Chris & Nancy by Irvin Muchnick Page B

Turner would grant an interview to confirm this, it seems overwhelmingly likely that DeMarco called Turner or got a message to him after DeMarco spoke the first time with Margaret Benoit. Also on the answering machine was a message left at some undetermined point by Daniel Benoit for his father, whom the little boy affectionately called “pooh-bear.” Finally, the answering machine still retained — probably for sentimental reasons — the very last known recordings of the voice of Eddie Guerrero, in two messages left the day before Guerrero died in Minneapolis in 2005. The answering machine audio is included in the companion disk. See “Order the DVD” at the back of this book.
    [ 3 ]. Facsimiles of the RCMP “Occurrence summary” and “General Occurrence Report” are included in the companion disk. See “Order the DVD” at the back of this book.
    [ 4 ]. After some of the information in this chapter was published on my blog, Zerr denied to Josh Stewart, a wrestling columnist for the Long Island Press , that he was the one who had told Mike Benoit that Chris was the perpetrator. Mike linked Zerr’s puzzling denial to Mike’s earlier refusal to sign a legal release authorizing a book Zerr was planning to write. Mike reemphasized the accuracy of my account and said he believed Zerr to be part of “a coordinated attempt to discredit” my work. Zerr — whom I have never met or spoken to — also falsely told others that an essay I had published months after the Benoit deaths failed to mention Chris’s concussion syndrome, and he spoke of me in disparaging terms to Mike Benoit. A wrestling insider told me, “The fact that Zerr would run you down in combination with the denial shows it’s likely coming directly from DeMarco, and that they have no defense. DeMarco is the type — clumsy in covering his tracks.”
    [ 5 ]. Generally speaking, does WWE, a publicly traded company listed on the New York Stock Exchange, run afoul of federal securities law prohibitions against issuing materially false statements when it hypes wrestling story lines on its corporate website, outside the boundaries of its entertainment television shows, website, and magazines? In a related example, WWE in the spring of 2008 staged a news conference to announce that boxer Floyd Mayweather was being paid $20 million to appear at WrestleMania — a figure surely many multiples higher than Mayweather’s actual payoff. If there were factual misstatements in WWE’s published internal timeline for Benoit, the same issue might arise. And in June 2009, WWE shares plunged seven percent after a TV storyline, supported by a USA cable news release, had Donald Trump purchasing WWE’s Raw brand.

CHAPTER 7
Chavo Guerrero, Scott Armstrong, the Text Messages, and the Two Timelines
    HUNDREDS OF PRO WRESTLERS DIED young in the twenty or so years before the Chris Benoit tragedy. Some, like Brian Pillman and Eddie Guerrero, had heart disease brought on or exacerbated by abuse of steroids and other drugs. Some overdosed more overtly on recreational drugs like cocaine. Some committed suicide. Some suffered liver or kidney malfunction, which — like the forms of cancer sometimes associated with them — stemmed from alcohol and/or high doses of their pharmaceuticals of choice. Others met their ends in car crashes, in which fatigue or impairment played a part, and at least one was killed in a barroom brawl. Most rarely, but occasionally, others died in accidents inside the ring, like Owen Hart.
    Prior to June 2007 , however, no wrestler had ever murdered loved ones in a rampage so sensational that it made the cover of
People
magazine, fueled tabloid coverage, and for weeks commanded panel-discussion analysis and commentary on cable news networks. Principally for that reason, it is hard to pass judgment on Chavo Guerrero and Scott Armstrong if they initially weren’t sure