Search the ArchivesNavigation Contact InformationThe Citizen Newspapers For Advertising Information Email us your news! For technical difficulties |
Sheriffs following up on bizarre online postFri, 06/29/2007 - 10:54am
By: John Munford
Anonymous poster claims death reference was coincidental An anonymous person is apologizing for editing an online biography of pro wrestler Chris Benoit to indicate that his wife was dead some 14 hours before the family’s bodies were found in their central Fayette home. Meanwhile, Fayette County sheriff’s deputies are trying to get access to the poster’s computer to confirm that the posting was indeed mere speculation as the poster has said, according to lead investigator Lt. Tommy Pope. The poster has been positively identified by police, Pope said, although he or she has chosen to remain anonymous online. “Hopefully, we will be able to truly confirm his story,” Pope said, adding that Connecticut law enforcement officials are helping with the investigation. Wikipedia officials have confirmed that the apology came from the same IP address in Stamford, Conn., which also happens to be the home of the World Wrestling Entertainment organization for whom Benoit worked. Benoit, his wife Nancy and their 7-year-old son Daniel were all killed, and authorities have said all evidence points to Chris Benoit killing his family and then himself. The posting, which just came after midnight, was an “edit” to the Benoit page, adding to a note that Chris Benoit missed a weekend WWE performance for personal issues: “stemming from the death of his wife Nancy.” In a detailed apology, the anonymous poster said it was merely “coincidence” and that he posted the item after “reading rumors and speculation about this matter online, and one of them included that his wife may have passed away, and I did the wrong thing by posting it on wikipedia to spite (sic) there being no evidence.” The poster also said they had no connection to WWE or Chris Benoit in any way. “I am from Stamford as the IP address shows, and I am just an everyday individual who posted a wrongful remark at the time that received so much attention because it turned out to actually happen. ... It was a terrible coincidence that I never saw coming.” A Wikipedia spokesperson confirmed that the apology came from the same IP address that the initial edit came from, but no one from the company has spoked with the poster. Wikipedia officials contacted law enforcement to report the posting as a possible lead in the investigation, and the company is content to let police handle the matter, said spokesperson Sandra Ordonez. Wikipedia has locked the Chris Benoit page temporarily to prevent vandalism. The web site is an online encyclopedia that allows anonymous users to update, edit, change and add to publicly accessible web pages for information sharing purposes. The anonymous poster, in his online apology, said he or she will never vandalize anything on Wikipedia or post wrongful information. Benoit may have killed his 7-year-old son by applying a choke hold, Ballard said Thursday afternoon. The autopsy on Daniel Benoit stated that his throat had internal injuries, although there were no bruises or markings on the exterior of his neck that would have been present had Benoit’s hands or a cord been used to choke Daniel, Ballard noted. Chris Benoit’s wife, Nancy, had a coaxial-type cable wrapped around her neck, and she was also bound at the wrists and ankles, Ballard has said. The family’s bodies were discovered by sheriff’s deputies Monday afternoon when World Wrestling Entertainment officials asked them to check on Benoit after he failed to show for two events and return several messages left for him, officials and the company have said. All of the evidence so far points to Chris Benoit having committed the killings, Ballard said, noting that the wrestler had a piece of cloth wrapped around his neck, underneath the cable that killed Benoit when some weights attached on the other end. The part Ballard said will stick with him most is when he entered Daniel’s room after the boy’s body had already been removed. The walls were covered with Chris Benoit wrestling posters, Ballard said. On a chair next to the bed were two toy championship wrestling belts, and on a shelf was a foot-tall wrestling doll. “It was as if this kid worshipped his daddy,” Ballard said, adding that it also could have been his parents chose to decorate the room in that manner. Ballard said he was initially struck at how clean the home appeared when he first got to the scene. “It looked as if someone had just stepped out to go to the grocery store,” Ballard said. Ballard added that Nancy Benoit must have struggled when she was attacked just before she was killed. Although Nancy Benoit was killed in an upstairs family room and Daniel Benoit was killed in his upstairs bedroom, there was no apparent way to cross from one of the rooms to the other, Ballard noted. The investigation is ongoing as detectives try to piece together where the family was before the killings began and what messages and information they might have received or sent on devices such as cell phones and computers, Ballard said. According to a report by News1130, a news radio station in Vancouver, Canada, a woman whose child suffers from fragile X said her late husband spoke with Chris Benoit about five years ago about trying to start a support group in British Columbia and Canada for fragile X because Daniel Benoit also suffered from the condition. “My husband was struggling when we got diagnosed with our son, and Chris was struggling with his,” Pam Winthrope told the radio station. “They talked for a few minutes and then he said he didn’t want to be a public face for fragile X, he juts wanted to keep it really, really quiet.” Fragile X syndrome is the most common cause of inherited mental impairment, which ranges from learning disabilities to more severe cognitive or intellectual disabilities according to the National Fragile X Foundation. Parents can have a hard time finding help and support for their children who suffer from fragile X, Winthrope told the radio station, which quoted her as saying: “You as a parent have to go out there and find what’s available and it’s not easy — they don’t tell you.” The condition is the most common known cause of autism or autistic-like behaviors and can also cause characteristic physical and behavioral features and delays in speech and language development, according to the foundation. The foundation’s web site notes that the condition can be passed on to family members by persons who have no apparent signs of the genetic condition. Meanwhile, the World Wrestling Entertainment has published an account from “a source close to Benoit” who recalled Chris Benoit describing Daniel’s condition “as a learning disability much like autism.” The unnamed source quoted by WWE said Chris Benoit had said Daniel “wasn’t capable of interacting with other children and was afraid of other children” and Daniel also “had a hard time making eye contact with everyone.” login to post comments
|
Copyright 2010 - Fayette Publishing, Inc. | Privacy Policy | Terms of Use Policy
Server 4
