Benoit: Bibles at murder scene
2007-06-27 08:44
Atlanta - WWE wrestler Chris Benoit allegedly suffocated his seven-year-old son and placed a Bible next to the body before using an exercise machine to hang himself, authorities said on Tuesday.
Law enforcement officials believe Daniel Benoit was killed on Saturday, one day after Benoit also allegedly strangled his 43-year-old wife, Nancy, in the upstairs family room of their luxury rural home.
Another Bible was placed next to her lifeless body which was wrapped in a towel, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
The three bodies were found in separate rooms of the house on Green Meadow Lane in Peachtree City in what police are calling a double-murder suicide that stretched through the weekend.
"Bizarre. That's the only way I can describe this," Fayette County District Attorney Scott Ballard told the Fayette Daily News.
"What's most bizarre to me is the timing and the circumstances. Not just that a man could kill his own seven-year-old son but that he could have stayed in the same house with the bodies.
"And then there's the placement of the Bibles. I can't understand this."
Law enforcement authorities said steroids were discovered at the home along with the bodies on Monday and they are probing whether this may have been a factor in the deaths.
Murder-suicide
Steroids have been linked to the recent deaths of several pro wrestlers.
News of the murder-suicide has turned the professional wrestling world upside down.
The World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) aggressively defended its drug-testing programme on Tuesday.
"We strongly suggest that it is entirely wrong for speculators to suggest that steroids had anything to do with these senseless acts," the WWE said on its website.
The WWE said the placing of Bibles next to bodies was not something an angry person would do.
"The presence of a Bible by each is not an act of rage," the WWE said. "The physical findings announced by authorities indicate deliberation, not rage. The wife's feet and hands were bound and she was asphyxiated, not beaten to death.
"By the account of the authorities, there were substantial periods of time between the death of the wife and son, again suggesting deliberate thought, not rage."
The WWE said Benoit was tested under their drug-testing programme as recently as April and passed.
Pay-per-view
The 40-year-old Benoit was born in Montreal, Canada and moved to Calgary in the mid-1980s where he got his start in professional wrestling under the late Stu Hart. Benoit later wrestled professionally with the New Japan Pro Wrestling before joining the WWE in 2000.
Benoit was scheduled to appear in a pay-per-view title match on Sunday, but at the time the WWE announced he couldn't attend because of a "family emergency".
Benoit went by the ring name the "Canadian Crippler" and "The Rabid Wolverine" and his signature moves included a flying headbutt, the triple German suplex and the "Crippler Crossface."
Benoit left no suicide note.
The Atlanta Journal Constitution said the Benoits had lived together since 1997 and were married in 2000 but separated about the same time Nancy Benoit filed for divorce in May 2003.
In an accompanying petition, the newspaper said Nancy Benoit had sought protection from domestic abuse, claiming she was intimidated by threats of violence from her husband.
She later filed to have the divorce and protective petitions dismissed.