The “Canadian Crippler” in murder suicide
As some of you may know, in my youth I was always a fan of the WWE/WWF (that’s the World Wrestling Federation, not World Wildlife Fund!). Despite my parents comments about how silly it all was (and rightly so), and how Big Daddy (aka Shirley Crabtree, from Halifax and father of Eorl Crabtree of the Huddersfield Giants, and shown on the right) on ITV on Saturday lunchtimes was much better to watch, many a Friday and Saturday night would be spent watching wrestling on Sky Sports. So it came as a huge shock to me when my friend Chris sent me a very short email telling me that Chris Benoit, WWE superstar had died. Benoit, known as the “Canadian Crippler” and also more bizarrely, the “Rabid Wolverine”, was a huge name in wrestling and was featuring in a number of big storylines. Due to his second nickname, my first thought was death by rabies, but this is no time for jokes at all. As more details of this story came out, the situation got worse.
It turns out his wife and son were also found dead in their house in Atlanta, Georgia. The WWE website which was previously showing a memorial/life history of him on their frontpage quickly changed things as events became clearer. Investigators believe that over the weekend Benoit strangled his wife before smothering and killing his 7-year old son. He then hung himself in a weightlifting machine pulley. Benoit was due to appear in a WWE special event over the weekend, but called to say he couldn’t make it due to a “family emergency”. Initial reports said he had claimed his wife and son were coughing up blood and he had to take care of them. A series of strange text messages to friends made them contact the WWE who in turn contacted police. The events seem to have occurred throughout the weekend, and not at one particular time. Although this is to be fully confirmed by the authorities.
It seems that the WWE have more information about this murder-suicide, but have been asked by the police to not reveal much more information at this time. Investigators found anabolic steroids at his house and are trying to determine if something called “roid-rage” occurred, an event where these steroids cause a person to become irrational and violent. It could be a case of this, plus him struggling to overcome the death last year of his good friend and also WWE wrestler, Eddie Guererro. When more information on this case comes out I will be sure to write more.
In the meantime, my thoughts go out to the people close to this tragedy and who have suffered personal loss.
or Discuss this Article
Hi Dave,
This is a strange case indeed, to say the least. Anaboles can do strange stuff to a person, so let’s hope it wasn’t a roid rage, although, honestly, what other explanation is there?
Killed his wife first and than a day later his 7 year old son!! How sick is that?
Another day later he kills himself.
Very strange.
Yeah, this story is just wierd, and has rocked the ATL community for the past few days. There’s still some debate (I believe) about what actually happend, and there is a rumor that they are investigating a possible triple murder, but everything is just so sketchy right now nothing is sure until the lab results come back and they say that’ll take 2-3 weeks. Who knows what they’ll actually find.
Really - I thought they’d thrown away the rumour of a triple-murder. I suppose the murder-suicide route would be the most obvious, as copies of the bible were allegedly left next to his wife and son. The timeline is still a little strange though - these events were all said to have happened over a weekend, but after one murder there’s surely going to be a little chaos rather than the calmness which seems to have taken place.
Time will reveal all I suppose…