Chris Benoit and family found dead

[magpie in the 80's]

Brain damage may explain Benoit's meltdown
Thursday September 6, 2007
By ninemsn staff and wires

Brain damage caused by a career in professional wrestling is far more likely than steroids to have caused the irrational rage that led Chris Benoit to kill his family and then himself, medical experts said yesterday.

Doctors from the Sports Legacy Institute in the United States conducted tests on the remains of the man known as the "Canadian Crippler", discovering a history of concussion.

The examination revealed Benoit's brain was pockmarked with evidence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), whose symptoms include depression, dementia and erratic behavior.




But doctors said they were unable to determine if the trauma was the only cause of the wrestler's meltdown.

"Whether it is the sole factor, I believe, is speculation, and I will not go there," the institute’s Robert Cantu told Associated Press.

CTE is believed to afflict 20 percent of professional boxers and was found in four professional American football players aged 36 to 50 who died in recent years — two by suicide — after showing erratic behaviour, the institute said.

Benoit's father Michael gave the medical team permission to perform the operation because he believed the attack to be out of character.

The elder Benoit could recall his son complaining regularly of head pain but was unsure if he had received medical assistance.


"The human skull just isn't built to get hit with a table or a chair," he said.

Benoit, 40, killed his wife Nancy and 7-year-old son Daniel before hanging himself in their suburban Atlanta home in June in what police labelled a murder-suicide.

The mystifying slayings raised speculation Benoit may have suffered a case of "roid rage," or uncontrollable violence caused by steroid use.

An earlier autopsy found Benoit injected steroids not long before he died.

But the institute said steroids would not have caused Benoit's brain damage and all but ruled out steroids as a cause.

The Sports Legacy Institute, an advocate for greater safety in contact sports, was founded by former Harvard University football player and professional wrestler Christopher Nowinski, whose career was cut short by post-concussion syndrome.