Benoit murder-suicide case gets stranger
In what was a poorly thought through prank or an eerie forewarning, someone apparently reported the death of Chris Benoit's wife on Wikipedia — the online open source encyclopedia — more than 14 hours before police discovered her body, along with her son's and husband's, at the pro wrestler's Fayette County home. Labels: crime drama, internets, local news, murder, suicide, technology news, wikipedia
An anonymous user edited the biography of the wrestler on Monday at 12:01 a.m., said Sandra Ordonez, communication manager for the Wikimedia Foundation, which runs the encyclopedia.
Authorities discovered the bodies at the Benoit's Green Meadow Lane home that afternoon, at 2:30 p.m.
The Monday morning posting said: "Chris Benoit was replaced by Johnny Nitro for the [ECW] Extreme Championship Wrestling Championship match at Vengeance, as Benoit was not there due to personal issues, stemming from the death of his wife Nancy."
Adding to the mystery, the anonymous poster used a computer whose internet protocol, or IP, address was traced to Stamford, Conn., where the headquarters for Benoit's employer, for World Wrestling Entertainment, is located.
Investigators think Benoit, 40, killed his wife Friday and his 7-year-old son Daniel Saturday. He placed Bibles next to their bodies, authorities say. Sometime Sunday he hanged himself using a weight-machine pulley.
The posting now raises questions of who, if anyone, knew about the deaths and if so, when.
"We are looking at that, trying to track down the IP address," said Fayette Sheriff's Lt. Tammy Pope in a statement to WAGA-TV. "It's either true or it's a hoax."
Anyone can post and edit content on the Web encyclopedia. Further more, an IP address, which is a unique set of numbers that every machine connected to the Internet carries, does not necessarily have to be broadcast from where it is registered.
The IP address from which the 12:01 a.m. addition was made had been flagged for "vandalizing" other Wikipedia entries in the past, ABC News reported.
Earlier this month, the same IP user also edited a post about WWE wrestler Chavo Guerrero Jr., a close friend of Benoit's who reportedly was the recipient of at least one of the text messages Benoit sent over the weekend before the discovery of the bodies.
In that edit, the IP user took out a damaging description of Guerrero from the post, ABC News said.
Wikipedia does recruit volunteer editors who troll the entries to ensure that facts within posts are properly attributed.
According to a timeline posted on Wikinews, which is the news source of the nonprofit foundation, within an hour of the 12:01 post, the edit had been changed with the comment: "Need a reliable source. Saying that his wife died is a pretty big statement, you need to back it up with something."
Another hour went by. Then a second anonymous edit, using what appears to be an Australian Internet service provider, added the attribution: "according to several pro wrestling websites."
Again, the edit was changed after 20 minutes with the comment: "Saying 'several pro wrestling websites' is still not reliable information."
The posting was brought to the attention of the foundation, based in St. Petersburg, Fla., and an employee left a message with Fayetteville authorities about 11 a.m. Tuesday.
"We provided the IP address, and I guess they were investigating," Ordonez said.
The Chris Benoit entry, updated hundreds of times this week, has now been "locked" to prevent further edits by posters.
New details about the killings emerged Wednesday.
Daniel appeared to have been killed in a chokehold because he had internal neck injuries but no visible bruises, according to Scott Ballard, district attorney for Fayette County.
Nancy Benoit, 43, had bruises on her back and stomach, indicating her husband had his knee in her back as he pulled on a cord that was around her neck.
Benoit killed himself by wrapping a cord around his neck that was attached to a weight machine. He released the weights — about 240 pounds — to cause strangulation, Ballard said.
During the weekend, Benoit made groggy calls to co-workers and left text messages, according to the WWE.
On Saturday, he said he was delayed in catching his flight to an event in Beaumont, Texas, because of family health issues, the WWE said. In one call he said "I love you" to a co-worker, who called it "out of context," the organization said.
In other calls, Benoit said his wife and son were sick with food poisoning and that they had gone to the hospital, WWE said.
On Sunday, Benoit sent text messages to friends from his cellphone and his wife's cellphone. The last text message was sent at 3:58 a.m. Sunday, according to WWE.
The WWE lawyer tried to get inside the mind of the wrestling star to explain why he would kill his child.
"The time gap between the death of Nancy and the time he was with this child, it doesn't take much to figure out what was going on in his mind," McDevitt said. "The mother can't take care of [Daniel], he'd killed her. He was going to jail. There was nobody left to take care of this little boy."
McDevitt could not find any other explanation why Benoit would take Daniel's life. The boy adored his father and had his pictures in his room, McDevitt said.
Also Wednesday, Benoit's longtime physician, Dr. Phil Astin, said he had prescribed testosterone for the wrestler in the past but would not say what, if any, medications he prescribed the day of their meeting.
"He was in my office on Friday to stop by just to see my staff," Astin, of Carrollton, said. "He certainly didn't show any signs of any distress or rage or anything."
That the violence went on for an extended period indicates it was not a "roid rage" sparked by steroid use, according to WWE and others.
Toxicology results from Benoit's autopsy won't be available for weeks.
Benoit received drug deliveries from a Florida business that sold steroids, human growth hormone and testosterone, according to the Albany County, N.Y., district attorney's office, which is investigating the business, MedXLife.com.
"This gentleman may have had other significant mental health problems," said Gary Yesalis, an epidemiologist at Penn State University. "The death of Benoit and his family wasn't spontaneous. I don't see steroids had much if anything to do with this."
At the gate and stacked stone wall at the family's 8-acre home, flowers, stuffed animals and wrestling figurines were left by fans.
And so were notes.
One was written by a child in pencil on lined notebook paper. "I will miss you, we will always love you," it says. "I left you my [toy] wrestler. See you in heaven."
Staff writers Mike Morris, Kathy Jefcoats and Bill Hendricks, researchers Sharon Gaus and Nisa Asokan and The Associated Press contributed to this article.
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