The Benoit family tragedy examined from all angles

[Bix]

Might be worth adding the stuff about how Johnny Grunge repeatedly diffused domestic disputes between Chris and Nancy, and his death got rid of the buffer that kept Benoit from completely snapping.

[Loss]

Already there.

 

[Jingus]

I have updated this now with current information and corrected things that have been debunked in the media, like Daniel's Fragile X Syndrome.

I dunno if that's officially debunked yet, there's still a lot of people arguing both sides of it (and not in a stupid way like the Wikipedia thing).

[Loss]

The sheriff's department and the DA's office have investigated Daniel's medical records and said it wasn't true. His teacher also confirmed he was right on schedule with his classmates.

 

I'd say that's a pretty good debunking.

 

I think it's a peculiar rumor to be spread in the first place, and it makes me wonder if WWE planted it in the media to divert attention elsewhere.

 

I have nothing to support that, but it sure sounds likely.

[Guest teke184]

The sheriff's department and the DA's office have investigated Daniel's medical records and said it wasn't true. His teacher also confirmed he was right on schedule with his classmates.

 

I'd say that's a pretty good debunking.

 

I think it's a peculiar rumor to be spread in the first place, and it makes me wonder if WWE planted it in the media to divert attention elsewhere.

 

I have nothing to support that, but it sure sounds likely.

It depends on a number of things.

 

 

1. Didn't that woman in Canada originally break the story, claiming that she'd met Benoit through a support group for Fragile X children?

 

2. Didn't Dr. Levin also claim that Daniel had Fragile X?

 

3. Did Jerry McDevitt say they had proof Daniel had Fragile X, or just that they'd been told by someone (possibly Benoit) that he had Fragile X?

 

 

 

 

Maybe it was a case of Munchausen-By-Proxy? (parents faking a child's illness, or inflicting the illness on them, for their own reasons)

 

If so, then Benoit could have been using a phony diagnosis of Fragile X to get hormones for Daniel, then using them to inject himself.

[Jingus]

But he WAS injecting Daniel, the police found the needle marks on him. And hell, if you've seen the pictures and/or video, Daniel didn't look like a normal kid. He was seven years old and still in kindergarten, that's not average.

[Loss]

From WOL recap:

 

Meltzer says the Wikipedia and needle-marks stories blew-up even though they were both non-stories.

Did he throw out this story at some point as well, only for me to miss it? Maybe in the WON?

[Loss]

TomK at DVDVR and I must have had our heads in the same place at the same time.

 

He just posted something with a link that shows that the Canadian woman was not the original source of the Fragile X story. It was Jerry McDevitt, according to Newsweek.

 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19512872/site/newsweek/

 

One theory put forth by World Wrestling Entertainment officials: that Daniel himself was a source of turmoil for Benoit. According to a WWE lawyer, Jerry McDevitt, Daniel suffered from Fragile X syndrome. A genetic condition, Fragile X is the most common cause of inherited mental impairment and can produce a range of cognitive and intellectual disabilities. McDevitt says that based on WWE’s own inquiries, Benoit and his wife were arguing about Daniel’s care in the days before the tragedy. The boy had completed kindergarten at First Baptist Church in Peachtree City (where the pastor says Daniel “was loved by his teachers”), and the couple were now looking for an elementary school, according to McDevitt. “It was the issue of Daniel’s special needs that was the long-running problem with [benoit] and Nancy,” says the lawyer, who adds that the family had been in the Fayetteville house for only a year. “The tensions were exacerbated now that they were in a new home, in a new community. They didn’t know where to go for his special education needs. It was building up.” According to WWE, the couple consulted with their family physician about Daniel’s condition last Thursday and Friday, on the eve of the killings. Did the stress of that discussion play a role in Benoit coming unhinged?

SPIN.

[Guest teke184]

The timeline doesn't track...

 

That article comes from June 29. The original information from the Canadian woman came on June 26.

 

http://www.news1130.com/news/topstory/arti...626_212836_4500

 

 

 

It's certainly possible that it was known within the WWE offices before then, but I don't think that McDevitt made Daniel Benoit's condition public until the 27th.

 

 

 

 

To be even more clear about it, I don't think the WWE made up the rumor, but it's certainly possible that they ran with it as misdirection to mask Benoit's other problems.

[Guest KCook]

He was seven years old and still in kindergarten, that's not average.

That's not all that unusual, especially if he was a small kid. He was born in February, which means he turned 7 halfway through the last school year and was on track to be in first grade at 7 this fall. He would have been one of the older kids in his class, but a lot of people hold their kids out of kindergarten a year these days, whether because they're small or because they think that being older will give their kids academic advantages. If the teachers say he was a more or less normal kid there's absolutely no reason not to take them at their word.

[jdw]

What Teke said. Someone on tOA had asked if Jerry was the source. He *wasn't*. It was the woman in Canada. Jerry and the WWE grabbed onto it in total CYA fashion. For fucks sake... does anyone honestly think that anyone in WWE management (which Jerry has long been a shadow member of) knew before this what Fragile X was, let alone than Benoit's son may have it?

 

As far as the child, it's pretty clear from the WON that he had health and mental issues, and they were getting to be too much for Nancy to handle on her own. Perhaps in his second issue Dave will debunk himself and those stories. We'll see.

 

John

[Loss]

What Teke said. Someone on tOA had asked if Jerry was the source. He *wasn't*. It was the woman in Canada. Jerry and the WWE grabbed onto it in total CYA fashion. For fucks sake... does anyone honestly think that anyone in WWE management (which Jerry has long been a shadow member of) knew before this what Fragile X was, let alone than Benoit's son may have it?

 

As far as the child, it's pretty clear from the WON that he had health and mental issues, and they were getting to be too much for Nancy to handle on her own. Perhaps in his second issue Dave will debunk himself and those stories. We'll see.

 

John

The questions remain:

 

If it is true, why wouldn't medical records show that he had the condition, and why would Nancy's family so strongly deny it? Why would his teachers deny it?

 

If it isn't true, why in the world would anyone make something like that up?

[Loss]

Also, this came out last Tuesday. The timing is fishy.

 

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles...pes_for_autism/

 

Fragile X study raises hopes for autism

Researchers eye key to restoring brain function

By Carey Goldberg, Globe Staff | June 26, 2007

 

Blocking a key brain chemical can reverse many of the symptoms of Fragile X Syndrome -- an inherited form of mental retardation often accompanied by autism -- in mice engineered to have the disease, an online scientific journal reported yesterday.

 

The findings raise the prospect that drugs with similar effects might someday help restore brain function in human children with the syndrome, and possibly with some forms of autism as well, said Susumu Tonegawa, the senior author of the paper in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

 

About 100,000 Americans have Fragile X.

 

Mental retardation has long been thought to be permanent. But recent research increasingly suggests that the brain might be more fixable than previously believed. Earlier this year, scientists from Scotland reported that dramatic recoveries could be achieved in mice with Rett Syndrome, another genetic disease related to autism.

 

Tonegawa's paper says "that some of the abnormalities with mental retardation syndromes and autism aren't necessarily cemented in stone," said Eric Klann, a professor at Center for Neural Sciences at New York University who was familiar with the paper but not involved with the research. "I think it gives some degree of hope."

 

The research focused on blocking an enzyme called PAK. Tonegawa's research used genetic manipulation instead of drugs, but he said that he believes drug and biotech companies are already developing compounds that block the same enzyme. His lab may seek access to such compounds that target other diseases, or ask a chemist to synthesize them, said Tonegawa, a neuroscientist at Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology .

 

There are currently several drugs in development as possible treatments for people with Fragile X Syndrome, said Katie Clapp, co founder of FRAXA Research Foundation, a Newburyport based nonprofit that helped fund the research. Her 18-year-old son has the syndrome, the most common known genetic cause of autism. None of the compounds has reached the point where she would want him to try them, she said, nor are they available.

 

"But talk to me in a couple of months," she said. "There are more drug targets coming out of research that we're funding, and some of it does suggest drugs that are already available. So sometimes I feel like I'm living a dream -- a really good one."

 

In people with Fragile X, the formation of neurons is abnormal, with "spines" -- the little nubs where the neurons connect to each other -- that are overabundant, spindly, and long. Clapp said they are "sort of like a thin, dangly . . . little wire when what you really want is a nice, thick, three-pronged, grounded thing." The thin spines tend to form weak connections.

 

In Tonegawa's lab, Mansuo Hayashi, then a post-doctoral fellow and now at Merck Research Laboratories, had already found that when PAK activity was genetically blocked, it hindered the formation of spines, leaving them shorter and fatter with connections that were unusually active.

 

In all, he said, it seemed that blocking PAK produced spines exactly the opposite from those produced in Fragile X Syndrome.

 

Hayashi proposed cross-breeding a mutant mouse whose PAK could be inactivated with a mouse engineered to have Fragile X Syndrome, in the hope that the two abnormalities would cancel each other .

 

At first, the idea seemed overly simplistic, Tonegawa said, "but to our great surprise, that's the way it turned out."

 

The cross-bred animals were also genetically manipulated so that the PAK-blocking would begin several weeks into the mouse's life, well into childhood in human terms. Nonetheless, the effects were striking, the researchers reported.

 

Normally, the Fragile X mice are hyperactive, as are many of the human children with the syndrome : They engage in repetitive motions, as is common in autism, and have learning deficits. Many of those symptoms were reduced or reversed when PAK's activity was blocked, Tonegawa said. Within the animals' brains, as well, the neurons and their connections came to look and act much more normal .

 

"It's reversing the architecture of brain connections," Clapp said. "That's exciting."

[Guest teke184]

To debunk the original Benoit connection with Fragile X, you'd need to debunk the woman who claimed that she and her husband had been put in contact with Benoit several years ago about the disorder.

 

 

If someone finds a way to debunk that woman, then it comes down to "Was the WWE told this by Benoit even though it was false?" and "Did they lie about it as a form of misdirection?"

[Bix]

At this point, the Vancouver woman's story is pretty fishy regardless of WWE involvement. If Daniel had Fragile X, then the Benoits told NOBODY, and there would be nobody to put them in touch with a random family in Vancouver.

[Guest teke184]

At this point, the Vancouver woman's story is pretty fishy regardless of WWE involvement. If Daniel had Fragile X, then the Benoits told NOBODY, and there would be nobody to put them in touch with a random family in Vancouver.

Anyone know what the doctor-patient confidentiality rules are in the Canadian health-care system?

 

The woman mentions that they talked to Chris specifically because his family was one of the few Canadian ones having a child with that syndrome.

 

Fragile X syndrome is an inherited mental impairment. Pam's 12-year-old son has the condition and she said in an effort to shed light on the syndrome, her husband called Chris Benoit about five years ago.

 

She said, "We talked to him because I was trying to set up a support group in BC and in Canada, we only have a couple of them. My husband was struggling when we got diagnosed with our son, and Chris was struggling with his. They talked for a few minutes and then he said he didn't want to be a public face for Fragile X, he just wanted to keep it really, really quiet."

 

Even then, how the Canadian national health knew is a bit sketchy... Maybe Chris used his Canadian citizenship to try and get his son's medical bills covered by the Canadian national health care system?

[jdw]

If it is true, why wouldn't medical records show that he had the condition, and why would Nancy's family so strongly deny it? Why would his teachers deny it?

 

If it isn't true, why in the world would anyone make something like that up?

Where are the articles that clearly state that all of the doctors Daniel saw said he wasn't suffering from Fragile X or any other physical and mental health issues.

 

As far as grandparents go, I hate to break people illusions. They can be nuts and in denial. One of my grandmothers thought that my mother caused my brother's kidney diesease, and I can't even count the number of phone messages I deleted from the answering machine after he died where she rambled about my mother killing him.

 

I'm not saying that's the case here. But one shouldn't take grandparents as the gospel when it comes to the health of their grandkids. They're not always rational.

 

 

John

[Loss]

The information is from the sheriff's office and the DA.

 

At this point, I take their word over something a random lady no one has ever heard of said in a Canadian newspaper interview. She's the only person who has said anything like this, except for WWE picking up the story and running with it as damage control.

[Bix]

http://www.wrestlingobserver.com/wo/news/h...t.asp?aID=20073

 

WWE backs off on Fragile X claims; More wrestlers linkedto Astin

 

by Dave Meltzer

 

[email protected]

 

The Fox affiliate in Atlanta today reported that federal investigators have in their possession medical records pf pro wrestlers under the care of Dr. Phil Astin III. They seized records in particular of pro wrestlers who had autographed photos on the walls of his office.

 

It was well known in the Atlanta sports community that Astin was the doctor to several pro and college athletes, hardly limited to wrestling, and had been well known in the WCW days.

 

Astin was released today on bond and his whereabouts will be electronically monitored.

 

WWE spokesperson Gary Davis backed off the company's claim that Daniel Benoit had Fragile X syndrome today.

 

"A lot of people got caught up in the idea Daniel had Fragile X syndrome," said Davis in an AP article. "We were just as caught up as everyone else."

 

Davis said the company has no information to contradict the claims of Nancy Benoit's parents that Daniel had no such disease.

 

"I think we have to go with what the district attorney has said as being the best, up-to-date information available right now," Davis said.

 

Davis said McDevitt was confident from speaking to WWE employees who knew Daniel Benoit.

[Guest teke184]

This now brings the new question:

 

Why did the WWE announce Daniel Benoit's supposed illness to the world if they didn't have any proof?

 

 

Were they just running with that Canadian article to do spin control? Or had they been told in the past of his illness by someone but not had any proof to support the claims?

[Bix]

Were they just running with that Canadian article to do spin control?

So it seems.

[sek69]

One thing mentioned in the WON is that Vince (with Stephanie's support) is in total us-against-the-biased-media mode where EVERYTHING is going to be spun like crazy to deflect as much heat off the WWE as possible.

[World's Worst Man]

Man. This is going to get a lot worse before it gets better, especially if that one particular wrestler linked with Astin is who we think it is.

[Guest teke184]

Man. This is going to get a lot worse before it gets better, especially if that one particular wrestler linked with Astin is who we think it is.

Pretty much.

 

OG could only be so many people in the business and THIS particular guy has been on a LOT of stuff over the years to make up for his lack of height and build.

[tomk]

So at Schneider’s recommendation I read this thread and this is now up at segunda caida. Hadn’t been able to access this site since I registered in February but using different computer and unfortunately now is the time I can write here and able to contribute some thoughts to this thread.

 

Distraught wrestling fans who missed the days of old, and new fans who were underwhelmed by the WWF's version of wrestling which was largely catered to small children, began searching out alternatives. They found wrestling in Japan, which more closely resembled the wrestling they grew up watching. The style was more physical and realistic, and was largely without hillbilly weddings, bird men, kings, Elvis impersonators and live animals.

 

It was there that most wrestling fans discovered Chris Benoit

It was there that most wrestling fans discovered Chris Benoit.”

 

Well that’s where I found Chris Benoit, that’s where most in this thread probably found Chris Benoit. Actually, I think I found Benoit when WCW aired a Lyger v Wild Pegasus match on the Pro or some syndie (but point is found through Japanese work).

 

But setting up this with his Wrestlemania win is a separate story.

 

The mass of MSG that was chanting for Benoit and booing everything that HHH and HBK did weren’t tape watchers. That was MSG, not the Murphy Rec Center. My guess is that the MSG fans discovered Benoit in the WWF (some may have discovered in WCW and there may be pockets of folks who had discovered him in ECW but doubt even ten percent of MSG was made up of fans of NJ juniors).

 

I also often make the mistake of mistaking me for a fair representative of basic wrestling tape trader nerdom. But my assumption is that the tape trading community didn’t see vindication in Benoit winning the WWF belt. JDW et al were all about shitting on Raven, DDP, Benoit as a watering down of Benoit’s skills. And HBK,HHH, Benoit was nothing if not a really watered down DDP,Raven, Benoit match. I don’t think I ever read the toa consensus on Mania. Not sure what Lorefice, or Kunze said but I can’t imagine anything positive.

 

I may be completely off base in my assumptions about the tape trading community but I’m certain that my assumptions about MSG are correct.

 

Understanding Pro Wrestling and Wrestling Fans

This whole section is really well done and anchors the whole piece.

 

I think somewhere in the part where you explain the development of Hell in the Cell there should be some mention of the development of the really meta “showstopper” gimmick. Not tough guy overcoming the odds but rather guy sacrificing himself to put on spectacle for the fans. Not the traditional midcard workrate match but the “showstopper” that “deserves” to be in the main event. Because somewhere in this section is the reason that the MSG fans who had never seen a Wild Pegassus match were booing the match but cheering Benoit.

 

Somewhere here is explanation of how Benoit went from guy who was presented in U.S. as a modernized Arn Anderson gimmick (blue collar non-flashy "hard working" guy for whom wrestling is his job) to the equation where being “hard working”= ratcheting up ”self destructiveness” for audience pleasure.

 

 

 

Kevin Cook:

 

It's an odd comparison, but it seems similar to the position of guys like Hogan or Nash. They always preached that the road guys like Benoit followed was a dead end, that if you understood the nature of the work you'd understand why what they did wasn't just unnecessary, but was counterproductive. They thought Guerrero and Benoit and those guys were marks working themselves to death for nothing but the praise of a handful of hardcore fans whose opinions didn't mean shit. I think ten years later it's pretty hard to argue with them, and I think hardcore fandom is complicit in all these deaths, though hardcore fans as individuals aren't, if that distinction makes sense.

I think it’s a mistake to praise Hogan and Nash because they have yet to have their hearts explode or kill their wives and children.

 

If this happened three years ago would you be praising Luger, Nash and Hogan? Luger is currently living in a minister’s basement.

 

Nash is a guy who was successful because of a combination of height and being likeable and gregarious backstage. Of course it’s wrestling where being likeable and gregarious means feeding Sunny feces as punishment for being too uppity. Reading the recent observer I wondered about the timeline as to when it was exactly that Benoit started to become paranoid about the possibility of loosing his job vis-à-vis when he started appearing regularly in the Observer as being one of the judges for backstage courts. For guy who was always into performance and not backstage politics, there was a point where he suddenly was appearing every week to be involved in protecting the backstage codes. Was he always doing that, and just their came to be a time when Meltzer decided that he needed to report it? Or did Benoit actually learn “the lessons of Nash” and realize that the way to make yourself valuable is to be central figure in locker room socialization?

 

more cook:

 

Benoit is accountable, of course, but I think in a very fundamental way wrestling itself -- the nature of it, the secrecy and working -- is what caused this and the rest of the explanations are red herrings. By all accounts it's all he cared about. It cost him his health, his family, his friends, and it also gave him those things. I think he reached a point where he lost his passion, looked at what wrestling had cost him, and realized it had all been for nothing. I don't think that's the true cause of the murders, but I do think that's the line of thinking that ultimately led to this.

Somehow the Regal testimonial where he described Benoit as the person “Most dedicated and totally absorbed” to/in this fantasy world was the most creepy testimonial.

 

I absolutely don’t want to come across as Keller but the one thing that felt missing from Loss’ “all angles” was some mention of the Vince goes boom angle from the week before.

 

Its important detail for a couple reasons. If you go to the WWE timeline they write:

 

Fayette County Sheriff's office made contact with WWE at approximately 4 p.m. advising that they had entered the house of Chris Benoit and found three deceased bodies – an adult male, adult female and a male child. WWE was told that Benoit’s home was now considered a major crime scene.

 

The decision to cancel the live event scheduled in Corpus Christi that night was made between 4 and 5 p.m. In keeping with company policy, and with limited knowledge regarding facts of the case, WWE chose to air a memorial dedicated to the career of Chris Benoit. As facts emerged surrounding the case, all tributes to Chris Benoit were removed both on-air and on WWE.com

 

The Benoit tribute wasn’t in keeping with company policy. It was very different. They canceled a live show, and aired old footage. Company policy is "the show must go on". The reason they broke from that is because a week earlier they had used a wrestler memorial format for dark humor as part of an angle. They essentially killed the gimmick and like any gimmick you can’t do it two weeks in a row.

 

As Cook wrote at time “This show exhibited some real quick thinking in working up a new gimmick to portray solemn emotions. “

 

Cook and I and a bunch of folks have written before about the crassness of the tribute shows. The burying of guys show must go on stuff, and how fake it all is. In the June 25th Observer Meltzer does a nice job of pointing out the flaws in the Vince is killed angle. That while in terms of management it’s clear that those tributes weren’t real, that the emotions of some of the wrestlers and audience were real. And treating those real emotions as a joke is a way of going “Ha Ha we tricked you”.

 

Benoit was a guy who according to Meltzer had a difficult time “coming to grips with justifying working in the WWE during the exploitation of the death of Guerrero”. An emotionally guarded person who took deaths very hard and let his guard down for the Eddie tribute (

).

 

The Vince goes boom tributes were a real outward manifestation to everyone who watched and participated that this was “all for nothing”.

 

I think he reached a point where he lost his passion, looked at what wrestling had cost him, and realized it had all been for nothing. I don't think that's the true cause of the murders, but I do think that's the line of thinking that ultimately led to this

Again I don’t want to come across as Keller but I think the Vince angle is important to remember for context. Both in terms of explaining the nature of the WWE tribute show on the 25th and also for adding context to the way in which wrestling constantly toys with the margins of what are real and not real emotions. Toys with working the fans and toys with working the wrestlers themselves.

 

There are other "angles" missing form the exploring from "all angles" post. As a lark on dvdvr I wrote a thing on WWE knowingly allowing physical hazing of women who fail to show proper deference to the male performers. In explaining the situation to one of his ex's, I know Phil has gone into underlying mysogyny and told the story of WWE celebrating the end of Austin's probation for spousal abuse by having him come center ring drink alot of beer and then beat up a girl for being unwilling to properly party with him. But really I don't think either of those is neccesary addition. Somehow the story of "Vince goes boom" and nature of wrestling tribute shows feels like ana actual missing piece.

 

Loss again

 

As much as WWE would probably like you to think it was their idea all along, the transition from working to performing, which I alluded to at the beginning of what I wrote, was in many ways necessitated by the change in emphasis on what wrestlers felt was important in their style.

Cornette is as full of shit as anyone else in the biz but when he talks about the difference between the Condry/Eaton MX and the Lane/Eaton MX he always points to the idea that they were supposed to be doing different things. Condrey/Eaton were main event tag team that built matches around building heat, while Eaton/Lane were supposed to be in the midcard to semi-main as the workrate match that gave the audience lots of excitement. Both valuable roles, both respected. If you move the MX to main, they would work a different style than the one they work in a hot opener or exciting midcard match.

 

I don’t think there has been a change in emphasis so much as change in card positioning. What’s necessitated where. Which is why I brought up the “Showstopper” earlier.

 

Jingus says

 

His position on the card made no difference in his style, he always worked at an identical 101% pace whether he was jobbing in the first match or winning the world belt.

I’m not so sure about this as at least in WCW, Italian Stallion v. Benoit on the Pro was always a workrate sprint, while Sid v Benoit was a pretty methodical main event. But again that was WCW.

 

As to the question of weight classes and drugs, I think Benoit looked his most ridiculously roided when he was in New Japan. There were poiints there where he looked like Davey Boy Smith.