On the Benoit killings: ‘Not the Chris we knew’

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By Andy Hall

Chris Benoit used to offer aspiring World Wrestling Entertainment performer Michelle McCool tips after matches — and thank her for listening.

In her three years with the organization, McCool knew only a “very quiet, very humble, very compassionate” Benoit — never imagining the 40-year-old, former WWE champion was capable of killing his wife and 7-year-old son before taking his own life at their Atlanta-area home over the weekend of June 24.

“I’ve known Chris since I’ve been in the business,” said McCool, the Palatka native who first became affiliated with WWE in 2004. “He was very respectful and very respectable.

“Every time I came backstage, he’d give me some pointers — and then thank me for listening.”

WWE has come in for heavy criticism in the weeks since the killings amid suggestions that performance-enhancing substances may have driven Benoit. Other wrestlers, not all of them WWE performers, have died young from drug- and alcohol-related causes in recent years.

“If it’s not tragic enough, the media are reading a lot of other things into it,” said McCool. “The hardest thing is that it’s not the Chris we knew. My heart goes out to his other two kids.”