Chris & Nancy
Page 20
Xanax peak plasma concentration about 1 hr after administration. At this point he loses his mind completely and goes to the office and kills Nancy.
Doesn’t make any sense that he would kill Daniel first, chances are he killed Daniel accidentally, to sedate him, gave him too much and died so at that point he knew he was in too deep. While in contact with WWE they may have still been alive, after they told him not to show up Sat he got scared his career over and decided to end it hence leaving the drugs out to be found
Nancy still had alcohol in her blood, why did no other bodies produce alcohol during decomposition
It must be reemphasized that this theory appears to have been drawn up to advance a particular monetary interest. (The theory became moot when the Benoits and the Toffolonis settled the estate dispute by splitting the assets right down the middle, abandoning any claim the latter might have been contemplating of their entitlement to a larger share.) The theory means little more than that. The narrative of any crime, especially one with no surviving witnesses, has open-ended elements. Here the open-endedness was worsened by the poor record created by the authorities.
***
Since the summer of 2007, Atlanta’s dubious distinction as a capital of wrestling’s drug culture hasn’t missed a beat. On March 23, 2008, thirty-four-year-old ex-wrestler Chase Tatum was found dead in his Atlanta home from an overdose of painkillers. Two weeks earlier, Tatum had been recovering from surgery for a degenerative spinal disc. He was a heavy-duty steroid guy at WCW in the ’90s.
The next month the daughter of a preacher in another Atlanta suburb, Locust Grove, came across a stash of at least eight vials of steroids, testosterone, and growth hormone, and more than twenty syringes, in their house attic. The drugs were left by former residents of the house, who included WWE wrestler Michael Hettinga (“Mike Knox”). Hettinga’s WWE contract and a company memorandum about its dress code were also found.
***
In 2008 director Christopher Bell released the critically acclaimed documentary Bigger Faster Stronger, which glorified his own steroid use and that of his brothers Mark and Mike.
On December 14, 2008, “Mad Dog” Mike Bell, who wrestled for both WWE and the original ECW, was found dead at Ramona House, a substance abuse rehabilitation facility in Costa Mesa, California. He was thirty-seven.
***
On January 16, 2009, independent wrestler Paul Fuchs (“Paul E. Normus”), who had a cameo role in the even more critically acclaimed dramatic film The Wrestler, was found dead at his parents’ home in Sloatsburg, New York. Fuchs was thirty-three.
***
Another character in The Wrestler was a drug dealer, portrayed by Scott Siegel. It was method acting at its finest, for Siegel was a real-life drug dealer. So exposing himself on the big screen could not have helped him elude the DEA agents who were closing in on him.
As the website TMZ.com reported on February 19, 2009:
Scott Siegel was already under DEA surveillance in Westchester County, NY last night when officers spotted him picking up a package. Feds in four cars moved in, and the raging beefcake allegedly rammed three of their cars — then took off on foot.
Officers caught up with Scott and arrested him for steroid distribution and assaulting a federal officer.
UPDATE: Siegel’s bail has just been denied — due to strong evidence against him, along with his 1999 conviction for selling steroids.
***
A handful of ex-WWE wrestlers took up Vince McMahon’s offer to underwrite alcohol and substance rehab. One of them, Jake “The Snake” Roberts, expressed his undying gratitude before he and his prop, a live cobra, headed back out to independent bookings.
Another old druggie, Lanny Kean, “Cousin Junior” in the ’80s, checked out early, from his rehab clinic and then from life. On January 12, 2009, Kean suffered a fatal heart attack in Jamestown, Kentucky. He was forty-eight.
***
Early in 2007, months before the Benoit rampage, WWE star Andrew Martin failed a wellness program test and was suspended. He was released soon thereafter. Martin was known as “Test.” The handle was an inside joke about drug-testing.
Martin — also at one time the boyfriend of WWE diva Barbara Blank (“Kelly Kelly”) — became a part-time independent wrestler. In April 2007 the Maryland athletic commission refused to let Martin work his spot in a show because he was under the influence. He also missed numerous other bookings. After his April 2008 arrest for driving drunk and with a suspended license, he accepted WWE’s offer to underwrite rehab. In August he checked himself into the Hanley Rehabilitation Center in West Palm Beach, Florida, for treatment of a painkiller addiction.
On March 13, 2009, a neighbor of Martin’s at a waterfront condo complex in Tampa saw through the balcony window that he had appeared to have been sitting in the same awkward position for more than twenty-four hours. The neighbor called police, who climbed a ladder to the balcony and entered the apartment through an open window. Martin was dead. Steroids and painkillers were found on the property. He was thirty-three.
***
World Wrestling Entertainment put a lot of hours into the obliteration of all references to Chris Benoit in its DVDs. A few leaks remained, mostly in side references by announcers in non-Benoit matches.
On the June 28, 2007, Today show on NBC, Vince McMahon told Meredith Viera, “There was no way of telling this man was a monster.”
Yet according to company sources, WWE privately held out hope that, over time, the “monster” of the tale would prove to be Nancy, Chris’s image could be rehabilitated, and the marketing of his branded merchandise could resume. Some office flunkies were tasked with helping to bring about this happy day.
In the secondary market on eBay, all things Benoit moved briskly. Out of every three fans, one was creeped out by this, one wallowed in it, and a third experienced the latter while pretending to experience the former.
Shortly before his death, Chris Benoit gave Ray Rawls, the small-time wrestler who made his ring wear, a special token of their friendship: the dark tights with blue piping and design that Benoit wore when he won the championship at WrestleMania 2004. It was something he wanted to do for Rawls, Chris said. He added, “It’s for your use in the future.” Following the murder-suicide, and because of the loss of his star customer and other factors, Rawls was broke. Though he felt guilty doing so, Rawls decided that Chris had been giving him permission to auction the tights on eBay to keep the wolf from the door.
The tights fetched $3,000.
***
On May 12, 2009, Astin was sentenced to ten years in federal prison. The harsh sentence was dictated by information from the prosecutors that his promiscuous prescription practices had resulted in the deaths of at least two patients — two, that is, other than Chris and Nancy Benoit. (Though not named, both were believed to be ex-wrestlers: Johnny Grunge and “Sensational Sherri” Martel.)
On June 10, 2009, just before the statutory deadline for a civil wrongful-death lawsuit, Maureen and Paul Toffoloni — the parents of Nancy Benoit and grandparents of Daniel — sued Astin, who was already headed to prison, along with unknown “Distributors X, Y, and Z.” The Toffolonis sought damages stemming from Astin’s actions as Chris’s physician for seven years, The complaint charged that the doctor’s misconduct put his patient “under the influence of CNS [central nervous system] depressants, opioids and anabolic and androgenic steroids,” in turn impairing him mentally and triggering his homicidal-suicidal rampage. The family apparently was depending on subsequent revelations, during discovery and trial, to establish the identities of the co-defendants — “manufacturers, distributors, wholesalers and/or retail sellers of certain anabolic and androgenic steroids, narcotic drugs and/or controlled substances.”
WWE was not named.
***
Securities and Exchange Commission filings by World Wrestling Entertai
nment, Inc., disclosed $526.5 million in net revenues in 2008, broken down as follows:
Live and Televised Entertainment
$331.5 million
Consumer Products
$135.7 million
Digital Media
$34.8 million
WWE Studios
$24.5 million
About three-quarters of the revenues came from North America operations. Other portions were generated in EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Africa), 18%; APAC (Asia Pacific), 7%; and Emerging Markets (Latin America, China), 1%.
***
On January 12, 2009, Connecticut Governor M. Jodi Rell nominated Linda McMahon for a position on the state Board of Education.
Rell said, “Linda clearly understands the skills and education needed to succeed in business and the type of highly educated and skilled workforce that must be available to ensure that success. I am confident that her leadership abilities, input and advocacy as a mother and grandmother will be key assets to the Board and its mission of ensuring quality education for all Connecticut children.”
During the confirmation process, McMahon acknowledged that her claim that she had a degree in education was false. She said the error on her resume was caused by honest confusion.
Linda McMahon was confirmed by the State Senate, 34–1, and by the House of Representatives, 96–45.
About the Photos
Pages 1–2: all photos courtesy of Bob Leonard.
Page 3: Photos courtesy of Mike Lano.
Page 3: Nancy Benoit with Too Cold Scorpio and Sandman in ECW (ECW Press archives).
Page 4: George Napolitano.
Pages 5–6: all photos courtesy Mike Lano.
Page 7: Eddie Geurerro, courtesy Jake Aurelian.
Page 7: Johnny Grunge and Rocco Rock, courtesy Mike Lano.
Pages 8–9: Simon Dean, courtesy Mike Lano; Randy Orton and Umaga, courtesy Matt Balk; all other photos courtesy Mike Mastrandrea.
Page 10: Vince McMahon (ECW Press archives).
Page 10 Michelle McCool, courtesy Matt Balk.
Page 13: Chavo Guerrero and Kane, courtesy Mike Mastrandrea.
Page 13: Scott Armstrong, courtesy Matt Balk.
Page 13: Dave Taylor Singing with Paul Burchill, courtesy Shawn Boyette.
Page 14: All photos courtesy AP.
Page 15: Linda McMahon, (ECW Press archives).
Page 16: Chris Benoit, 2004, courtesy Jake Aurelian.
Notes on Sources
At the back of this book is information on how to order on disk some of the background records I used. The goal here was for as much transparency as possible. From the get-go, I had faith that, even if the Benoit crime itself flashed no conspiratorial smoking gun, a close reading of the public record would reveal more than we might think.
Below are the stories behind the stories of a few important aspects of my reporting.
FAYETTE COUNTY AUTHORITIES
On February 12, 2008, the Fayette County Sheriff’s Office released a report closing the Benoit investigation. The materials consisted of a fifty-two-page case summary by Detective Ethon Harper, the lead investigator, along with more than 300 pages of supplemental reports and records.
Through the public information officer, Lieutenant Belinda McCastle, then-Sheriff Randall Johnson said that only Harper was authorized to talk to me; everyone else in the department was instructed to grant no interviews. I reached out to others as needed, but it was clear that the sheriff’s employees took his directive seriously.
My dialogue with Harper started off amiably before quickly dribbling into nothingness. As the questions got sharper, Harper did not want to interpret the gaps in his report, which I was showing were not just discretionary, but passive to the point of negligence. Missing text messages, arbitrarily truncated phone call logs, absence of voicemail evidence, references to documents and records that were not released and then, in defense, were explained as never having existed at all — all these detours from openness and common sense speak for themselves.
“I hope you are keeping in mind that I am not a professional writer,” Harper said at one point. Ultimately, his lack of felicity with the written word was presumed to excuse that where he represented that Scott Armstrong had said something “in a statement,” the detective merely meant to refer to something he claimed to remember Armstrong stating. There was no backup document, after all; the plain language suggesting otherwise was a swerve.
In an April 8, 2008, email, Harper accused me of not publishing on my blog his explanation of a text message Armstrong sent to Chris Benoit on June 24, 2007. “I thought you said you did not want to ‘hype,’” Harper wrote. When I replied that I had received no such explanation and asked him to show me the original message, he wrote back, “I clear out my sent box pretty frequently to keep from getting the ‘over size limits’ message from our server. I don’t have any messages past a week ago.” Unfortunately for his logic, such a message would have been less than a week earlier. Anyway, Harper wrote, “I was really just poking a little bit of fun at you. No reason to point out a misunderstanding and make it a bigger issue than it is.”
If this was a joke, I wasn’t laughing. Thereafter, Harper stopped returning phone calls, emails, and faxes.
Three months later came the search for the Stamford police interview of the Wikipedia hacker, which the Fayette County sheriff’s report said was “included in the case file.” After several rounds of dodgeball, Harper said, through sheriff’s attorney Richard Lindsey, “We have had and still do have the video they sent us. The video cuts out after just a couple of minutes, so there is no recorded interview.”[1] I demanded and received what was, in fact, a partial recorded interview. I asked Lindsey why the sheriff’s office issued a report on this aspect of its investigation on such a basis. Lindsey wrote back, “I have no idea.”
After a time-consuming fight that led all the way to the docket of the Connecticut Freedom of Information Commission, I got the full video from Stamford, and it reinforced the apparent determination of authorities in two states not to breathe a word of whatever was known about why the body of a famous wrestler — who was uncharacteristically missing appearances — and the bodies of his wife and their son could lie around decomposing for days.
Then there were the grudging and piecemeal releases of copies of WWE’s calls to 911. All records “of the initial call to 911 for a welfare check may be obtained from the Fayette County 911 Communications Center,” noted the summary of the open records. By omission, this at least implied the existence of only one 911 call. After I applied to the 911 center for “the” call and listened to it, it was evident that there were others; in fact, three iterations of requests to the center were required before the complete collection of eight audio records got pinned down.
At the beginning of the process, Lindsey had written to me, “I suggest that you read the investigator’s summary first (which I am sending to you) to determine if you really need the 911 documents. The summary is very good.”
Later Lindsey was angered by my persistent questions about the mysterious Scott Armstrong “statement.” Unable to understand why Harper wouldn’t produce what nine out of ten drunks in a bar could identify in that context as a dedicated document, I assured Lindsey that I would not make a fuss if such a document surfaced and turned out not to have been disclosed previously due to an honest mistake. Lindsey then threatened in an email, “If you ever imply that I withheld anything, all communication will cease immediately.” He complained that he was “at the mercy” of his client in such a situation. “I do not withhold documents — I never have and never will. If I read that again (as a threat, comment or thought), you’ll have to get a court order before I will ever communicate f
urther with you.” After I replied that I’d proferred no such threat, comment, or thought, Lindsey apologized.
MICHAEL BENOIT
Michael Benoit, Chris’s father, contacted me early in 2008, after we were separately interviewed for a documentary on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation program the fifth estate. Mike was most interested in promoting research suggesting that Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy — a doctor’s neologism for the brain damage he had found caused by Chris’s serial concussions in the ring — had been the central cause of his rampage. I promised Mike that I would cover and address this research respectfully, whereupon he wrote me, “I will help you with any details you require for your book. I will not ask that you write in a manner that is pro Chris Benoit.”
For several months Mike and I conversed extensively, though at arm’s length, in dozens of emails and several long phone conversations, about aspects of my reporting on the timeline in particular, and we contemplated meeting face to face for further conversations on a range of topics. Mike was eager to introduce me to one of the CTE research pioneers, Dr. Bennet Omalu, a professor at the University of California-Davis Medical School, the coroner of San Joaquin County, California, and the author of Play Hard, Die Young: Football, Dementia, Depression and Death. A meeting among the three of us almost happened in May 2008, when the producers of NBC’s Dateline planned to fly Mike to San Jose to participate in interviews for an investigative piece. But Mike’s flight was canceled at the last minute as NBC abruptly scrapped the Benoit story.
A month earlier Mike had been a key confirming source as I nailed down the story of WWE’s phony Raw tribute show, hours after company executives knew full well that they were spinning a murder-suicide. After the publication of that report on my blog, Wrestling Babylon News (http://muchnick.net/babylon), he alerted me to a clumsy attempt to discredit me by Scott Zerr, an Edmonton journalist who had hoped to work with Chris on his autobiography. (Zerr might have been smearing me in concert with Carl DeMarco, the head of WWE’s Canadian operations, who likely had been embarrassed by my revelation that the leak of the company’s early knowledge that Chris was the killer came from DeMarco.) For details, see the April 6, 2008, posts on Wrestling Babylon News.