THE DOUBLE MURDER/SUICIDE OF THE BENOIT FAMILY

Many people have theories about what happened the fateful last weekend of The Benoit Family. As much as his fans hate to admit it, the most likely scenario, at least the popular opinion is Chris Benoit suffered many concussions over his multi year career. Concussion expert and former WWE superstar Chris Norwinski studied Chris Benoit’s brain after his death. His staff determined that despite being in his early 40s he had the brain of a man in his 80s even though Nancy Benoit’s sister, Sandra Toffoloni scoffs at their findings especially when it concerns the way they believed Benoit should have been acting at the time of his death.

Although Bill Apter, a British Criminologist who wishes to remain unidentified, as well as myself believe there is some conspiracy to the events that occurred June 24, 2007. There are a few discrepancies as pointed out by Chavo Guerrero, JR on a two-part interview with Chris Jericho and his Talk is Jericho podcast. Guerrero and Scott Armstrong did not know what kept Benoit from a major pay per view event so they tried to cover for him. When he was very late and was going to miss his ECW title match Chavo went to John Laurienitis called the police since as Arn Anderson is quoted as saying, “He’s either ran off to Alaska to be a Merchant Marine or he’s dead.”

The police responded to the call for suspicious activity but despite protocol they allowed a female neighbor, only identified as “Holly” to enter the Benoit home. The mysterious texts that Guerrero and Armstrong received made a police response necessary but why a civilian entering alone? This is what causes a lot of controversy in a lot of fans’ minds.

Toffoloni, believes that it was given as a reason to allow his fans a measure of closure. As a fan of Chris Benoit for 20 years, it makes me think of the British Criminologist who did the voice only videos on YouTube discussing the crime. So many discrepancies and police officers from three different cities in two different states could not give me an answer to why such a deviation from protocol in a suspicious incident call would have been ignored. With a mysterious text stating, “Dogs in pool area. Garage Open,” sent to a close friend and not one who would have normally received such a text increases the mystery surrounding the Benoit Double Murder-Suicide case as it has been dubbed by the media at large.

When Toffoloni was told of Chavo Guerrero’s story of Benoit becoming increasingly paranoid, she concurred. He would change cars when going to the gym and was adamant about his privacy. He would also alter times and routes when he did make rare ventures out of his personal residence. Toffoloni was understandably concerned about the growing paranoia of someone she loved like a brother and shared her concerns with her sister.

Even though Nancy Benoit had noticed his paranoia she believed that it was in regards to the fact that her husband had achieved main stream WWE success winning the world title at Wrestlemania 20 by defeating legends Triple H and Shawn Michaels. While the paranoia could be attributed to the repeated chair shots and concussions that Benoit had suffered during his career she was more concerned with the depression that would ultimately engulf him with so many of his friends dying. She mentions that her sister believed he was justified in his constantly checking the alarm and being over protective of his personal life now that he was an international recognized superstar. She relates in her own Talk is Jericho interview that at one time a wrestler’s child had been kidnapped many years ago. This is in addition to the tales Chavo would tell of his Chavo getting shot at and his grandfather, Gory moved in the nick of time but a woman sitting in the crowd was hit instead.

Charles Lindbergh’s son was kidnapped and murdered after he made his infamous flight and then of course there are the obsessed fans who have murdered the stars they were so obsessed with. Tejano singer Selena was murdered by her fan club president and John Lennon was murdered by a fan who perhaps received the very last autograph the singer ever gave out. In light of this Nancy Benoit’s reasoning that the extra added precaution was justifiable but to the extent of altering his own schedule speaks to what seems more in line with someone was suffering the onset of paranoid delusions.

After the death of Benoit’s best friend Eddie Guerrero November 13, 2005, Toffoloni describes her brother-in-law as living in a constant state of “perpetual sorrow.” As for various theories that he was suffering from Alzheimer’s or what Norwinski believed was solely the result of a traumatic brain injury she does not believe it.

She refutes the fact that he was anything more than depressed and suffering from a potential break from reality at the time of the murders of Nancy and Daniel Benoit. She reports that while their dead bodies were upstairs, as time of death in the Medical Examiner’s reports he was in what she believed to be in a state of clarity as he attempted to go about business as usual by making travel arraignments to fly out to the pay per view in which he was scheduled to appear. She believes she will be forever plagued with the why of the situation and the discrepancies in the deaths. She adamantly believes that no outside force was involved despite things that bothered her, such as a search history on the best way to break someone’s neck on the computer when both she and Chris Jericho have confirmed that Benoit barely knew how to use a computer. Another thing that bothered her was the way Benoit was to have committed suicide since she had been told that it would have required someone with “superhuman strength.”

To which Chris Jericho brings up the idea of demonic possession which he believed and is ironically the same reason Dave Batista gave in his autobiography as the reason he believed someone that the majority of people in wrestling would have called the most responsible and loving family man they knew in committing these crimes. Upon seeing the office, in which Nancy died and the medical examiner’s report Toffoloni puts a simple explanation of a case of involuntary manslaughter such as if it had been a case of domestic abuse and she had fallen or she had been hit to hard to rest when she states, “he brutalized my sister. There was blood all over the floor.”

Toffoloni never confirms nor denies Jericho’s theory of demonic possession but does mention that her former brother-in-law Kevin Sullivan who is often a target of internet speculation was cleared of any involvement in the case. A theory that the aforementioned British Criminologist discusses is the belief that he would have been allowed into the home without a struggle but deviates since he thinks fans who believed his borderline demonic gimmick of the Taskmaster to have been relative would have taken it upon themselves to avenge him. The idea is pure ridiculous speculation since Chris and Nancy Benoit had been fallen in love in 1996 over a decade before their deaths. Any fans of the time who had believed Sullivan was the Anti-Christ would have acted long before then, if they had been so inclined. Any fans of Sullivan’s who were simply his fans and not inclined to follow the whole demon lord persona would have been appeased many years ago when Sullivan admitted that he bore them no ill will since he had written the script that had inadvertently caused his divorce from Nancy.

Toffoloni believes that it was a combination of factors although she does relate that Nancy had a foreshadowing that something bad was going to happen; however, she believed that with all the friends who had died that she was going to lose her husband. When she thinks about all of the deaths in wrestling of people who were friends to the Benoit family she states, “it wasn’t a question of who’s next it was an am I next in his eyes.” Chris and Nancy Benoit, at least in her sister’s point of view believed that Chris would be the next to die.

No one will of course know what happened the weekend of June 24, 2007 other than the times of death for the family. Sandra Toffoloni sums up the murders-suicide in a way that would appeal to Chris Benoit’s fans. Everyone expects her to hate Benoit and condemn him for the things that transpired that weekend but she simply can’t. Toffoloni states that her sister instilled in her a sense of forgiveness and for her to have loved Benoit like a brother for so many years she cannot simply write him off. The one thing that she cannot forgive is the death of her nephew. In her speculation of his mental state concerning the death of Daniel she postulated that if he was thinking clearly, knowing that he had killed Nancy, and was going to jail for life that he considered Daniel. She would have raised him in the event something happened to his parents and calls the murder of Daniel selfish but reluctantly admits that had Daniel lived to learn what his father had done to his mother, “it would have destroyed him.”