This book discusses the murder of Nancy and Daniel Benoit by Chris Benoit before he took his own life. Chris Benoit was a professional wrestler from Canada, who was working for the WWE at the time of this incident. Chris had been a professional wrestler for twenty-two years, traveling all over the world and wrestling in countless matches. Chris had been married once before, with two children from that marriage. Chris and Nancy had one child together. Their relationship was tumultuous, with Nancy claiming Chris was abusive and had destroyed their house on multiple occasions. Chris had been exhibiting some concerning behavior before the murders, but it was largely attributed to him being a private person or depression from the death of his best friend. The author of this book is determined that all of his problems were a result of drugs, which I have opinions about to follow. Chris murdered his wife and child in 2007, before taking his own life.

The author of this book seems to have an unwavering opinion that steroid and recreational drug use were the absolute cause of this murder-suicide. I do not buy it. Was Chris Benoit using copious amounts of steroids, opiates, and other drugs? Absolutely. No question. Do those things have a detrimental impact on the health and cognition of a person? Yes. Steroid use has been known to cause people to have anger issues and become highly erratic and reactive. Does this explain a lot of his behavior? Certainly. Was this a major contributing factor in what happened in his home? Probably. It couldn't have helped. The author seems to dismiss CTE as being a contributing factor, which I disagree with strongly. When Chris Benoit's brain was autopsied, his brain showed severe CTE markers. In fact, it was stated that his brain resembled that of an 80+ year old Alzheimer's patient. Symptoms for CTE include depression, suicide, anger, and memory impairment. Traumatic brain injury information has come a long way since 2007, and a long way since this book was published. Discounting the effects of traumatic brain injury is unhelpful and silly. A scrambled brain in concert with drugs in concert with mental health issues....is simply a bad combination. It is reckless to say that all of these things did not play a factor in the murder-suicide. These things do not excuse murder or abuse of any type, but it certainly helps explain the road map of how we arrived here.

Chris Benoit was one of my favorite wrestlers to watch when I was a kid. I used to watch wrestling all of the time with my grandfather. I got this book during the most recent Audible sale, and I had high hopes for it. It did offer some good information about the case and Chris Benoit's career. I am disappointed in the absolute bias of the author. If you plan to read this, please take it with a grain of salt, as the author left a lot to be desired in unbiased reporting.