Fayette County, Georgia district attorney Scott Ballard said law enforcement officials believe that Chris Benoit strangled his wife Nancy on Friday night, smothered his seven-year-old son Daniel on Saturday morning and hung himself on Saturday night.
Authorities believe the former World Wrestling Entertainment star used an electrical chord to strangle his wife and a bag to asphyxiate his son before hanging himself inside the weight room of his suburban Atlanta home.
Ballard said Nancy Sullivan Benoit‘s wrists and feet were bound with tape and that there was some blood under her head. Daniel Benoit was found dead in his own bed in his upstairs bedroom.
A bible was placed next to the body of both Nancy and Daniel.
Meanwhile, TMZ.com is reporting that Benoit’s wife accused the Montreal native of domestic abuse when she filed a divorce petition in 2003.
Large amounts of anabolic steroids and legal prescription medication were found in the house.
There was no suicide note left inside the house but a WWE co-worker, believed to be Salvador “Chavo” Guerrero received a delayed text message from Benoit. Ballard did not disclose the contents of the message..
Benoit was previously arrested in the Atlanta area on a DUI charge but has no record of domestic abuse, save for his wife’s charges in the 2003 divorce petition.
“In a community like this, it‘s bizarre to have a murder/suicide, especially involving the death of a seven-year-old child,” Ballard said. “That‘s what struck me the most in all this: There‘s a seven- year-old little boy who‘s dead. I don‘t think I‘ll ever be able to wrap my mind around that completely.
“It struck me as somewhat bizarre that he would even be in the home with their deceased bodies all that time. I‘m baffled why anyone would kill a seven year old. I don‘t have any idea at all about a motive.”
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