About

Chris Benoit (real name Christopher Michael Benoit) was a Canadian professional wrestler, who wrestled in several promotions, most notably World Championship Wrestling (WCW), World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW) and New Japan Pro Wrestling. In late June 2007, Benoit murdered his wife Nancy and his son Daniel before committing suicide, which led to several conspiracy theories and discussions online.

History

Wrestling Career

Hart was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.^[1] He was influenced by the famous Hart family and trained under Stu Hart. During his career, he worked in promotions including WWF/WWE, WCW, ECW, and NJPW. He accumulated 22 championships, including two World Championships, one WWE Heavyweight Championship, and one WCW Heavyweight Championship. He won the main event at Wrestlemania XX.

Death

On June 22nd, 2007, Benoit murdered his wife Nancy Sullivan and son Daniel and then committed suicide. It was likely that Benoit had drugged his son before strangling him. It is believed that multiple concussions had led Benoit to have deteriorated mental health. Results of testing done on Benoit's brain after the murder revealed that "Benoit's brain was so severely damaged it resembled the brain of an 85-year-old Alzheimer's patient," according to doctor Julian Bales of West Virginia University. Benoit was not mentioned for years on WWE television after June 26th, 2007.

Online Relevance

Conspiracy Theory

The most prominent conspiracy theory about Benoit's double murder-suicide is that Benoit is actually innocent of the crime, and the real culprit is fellow professional wrestler Kevin Sullivan, Nancy Sullivan's ex-wife. On February 17th, 2014, an IGN^[2] user posted "24 Reasons that will prove that Chris Benoit is Innocent" in a thread on the site's forum, citing some details of the case that suggest the officially given times of death and the events leading up to the double murder-suicide are not consistent with the police report. On May 14th, 2016, Top10Wrestling posted a video about the conspiracy that gained over 150,000 views (shown below).

Related Memes

The Dogs Are In The Enclosed Pool Area.

On June 24 2007, before his death, Benoit sent a series of text messages to his co-workers between 3:53 AM to 3:58 AM, and one of them contained the following message: "The dogs are in the enclosed pool area. Garage side door is open," evidently to tell people it was safe to come into his home to find the bodies. Due to the absurdity of the phrase, it has been used as an example of dark comedy to signify that a person is suicidal (or is just acting like they are). They are most commonly used in forums like SCJerk, Squaredcirclejerk
where it has become an ironic meme. A thread about the phrase was posted to /r/OutOfTheLoop^[3] on October 11th, 2016.

Search Interest

External References