Today In Wrestling History 6/25: Chris Benoit & Family Found Dead, WCW VP Gives Dirtsheet Interview
* 25 years ago in 1990, WCW Executive Vice President Jim Herd gave an interview to Steve Beverly of the Matwatch newsletter for the July 2nd and July 9th issues. Of interest a quarter century later:
Heel color commentators are gone because "[booker] Ole [Anderson] finally convinced me they couldn't keep their heat."
It was implied that more fans suggested punishing the Four Horsemen that complained about older talent being pushed. The latter was the big complaint of the newsletter-reading fans at the time.
He was blunt in saying that a Sting title win at the Great American Bash pay-per-view in Baltimore would not immediately turn business around, citing that the WWF had some disappointing houses recently. That said, Herd was confident that Sting was the future of the company and the right guy to go with going forward.
In light of rumors that Herd is trying to "get rid of contracts," he explains that he's just trying to get rid of contracts for mid-card talent and switch them to nightly deals. Herd had attempted a similar move around that time, trying to break up the Midnight Express with one staying on contract and the other moving to a nightly agreement.
When asked about fan complaints that they haven't brought in top young prospects like Owen Hart or Scotty the Body (Raven), Herd insisted that he watched tapes of young wrestlers all the time. "We've had a young guy who's about 6'10" from right here in Atlanta who's in training now. But I assure you, you'll continue to see new people come into the NWA." That's probably Kevin Nash, who was being broken in after being spotted as a bouncer working at one of Atlanta's finest gentlemen's clubs.
* 8 years ago in 2007, police found the bodies of Chris, Nancy, and Daniel Benoit in their Fayetteville, Georgia home. WWE, concerned having not heard from Chris for two days with him having missed a pay-per-view (as well as unusual text messages he sent Chavo Guerrero and Scott Armstrong) enlisted their security personnel to contact local police for a welfare check. The police had difficulty controlling the family's guard dogs, Carny and Highspot, so they enlisted a neighbor who the dogs liked to corral them...and go in the house. She found the bodies and ran screaming from the house.
From the layout of the crime scene as well as the condition of the bodies, the matter of death was obvious: Chris had killed Nancy via strangulation, Daniel via some kind of smothering (toxicology revealed he was drugged first), and then he hanged himself from exercise equipment in his home gym. The belief was that, encouraged by her closest friends, Nancy had threatened to leave her increasingly abusive husband, but there's no way of knowing if anything specific set him off.
Between the whole family being found dead and WWE having to do away with their previous tribute show format (due to the "death of Mr. McMahon" storyline more or less parodying it), the live Raw in Corpus Christi, Texas was cancelled. Instead, they ran a tribute show featuring classic matches, video testimonials, and comments from the announcers. Officially, it was a tribute to the whole family, though Nancy and Daniel were rarely mentioned until Jerry Lawler made a point to do so late in the show. Just who knew what and when was unclear, as it seems impossible to believe WWE would run such lavish tribute to someone they knew was a double murderer. WWE has always maintained that nobody in the company knew.
That said, 911 response records show that Chris's mom (who understandably needed assistance) had found out exactly what happened before Raw went on the air. Chris's father told journalist Irv Muchnick that Scott Zerr, a writer friend of Chris who told them the news, was sent over by Carl DeMarco, then an executive with WWE. The day after the bodies were found, a local Atlanta reporter appeared on MSNBC and said that she had been told the same thing by the police over an hour before Raw went on the air.
How quickly someone realized on their own that there might be something more horrible than was immediately self-evident depends on the person. Some never could have conceived it. Others calmed down enough to realize that the whole family being dead meant some kind of wrongful death was most likely. Famously, during the tribute show, William Regal made a point during his testimonial of only praising Chris as a wrestler and not as a person. Many viewers interpreted this as him knowing something "inside." He didn't; JBL had asked him right before the segment if he thought it was possible, which shook him him. The news of the police's findings broke during the last hour of the show, and at that point it was impossible to put the genie back in the bottle.
It didn't come out until years later, but Chris did not have much time left to live. At the time, most of the relevant autopsy details were given in a press conference. Dave Meltzer also spoke directly to the medical examiner, who said Chris had none of the heart and internal organ damage typical of long-term steroid and human growth hormone abuse. Eventually, the actual autopsy report made it online, and it turned out he lied. Nancy's sister later did an interview where she outright said that the coroner told her "that Chris was on his way to death within 10 months" due to his heart being enlarged to about three times its normal size.