Chris Benoit — Why He Did It

5 min readOct 28, 2020

Picture the scene — a starry eyed twelve-year-old kid at his first wrestling show, watching his heroes Tom “The Dynamite Kid” Billington and Brett Hart (Embed links here) in the ring, absolutely entranced by what he’s seeing. As the bodies hit the floor time and again, fly through the air like graceful birds, he watches and thinks “That’s it. That’s what I wanna be when I grow up”.

And that is exactly what he did.

It is around this age that Christopher Michael Benoit, of Montreal, Quebec, Canada, joins the Hart family Dungeon, and begins training, and thus his eponymous wrestling career, under the tutelage of Stu Hart. This would begin a 22 year long career, spanning promotions such as NJPW , ECW , WCW , and WWF/WWE , the promotion that would be his final home. Benoit was, and is to this day, considered to be one of the top ten wrestlers in the world.

The career of Chris Benoit came to a sudden halt on the night of June 24th, 2007 when he failed to turn up for a WWE PPV — Vengeance: Night of Champions (Way Back Machine) . A replacement match was quickly rescheduled between CM Punk and Johnny Nitro (which Nitro won after being in ECW for only a week at that point) when he couldn’t be contacted but throughout, all the fans could chant was “WE WANT BENOIT! “, who was booked to win his third World Championship title — the ECW World Championship — that night, against CM Punk. The whole world was with Benoit at this point in time, it seemed.

After the show WWE staff tried to contact Chris again and failed, and as this was so unlike him, since he turned up for everything he was scheduled for and his communication was always excellent and professional, a wellness check was requested the next day, June 25th, and police attended Benoit’s home. This tragically resulted in the discovery of the bodies of his wife Nancy, his son David, and Chris himself.

It was discovered upon later investigation that the three had died over the course of three nights, a double murder suicide, of which it was decided that Chris was guilty. First his wife, who had a combination of drugs in her system at the time of her death. These were found to be Hydrocodone, Xanax, and Hydromorphone, all of which were found to be at therapeutic levels, following the toxicology report, released on July 17, 2007. However, she was found bound.

The following evening, his son passed. He was found to have a large amount of Xanax in his system., leading the Chief Medical Examiner Dr Kris Sperry to believe that these were given to him to sedate him so that he would be less aware of what Chris was about to do. It is believed that David was already unconscious by the time that Chris strangled him.

Then finally he ends his own life by hanging himself on his lat pull up machine, where his body was found. He also had elevated levels of drugs in his system, namely Xanax, Hydrocodone and elevated levels of a synthetic form of testosterone, which was believed to be a part of treatment for past steroid abuse. However, none of these drugs were considered to be at levels that would cause the kind of aggression in Chris that would cause him to commit these dreadful acts, the testosterone in particular, something which the media largely ignored despite strong caution from the Chief Medical Examiner (Think Steroids).

So, why did he do it, you may be asking yourself? This has been the subject of great controversy ever since the news broke and thirteen tears later, the conspiracy theories are still rife.

Chris Benoit was found to have a brain resembling that of an 85 years old dementia patient, caused by severe brain damage. Dr Julian E. Bailes MD, of West Virginia University carried out the post-mortem examination and discovered this. This brain damage was certainly acquired from his time in the ring, the effect of multiple concussions adding up over time. Repeated concussions, particularly those that do not display any particular lingering symptoms at the time, can manifest later on in life in other much more severe ways, such as severe depression, extreme bursts of aggression, advanced dementia normally only seen in elderly patients, self harm or harm to others. This particular pattern of brain damage, repeated traumas to the head leading to concussions with no apparent lingering symptoms at the time, is now widely accepted as being Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy. It is almost certain that this is what was wrong with Chris, and precisely the reason for why he did what he did, and why his marriage was so turbulent as well.

CTE cannot be diagnosed whilst the person is alive, sadly, it can only be confirmed as of yet through an autopsy where the brain can be examined thoroughly for the diagnostic criteria. Tests can be performed during life to rule other things out, and the patient can be treated for Alzheimer’s to help ease their symptoms, but CTE cannot be diagnosed during life currently, as there is still so little known about this. There are no known treatments for specifically this, and no cure.

Chris developed such a high risk signature style in order to emulate his idols Brett Hart and Tom Billington, and one move in particular, the diving headbutt, which was one of Billington’s originally, is thought to have been the one that caused the most damage.

So, was Chris guilty of murder? Whilst he did kill his wife and son, it is evident that he was no longer in his right mind, he was not aware enough of his actions to be in control. He could not have controlled or stopped his thoughts at this point, let alone the subsequent actions that followed. It is apt then that as a result of this that it becomes difficult to see him as a cold blooded murderer, it was clear that in the times when he was lucid he loved his wife and son very much, but rather as an extremely unfortunate victim of circumstance. Unfortunately, Nancy and David became victims of this circumstance as well. It’s a very emotive subject that will always make people feel one way or the other very strongly, but as someone who has a working background in dementia care and brain damage, I can very much vouch that these behaviours absolutely cannot be controlled. We as people all too often get caught up in our emotions and respond with our own minds, think about what we would and wouldn’t do as people in that situation ourselves, but rarely do we bother or are we able to place ourselves in the minds of those going through something like this. Only once we can do that, can we begin to understand how things like this occur and perhaps prevent more of it from happening in the future.

References

Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Benoit

New Japan Pro Wrestling

https://www.njpw1972.com/

Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW)

https://www.wwe.com/classics/ECW

World Championship Wrestling (WCW)

https://www.wwe.com/classics/ECW

World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE, formerly WWF — World Wrestling Federation)

https://www.wwe.com/

Interview with Stephanie McMahon Levesque (Archived at Way Back Machine)