm not a medical professional, but that seems like a hell of a lot. Now the last theory about why Benoit did what he did focuses more on the damage to Benoit's brain by the many hits he took to his head in his wrestling career and the many concussions he experienced. You know, if you're a wrestling fan you will have seen many wrestlers in the 90s and 90s taking a chair to their head. And there's actually a former pro wrestler called Chris Nowinski who resigned from his wrestling career after he had quite a few concussions. He said that he once had a conversation with Benoit about it when he started writing his book about concussions and brain damage. Nowinski told Dark Side of the Ring that Chris couldn't even remember the number of concussions that he had. So Chris Nowinski is now a PhD and runs a foundation to increase awareness of something called chronic traumatic encephalopathy. That is too hard to say, but it's CTE basically, and Nowinski actually carried out an investigation on Benoit's brain after his death and they assessed that he had a severe case of CTE. They likened his brain to that of an 80 year old Alzheimer's patient and they sort of asserted that damage to the brain could change who you are and what you do and what you become. So symptoms of CTE in this area of medicine is still being researched. So this is from Lewinsky's Foundation's website. Symptoms can include mood and behaviour change and, in extreme cases, dementia. So research, as I said, is very still much in its infancy, but it is thought to affect people like professional athletes, so American footballers, rugby players and military personnel as well, and I think it is really important that more research is put into CTE to try and understand if there's anything that can treat or prevent it.
Speaker 1:Whether it caused Benoit to do something so horrific, I am not sure, though Benoit's dad does hold on to this theory and think that it is why he did what he did. So, despite all of these other theories and possible reasons why Benoit did what he did, I have maintained, and I believe that it's simply about his control, misogyny and abuse. Could it be that his rage was heightened by steroids and other substances? Of course there was a root of control already there with Benoit, and one that was clear in the marriage At the point at which he murdered Nancy and Daniel. Their relationship was deteriorating and I'm sure that Nancy considered leaving him more than that one time in 2003. He, and only he, is responsible for the deaths of Nancy and Daniel. He is responsible for the deaths of Nancy and Daniel, and what still makes me so sad and angry about this story is that still, the lives of Nancy and Daniel always seem to be a footnote in the life of Chris Benoit. The Dark Side of the Ring documentary spent 90% of its time talking about Chris's career and what happened, and then five minutes at the end talking about Nancy, daniel and Chris's other two children. It just seems again like the reason why I'm doing this podcast is so reinforced, because all of these stories centre the perpetrator, not the people that have lost their lives.
Speaker 1:A memorial service was held for Nancy and Daniel in July 2007 at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church. The service was not open to the media, but many fellow wrestlers were in attendance. Benoit was buried in a separate ceremony in Canada and, before we finish, it's so important to remember that Benoit has two children with his first wife who have to live with this every day, as well as Nancy and Daniel's family and friends. This episode is dedicated to Nancy and Daniel Benoit, thinking about the memories of who they were and what they brought to their friends and family, of who they were and what they brought to their friends and family.
Speaker 1:This has been Killer in the Family podcast, written and produced by me, claire Laxton, with music from the brilliant Tombox and Pixabay. I'll be back next week with another episode, so please subscribe. Wherever you get your podcasts. Don't forget to send me any comments or questions on a voice note or DM to my Instagram profile at killerinthefamilypod. Do let me know any stories you'd like me to cover as well. Until then, I've been Claire Laxton. This is Killer in the Family podcast. Until next time, take care, thank you, thank you.
