A former world champion left a haunting mark of guilt at his home where he slaughtered his family with his friends still grasping at what pushed him to the violent act
08:00, 04 Jan 2026
In the fraught and weird world of WWE, one horrific crime has chilling stood out from the rest after the perpetrator committed a sickening final act before slaughtering his entire family.
In 2007, Chris Benoit left a violent legacy in perhaps one of the most shocking cases in the wrestling world. The Canadian fighter killed his wife and son before taking his own life at 40. The former world champion wrestler was found in his Georgia home dead next to the bodies of his wife and seven-year-old son. Benoit strangled Nancy, 43, and smothered Daniel before hanging himself at his mansion, sickeningly leaving a bible next to both of their bodies in a twisted final act.
After strange text messages were sent to his friends, police went to the home of the ex-World Wrestling Federation champ in Atlanta. Injuries indicated Benoit had pressed a knee into his wife’s back while pulling on a cord around her neck. Her body was found wrapped in a blanket alongside the Bible. Officials said that there were no signs of immediate struggle.
Toxicologists found alcohol in his wife’s body but were unable to determine whether it had been present before death or was a product of decomposition. Daniel was Benoit’s third child after having David and Megan with his first wife Martina. Daniel was Nancy's only child. Horrifically, a separate bible was found next to Daniel’s body after he was suffocated in his bedroom.
He had internal injuries to the throat area, showing no bruises. An autopsy suggested that Daniel was drugged with Xanax before his murder and he was unconscious at the time of his death. It was unclear when each victim was killed but Daniel’s body had just started to show signs of decomposition, whereas Nancy's body was further along in the process of decomposition.
It was later alleged that Daniel had the genetic disorder fragile X syndrome and this was the cause of domestic problems within the Benoit family. It was also alleged Benoit had been administering Daniel human growth hormone (HGH) as indicated by track marks on his arms because his father thought he was too small.
Benoit's coworker and close friend, wrestler Chris Jericho, stated from his own research on the condition, the symptoms "fit Daniel to a tee, all across the board." What was most concerning was those who had publicly stated they had no knowledge of Daniel having the condition, Jericho said, "If Chris had decided that he wanted to keep it to himself, you wouldn't have been able to pry that out of him with anything."
Jericho's later wrote in his 2011 book Undisputed: "It turned out that Daniel didn't have fragile X, but at the time it made sense because I was grasping at straws."