Original subtitles

Previously on Dark Side of the Ring.

If you're a wrestling fan, how could you not be a fan of Chris Benoit's work?

This is my favorite page because this is the love that Chris and Nancy

always had.

Chris was always very much a great father, very much about his family. He

hero, you know? I looked up to him.

I have never, ever seen a closer friendship as I did between Chris and

Eddie Guerrero has passed away.

My next thought was, oh my God, Chris.

I love you, Eddie.

He didn't handle it well.

Let me just say it like that.

Nancy started getting really worried. She's like, I'm really worried for

I just had this really bad feeling.

We have more for you now on a developing story in Fayette County, the deaths of

a pro wrestler and his family.

In the immediate wake of Chris Benoit's death, the world is desperately

searching for answers.

What comes to light goes beyond anything anyone could imagine.

People just couldn't believe it, couldn't fathom that something like that

happen. It can't be real. Like, where's my nephew?

That can't have happened because the person that I knew...

would not do this horrific thing. But I think this is going to be gigantic.

This will affect WWE.

Well, the question is, was he on steroids at this time? Did the blows to

head Benoit received in the wrestling ring fundamentally change his brain?

It really, really was the darkest time of my life.

Fayette County, Georgia, it's a laid -back community.

It's more of a family atmosphere.

Not a whole lot of crime.

It's pretty peaceful.

My name is Larry Alden. I was with the Fayette County Sheriff's Office.

I was lieutenant in charge of the shift that was working the day of the Benoit

incident.

I had been a detective for about 15 or 20 years.

I'd probably see Chris Benoit once or twice a week at the gym, which was right

in the middle of Fayetteville.

He didn't talk a lot, and he was pretty focused on getting his workout in.

I never heard anything about him. I didn't even know where he lived at until

call came out on the radio that day.

My name is Dennis Figg, and I run the security for World Wrestling, and one of

our wrestlers that lives down there is missing.

And what's his name?

Chris Benoit.

Okay, and he's a wrestler?

Yes, he's a very religious gentleman, and yesterday he was supposed to show up

at a pay -per -view and never got on the plane, never showed up.

It's not a character for him.

All right.

We'll go ahead and send somebody out there to check on him. If you want to

us back in like 45 minutes or so.

If he's there, we'll tell him to give you a call.

I was in my patrol car just riding around the county.

It was pretty close to the area when the call went out.

I wasn't thinking of anything other than a welfare check where maybe he was

sick, maybe drunk, didn't really know what.

I pulled up on scene about time the neighbor was walking over, and I walked

to them, and I asked if she had seen Mr. Benoit or anybody.

And she said, it's been three or four days since I've seen anybody over there.

There was two large canines in the yard.

If I remember correctly, they were German Shepherds.

We asked her if there was any place she could put the dogs at so we could go up

there and do the welfare check.

And she said, oh, yeah, me and the dogs get along great. I feed them whenever

they're out of town.

and she jumped the fence, dogs right there with her. She walked them in there

and never had to take a hold to them.

It was taking a little longer than I thought it should take, but then she

running out the door screaming that Daniel's dead, Daniel's dead.

I went from just being a regular welfare check, okay, we've got something more

serious here.

crossed the fence at that time, myself and Deputy Mundy, and we made entry

through the side door, which she had left open.

We drew our weapons, not knowing what was going to come upon.

It was daylight, and they had plenty of windows in the house, so you had a lot

of light coming in.

There was an odor in the house.

And I looked over at Deputy Mundy and said, something is dead in here.

There was a set of stairs going up to a bedroom. So we went up those steps.

And sure enough, that's where the juvenile child was at, laying in bed.

I noticed the child was laying on the bed, face down.

Deputy Mundy said, do we need to start CPR?

And I said, no.

He'd passed away.

We started clearing all the different rooms and doors.

We found another room, and that's where we found Ms. Benoit at.

She was laying on the floor, and she was wrapped up in a blanket or maybe a rug

or something like that.

Went downstairs to the basement area, which was a couple of large open rooms.

And the last door we opened was the gym door.

And that's where Mr. Benoit was at.

Because of the mirrors and at the angle Deputy Mundy was at to my right, she saw

the reflection at the far end of the room, which might have been 5, 7, 10

away from where he actually was.

And she started to say, show me your hands, Fayette County Sheriff's

She could not see. He had cable from one of his weight machines around his neck

and had some weights on it.

That's when I told her, I said, he's sitting right here. He's passed away.

The radio had called us, asked if everything was okay, and I told them on

radio that it looked like it might be a homicide and suicide.

It was within two or three minutes of us walking back outside that somebody had

already strung crime scene tape across the front of the property.

I was at the gym, and I remember I was driving home. My son was with me, and I

got a call from one of the writers from WWE who called me and said, are you

sitting down? I'm like, what's going on here, dude? And that's when he said,

Chris is dead. And I said, what? Chris who?

He said, Chris Benoit.

And I pulled over on the side of the road, and I just started bawling.

And I remember my son, he said, Daddy, you cry funny.

I was just crying. I was bawling.

At this time, no one knew what happened to WWE.

It's just thinking that Chris Benoit has passed away, along with Nancy and

Daniel. You're not trying to put together that, okay, did someone break

carbon monoxide happen?

What's going on? You just know that these two of your friends are gone, and

one has answers.

Vince McMahon, the chairman of the board, couldn't go on the air and not do

anything. So we went on the air and did what we thought was right.

Tonight, this arena here in Corpus Christi, Texas, was to have been filled

capacity with enthusiastic WWE fans.

We tried to honor the guy. We tried to honor his family. We tried to honor his

fans. But we didn't have a full story.

Shame on us for that, I guess.

So tonight will be a three -hour tribute to one of the greatest.

WWE superstars of all time.

We just know that Chris Benoit is no longer with us, and neither is his

Of course I'm going to pay tribute to my friend.

And I would trust you with me, with my life, with my kids' lives.

Because I know you, Chris. I know your heart.

Yeah, they called me and asked me if I wanted to be on it, and I was like,

absolutely not. I remember just sitting there, just watching, like, dead.

The bottle of vodka he was drinking, like, you know, because Eddie's was bad.

This was worse.

Chris Benoit was one of the greatest wrestlers I ever saw, but he was one of

best friends I ever had in this business.

We did not know all the information.

That's our fault.

We were trying to serve the audience.

It was a major story.

It was hitting all the news sources, and we had a TV show.

We wanted to update people on what the hell was going on, but we didn't have

the information.

But we didn't know we didn't have all the information.

We were told from the authorities, here's what happened. Oh, guess what? We

wrong. This is not what happened.

Chris was the type of guy you'd want to go to war with.

It was hard because at that time, some guys were, you know, in their speeches,

you know, praising Chris.

Because Chris Benoit was my hero.

I love you, Chris.

It's interesting to me because when I watched the Raw tribute and everybody

talking about Benoit and how great a performer he was and...

How amazing he was. I thought Regal's words on that night were very revealing.

Now all I'm willing to say is that Chris Benoit was

undoubtedly the hardest working man in professional wrestling.

And when you talk to him afterwards, you find out he lived in the same city as

Chris and knew a lot about whatever fights Nancy and him had or whatever

was going through at the time.

And I'm not sure if a lot of people would have noticed it, but knowing what

knew about him, I started thinking, wow, this is not good.

My sister had told me to spoil myself and go to the mall and get some makeup

have some wine with lunch and go watch a movie.

I came out of the theater and I turned my phone on and I had like 22 missed

calls from my parents.

And my parents made sure they wouldn't tell me anything. They wanted me to be

parked in my driveway and inside my house before they told me.

And that's how I found out.

And then when it finally sunk in, I just absolutely lost control of myself.

It was very difficult.

Very difficult.

I had to go to the hospital and be sedated.

I was in Edmonton, and then this number kept calling.

My mom's cell phone, unknown number, unknown number, unknown number.

And then she finally answered it, and it was the police, RCMP.

So we left, rolled down to the station.

She found out first.

I see her crying there.

She couldn't spit it out, so...

The cop told me that they all passed away over the weekend.

I punched them in the chest.

Then me and the cop went for a walk. We talked.

You know, your dad loved you.

They all loved you.

I thought that was a joke.

I really did.

It wasn't until after the show and after the fact that all the details started

coming in.

We have more for you now on a developing story in Fayette County, the deaths of

a pro wrestler and his family. Fayetteville authorities say the bodies

Benoit and his family were found this afternoon in their home. Right now it's

being investigated as a murder -suicide.

However, until we get the crime lab reports, it's undetermined exactly what

happened.

you know, all of these details start coming out about it's not just him

dead, it's Nancy and Daniel's dead as well.

And then that's when it just started getting out of control.

The father killed his wife and son and then committed suicide.

That's what's happened here.

You didn't want to believe it. Can't believe it. Can't be true.

But it was.

The evidence indicates that It was a particularly brutal and vicious murder.

It was something that showed some sign of real rage.

I'm Matthew Randazzo V, and I'm the author of Ring of Hell, the story of

Benoit and the fall of the pro wrestling industry.

The weekend of the murders on Friday, Chris Benoit had a barbecue out by the

pool with Daniel. And then that Friday evening, it appears that there was some

sort of altercation between Chris and Nancy.

that Chris restrained Nancy with duct tape and then utilized a telephone cord

strangle her and then placed a Bible next to her body.

There were a number of beer cans and wine bottles around that indicate Chris

have been drinking.

Next morning on Saturday, Chris, we assume, gave his son Daniel Xanax and

murdered him in his room, being suffocated by his father.

A Bible was then placed next to Daniel as well.

After that, Chris made a phone call and let friends know that Daniel and Nancy

were both suffering from a bad stomach virus, and that he had to take them to

the hospital.

That night, Chris went to bed with the bodies of his wife and child in the

house.

On Sunday, Benoit makes a couple searches on the Internet that are

retrospect.

One for a story in the Bible about the prophet Elijah and the resurrection of a

dead boy in the Old Testament.

And then a search about the quickest and most painless way of breaking one's own

neck.

Chris then went down to his home gym with a half -drunken bottle of wine.

He went to his lat pull -down machine, he took the bar off, he wrapped a towel

around his neck, and he took the metal cord from the lat pull -down machine and

put it around his neck.

He adjusted the weight to 240 pounds, and then he released it.

So it's a very bizarre scenario. It's a very bizarre weekend.

And it does leave a lot of answers.

He was just a guy.

You know, like my friend.

Nobody expects a friend to kill their family. Like, what?

When I found out what had really happened, the shock is just, you can't

believe it. He had put his knee in her back and essentially broke her back.

I couldn't fathom how cruel and how much pain she must have gone through and how

horrific that must have been for her. It was just unfathomable.

If Chris did give Daniel that, you know, medication or prescription pills and

suffocate him, you know, like, shame on him. Daniel was innocent in all this.

We were hearing other things come out about the circumstances of him putting

Bible by their side and having a knife.

that he had planted underneath Daniel's bed or something like that.

Still couldn't wrap my head around it.

Just sounded so... like some bad horror movie.

And now I'm a part of humanizing a murderer?

Strange.

I mean, to think that Nancy was dead for two days before Chris took his life?

How is that even logical for this man who loved her so much?

Later, it turned out that there was a Bible in the house, similar to the ones

left by Nancy and Daniel's body, that Chris had left something akin to a

note, something along the lines of, I'm preparing to leave this earth.

So Chris did leave a suicide note.

He did know what he was doing. He was at least enough in his right mind to

understand exactly what was happening and was still considering whether he

go make a flight to go wrestle that night on international television.

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. We came up on air with Vince talking and

letting everybody know what happened. Last night on Monday Night Raw, the WWE

presented a special tribute show recognizing the career of Chris Benoit.

However, now some 26 hours later, the facts of this horrific tragedy

are now apparent therefore other than my comments there will be no mention of mr

benoit's name tonight it was understood that we were not to speak of chris speak

of benoit speak of anyone of that incident and by that next week chris's

was erased from everything that was involved with wwe i mean when we did

interviews we were not to mention chris benoit so that's something that was

really hard for us to do but Because we all wanted our jobs, it was understood.

I know WWE has kind of like erased a history of being in the business, and I

understand and totally agree with what they did. We're not going to praise a

who murdered his wife or son.

I don't give many accolades for that.

I went to the funeral of Nancy and Daniel.

I can't even believe how sad it was.

I was the WWE representative there, just me, with the shits.

To go to a funeral and keep crying and a kid being buried and a woman being

married for no reason.

No reason to die.

The WWE sent JR and I left my cool with him and told him two days that he wasn't

welcome at the wake afterward.

It was all work.

Just fake, garbage, nonsense.

I can see work coming a mile away and that's what I saw and I knew that that

the truth.

I felt like I was the most unwanted person in the building because I was a

guy. And I probably loved him as much as anybody there.

Everybody was just a mess.

It's shitty, and it's sad, and it's unfair because there's two people that

still be with us today.

And if Chris wanted to take his life, then so be it. But to take all of them?

I didn't go to Chris' funeral. I was angry.

At that point, I was pretty angry at Chris, you know, for what he did.

This funeral was very private. We didn't tell anyone about it.

That's when it all hit me right there, all at once.

I was crying my eyes out.

Who in the wrestling business provided care for you and your family in the

aftermath of this?

Is that a serious question?

Not a single person.

No one. And did anyone from the WWE ever reach out to you and your family?

Chris Jericho and Chavo Guerrero.

That's it.

Nobody else, you know?

Screw them.

They weren't there for me, you know?

They backed off like I didn't even exist.

It was so hard after the funeral because the media was just nonstop, 24

-7. Tonight, we are talking about the strange and very sad case of Chris

I didn't even watch news anymore. I didn't watch TV for months.

I couldn't even watch wrestling anymore.

We're also told by the police here that there were instruments of death bound,

not instruments of murder.

There's going to be an autopsy report, but there's an awful lot of confusion

about how this happened.

It really, really was the darkest time of my life.

Benoit had an intense on -stage persona. He was nicknamed the rabid wolverine,

the Canadian crippler. The couple actually met when her former husband

script that had put the two of them in a relationship.

It made everything extremely difficult. It made everything under a magnifying

glass because CNN and Fox and all the news channels were at the gate. You

a double murder -suicide with a seven -year -old kid is news, but I think that

there's a point where you really just need to let the family grieve.

All I really wanted to do was to be with my niece and nephew.

The mainstream media's reaction was typical because, A, they love a tragedy,

it gives them another reason to take a shot at wrestling. It was a field day

them. Professional wrestlers are 20 times more likely to die before age 45

professional football players.

I think a lot of mainstream media looks down on wrestling as it is, and suddenly

it's... Public enemy number one.

Chris Benoit's diary is revealing new information about his state of mind. The

wrestler wrote a series of letters to his best friend. At one point, Benoit

wrote, I'll be with you soon.

Mike Benoit believes it's the diary of his son going mad.

We just didn't understand this was going on at that time in Chris's life.

I got a call from Chris's dad, Mike Benoit, because he knew my relationship

Chris. The first thing he asked me was why.

Which from a father's standpoint, I can understand how upset he was.

Unfortunately, I felt bad I didn't have any answers for him.

People need to understand that that was not him.

Not the person we knew.

The person I loved with all my heart. My hero.

The term that's been being thrown around everywhere is roid rage.

Some say steroid abuse is rampant at the organization, and everyone just turns a

blind eye to this. The media's initial response to the Benoit tragedy was that

this was a roid rage incident.

Where do steroids stand in the bizarre Benoit deaths?

Pro wrestling, when Chris Benoit entered it in the 1980s, was extremely

discriminatory against people who were not six foot plus tall, who were not 250

pounds or more, and very, very muscular.

My understanding is that Chris Benoit was using steroids from when he was in

high school.

In the months before the murders, Chris received a number of text messages from

Nancy in which she made it very clear she was sick and tired of his steroid

abuse. Nancy definitely directly accused him of abusing steroids to the point

that it led him to be an angry and violent and unhappy husband.

And she said that the WWE drug enforcement policy and testing regime

obviously nonsense. Something called the wellness program that alleged that it

was. testing every WWE wrestler to make sure they weren't using recreational

drugs, performance -enhancing drugs or steroids.

I think at that time, you know, instituting a wellness program like

think everybody was happy that finally some of these guys that needed the help

were going to get help. I thought it was a great idea, anything to help talent,

save guys from themselves.

After Eddie died, the WWE's drug testing was super strict.

It went through the roof. Like, you couldn't even take...

freaking aspirin, like a high -powered aspirin, unless you had like a

prescription. And I'm not kidding.

The drug testing is so strict.

Dude,

you can't. You can't go snort cocaine or smoke weed or anything.

In practice, it was seen that this initial version of the wellness program

large loopholes in it and large blind spots that allowed wrestlers to continue

to use drugs at a really large scale without...

tripping the tests.

Speculation is running wild. Did steroids play a role, or is there

explanation? We have an exclusive interview with WWE Chairman Vince

WWE did everything it could to combat any coverage in the news media that

indicated that drug abuse or steroid abuse was the cause of the homicides.

And obviously this is not an act of rage. It's an act of deliberation when

do something like this over three days. It's not an act of rage, be it steroid

rage or roid rage, whatever it's called, or any other rage.

WWE strongly suggests that it is entirely wrong for speculators to

steroids had anything to do with these senseless acts. It's all speculation

until the toxicology reports come back.

In his autopsy, Chris Benoit was shown to have enormous amounts of testosterone

in his body.

Testosterone is still a steroid that's banned in all major sports.

It directly leads to increased muscle growth. Some folks have said he had 10

times the normal amount of testosterone in his body as a normal human.

And did Benoit pass the wellness program check leading up to the murders?

Yes, preposterously, Chris Benoit passed the wellness checks leading up to the

murder, despite the irrefutable fact that he was taking enormous amounts of

steroids.

After it initially happened, I actually had nightmares.

It was very traumatic because as a female, I tend to really get angry with

The one person she thought was there to protect her is the one that really took

her life.

There was a lot of stuff going on behind closed doors that no one knew about. I

think there was a lot of volatile fights.

One thing I'd always heard about Nancy and the fact that she didn't take shit.

So I just know there was a lot of volatility there.

That's the word I think was used, volatile.

There was a few times that Nancy would call me and she would say that her and

Chris were fighting. There was an instance when they were in Tampa and

upset when they were driving on the way to our house and Chris went and busted

the windshield of their car.

Did you ever witness any abuse that was going on in that relationship?

My sister called me to the house and she called Mike Durham.

known as Johnny Grunge, who was also a professional wrestler that lived in the

area.

And Mike said, I'll go wrangle Chris, I'll go wrangle Chris, don't do anything

rash. But it was already kind of done. He hurt her.

I don't know whether it was intentional or accidental, but he hurt her.

Out of respect for the kids that he still has here, I won't go further into

that.

She got a restraining order against him.

I went down there and stayed at the house.

Mike had him at a hotel there in the area.

Chris contacted me directly because Nancy wasn't answering any of his calls

asked me to talk to my sister on his behalf.

And please, please, please let him come to the house and talk to her personally.

She called him, and he came over the next day, and they were back together a

couple of days later.

So I look back on that moment and say, you probably shouldn't have gotten

involved, and why did I take his call? Because maybe that would have been the

end of it.

Almost every day I think about that.

When police found steroids on the scene, many assume that explained it. The

killer had flipped out because of drug use.

Or might there be another explanation?

The initial media coverage all focused on steroid use, and I said, there's no

way. I'm Chris Nowinski. I'm a former WWE superstar, and now I am a

neuroscientist and run the Concussion Legacy Foundation.

My wrestling career came to an end because I had a series of concussions

didn't quite appreciate were concussions.

I never stopped performing until the damage was sort of too much.

So I decided I would start digging into what else was known, and it became a

book.

Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, or CTE, is a progressive degenerative brain

disease that appears to be started by hits to the head.

What

I knew

about CTE at that time was that there were four cases of NFL players.

Two had died by suicide, and one had started hearing voices and led the

on a...

chased through upstate New York and died in a fiery crash going on the wrong

side of the highway.

When I heard about what happened with Chris Benoit, I immediately remembered a

conversation I'd had with him maybe six months prior.

I remembered that he had sat next to me in the locker room and said, I heard you

write in a book about concussions.

I was like, yeah. And he goes, I'm interested in what you're learning.

And he's like, how many concussions have you had before you had to retire? And I

said, well, I can remember at least six, but I probably hadn't.

more. And I said, how many have you had?

And he said, I've had more than I can count.

And then he said, I'm going to give you my phone number and I want you to call

me next week.

The next week I called him.

It sounded like he was in the middle of an argument. He was clearly agitated. It

sounded like someone else was there. He just said, hey, I can't talk right now.

Can I call you back?

And I said, sure.

I wonder if the reason he was asking me to call him was that he knew that

something was going on.

but he didn't quite appreciate what that was.

And so I decided that I really needed to know if Chris had CTE.

There was so much media attention, I really couldn't imagine his family

answering the phone. But I said, I'll give it a try.

And Chris's father answered the second ring. He was in a state of mind you

imagine when you just lost your son and learned what happened.

I told him my theory, and he immediately said, yeah, I want to see this done.

We have the brain in early July, and I think within about a month we knew that

it was positive for CTE, and it was a pretty severe case of CTE.

And so we held a press conference in New York. When you look at Christopher

Benoit's brain, it is in fact shocking. Our findings showed extensive areas of

tau protein deposition throughout his brain.

Tau protein is a marker for brain damage.

With Chris, he actually had what would be defined as a severe case of CT at 40

years old, which is early to have it. So it wouldn't just be areas of his cortex

or areas of his brain stem, but there was damage in areas that you would think

could influence emotional behaviors.

And I believe the degeneration of his brain changed who he was and what he was

capable of.

If you get hit in the head thousands of times, your brain essentially can start

to rot.

You get this damage in your brain that even after you stop getting hit in the

head will continue to spread and changes who you are and how you behave and what

you become.

I think about, you know, when me and Chris would be talking and he would just

crying so much that, you know, I wonder why he couldn't control his crying.

Does that go with the concussions? Does that go with his brain? You know, Eddie

and Chris took a lot of chair shots.

And these chair shots from, like, years ago were hard and they were mean.

In the 90s, we used to take chair shots to the head.

That was a badge of honor. And what I mean by that is someone would swing a

steel chair at your head.

And I literally remember you would grit your teeth and you'd, you

know, tense yourself and tense your neck.

And just take it. They hit you in the head with it and you just take it.

That was what you did.

That was expected.

If you had a concussion in wrestling, you just shake it off.

Shake it off, go in there and do it. And all of us did it.

I wrestled for 20 -plus years.

It makes me wonder, how much CT do I have?

How much CT do these other wrestlers have? Because we all got it to some

you know?

Is this going to be my end?

So one of the most incredible things to me is you have Harley Race invents the

flying headbutt and tells everyone after, don't do this move, it fucks your

spine up horribly, it ruins your ability to have an old age.

Dynamite Kid hears that from Harley Race, does it his whole career, ends up

wheelchair. Dynamite Kid tells Chris Benoit, Chris Benoit does it his whole

career, then loses his mind.

I mean, there is a clear history of people repeating the most self

story imaginable over and over again.

I think the Benoit tragedy led to some institutional changes. The awareness of

what CTE is was never before even a conversation point.

Now it is.

And finally, unprotected chair shots and subsequent concussions are now being

addressed because the one thing we've got to do is protect the athlete.

I think when you look at what Chris Benoit did, as a symptom of some sort of

medical problem, whether it's drug use or brain damage, I think that misses the

point. Ultimately, the thing that is the core reason this happened was Chris

Benoit made a decision when he was a very young person to do absolutely

it took to succeed at his childhood dream of becoming a pro wrestling star.

No matter what happened that weekend, Chris Benoit's story was going to have a

tragic end.

I think his fate was sealed the day that Eddie died.

Whether he knew it or not, I don't think anybody could save him after that.

Not his kids, not his family, not his other friends.

I just think that was the one guy that he said, I can't do it if Eddie's not

with me.

Whatever it was that he was going through, you know, I think he just

to shrink his whole world until all that was left was just whatever was in his

head that caused him to snap.

And he fucking snapped.

It's not one thing.

I think that it's a factor of alcohol and drugs and, yes, possibly CTE and

stress and grief.

And all those things rolled together put him on a path that weekend that he

couldn't get off.

Chris is always going to be my friend and my brother. I just know that there

something going on with him that wasn't him. And it's something that, you know,

I'm still very much torn with because you love Chris.

You just hate what he did.

The act of what he did is unthinkable, unforgivable.

It's so hard for me to separate a friendship that I had with him, matches

had with him, moments, times, car rides.

I think I can always look at Chris as one of the best performers I've ever

I'm just going to leave it at that.

You get questions all the time, does Chris Benoit deserve to be in the Hall

Fame? And I say, absolutely not.

No. The issue is, is that if Chris were here, we could talk to him, he would

say, putting me in the Hall of Fame is going to be one of the great

of the entire event.

Because all it's going to do is bring up Nancy and Daniel and Chris in their

last 24 hours.

So therefore I say, Chris Benoit does not belong in the WWE Hall of Fame, now

ever.

You have two guys that were the same.

basically their whole life, and had the same reputation of being immaculate

professionals, immaculate human beings, the nicest guys, and they both die very

young, and one's legacy is acclaimed, and one's is buried to that you almost

can't say his name.

If you would have told Chris, you know, when you die, your name and your body of

work is going to be erased from existence forever, it would have broke

heart. Because I think if nothing else, I remember he told me once, like,

listen, the critics are the critics, but if you have the respect of your peers,

then nothing else matters.

So to find out that he would have lost the respect, not only of his peers, his

friends, his family, I don't think he ever wanted that.

It almost took down the whole business.

What Chris did almost, and that's another thing, what Chris did almost

the only thing that he ever loved from a professional standpoint.

The only thing he ever loved, pro wrestling, Chris Benoit almost destroyed

That would have torn him apart as well.

So it leaves us around to, like, why did he do it?

And I don't think anyone's ever going to be able to answer that question.

You know, people will look at me different now because of what he did.

People talking shit behind my back, looking at me different, getting

Screw it.

I'm defending my family and what I believe in. You know, he loved them.

That definitely was not him.

He's still my hero.

I think about him all the time.

I want them to recognize Nancy, though.

She definitely deserves...

the recognition that she doesn't get.

That's the unfortunate and the sad part about the story is that she needs to be

remembered for a strong woman pioneering in this business and her talent and

focus on that instead of what happened to her.

She's a Hall of Famer all across the board, in my opinion.

She was a pioneer and one of the best at a role that doesn't exist anymore.

As a pro wrestling manager,

She created the role. She perfected the role. And then when she stopped doing

it, the role basically disappeared.

I would like nothing better than to see Nancy, you know, Nancy Benoit.

Once again, you can't even say that name, right?

Woman.

I would like nothing better than to see woman be put into the WWE Hall of Fame.

She was a great mom.

She was a beautiful friend.

And Nancy will always be the superstar that she was meant to be.

In my, in my mind.

What do you remember the most about Nancy?

I remember everything about her. I remember how her hair smells.

She's tucked me in with both hands real hard, like on both sides of the

blanket to tuck me in.

Almost like she was putting a lock on me to keep me safe.

And to this day, when I get sad or upset or stressed out, I will tuck myself in

on the sides so that I feel more secure.

What do you remember the most about Daniel?

Everything.

I closed my eyes and I could see him doing everything.

He was our whole lives, all of us. He was very, very, very, very loved by our

family, by his siblings. He and his brother were just thick as thieves.

Did you go on to have any relationship with the Benoit family afterward?

I tried.

Unsuccessfully.

I was told, I won't say by who, that the children didn't want anything to do

with us.

And apparently the children were told that we didn't want anything to do with

them because of what their dad did, which was absolutely not the truth.

My last trip with my family was for WrestleMania 23 in Detroit.

And then after the match, we flew back to Atlanta, me and Nancy.

And Daniel.

My dad went to Mexico for a tour.

And then me, Nancy, and Daniel were just hanging around the house, taking

pictures, you know, out by the trees, the dogs.

And then, you know.

David is absolutely a victim.

He's a great kid that was just dealt a bad hand. I mean, it's just not fair.

It's not right.

He didn't do anything wrong. He's just an innocent bystander in all of this.

I felt that because Chris killed his family, that the family he left behind

automatically blackballed from the world.

Like, they're going to be blamed for what Chris did. To me, those two needed

be reconnected because talking with David and meeting Sandra and knowing she

having the same issues and pain and hurt that David had, and nobody will ever

really understand.

what they went through with the exception of each other. So I thought if

connect them, if they had a chance to talk, that maybe they could move on and

still realize that they have family in each other.

Chris Jericho, wrestling angel come to life. He gave my number to my nephew and

gave my nephew's number to me. We hadn't talked before.

Everything happened.

So 13 years, the last time we saw each other.

It's been a very long time.

She finally called me. I answered.

We talked on the phone for probably a good two hours, and now going to watch

wrestling because I still love it.

It's in my blood.

It feels like we never were apart.

It felt like we just reconnected, left off where we started.

Nothing has changed.

She's still my Auntie Zosia.

Chris lives on in David every day, and Nancy lives on in Sandra every day, and

think they're both lost.

when Tristan Nancy died.

So hopefully this will help them get found.

You feel better? Yeah. Because you guys have the same perspective, you know, and

it's important for you guys to stick together on this, right?

Because you know, yeah, we can be friends and be supportive, but it's not

same. It's for you guys.

No, it's not the same as family.

Yeah, exactly.

They've never been more.

I've never been more grateful and happy to see someone that I love as I was when

I saw my nephew.

Do you think you will ever be able to or want to give forgiveness to our script?

Yes, I think I do someday want to be able to forgive him. I do.

Because carrying around the burden of hate gets

exhausting.

Everyone deserves forgiveness.

And everyone deserves mercy.

So I think that within time, there will be a day when I get on my knees and

I finally say it, that I forgive them.

You never know. It might be tomorrow.

But I do know it's not today.