Benoit murder-suicide - an insanity plea

Nancy and Daniel Benoit. RIP

This year is the 10 year anniversary of Benoit's murder-suicide. Way back doing the "Monday Night Wars" when WWF/WWE and WCW were going head-to-head and pushing the bounds, trouncing even Monday Night Football in ratings, I was a huge wrestling fan. I watched both promos, jumping back and fourth, and "The Crippler" Chris Benoit was one of my favorite wrestlers. His skills were amazing and he brought an intensity to the ring that kept you glued to the match. In other words, and unrivaled performer.

When ever something like this happens, people always try to make sense of the matter. Try to figure out why something happened, why someone did what they did, when no one expected it. A lot of people are saying Benoit was out of his mind, that he went crazy, that he was insane. Truth is we'll never know, the only ones who really know why are dead.

But based on what we know, is that insanity explanation going to fly in court? Let me say this first, I'm not excusing what he did. All I'm doing is following the road of 'is Benoit insane' and testing to see if he fits the legal definition of. Why? Just to give some kind of concrete foundation to the term "insane".


Lets start with what we do know.
- According to Chavo Guerrero he sent out a series of bizarre text messages just before his suicide.

- According to Chris Jericho what Benoit did was vastly out of character for him, that no one expected it. Also according to Jericho, Eddie Guerrero's death weighed very heavily on Benoit. Jericho also mentions bizarre behavior from Benoit, such as paranoia.

- According to, Nancy Benoit's sister, Sandra Toffoloni, there was strain on their marriage, and a lot of personal strain after the deaths of Victor Mar (ring name: Black Cat), Ray Traylor (ring name: Big Boss Man), Eddie and others, deeply affected Benoit. Also according to her there was a lot of self-medicating going on between Nancy and Benoit.  Additionally, according to her he didn't display the typical Alzheimer's symptoms. Toffoloni also revealed that Benoit spent two whole days alone in the house with the bodies of his wife and son, as well as a WWE official mentioning to her that Benoit had attempted to book a flight for the show he was scheduled for.

- According to Sean Allen Morley (ring name: Val Venis), at the Benoit home there were open alcohol bottles everywhere.   

- Researchers at the Sports Legacy Institute released findings that demonstrate Benoit as having Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy. Having suffered the same sort of brain injury that NFL players have suffered that caused them to sink into depression and hurt themselves or others.

- Benoit's method of suicide was to rig his weight lifting machine to hang himself. A method that took an enormous amount of strength, and therefore, demonstrated to be thought out.

Lets now synthesize all this. Benoit has suffered brain injury consistent with what NFL players have suffered. There was in all probability alcohol and/or drug abuse, brought on by both personal and professional pressures. Benoit himself displaying odd behavior from the paranoia observed by Toffoloni to the bizarre text messages received by Chavo, and the strange behavior observed by Jericho. Behavior that had been observed as on-going during the last year and and a half of Benoit's life. That he had spent several days alone with the corpses of his family, with the thing that occurred to him being trying to get to work. His ultimate method of suicide being one which was difficult and took great strength to do.


So that's what we do know (I'm not even going to entertain bullshit like the Kevin Sullivan conspiracy theory, Kevin gave him a push in WCW even after the Kevin and Nancy divorced, Sullivan was behind Benoit winning the championship, I don't think there's any credence to this). What legally constitutes as "insanity" depends on what state/circuit a given court happens to be in. The important thing to focus on is if the person is "insane" at the time the act was committed. The other thing to consider is that it doesn't have to be any one single factor behind this. We'll go through each of these standards.

McNaughten Rule:
Under this rule, insanity will be found if because of a mental disease/defect the defendant:
- Did not know that his act would be wrong. 
- Did not understand the nature or quality of his actions. 

So based on what we know, regarding Benoit's behavior and the medical report, it is very likely Benoit had a mental illness/defect as a result of brain injury coupled with substance abuse.

We don't know enough to consider whether Benoit knew what he was doing was wrong.

Going by what we know it is possible that Benoit did not understand the nature of quality of his actions at the time he did it, because of the brain injuries he sustained? He did stay in the house alone with the bodies of his family. No calls to the authorities, or any mention of what happened, instead just trying to go back to work. He just killed two people and he's trying to book a flight to make a show? Did he really understand what he was doing when he did it? There is an argument there to be made that Benoit did not understand the nature and quality of what he just did. It might be mostly conjecture, but there is something going on there and a picture can be scratched together from it.

There is an argument that Benoit was insane under this rule.

Irresistible Impulse:
Under this rule insanity will be found if because of a mental disease/defect the defendant is unable to control his actions or conform his action to the law. 

Benoit has been observed by those closest around to him to be displaying strange and bizarre behavior. We don't know enough to be able to tell whether Benoit was unable to control himself, but if his acts of paranoia, such as driving different routes to the gym everyday, taking different cars, if there was some compulsiveness to that behavior, then it may point to him being unable to control his actions at the time he committed the murders.

We just don't know enough to argue whether or not Benoit was insane under this rule.

Durham Test:
Under this rule insanity will be found if the crime was a product of a mental illness. 

As I mentioned, Benoit was displaying strange and bizarre behavior, and the medical reports are consisted with brain injuries. So there is a strong argument that everything combined resulted in some sort of mental illness.

That said, it was very likely, based on what his family and friends have said about him, that the murders were a product of this mental illness. His closest people didn't see it coming, and he was behaving strangely for awhile, so more than likely something was going on in his head.

Under this test, there is an argument there for insanity.

Model Penal Code:
Under this rule insanity will be found if because of a mental disease/defect the defendant lacked the substantial capacity to either"
- Appreciate the criminality of their conduct. 
- Conform their conduct to the requirement of the law.

Based on what we know, this one is hard to tell. Did he understand what he was doing was criminal at the time he did it? Maybe. Maybe not. If he's refocusing on work with two dead people that he's just killed, maybe he was so out of it that he didn't appreciated the criminality of what he did.

From what we know, there's a weak argument, mostly conjecture, but there's still enough there to work with, and things do lean towards insanity.

...

So there it is, had Chris Benoit gone insane when he committed murder, under three of the legal standards of insanity, based on what is known, quite possibly. He was quite likely insane in both the "he's want himself" sense, and in the legal sense. Had he not killed himself, had he gone to trial, it's certainly possible that he's be found Not Guilty by reason of insanity. Does that mean he'd walk for what he did? I doubt it, he's probably be institutionalized.

So what's my take on this as a fan of his ten years after? Do I think he should be inducted into the Hall of Fame? Hell no! Because of what he did the attention will always be on the double murders, not on his skills as a wrestler. Do I think WWE should continue to pretend that Chris Benoit doesn't exist? No. Because he did exist, I don't think he should be glorified (like don't release any blu-rays focused on him, but have an archive of his matches), but by pretending he didn't exist just fuels the kind of infamy/mystique around him.  People know why he's treated like he doesn't exist and new fans who hear about him are going to get curious and look him up. In fact, it's reached the level of being an internet meme. In other words he'll never be erased.

Ten years ago when it happened, WWE made the right decision. But ten years later today, I don't think they should go out of their way to show him, but also shouldn't go out of their way to pretend he never existed anymore. But also, Benoit is an example of what can happen to someone when the perfect storm of personal and professional pressures, substance abuse and brain injuries all come together. Why it's important to seek help, because that shit will eat you. Was he a monster for what he did? YES. But monsters don't come from nowhere...