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129: Picture Perfect Family, or is it?
19 Plays1 year ago
Welcome to our 2nd last ep of 2023, and the last true crime ep of the year! (insert confetti cannons and air horns here) For this weeks ep we each chose cases where a person decided to kill the rest of their family members, depressing we know...
Kelsey tells the story of the Fisher family, a seemingly normal family with a few problems from the outside, and even more on the inside. Friends and coworkers are shocked after a sudden explosion rips through the neighbourhood, bringing about The Fall of the House of Fisher (see what we did there, we love you Mike Flanagan)
Alanna shares the story of 2 great pro wrestlers, Chris and Nancy Benoit. While the pair may have started as a storyline, they fell for real and started a life together. Years later their love story comes to a tragic conclusion that no one saw coming.
It's a dark ep for sure, but catch us next week for our last ep of the year (shameless patreon plug, where we have dozens more eps and videos!)
Until then, keep it cryptic!
Use our special link https://zen.ai/E0jhXppbKy1GdZYyKRcHFg to save 30% off your first month of any Zencastr paid plan.
Tags: Familicide, Fisher Family, Robert William Fisher, Chris & Nancy Benoit, Chris Benoit
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Transcript
Introduction to the Darkcast Network
00:00:01
Speaker
Darkcast Network. Welcome to the dark side of podcasting.
00:00:30
Speaker
Welcome
Pet Interruptions and Podcasting Challenges
00:00:31
Speaker
to Castles and Cryptids, where the castles are haunted and the cryptids are cryptic as fuck. And I'm your host, Alanna. I'm Kelsey. And Gordo's in the back being quiet. Shh, Gordo's quiet. Just kidding. Oh my god, I don't even... Can you hear him?
00:00:54
Speaker
No, no, no, no. I was kidding. Okay. He started scratching a toy and I was like, as soon as this... And Gordo is quiet. I heard of him like beating up a toy and I'm like, oh my God. I totally jinxed it. Yeah. Yeah. Like immediately.
00:01:14
Speaker
No, I was listening to and that's why we drank earlier and Christine goes, Oh, sorry, can you hear? I think it was her cat Juno hurling himself or itself against the door. And it's like, no, but just locked out. Yeah.
00:01:34
Speaker
He'll start attacking the door handle because it's like one of those lever door handles. So it's got the little thing and he's strong enough he can like pull it down and then he can push the door open. So I have to lock them so that when he tries to hit the door handle, obviously it's not going to turn because the door is locked.
00:01:59
Speaker
So yeah, just like, like someone jiggling the stall door when you're in the bathroom or something. Yeah.
Creepy Bathroom Experiences
00:02:09
Speaker
We're like a horror movie when you can see a knob turning and you're just like, Oh, that's how it feels. Just like, Oh my God. Yeah.
00:02:20
Speaker
Whichever one that did the bathroom kill scene, whichever scream it was, with Jada Pinkett Smith. Oh yeah, I remember that. Yeah, she thinks she hears someone through the bathroom stall wall or something, so she keeps putting her ear up to it. Yeah, and then they stab her. I know, I used to be like.
00:02:44
Speaker
scared going like you know when you go to the to the bathroom at the movies and it's like it's in between like it's during the movies so then it's like nobody's in there and it is really kind of creepy especially watch that movie as like a teenager you're like oh my god yeah hiding in the stall next to me with a knife especially at
00:03:07
Speaker
probably the theater I most often go to would be at the mall and there's what probably 20, 25 stalls in the one huge main bathroom part. It just like is a whole row of them and it has an entrance on either side. So there's like two entrances into there. Yeah, at the whim. Yeah, you go in there.
00:03:32
Speaker
Yeah, you go in there in the middle of a movie and you could be the only person in all of that you're like This is it is a little creepy because all the doors are just closed and you can't see in and you're just walking down Yeah, they naturally like look closed and then yeah, I guess in North America compared to other places they say we have really big gaps in between stalls and
00:03:56
Speaker
which I have found to be true. I don't have much else to compare with having not been a lot of other places, but the new space we, we are in like this big, we're just in a basement and a big room or whatever. But then, so now we have just like this one little three stall toilet, you know, where they put the paper towel right in front of one of the stalls so that you basically have to stand like right in front of like trying not to look through the cracks as you trying like,
00:04:24
Speaker
hover your hand to get the paper towel. It's so tiny. Stupidest little bathroom. That sucks. Why do they do this to us? Why? I don't get it. Yeah, just whoever planned that was very poor planning. Awful. Zero out of 10. Would not recommend. I don't even go in that stall because A, because the paper towel thing is right in front of it. B, it flushes like a freaking
00:04:54
Speaker
with something that has a really big engine, a turbo jet. Oh, like sprays up onto the sea. You have to like run away. Oh, yeah. So that's one thing about some of the auto flushing toilets is I hate when it auto flushes while you're still sitting on it. And you're like, thank you, good day. Like accidental day. Yes. Awful. No.
00:05:24
Speaker
I've always wondered if bidets are because if it's cold water, like, I don't want any of that. No, that sounds uncomfortable. No, I think it's supposed to be warm. But. I don't know. Yeah, I'll have to get the toilet attachment, I guess. To find out. Christmas is coming.
Humor in Beer Consumption Studies
00:05:44
Speaker
No. They were just talking about that on a different podcast. I was listening to you too.
00:05:52
Speaker
She's like, I got a bidet attachment. I don't know how I can go back to regular toilets now. They're all inferior. I'm like, I don't know. I've never tried it. So. Yeah, I haven't either. They're a big thing in what, like Paris and all that stuff. Yeah, I think like China and Japan too. Yeah. I don't know.
00:06:19
Speaker
I'll know guys. Um, let's have a fun fact from somewhere in the world. Speaking of other places in the world. Do you want one? That's from America. I'm like other places, other countries. Um, okay. Would you want to go back? That's from America, just a little south of us, or should we go across the pond and have a fact about Ireland?
00:06:48
Speaker
ish. Let's do Ireland ish. I'm intrigued. Okay, okay, good. This one could have been saved for St. Patty's Day, but whatever. It's at the top of the page here. And it sounds fun. It says 162,719 pints of Irish stout go to waste every year dot dot dot via mustaches. What?
00:07:17
Speaker
Like just getting caught in mustaches when people are drinking? Yeah, apparently. Wow. That's a lot. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Apparently there's been a study done. Who thought of this? I don't know. Who funded this? I'm not sure. And how do they measure that? Suck it out? Nope.
00:07:42
Speaker
Yeah, do they vacuum men's mustaches after they drink? Well, dab them with a paper towel? I don't know. No, yeah, exactly. Yeah, because you can't just go with what's left of the glass because they don't, when they're tummy. Yeah, that's OK. OK, I don't know. Is there more information? Well, a little bit, but I don't know if they're going to answer your hard hitting question. OK. She's all about the logistics, guys. She's always got to know.
00:08:11
Speaker
Um, it says the study found that 0.56 milliliters of Guinness get trapped in the average beard or mustache with each sip. And it takes about 10 sips to finish a pint. Okay. I'm still not sure exactly where they're, how they're quantifying it, but at least I know what their math is.
Personal Dental Experiences
00:08:35
Speaker
Yeah. Okay.
00:08:38
Speaker
An estimated 92,370 Guinness customers every year in the UK have facial hair. Assuming they consume on average 180 pints each a year, the total cost of wasted Guinness annually is about $536,000. Yeah. Wow. The moral of this story is shave and save.
00:09:02
Speaker
Uh-oh. At least we didn't do that one in November. Yeah. Drink your Guinness through a straw. Yeah. Now you just have me thinking about how did they really think they measured that so specifically. Yeah. It doesn't... Yeah, that's so weird. It doesn't bear too much thinking about, does it? Yeah.
00:09:29
Speaker
It's like a milk mustache, but they're like, no, you're, you're beer, you're wasting your money because it's all your beer is getting trapped in your mustache. Yeah. They like use the mustache as kind of like, what's that thing you use to check your oil? The dip is a dipstick or something. They just like measure how many millimeters up the, um, the wetness is on it. Yeah. Okay.
00:09:58
Speaker
That is that is weird though because when I got my teeth cleaned the other day you know what she did they never done before was they're like we're gonna measure your gums and see if those are receding by any like oh okay yeah some of them were a little bit she's like yeah I have one water flosser I was like oh okay
00:10:24
Speaker
I had, because I was getting hot and cold sensitivity on my one tooth really bad. So the last time I went in for a cleaning just month and a half, two months ago maybe.
00:10:40
Speaker
they were looking and they're like, yeah, your gum on that tooth has receded down. And they took a picture and they showed me and you can tell that that one is a few millimeters lower than the rest of them. And even now, if I run my fingernail across there, I get a shooting
00:11:04
Speaker
slight pain, but I can feel it because the nerve is exposed. It's not as bad as when it first receded because I've been using, they told me that it would help if using like the Sensodyne, like sensitivity kind of toothpaste and stuff. And then I've been wearing like my mouth guard more because I do clench my teeth when I sleep.
00:11:28
Speaker
So same. That's why I had to pick it up last week. Yeah, they say that causes like receding gums. And I know I clench my teeth more on that side. And I chew my food more on that side. So I was like, Oh, I don't want it to start happening to all of my teeth because like this really hurts. Yeah, because I've had cleanings before where they like get down into it. And I've been like,
00:11:55
Speaker
like flinch because it hit a spot that hurt so much before. But this one wasn't bad. She was good, even though she was like, oh yeah, there's a little bit. But then she was like, well, I try to be gentle. And I was like, oh no, you were. You were good. Yeah, sometimes they are vicious when they're in their cleaning. It's like, oh. Yeah, that's scraping sound too, right? I'm like, nails on a chalkboard. Yeah. And the drill, the ee.
00:12:26
Speaker
Yeah, it's usually the scraper one that makes the hair stand up on my arms.
Transition to True Crime: Family Annihilators
00:12:31
Speaker
Yeah, I just hate the dentist. Oh, anyway, I still go, but I hate it. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Nobody wants to talk about it, though. We're giving you guys great dentist ASMR over here. Yeah, the noises.
00:12:53
Speaker
But that's okay. This one's going to be like pulling teeth because we're talking about family annihilators today. Yes. Not a fun episode.
The Fisher Family Story
00:13:06
Speaker
No, it's tough. True Crime's always a harder one to get through. Doing the notes especially. Yep. That was kind of rough this time to take some breaks. Yeah.
00:13:24
Speaker
Mine wasn't too long, so it wasn't too too bad. There isn't a lot, I guess, of maybe like details. So that wasn't as bad as someone's I've done in the past. But overall, it is just kind of a harder topic, I guess, just because it's so sad anytime it happens. Totally. Very dark. I mean, any murders.
00:13:53
Speaker
dark but then yeah it's multiple murders with this one and it's family members and I don't think maybe talk to even about any except for maybe on the one we I did for the cruel summer because that one was a family uh that was killed a bit well it was highly debated whether it was done by the sun or not and okay yeah I think that was the nope don't
00:14:23
Speaker
remember the name right now i didn't tell that one to you did i because we did it separate for that one yeah yeah now i'm blanking but it was interesting go listen that one you guys that was in cruel summer um yeah i don't remember specifically if i've done
00:14:48
Speaker
I think I've done like family members that killed other family members, but not necessarily somebody that killed like a bunch of their family members, like these ones typically are. No Amityville horrors or nothing that we've covered yet. Yeah. Well, rip off the Band-Aid. Tell me what you got for me today. I have the story today of the Fisher family.
00:15:18
Speaker
Oh, F-I-S-H-E-R? Yes. Like fishermen? Okay.
00:15:25
Speaker
Yeah, I think I either had heard this one before. I remember seeing the guy's face because when I looked up the notes and started seeing pictures of the family, he seemed vaguely familiar to me. So I think I had heard this somewhere or had at least seen his picture from something. Yeah. I don't think it's that good.
00:15:56
Speaker
But hard to tell from the one name, I guess. Yeah. The main guy is named Robert William Fisher. And yeah, he was born April 13th of 1961 in New York City to parents William Fisher, who was a banker and Jan Howell, his mom. And he had two sisters. I can't remember if they were older.
00:16:26
Speaker
I don't think it really said. I don't even remember seeing his siblings names. Just sisters. Yeah. So Robert ends up marrying his wife Mary Cooper in 1987. So he would be 26 at this time.
00:16:51
Speaker
And the couple had two children that they named Brittany. And they also had a son that they named Robert William Fisher Jr. Securing him like... Yeah. But he's not quite the third? Okay. No. Because remember the father's name was William also. Yeah, he's William.
00:17:18
Speaker
Yeah, the father's William. The main guy is Robert William. And the son is Robert William Fisher. So he's the Bobby Billy Jr. Yeah, they they just called the son Bob Bobby. So I'll be calling. Okay. So
00:17:39
Speaker
It did say that Robert the father, he had medical knowledge from his work. Previous work is like a surgical technician. He also had experience as a respiratory therapist. And before that, he had worked as a firefighter, but ended up having to stop due to this back injury. And the back injury must have been pretty severe because it said
00:18:04
Speaker
He had like an unusual walk, like a distinctive walk and kind of like his back ended up being kind of messed up. So we'll get to it. There's like description of like what his spine kind of looks like and how he walks like because of this injury. Yes. Okay. A very distinctive gait. Okay. Got it. Yes, exactly.
00:18:29
Speaker
uh it seems like at the beginning of their marriage he had also served in the united states navy and he was described as an avid outdoorsman a hunter and a fisherman oh wow okay so yeah military and firefighter and like a whole bunch of
00:18:49
Speaker
Yeah, like great careers to be in. Right. But he's very, keep in mind, he's very comfortable outdoors and would probably be described, I'd say a bit as like a survivalist. Like he'd be, he'd do okay. Like, yeah. So the family,
00:19:14
Speaker
with everybody like Brittany and the White Fairy and Bobby, they all lived in Scottsdale, Arizona. And the family was kind of described as like a difficult family life. Robert was described as displaying cruel and controlling behavior towards his family.
00:19:34
Speaker
So not good. Yeah. Yeah. Multiple occasions, they describe disturbing and violent behavior that was reported. Some of it was by like friends and family. I couldn't really make out if it was like reported to the police, but... Right. Yeah. It was known about at least in their circle. Absolutely. Because a lot of people talked about it. Hmm.
00:20:04
Speaker
Uh, some of the sources said that the couple fought about like stacks and money. I mean, who doesn't, but it's like two main things to fight about for sure. You don't get enough of either. You're not going to be happy. Yeah. Uh, it said that Mary even got a job that she ended up telling friends was a quote unquote security fund.
00:20:31
Speaker
So like she's kind of putting her own money aside. Oh, a security for her. Yeah.
00:20:41
Speaker
Rainy day or whatever. Yeah. Robert also had issues with the kids. It said that he didn't like that Bobby didn't like to hunt or fish. Like didn't really have much of an interest in like the outdoor activities that Robert liked to do. And reportedly he also ended up trying to teach the kids to swim by throwing them off a boat.
00:21:08
Speaker
I have heard this a bunch of times. I feel like it was definitely a thing in the 80s of just chucking kids into water and expecting them to have swim. Yeah, it's kind of like a trope almost. I mean, I've heard of that too. You're like sink or swim. Yeah, but somebody...
00:21:29
Speaker
A family friend, I think that was with him when he did this, at least on one of the occasions he may have done this, said that like Brittany was like screaming and everything and like flailing in the water and he was kind of ended up just giving up and like dragging the kids back into the boat and was like really mad that they didn't know how to swim after that and stuff. And the friend was like, yeah, the kid seemed pretty traumatized by like him almost letting them drown.
00:21:58
Speaker
Yeah, I feel like I would hear about that boar in maybe like a pool. A pool. Yeah, this seemed to be a lake because they said in a boat. So it's not difficult to rescue someone if they start to go down. Yeah, or even see them. Yeah, like in a pool, the water is clear. You'd be able to see if they went under. Yeah, exactly.
00:22:28
Speaker
Yeah, it was also really weird. It said that, and this was in multiple sources, that he wouldn't allow the family to paint any of the walls in the house, anything other than white. Oh, God. Yeah, right. It also, yeah, that would be awful. It also said that only a small number of special pictures of the family were ever even allowed to be hung up. So he was like,
00:22:58
Speaker
very controlling about like the artwork. It's at that Mary did like quilting stuff and
00:23:05
Speaker
might have done like needlepoint or something like that and stuff that she wanted to hang up because she had made it herself and she was proud of it and they would get in fights because he would never let her hang it up and he would make her keep it in a closet and then he would constantly like tell her why haven't you thrown this garbage out like it's just taking up space yeah i mean i'm not saying i always agree with my partner on art but if it was something i made and was proud of and i wouldn't be allowed to just play it anywhere in the house or something and then he comes up garbage
00:23:35
Speaker
Like, that's really unnecessary and cruel. Exactly. And yeah, just not being allowed to do stuff in your own house is really shitty. Yeah. Friends that went hunting with Robert.
00:23:52
Speaker
described disturbing behavior on different hunting trips. One of the friends described Robert as having smeared the blood of an elk that he had shot. Like he smeared the elk's blood all over his face. Yeah, very unnecessary.
00:24:15
Speaker
cultural significance. On at least one other occasion, it's reported he snuck up behind a family that was having this nice little picnic, and he ended up emptying the clip of his gun just shooting it into the air behind them.
00:24:38
Speaker
to scare them or something he's not shooting at them but he just like emptied his gun into the air right behind them and they didn't see him coming up so they were probably scared shitless like oh yeah
00:24:52
Speaker
That's, there was no trigger warning for that one. Yeah. Um, that's, there's like that Simpsons character. He's like this Texan that usually has, you know, two holsters, one on each hip or whatever. I don't know. I think he might have OCD too, because one time he was like shooting up in the air. He has to go bang, bang, one, two, three, four, bang, bang, one, two, three, four. Like, yeah.
00:25:21
Speaker
that this is what I'm picturing now, like just an idiot with a couple of guns like showing off for no reason.
00:25:31
Speaker
This was also just weird and disturbing. It's reported that he had shot a stray pit bull that was in the neighborhood. He claimed that it was attacking his Labrador retriever, but police that it was reported to actually maintain that he ended up orchestrating the attack between the two dogs as an excuse to shoot the pit bull, like he set it up and intentionally made it happen.
00:25:58
Speaker
um yeah that's fucked up yeah very i feel bad for that dog and his dog because yeah that's disturbing he would do that to his own dog like set it up to get attacked yeah it's like the homicidal um triangle they talk about when they're kids if they're hurting animals or animal cruelty like it's so sad i think yeah yeah
00:26:29
Speaker
Um, some of the last bit of, I don't have too much more like background, I guess.
00:26:39
Speaker
said that Robert had cheated on Mary at least once with this sex worker that he had met at a massage parlor. And this was backed up, like this happened because he reportedly told coworkers that it had happened, partially because he was worrying that Mary would find out.
00:27:02
Speaker
that it was actually like this affair was the cause of a urinary tract infection uh that had made him sick for several days and then like kept him from going to work what yeah so he he told co-workers about it like that's why he's sick and stuff stupid that that will keep her finding out telling other people right okay
00:27:31
Speaker
Robert's parents had actually divorced when he was 15 and it's later said that like they believed that their divorce at a younger age for him had contributed to some of the difficulties he had later in life.
00:27:57
Speaker
Uh, I know plenty of people's parents are fucking divorced. Right. Hello. Yeah.
00:28:07
Speaker
And all the while, like Robert, well, all this behavior, like the weird hunting stuff and the stuff with the dogs and a fair and controlling behavior, all, well, this is happening. Robert's trying to maintain to the rest of like the family in the outside world that he's this really devoted family man and like the pretty sure perfect life kind of thing. But yeah.
00:28:32
Speaker
Yeah, they're like scared to be seen as anything but perfect, it sounds like. Yeah, probably.
Explosion and Investigation
00:28:38
Speaker
Yeah. So in 1998, friends noted that Robert began speaking about committing suicide due to the state of his marriage. And then also in 1998, the couple ended up going to their church's senior pastor for marital counseling.
00:28:57
Speaker
So that might have worked for a little while because it is a few years before everything happened. I don't know how much, if anything, got better from that but... Mary's mother, this is from Wikipedia because it had some nice quotes in this.
00:29:20
Speaker
Mary's mother Ginny Cooper told investigators, quote, Fisher didn't socialize often with family because of a fear of getting too close to people and losing them. Oh, weird. Yeah.
00:29:37
Speaker
Fisher's mother Jan told investigators that she had been a yes sir wife who did not stand up to Fisher's father. She added that she saw similar dynamics early in Fisher's marriage to Mary and that she had spoken to her about her concerns. And also said that a close friend of his stated that his family bore a striking resemblance to that of his childhood.
00:30:05
Speaker
right so just like repeating the cycle and everything yeah the man's the domineering head of the house yeah the woman's like subordinate um escorting a dick yeah he's just flicking his tail i heard it a couple times um my dog's outside my door too i think um if
00:30:35
Speaker
more from Wikipedia. These were quotes from Wade Rensock, a former neighbor, thought these were interesting. He said, quote, they didn't have they did not have a happy marriage. They screamed constantly and everybody heard it. You could hear it.
00:31:02
Speaker
Uh, in the house next door and you never really heard him scream, which is kind of weird. I mean, he had a way about him, but you never heard him scream. You always heard his wife screaming things like you're worthless. I could have done better than you and we should get a divorce. End quote. I thought that was interesting that like.
00:31:28
Speaker
he's never screaming right and you can hear but that doesn't mean he's not like still being like abusive or at least like psychologically abusive towards his family just because you can't hear him being the one screaming or anything yeah yeah he could be just hissing at her in fury and like
00:31:51
Speaker
spinning in her face we don't know yeah but definitely not not a happy relationship from either side
00:31:58
Speaker
Yeah, not great sounding. No, Robert told one of his hunting friends that he was renewing his commitment to his faith after having distanced himself from the church for a number of months. Yeah, like Mary was always really involved in the church and Robert had kind of taken a step back leading up to the events. But right before everything happened, he kind of was like,
00:32:28
Speaker
kind of reinserting himself into the church and just talking about this. Yeah. He also said that he, like during this time, he began saying that he couldn't live without his family. And Mary at the same time had started to tell several of her friends that she was planning on divorcing Robert soon.
00:32:54
Speaker
Yeah, I bet he could tell that she was fed up. I'm sure he could, yeah. Yeah, and then he's just like realizing what would happen if that were to happen. Sounds like he's like, oh great, my life is gonna fall apart.
00:33:12
Speaker
Yeah, this picture perfect family, or he thinks it's picture perfect, whatever. Right. Yeah.
00:33:24
Speaker
leads us to the events of April 9, 2001, around 10 p.m., a neighbor reports hearing a loud argument coming from the Fisher home, and then that's really all it said, and then approximately 10 hours later, at about 8.42 a.m., the Fisher home suddenly explodes, like a huge explosion happens inside the home, and it bursts into flames the whole time. Yeah, it's crazy.
00:33:54
Speaker
It's a huge explosion. It's a full Michael Bay movie. Right? It's crazy. So Mary, age 38, Brittany, 12, and Robert Jr., age 10, were all inside the house at the time of the April 10th, 2001 explosion. And their bodies were discovered lying in their beds. So, like, firefighters? From every part of the whole family, including the father you said?
00:34:22
Speaker
No. Robert's nowhere to be found. Okay, the similar names. Okay, damn it. Yeah, sorry, that's for Bobby. So firefighters who were responding to the scene noted that the explosion had been strong enough to rattle houses in all directions for about half a mile. Wow.
00:34:46
Speaker
And when they arrived at the scene, neighbors were actually responding to the fire. They were trying to use garden hoses to keep the flames under control, which I think was really cool of them. They took actions pretty quickly because I think firefighters would have responded really quickly to this. Hard to miss that, I'm sure. Yeah, there is pictures of it. It was described as kind of like an inferno.
00:35:14
Speaker
uh firefighters quickly yeah there's probably no chance of them saving it with a little no household garden hoses or whatever no but they did like keep it contained enough because when firefighters kept control of the fire after briefly having to keep their distance as a series of smaller secondary explosions started going off
00:35:36
Speaker
These, they believed were unintentional, likely caused by rifle ammunition, like heating up or even paint cans heating up, like all these little explosions started going off. But the firefighters and everything successfully kept the 20 foot high blaze from spreading to any of the neighboring houses. So that was good. I mean, they probably had heat damage or like warped siding and stuff, but
00:36:03
Speaker
at least it didn't keep spreading because it likely could have looked pretty crazy probably yeah yeah that's the thing yeah when you the newer houses and they built them so close together and everything is just so flammable unless it's like forget stucco that's really ours is very close to our neighbors i would say you know you can spread on it from your yard or your door or whatever yeah
00:36:32
Speaker
So Robert wasn't home at the time, as I said, and responders at the scene discovered the bodies of like his wife and children inside. Further examination of the scene revealed that the explosion was not their cause of death, and they had actually been murdered. They figured this out really quickly. So they weren't just unsuspectingly blown up out of the blue. Great.
00:37:01
Speaker
It's worse than that. That's not surprising though. I don't know why I would be surprised. I was surprised when the house blew up, but now I see he's just more trying to cover his tracks.
00:37:13
Speaker
Yeah, that's what they believe he was doing. So Brittany and Bobby at least had their like their throat slit. It was described from ear to ear. The only saving grace is it seems like all of these murders happened when they were sleeping. So yeah, hopefully. That is like the Amityville one. They were all like.
00:37:38
Speaker
So yeah, the kids had their throat slit from ear to ear, like they're sleeping. And then some sources said like all three of them had their throat slit, so like including his wife, but his wife Mary was shot in the back of the head. So she could have also had her throat slit. It varies source by source, but she was definitely shot in the back of the head as well.
00:38:03
Speaker
Yeah, police theorized that the murders took place between 9.30 pm and 10.15 pm. So that would have been shortly after around the time the neighbor reported hearing the arguments and everything, but it also said that they were sleeping. So I think the timing might be out from the neighbor's statement or something.
00:38:35
Speaker
And then at 10 43 p.m. Robert was spotted on an ATM camera withdrawing $280.
00:38:45
Speaker
And so they know for sure like this is him because they've actually released these pictures and he was driving Mary's Toyota 4Runner at the time he had left what I think was his truck behind in the garage because if you look at pictures of the house they had kind of a car port like overhang on their driveway and you can see his truck parked inside and then the house
00:39:14
Speaker
It looks like it had kind of a driveway that goes up to the side and then the garage is kind of like a front attached garage and then the carport was at the side so his truck is kind of parked under the carport and then the main part of the house is what exploded so when they went and the fire got put out you could still see the the truck and the carport but the rest of the house was basically gone
00:39:40
Speaker
Oh wow, how cool, and his truck was pretty fine. Yeah, so he was seen spotted on this footage driving Mary's vehicle, this Toyota 4Runner. Through their investigations, they determined that or believed some sort of accelerant may have been spread around the house. They described as the flames that
00:40:09
Speaker
Where in the house is more than you would expect from what would be typically found within a house fire. It was just so hot and like spread so quickly and everything.
00:40:24
Speaker
It was like Michael Bay wrote it. It just. Yeah. Well, I think we were watching what family guy earlier and then they jump out of the house and it explodes and then just like keeps exploding and keeps exploding. Oh, like kind of making fun of like some of those old AIDS movies and stuff. And the last one and then. Oh, yeah.
00:40:47
Speaker
I like those, yeah. It's like it's just the highlight reel from like eight different angles. I'll see that instant replay again and again.
00:41:01
Speaker
They definitely know that the fire was intentional or I guess I should say the explosion was intentional because the gas line from the back of the house's furnace had been pulled off and this caused accumulation of gas that was then ignited by a burning candle that was left nearby.
Theories on Robert Fisher's Whereabouts
00:41:22
Speaker
So this setup was really interesting because the candle was a far enough distance from where the gas would start accumulating that it would take about 10 hours for the gas to accumulate enough to reach the candle and to have caused the explosion.
00:41:39
Speaker
Like, so he had, yeah, he was buying time. So this gave Robert like figured that out if he's not an explosive. Right. Yeah, that was a little weird to me. Yeah. It's almost like giving yourself a, um, what do they call it? The, uh,
00:41:57
Speaker
I just I just had the word the line let the fuse like that yeah that delays the explosion because it takes yeah time yeah so it gave him this huge like 10-hour head start and getting away before their bodies or the explosion even happened the next morning
00:42:16
Speaker
So police theorized that Robert had murdered his family because he threatened, he like had understood and felt threatened by Mary's plans to divorce him and that he didn't want Brittany and Bobby to go through what he did as a child, like being children of divorce, I guess, like, sure, better to just kill them throughout life without them. And he's a coward. Sorry. Right. I know. Yeah. What a shitty.
00:42:43
Speaker
piece of shit. I don't know. That's all I have to say. Obviously, they figure all this out really quickly. Robert was virtually named the only police's only suspect and has been the police's only suspect ever in the deaths of his family. They quickly released the statewide bulletin with the issue like an issue to arrest him like on the spot if anybody found him.
00:43:11
Speaker
So he doesn't want to live without them, but then he kills them and runs off to go live without them. Like, fuck you. Sorry. Just makes me so mad. So April 20th, this is 10 days after the explosion, Mary's forerunner, her car was discovered in a forest near young Arizona, about 100 miles away from the home.
00:43:33
Speaker
And the family dog Blue was found outside of it. He was actually hiding under the car and he was very hungry and described as like in an agitated state. Um, so they said he might've been there for a few days before he was found like by himself. So hadn't eaten or anything like that in a few days. Oh, poor Blue. Yeah, very.
00:44:05
Speaker
This was interesting. This I only found on Wikipedia. And that was that an Oakland Raiders hat identical to the one Fisher was last seen wearing in the ATM footage was found inside the vehicle. A pile of human excrement was found near the passenger door. There's no explanation. No. Uh, yeah. Just kidding.
00:44:32
Speaker
Yeah, well, he is a pile of human shit. Exactly. There's no explanation for that. I don't know what. And although police searched the area immediately around where the vehicle was discovered, they only searched one out of the dozens of nearby caves. There's like all these caves nearby and they only searched like one of them.
00:44:56
Speaker
Okay, some of these caves form this really complex underground network that extends for miles beneath the surface. I'm like the only ever searched one. So yeah, several professional
00:45:11
Speaker
Several professional cavers have suggested that Fischer used them as a hiding place before either escaping, killing himself, or dying from low oxygen levels. And professional cavers have visited these caves many times in the years since the murders, but no sign of Fischer has ever emerged. I was afraid you were going to say that.
00:45:35
Speaker
Spoiler, he's a wanted fugitive still. He's never been found. A couple from an Indian reservation near where the car was left.
00:45:53
Speaker
reported seeing a man who fit Robert's description walking along the road in the days before the car was found abandoned. They said that this area, like this young road I think it's called,
00:46:11
Speaker
It's like a fairly vehicle heavy area. So like if he had been walking along the road, he could have like hitchhiked or picked up a ride. There's also all these theories that he had an accomplice. Who knows? Yeah. Why do they think that? I wonder.
00:46:32
Speaker
I think it's more like along the lines that he got away and he's never been found. Also from Wikipedia, Lori Greenback, who was an acquaintance of the Fisher family, she said that her husband had gone camping with Fisher in the area where the truck was found shortly before April 10th.
00:46:54
Speaker
So like leading up to the murders, him and Robert had gone camping in this area and she said that her husband believed that Fisher was scouting the area out and according to her that he was very familiar with that region. So again like this whole he's an outdoorsman, like survivalist. Some people believe he did survive in the woods for like a fairly lengthy amount of time before maybe
00:47:21
Speaker
like leaving the area and going and getting a new identity or something like that. But this young road area where the car was found is obviously the last known location for Robert William Fisher. He has been charged with three counts of first degree murder, unlawful flight to avoid prosecution, and first degree arson.
00:47:45
Speaker
He's currently on the run for allegedly killing his family and then blowing up their house on April 10th, 2001. He is known to go by the alias Bobby Fisher. Yeah, don't really know how they... Yeah, right? The FBI ended up getting involved, so Robert was the 475th person to be added to the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list.
00:48:14
Speaker
He was added on June 29, 2002. He's also been profiled or featured on America's Most Wanted's Dirty Dozen episode and was profiled on The Hunt with John Walsh. I know my mom.
00:48:33
Speaker
Always like John Walsh, like he's the one his son got kidnapped and then was killed. Oh, he's the host of America's Most Wanted, right? Yeah. But he also did like The Hunt. It was like a separate show, I think. The FBI also. Sorry.
00:48:52
Speaker
when it goes after people on a horse. That reality show. Yeah, I remember that one. I've seen that, yeah. That always gave me such bad anxiety. I only watched a few episodes of that.
00:49:06
Speaker
Yeah to do it they had to run away from in the woods and he's tracking them like a Mountie or something and they're like literally just trying to get to the end they they feel like they're really literally running from the law by the time they're done because it's like so such an adrenaline yeah it just gives me anxiety watching those kind of shows it's weird um even though I know obviously nobody's gonna get hurt on either side it just is still anxiety yeah
00:49:36
Speaker
The FBI offered a reward up to $100,000 for info leading to Fisher's capture. By April of 2003, the FBI had hundreds and hundreds of leads, but nothing that ever panned out. So they had all these reported spotings and stuff like that, but nothing ever worked out when they investigated it.
00:49:56
Speaker
Uh, by April of 2016, FBI officials and Scottsdale police displayed new age-enhanced photos of Fisher during a news conference on the 15th anniversary of the murders. And Robert was removed from the top 10, like, FBI's most wanted list on November 3rd, 2021. And they, in their statement, they said, despite his removal, he remains a wanted fugitive. Um,
00:50:24
Speaker
And theories about his whereabouts range from him having committed suicide nearby, like where the Forerunner was found, and that his body has simply never been located, while others believe that he had been hiding under an assumed identity and is either still alive or has since passed away and his remains were not identified as Robert Fisher. So like maybe he passed away under this assumed name he had taken on. Yeah, maybe.
00:50:52
Speaker
Uh, those closest to Robert described him as an arrogant and stated that had he intended to kill himself, he likely would have done so in the house, uh, after rigging up the explosion, um, to go off. So like he likely would have killed himself and then the house explosion would have like covered up the murder suicide, you know, protected his reputation even after.
00:51:19
Speaker
Yeah, I'm more inclined to think something along those lines than him going off and just killing himself sort of unceremoniously in the woods compared to the rest of it. Yeah, because they said he was so arrogant about it that if they believed he was going to kill himself, he would have done so with his family. So they don't believe he did kill himself. They believe he is still alive or maybe has passed away for a different reason since
00:51:49
Speaker
But it's only been like, what, 20 years? No, it's been longer. It was, oh yeah, I guess like 20, yeah, 22 years now. Okay. Yeah. It's hard to say. I don't know if I believe he's still alive or not though. The reason why police are still pushing this is that they have speculated that Fisher may have started a new family.
00:52:18
Speaker
Because he was still fairly young when this happened and cited that the fear that he might eventually decide to leave and Annihilate that family like he did his original family is one of their chief reasons for continuing to search for him Yeah
00:52:35
Speaker
So going through his age per enhanced progression, whatever you want to call it, pictures will be on the drive. Like I said, I feel like I had seen these before because when I saw the picture of the family, I was like, he's definitely familiar to me. Yeah, so he's described as medium build, 190-ish pounds, six foot zero.
00:53:03
Speaker
Yeah, I had prior experiences, oh, the said surgical catheter technician, respiratory therapist and fireman, hair color brown, eyes blue, light complexion. He's white, he's American. For like scars and stuff, Fisher has surgical scars on his lower back.
00:53:26
Speaker
And then for like his physicality, this is where they kind of talked about it. Fisher is physically fit and is an avid outdoorsman hunter and fisherman. He has a noticeable gold crown on his upper left, first by cuspid tooth, like his canine tooth as a gold crown, which they said is pretty distinct. That's not very often.
00:53:47
Speaker
It's like that. I can't really see it because his mouth is never open in most of them. Yeah, right. He may walk with an exaggerated erect posture and his chest pushed out due to a lower back injury. Fisher is known to chew tobacco heavily. He has ties to New Mexico and Florida. And Fisher is believed to be in possession of several weapons, including a high powered rifle.
00:54:15
Speaker
Yeah. And I just saw the kids. Yeah. People just go average, though. Yeah. I don't know how else to just. Yeah. Right. Could be. Yeah. I don't know if the FBI is like still offering up that reward of one hundred thousand dollars. This is like from their original like wanted kind of thing that they posted. Yeah. And then they thought.
00:54:43
Speaker
They caught him on video because there's some. Well, they did. That's definitely him. That's that ATM footage that happened. Right around the times of the murder. So there's some people that think that footage happened after he killed his family. And there's some that think that footage is right before. So like he went back to the house after being on that footage and killed his family, rigged everything up and then left.
00:55:13
Speaker
But he only withdrew $280. And they don't talk about like bank records after that or him withdrawing any funds. I assume they would have like tracked bank usage or anything like that. So $280 is not a lot to run away with. So no. Yeah, not even like
00:55:36
Speaker
nothing to be like yeah trigger any kind of um money laundering um uh right limits or whatever yeah it's don't do more than ten thousand dollars yeah it's a really low amount um for him so weird yeah but the car was found 10 days later so he
00:56:03
Speaker
At least even if he abandoned the car a couple days before that, the couple said that they saw somebody matching his description, walking along the highway a couple days before they found the car on the 10th, so at least passed a week after he was still alive and he was in the area. That's so weird. He obviously wasn't trying to hide that he had gone.
00:56:30
Speaker
right? Like, I don't know how they didn't find him in those eight days. Yeah, if you hung around the area, that just seems stupid. Because they immediately were like searching for him and issued statewide bulletins that if they found him, he was to be arrested. So yeah. Yeah, I just I can't see any
00:56:55
Speaker
remorse or any kind of emotions like that in any of his actions. And I've just been reading that finally got to that Mine Hunter guys book by John Douglas. Oh, yeah. Mark, old shaker or something. And like, oh, it's like the people, some of the lesser known guys, but still crazy sociopaths or whatever you want to call them that they talked to that they're just like, you know, they killed a kid that like,
00:57:25
Speaker
You knew like, you know what I mean? Like you knew like their parents or whatever, or like was given because they were so good friends with the parents. They were given a child's like trusted safe word that only trusted adults would have and like use that against to like lure this small child away. Yeah. Just like the most heinous behavior. And then John was like called in to see if he was
00:57:51
Speaker
should be eligible for parole because he kept coming up for parole and the parole board was like, yeah, we want you to weigh in on this kind of thing. And okay. He's just like, he doesn't show any remorse or feeling for any of the family. And like, I don't see that he wouldn't just, and like, he was motivated by this and that and that and blah, blah, blah. And then like, I'm not seeing that any of that could change. He could have another crime of opportunity come up again. Yeah. Uh,
00:58:21
Speaker
just so senseless. Anything involving kids is just so heartbreaking. I'm like, I want to have no empathy for them when something involves kids. I'm like, fuck you, stay in prison the rest of your life. Goodbye. Right. But it's just the reason why we have to try and understand those people too, to be like, what the hell? What could we have done to prevent this, if anything? Because it's just so
00:58:51
Speaker
Yeah, so fucked up. Wow, that was really crazy. I had not heard of that one. Yeah, like I said, his picture's familiar to me. When I was looking it up, the story didn't necessarily sound familiar to me, so I don't know why his picture was, but yeah. No, sadly, I have heard one
00:59:20
Speaker
similar in the way if there was a house that was blown up with someone's children inside but it wasn't even this one which is horrible and gross. Awful. Right yeah because I remember hearing one where it involved like the um what are they called social worker had
00:59:42
Speaker
gone to drop the kids off at the house or something with the dad but then the dad like slammed the door and locked the social worker out and the social worker like calls 911 and he's like something's gonna happen these kids are in the house with this dad that they shouldn't be in with and he's just locked me out and I remember like the 911 operator in this case was kind of like
01:00:05
Speaker
almost didn't believe them. So it was like, in retrospect, really horrible that then like, yeah, he like blows up two kids inside. Oh, it's horrible. Yeah. That's like yours, but not like yours. Yeah. Yeah. Man. Nope. That was, that was crazy one.
01:00:26
Speaker
Yeah, just weird. I happen to think he I think he definitely escaped somewhere whether or not he's our new family or his since died on For a different reason that's kind of I could see the new family thing for sure. Yeah Fucking arrogant to be like yes
01:00:49
Speaker
like you don't love me anymore and this isn't going the way i want it to and he was always so controlling that he just wanted to and a lot of like abusive people do threaten suicide but they would never actually go through with it it's always just a threat so just because he was talking about it before doesn't mean he was ever actually gonna follow through with it it is a very like yeah psychologically
01:01:13
Speaker
Yeah, abusive thing. Yeah, because he doesn't see himself as the problem or whatever. Yeah, exactly. Whether he was saying he couldn't live without his family or whatever doesn't mean he would be likely to actually kill himself. No, it's more like the if I can't have you, no one else can kind of thing. Yeah, it's definitely a more controlling thing than somebody who's actually depressed and suicidal.
01:01:44
Speaker
Yeah. Right. Which maybe we'll see more of that type of one in my case. We'll know different. Great. Okay. We'll run the gamut here of different kinds of the two sides. Yeah. Oh shoot. Okay. Well, we'll have a break and mentally and emotionally prepare ourselves for round two. Quick break, quick break. Grab yourself another cup of tea or whatever you need to get through this next part.
01:02:14
Speaker
Yeah. Well, all our long time listeners will definitely know that recording a podcast is not always easy. You know, nope. So you better believe like when we find something we like that we're going to probably stick to it and not look for anything else. So yeah, that's one of the reasons why I love Sandcaster. When we tried it, we were like,
01:02:43
Speaker
Okay, finally, I wanted to have the video and it's what, up to 4K video, which is pretty effing cool. I can see every pour on Kelsey. No, I'm just kidding. I hope not. But it's a great video and just really easy on this one. So once we stopped recording on our phones, I was like, yeah, this is the one for us.
01:03:14
Speaker
So even though sometimes our computers fuck up, it always comes through for us in the end because we've never lost like a recording, knock on wood. And every time we've had to use it, it's just been really great and really easy and everything's just recorded when we wanted it to, which is, you know, it's a lot to ask for when you podcast as much as we do.
01:03:41
Speaker
Yeah, it's nice that each of us has our own separate audio recording that you can download and edit. So it makes when one of us is doing something or has something, it's easy. You can edit that out even with the other person was talking because you have two separate tracks that you can edit.
01:04:04
Speaker
Yeah, it's one of the reasons we love Zencaster. Definitely, it makes it a lot easier. And the audio quality is also a lot better than any of the other programs we tried using in the past. Yes, it is the best. So go to zencaster.com slash pricing and use my code cryptic and you'll get 30% off your first month of any Zencaster paid plan.
01:04:36
Speaker
We want you to have the same easy experiences we do for all our podcasting and content needs. It's time to share your story. Keep it cryptic. Hello, we are back. And no, you're not ready for my case. So I'm just going to give it to you anyway. Because it's now getting late on a Sunday night for us to be recording, which is weird for us. But that's the way it worked out this week.
01:05:05
Speaker
Yeah, I was closing on Friday when we normally record and then yesterday I was still working on my notes. I wasn't ready then. I just watched a bunch of movies yesterday instead. It was great.
01:05:25
Speaker
uh we watched one movie today than which we could have probably watched two smaller ones because i told you we were like okay we're watching open armor if we can get through it which we did but it was a little long in my opinion yeah i great cast like so many people
01:05:48
Speaker
Yeah, I do want to eventually see it. I think it'll probably end up on Prime first. Whenever service it ends up on for free, I will watch it on when it's free. I don't pay for stuff.
01:06:09
Speaker
I can't remember if we watched it for free, if he maybe bought it with Xbox points. Yeah. But yeah, now I'll have to watch Barbie and you'll have to watch open. Yeah. I love Barbie. On my shirt, we kept having girls sweaters, like little hoodies that said, hi, Barbie. And I kept holding them up for my co-workers and hi, Barbie. So funny. I'm thinking it's going to be a little bit more entertaining to me than
01:06:35
Speaker
perhaps Oppenheimer. I think it's cute. You kind of just have to take it for what it is. Don't take it too seriously. Oh, I never do with movies. Yeah. Okay, it's fine. All right, so this is the story of Chris Michael Benoit, but really the story of the whole Benoit family tragedy as it were. So yeah, you've like
01:07:04
Speaker
tease this one to me a few times, but I don't. I just know of it. Yeah. Just because of hearing the Chris Jericho wrestler talk about it before, but hadn't really like dived into it. So yeah, here we go. But yeah, he was actually a Canadian who was born in Montreal, Quebec.
01:07:35
Speaker
what would yeah on may 21st 1967 to a Margaret and Michael Benoit um so yeah he was a little bilingual boy he could speak english and french um and he had one sister and i don't remember anything saying her name either um that's so unfortunate no i i can't say i would particularly digging like there was
01:08:04
Speaker
There was a lot of info on other stuff. I got a lot of stuff from Jericho's podcast. Anyway, I'll talk about it. So this is fun fact. He grew up in Edmonton. We know her. We know Edmonton. No. Hailing.
01:08:26
Speaker
fucking Travis. What's his name? Fucking Dexter killer and this dude. Oh, you're not doing so great. Oh, the guy that's yeah. Mark. Yeah. Mark something. God damn it. I thought it was Travis. Why did I think it was Travis? Because there was a Travis Vader that killed somebody somewhere here in Western Canada or something. Yeah.
01:08:57
Speaker
Um, you know, there's so many to choose from as it were. Um, yeah, but, um, okay. But this, well, this, yeah, this one's just not a traditional true crime case that we would do normally.
01:09:15
Speaker
normal or something like this. Yeah. Um, so it's just like a bit on his, um, career and stuff, of course. Um, but yeah, it was cool that he was like from Edmonton and he was billed as hailing from Edmonton for most of his career. So whenever they say where you're from, even though sometimes it's not where the person's actually from, they, they always said he was from Edmonton. I think one of his nicknames, his ring names was the rabid Wolverine.
01:09:45
Speaker
Oh, okay. Yeah. Um, from all that's interesting, uh, the quote, he was pretty much driven from the age of 12, 13 to get in the wrestling industry. His father, Mike Benoit explained, Chris lifted weights every day. He was 13 years old. He was breaking records in high school in our basement. Okay.
01:10:09
Speaker
He's really into it. Always in that like bodybuilder kind of thing. Oh, totally. And he happened to love and idolize such wrestlers as Tom Dynamite Kid Billington, who I hadn't really heard of, but the hitman heart.
01:10:32
Speaker
I've heard of him. Yeah, I used to. I don't watch like wrestling anymore, but I used to with my dad when I was younger. And my favorite wrestler was the rock. I mean, come on. And like, I really like Chris Jericho, who's friends with Chris Benoit, who we're talking about here, which is why he knows so much. And Jericho is like Pat's favorite wrestler in
01:11:00
Speaker
I think he's similar to The Rock in that he's got that energy and personality and he really sells it. He was talking to William Shatner on one of his first podcast episodes that I happened to run across when I was looking for these other ones. He describes it as almost like a vaudeville type of
01:11:22
Speaker
play that you have to do and stuff like because it's like you know how they have like the soap opera type storylines and stuff they really have to do the behind the scenes stuff the background stuff of them walking the the long hallways like stomping down the hallway just coming after you the trash talk and everything yeah um yeah well
01:11:50
Speaker
get to some of it. Yeah, I've heard the Bret the Hitman heart too. I think I renewed his license plate last year because he still lives in Albert.
01:12:00
Speaker
oh shoot yeah yeah because this um family the heart family has uh what they called the heart family dungeon uh colloquially colloquially it's uh out of calgary um so that's where like a lot of the dressers and i guess in western can it got their start like jericho and and benoit and stuff
01:12:26
Speaker
Okay. Yeah, so I've heard of it. Even though they call it a dungeon, which sounds scary, but it's really just in someone's basement, like it's in Stu Hart's basement. But it was famous for training like up and coming wrestlers and stuff like that. But funnily enough, I quickly was googling it just to double check. I was like, that's out of Calgary, right? Like I heard of this from
01:12:54
Speaker
Chris's books or stuff before. And I Googled the Hart family and what comes up was a female family annihilator case, which had nothing to do with what I was trying to Google. I know. How are there just so many? Yeah, apparently it was this female couple, Jennifer Hart and her wife, Sarah, that killed their six children. And I was like, great. Now there's another one that I'll have to cover if we do a
01:13:23
Speaker
second version of this which we might not for a while because it's pretty yeah yeah there are cases to have to research yeah yeah I don't think it's something everybody wants to listen to every week either
01:13:44
Speaker
Yeah He ended up adopting a mix of his idols wrestling styles the quote high-risk style and physical appearance more reminiscent of the former which was the Tom dynamite kid Billington And then he adopted Brett's sharpshooter as his own finisher like they're finishing move or whatever. Oh, yeah in them. Yeah
01:14:10
Speaker
Um, so we started out on the stampede wrestling circuit, which is, I guess the one around Calgary or Calgary. Yeah. Cause we're, we're the cowboys of Canada here. Yeah. At least that's yeah. That's what definitely Calgary is known for the stampede down there. Yeah. Um, okay.
01:14:38
Speaker
So from Stampede Wrestling to New Japan World Wrestling, then onto WCW, which stands for World Championship Wrestling, and then onto the WWF, WWE, whatever it is now. His first match was on November 22nd, 1985 in Calgary. A tag team match with him on a team with the remarkable Rick Patterson.
01:15:06
Speaker
That's his name. Okay. Yeah, I know. So scary, right? They're remarkable. Yeah. And they were pitted against Butch Moffat and Mike Hammer. They won after Chris pinned Moffat with a Sunset Flip. However, not everything worked as well with that debut match.
01:15:32
Speaker
Oh yeah, because he tried something and it didn't work as well. It said on Wikipedia, from the beginning, similarities between Benoit and Billington were apparent as Benoit adopted many of his moves, such as the diving headbutt and the snap suplex, the homage. I love those names. I almost had to click on every one of those to try and see what it was.
01:15:55
Speaker
Having a wrestling move described is not the same as seeing it. I'm like, what? No. It's hard to figure out when it's described. I didn't think I bothered including any of them. I was like, oh, I kind of get it. But the homage was complete with his initial billing as dynamite Chris Benoit. So I guess that's what he went by the first time.
01:16:22
Speaker
But according to Benoit in his first match, he attempted the diving headbutt before learning how to land correctly and had the wit knocked out of him. Yeah, that's not good. Okay. And he said he would never do the move again at that point. So he dropped that one like right away. Yeah, that's fair. Okay. It's like, nope.
01:16:47
Speaker
Yeah, it's like so many things. The first thing you need to do is learn how to fall properly. Right. Yeah, in like so many sports, the first thing you need to do is learn how to fall correctly and like safely. Okay, yeah, I thought you meant just wrestling. I was like, did you learn that on glow? No. But yeah, you're right. It was probably true of a lot of them.
01:17:14
Speaker
He was very good, winning 22 championships and being lauded for his technical skill. But he was perfectionist and would just beat himself up figuratively, of course, if he fucked up. Yeah. Okay. But yeah, it was like this self-flagellation that Jericho witnessed firsthand during a new Japan pro wrestling match.
01:17:39
Speaker
where apparently Chris Benoit accidentally sold meaning you know made them
01:17:46
Speaker
like reacted to the move that Jericho was doing, even though Jericho slightly screwed it up. So it kind of made it look like he was reacting to something that didn't really connect or actually hit him. Oh, okay. Yeah. Even though they don't really, really hit each other for most of the time, are they? You know, where they're like pulling. Yeah. Yeah. Like when it looks like they like slam them head first or like with that kind of shit.
01:18:12
Speaker
Of course, they do really hit each other with chairs and stuff. So it's like, there is that. So what it said was Jericho slightly botched a spin kick with Benoit selling a move that had barely touched him. The spot would have happened so fast that barely anybody would have noticed anyway, but the imperceptible mistake weighed heavily on Benoit.
01:18:35
Speaker
Um, and then this was on the wrestling ink article talking about finding Ben while backstage after the match, Jericho said on talk is Jericho after the match was done. I went looking for him. I couldn't find him anywhere. I found him in the boiler room doing squats. And I said, what are you doing? And he said, you know, I shouldn't have never bumped off that. That was so unprofessional of me. And it was such a bad rookie mistake. I had to do squats. He did 500 squats as like purging himself for making that mistake.
01:19:05
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's not good. No, and he kind of like finished that one off by saying that like, you know, when you hear things like that, when you kind of equate it to the last few days, there was a lot of issues with him.
01:19:20
Speaker
so he was troubled but found happiness outside of the ring several times because he was married once to a woman named Martina whom he had two children with and they were David and Megan but they had been divorced by like 1997 so that was his first marriage and then he began dating a
01:19:46
Speaker
a woman named Nancy Sullivan, who was a fellow wrestler. She was born Nancy Tafaloni, but then had been married to the WCW Booker slash, I read, head of creative and frequent opponent of Benoit's, Kevin Sullivan. Sorry, too many Chris's. This is Nancy. She's married to Kevin.
01:20:14
Speaker
Okay. Kevin, as both Benoit and Nancy's boss and booker of all the shows and stuff, came up with a storyline that would have Nancy start cheating on Kevin himself with Chris Benoit in the show. Okay. That sounds great. Does this sound like it's going to go well? He's manifesting this affair.
01:20:45
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, and Nancy had been a wrestler, too. She had this is fun. She had wrestled under the ring name of Woman Woman character.
01:20:57
Speaker
There's a picture of her with the woman title. She's dressed up. She doesn't look like she's doing a caveman thing or anything, but apparently. Oh, okay. I see Slay Girl. What's the... Oh, Slay Girl, she looks so good at that bikini. Yeah, she looks like she should be on a Sports Illustrated magazine. Like, what is she doing? She's gorgeous. Just stunning.
01:21:23
Speaker
So then of course, yeah, exactly. You can see where this is going. She's got a storyline with this Chris Benoit. She's gorgeous. They fall in love for real. She played a character named Woman. I am Woman. First name Woman, last name Woman. Sometimes she was doing stuff like lighting. I don't know. They'd be like valets and managers.
01:21:50
Speaker
of some of the wrestlers. I think I have a bit on it on her thing there more, but yeah, she would like go out and like light the guy's cigarette for him before he went on stage and stuff. That sounds like fun, but like she could wrestle too, right? But they didn't always give the women the storylines. Anyway, that's a whole nother. Yeah, I remember seeing some women wrestling matches, but
01:22:19
Speaker
yeah yeah it was never the same it was a lot of like hair yeah hair pulling and like shoving and just more more like bad mouthing each other just yelling at each other yeah it's more it's it's better now they do have a lot more women's matches and as i have here they and i knew they stopped calling them the divas and started calling them the women's champions instead of just you know
01:22:46
Speaker
That's good. Yeah. Progress. But yes, it became almost WWE legend status that he had booked his own divorce, because Chris and Nancy got together and he had written it himself. Damn. Sorry. Yeah. I know. I didn't know that. I thought that was crazy.
01:23:13
Speaker
Um, but also there was other shady stuff, like once Nancy suspected Chris of having an affair with at the time, one of the divas, so-called WWE divas. Okay. Yeah. Well, I mean, when your relationship starts the way it does, I guess, I don't know. Yeah, by one of you having an affair. It's not, not great. Although I, yeah, I hate to say like that. Cause it's like, they
01:23:40
Speaker
It's just not like they intended to, but just in playing the parts, they just. Yeah. But yeah, it's definitely a weird way to start. And yeah. There was popular online speculation that the diva in question was Victoria. I don't know who she is. But I do know she categorically denied it in a post on her MySpace page. Oh, MySpace shout out. MySpace.
01:24:10
Speaker
these were the times yeah um a man named William Regal spoke on his podcast gentlemen villain of being in a terrible car crash with Chris and Nancy I know what a name sounds like some like romance novel yeah maybe that yeah I don't know if that was his ring name or anything I just read this story
01:24:39
Speaker
He was in a car crash with them. He referred to it as a near death experience for all of them. They had been headed, sorry. They were headed back to the hotel after training at the gym in preparation for the upcoming pay-per-view, Spring Stampede 97. They stopped at a stop sign and waiting for traffic. He noticed a vehicle coming at high speed in the rearview mirror, heading right at them.
01:25:07
Speaker
And all you could do is watch it abject horror as it came barreling into the back of their stationary vehicle. Oh, yeah, right. Yeah, especially like if you know you Yeah, you can't go forward or anything because it's not safe. Like what do you do? Yeah, because you're gonna hit someone else.
01:25:30
Speaker
Damn. They were hit badly. The other car flipped over, causing them to flip three times over. Jesus. Yeah. They must've been going so fast. I know. So apparently they were upside down. The roof was crushed in. And then William woke up and he saw Chris and Nancy hang in there. And they looked to him like they were already dead. Chris's tongue was apparently just hanging out of his mouth.
01:26:01
Speaker
But William managed to kick himself out of the car and pulled the other two to safety somehow, amazingly. Oh my god. Good thing they were all in shape. I don't know. Yeah, that's some like superhero movie shit. Right? The car exploded. No, I don't know. But they still wrestled that night at the show because the show always goes on at the WWE.
01:26:29
Speaker
jesus always they don't let that stop them not vince mcmahon he's gonna make his money yeah if they didn't stop when uh what bret hart's brother died on the way down to the ring that one time like they just let the show go on no that's fucked it yeah
01:26:56
Speaker
Anyway, don't get me started on. I could do a whole podcast on the crimes of Vince McMahon, I'm sure. Why? Yes, so throughout Chris's career, he had many friends, including Jericho and guys like Eddie Guerrero. He was super close with Nancy's family, like her sister Sandra.
01:27:17
Speaker
Um, she was on the Jericho's podcast. It was really cool to listen to her, especially cause she said, um, she's been told she sounds a lot like Nancy by a lot of people. Yeah. Nancy was born in Boston. She debuted in her first match in Florida and was wrestling with the WCW in a group called the Satanists. Oh.
01:27:38
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. Here it was. She managed this guy called the Sandman and her like shtick was going out, lighting his cigarettes before the match, opening his beers, and also apparently hit his opponents with something called a Singapore cane, which when I hovered over it on Wikipedia, it says it's a Shinai, a Japanese sword made of bamboo for practicing and competitions of Kendo.
01:28:07
Speaker
Oh, yes. I've seen that. Okay. A stick? Yes. Maybe I have heard of this. Yeah. It's basically like the wooden sword. It's a bunch of the pieces and they're like tied together and then it has like the protector thing across. If you Google like an actual picture of it, I'm sure you would be like, I've seen that movies. It looks familiar. Yes. Yeah.
01:28:34
Speaker
Yeah, there was a little picture and I was like, okay, I think I know what that is. Yeah. So, yeah, they definitely had like lots of friends, but it was also told that Benoit could be a bit of a bully too, especially to the younger talent. Okay. One quote. Threatened. Yeah. Threatened.
01:28:57
Speaker
Oh, he was such a big guy too. I don't know why he would be like, feeling his career threatened by like up and comers or something. Yeah.
01:29:07
Speaker
Yeah, I think that was a big thing with his mindset. Yeah, the importance of his career. Because it is very like performance and like personality and like stuff. Well, and hard on your body too is like hockey or something where they'll call the hockey players old if they're like in their 40s because you just can't like do it that long in your life.
01:29:31
Speaker
Yeah, right? So many injuries. Yeah. So current AEW ring announcer, Justin Roberts, went into details of these in his autobiography, Best Seat in the House. According to Roberts, on one such occasion, Benoit tackled him to the ground in an airport along with Jamie Noble. Both men put him in a double cross face and refused to let go even after he tapped.
01:30:00
Speaker
Oh, yeah, report. The incident left Roberts unable to walk for days afterwards. Oh my god. That's not okay. I was surprised to. Wow. And then it said oddly, in spite of the bullying behavior to Roberts, Benoit would also treat him with kindness and often called Roberts father to check up on him as he was going through cancer treatment.
01:30:32
Speaker
The duality of man. Yeah, that's so weird. I don't really understand that, but okay.
01:30:40
Speaker
No. Yeah, it seems like hazing sort of behavior. Yeah. Just, yeah, extreme. I know this other guy, they talked about him bullying. I was like, oh, I recognize his name. The Miz. He's like this little blonde guy. He's in the Scooby-Doo movie where they do a WWE crossover. So if you've ever seen that,
01:31:05
Speaker
I think I have. Maybe we watched it with Rain because she definitely owns it along with like the one where they have Kiss, Gastar because Scooby Doo's done across. I have definitely seen the Kiss one. I don't know about the WWE one. No. Okay so yeah he believed the Miz and I said yeah so did we from our couches a little bit.
01:31:35
Speaker
Oh, he's fine. But he, Benoit basically kicked him out of the locker room for getting chicken crumbs on someone else's duffel bag for seven months. He wouldn't let him back in. Shit, that's okay. That's a lot. I thought maybe just today. Extreme reactions. Yeah, seven months is a really long time. I know.
01:32:03
Speaker
Um, yeah. And then there was other weird behaviors. Sadly, Benoit seemed to become more and more paranoid in the months before his death. Uh, people stating on that, um, dark side of the ring documentary. I don't know if you heard of that one. I haven't seen it, but I'm not sure if I get whatever it's airs on. Um, but apparently he was becoming obsessed over, uh, possible, uh, like being a target of kidnapping.
01:32:33
Speaker
child kidnapping and violent fans, all this kind of stuff. Okay, weird. I know it does seem rather specific. I do know, yeah, I started taking different routes to the gym, the airport, he felt like he was being followed. I'm not sure what that was about. But
01:32:58
Speaker
They mentioned on the talk as Jericho that there had been at least one actual kidnapping of someone adjacent to the wrestling world. So I guess it wasn't completely unfounded, but I literally did not have time to look into like whatever this kidnapping was. I should have done a cursory glance, but these notes were already getting long by the time I had my two main sources going.
01:33:28
Speaker
Yeah. They were really good sources. What became, okay, yes, with Sandra, his sister-in-law talking on the podcast, what became really noticeable was a little bit more of a sense of unsafety and paranoia for the family. He'd just be constantly checking the alarm at night, constantly be checking things, and for himself,
01:33:51
Speaker
He used to be fairly laid back about stuff like that, but there was like, there was never any issue with that. So when it did start happening, I noticed immediately, I still kind of look back on it. Was it a precursor to everything that happened? I don't know. Yeah. Just like obsessive. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not sure.
01:34:17
Speaker
Yeah, the exact cause of the paranoia. There's a lot of factors going on that they pointed to, especially in the one article there with the different things in his life going on. He was given the nickname of the Crippler, or at one time I saw the Canadian Crippler. Oh, shoot. OK. Yeah.
Chris Benoit's Wrestling Tragedy
01:34:43
Speaker
This was after a match where his opponent's neck ended up broken, but it wasn't like it was really his fault So it said
01:34:54
Speaker
This nickname was cemented when Benoit wrestled Sabu at November 2nd, remember, 1994. The match, the main event of the show, ended after just two minutes when Benoit threw Sabu into a face-first bump. Sabu miscalculated and tried to change direction mid-air, causing him to land directly on his neck. Sabu. Yeah, it says he broke his neck, causing damage to his spinal cord and nervous system.
01:35:24
Speaker
Jesus. Well, that's rough. It's like, it doesn't sound like it was a mistake, like, you know. No, the other guy was, should have been going like one way that they had rehearsed or what you would typically do and he decided not to do that. Yeah, it sounds more accidental than like intentional or anything. Yeah, it's always a risk because as much as they try and
01:35:55
Speaker
What is it? Choreograph things. It's not like doing an actual stunt scene. You only get one take. So it said that afterward, according to the book Ring of Hell, I don't know who wrote that, but they were talking about it in the article. Paul Heyman found Benoit hiding in a closet. You know Paul Heyman? He's a really loud guy. He's always the manager for Brock Lesnar.
01:36:20
Speaker
He comes out and shouts and talks and blah, blah, blah, because Brock Lesnar doesn't say a lot. He's just a big guy that fucking knock you out, but doesn't really say much. So this is like his hype man. Um, but he's been with the WWE for a long time too, I guess. Anyway, so Paul Heyman found Bunwa hiding in a closet, rocking and weeping uncontrollably at what had happened. He was terrified that he had crippled Sabu in the ring.
01:36:50
Speaker
Paul Heyman had to physically pick Benoit up and send him to the hospital with Sabu. The event was clearly traumatic for Benoit, however Heyman took advantage of the accident and used the footage, which would become infamous and one of the most replayed spots in ECW history, to push Benoit even further, using it to emphasize the Crippler nickname. That sucks.
01:37:16
Speaker
Yeah, I really didn't like that. No, I think anybody, if you were doing that, if anybody was the one that had thrown him and that had happened, any of them would have been super upset. And then for that to be used against you just for publicity and everything, that really sucks. Yeah, they do get upset. We were watching Total Divas back when it was a reality show, but the Divas when they were still called that.
01:37:46
Speaker
and Brie Bella, one of the twins, she accidentally kneed one of the girls in the face when, you know, wasn't supposed to connect and she was like crying afterwards. She felt horrible. Like, yeah, but it happens. Like, uh, anyway, it's rough. It's a rough business. That's for sure. Um,
01:38:07
Speaker
Chris Jericho recalled how a string of deaths of wrestlers and friends culminating with the death of their good friend Eddie Guerrero just broke Benoit. He described Benoit holding onto Jericho like a child clutches a parent at the funeral of Eddie. Yeah, it sounded really sad. He stayed out of the public eye afterwards and began withdrawing from friends and family also.
01:38:37
Speaker
He eventually started writing in a journal to help him try and work through his feelings of depression and grief and hopelessness and all this from all these people he knew dying. He just felt like if all the other ones can die so young, because they can in wrestling, of course, he might be next.
01:38:58
Speaker
but he just kept working, never took any time off. Apparently he did, after Eddie's death, have dreams of maybe opening a wrestling academy one day. And like, yeah, he was like really into it so much that like the sister in Los Angeles says that she still has 500 shirts that say Benoit Academy in storage somewhere. Like really wanted to do it. But for whatever reason, that one never got off the ground.
01:39:28
Speaker
And then obviously they started their family. Nancy and Chris had a seven-year-old son named Daniel who they just doted on. He was born November 23rd, 2000, which my brother was also born in November, my Daniel. Then their little Daniel was in horseback riding like lessons and he had recently just
01:39:54
Speaker
done a full turn around the neighborhood or something for the first time, so they had this big barbecue celebration for him. And this was in June of 2007.
01:40:11
Speaker
Long before I have my kid, I was super pregnant. Which makes a hit even harder to home though, awfully. From all that's interesting, on June 24th, 2007, Chris Benoit was scheduled to appear at a pay-per-view fight called Vengeance Night of Champions in Houston, Texas, where he was expected to win the Extreme Championship Wrestling World Championship. Wow, that's a mouthful.
01:40:40
Speaker
Yeah, extreme wrestling. Just say ECW. But Benoit never showed up. That same day, his friend Chavo Guerrero, the nephew of the late wrestler Eddie Guerrero received a strange message from the wrestler. Benoit had written, the dogs are in the enclosed pool area and the back door is open and texted Guerrero his address.
01:41:06
Speaker
Aww, that's sad. Yeah, that's cryptic and weird too, right? Yeah, cause for concern. Yes, exactly. Well said. SportsKita reports that Benoit's messages didn't cause Guerrero any concern until he learned. Funny you should say that, because he apparently wasn't. Oh shit. Really worried, I don't know. They did say
01:41:33
Speaker
Um, this kind of reminded me some kind of funny that Jericho said about him that they called him like the Loch Ness monster sometimes because he would resurface for like a text message. But then like, if you didn't like answer his call or like text him back within like a minute, he'd be down under and you wouldn't see him again for like days. Yeah. I've known people like that. Yeah. It's a funny, it's a funny nickname.
01:42:02
Speaker
Yeah, but yeah, this was, it didn't cause Guerrero any concern until he learned that Benoit hadn't shown up at the pay-per-view fight, which obviously was a red flag. Then he alerted WWE authorities who called the police. They went to Benoit's house in Fayetteville, Georgia, which he shared with Nancy and seven-year-old Daniel and found a gruesome scene.
The Aftermath of Benoit's Actions
01:42:27
Speaker
All three were dead.
01:42:29
Speaker
jesus of course but yeah it's definitely a trigger warning because it is it is pretty brutal though obviously it's carried out they're always brutal um nancy had been found bound hand and foot uh obviously been strangled from behind like oh my god i think with a cord or something but just brutally like
01:42:57
Speaker
Yeah, he didn't even look at her. Daniel was found in his bed and Chris had hanged himself off his like weight machine thing. So he had apparently killed Nancy first, I believe on the Friday night. Then from what I read the next morning, he drugged Daniel with some Xanax and then smothered him. Oh.
01:43:27
Speaker
That was like, not like he flipped all of a sudden and did that like that. Yeah. Yeah, that's like two totally separate incidents. Yeah, it's almost like not systematic, but kind of deliberate. I don't know. Yeah, like for them to be so far apart, it's that's strange.
01:43:55
Speaker
Yeah, it's not like this one fit of rage or anything. Yeah. Um, in fact, he's like, what? Yeah. Talking to people over the weekend and stuff. Um, he was, oh yeah. And then he, he had killed himself, uh, on, I believe the Sunday. So he had taken like the whole weekend.
01:44:25
Speaker
wow yeah yeah so like nancy had already been dead for like two days or at least a day and a half yeah it's really awful um chris was found to have had 10 times the normal amount of testosterone in his body
01:44:44
Speaker
after death. So yeah, he's definitely abusing steroids, which people did know about, unfortunately. Yeah, like as Nancy put it, the WWE wellness program was a joke, which doesn't shock me in the least bit. But yeah, I guess he'd been abusing those for a while. I'm not sure exactly.
01:45:13
Speaker
In a quote, in a criminal case against Dr. Phil Astin, Benoit's personal physician, it was revealed that Astin's prescription to Benoit far exceeded the normal amount for a testosterone disorder and was well above the normal dose.
01:45:29
Speaker
I mean, if he even had a testosterone disorder to begin with. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. That's one way to put it, right? It's like there was too much. Yeah. Many pointing to roid rage, of course, caused by this steroid abuse. But many also like Michael, like Ben,
01:45:53
Speaker
Chris's father, Michael, also points to the chronic concussions that wrestlers do suffer and the CTE, which is the chronic traumatic encephalopathy, I think is how you say it.
01:46:12
Speaker
Um, that comes up with these types of sports careers. Um, so it's a brain condition. Oh, is it like brain swelling, like encephalitis is brain swelling.
01:46:25
Speaker
So like, probably, or like, yeah, similar because it's linked to repeated head injuries and blows to the head. So it said, or the one medical website or whatever it was like, it slowly gets worse over time leads to dementia. The right help and support can help manage the symptoms. Sorry, this is from the NHS website, I guess. And
01:46:56
Speaker
Yeah, it can. Yeah, it leads to dementia. Also, his father then gave his son's brain to Julian Bales of the Sports Legacy Institute to study. And this Bales guy happens to also be head of neurosurgery at West Virginia University. So he took a look at it. And he found it to look very different than a normal 40 year old brain should look. It sadly looked like
01:47:22
Speaker
quote, the brain of an 80 year old suffering from Alzheimer's disease. Wow. Damage was found in all four lobes of the brain and deep into the brainstem. It was extensive throughout Chris's brain. This is something you should never see in a 40 year old.
01:47:41
Speaker
Cheers. Yeah. He also believes it's the leading cause of the mental breakdown but cannot say for sure that it was the primary catalyst of his actions, of course. He's not like a psychologist or whatever. No, it sounds like it was a
01:47:57
Speaker
it contributed but there was a lot of other stuff that was going on at the same time yeah a perfect storm or whatever yeah just like with all his friends deaths and everything like that and any sort of paranoia or whatever he was having right and then not being able to deal with it yeah and having your brain be literally like
01:48:26
Speaker
i don't know deteriorating that's for sure yeah yeah it was weird too they said it was this like strange final act uh he placed bibles beside the bodies of his wife and son even though they weren't religious at all um okay yeah the only thing was the sandra nancy's sister speculated that um
01:48:53
Speaker
what he was close to. I think it was Eddie Guerrero who was pretty hardcore in his faith or something. So she thought it might've just kind of like rubbed off on him from someone he really admired kind of thing. But yeah, that was definitely
01:49:12
Speaker
they were discovered like as soon as he missed the event. And that's when I said this right that he phoned he ended up phoning or texting chavo Guerrero on the weekend. Yeah, it said somewhere that he had told chavo that Nancy and Daniel had food poisoning. And then he ended the conversation with saying that
01:49:37
Speaker
like I love you or whatever. And then after Chavo thought it was kind of weird, but at the time he kind of brushed it off, I guess. Oh, okay. So it wasn't just about the dogs. Yeah, that's so weird. Yeah, the text right about the dogs. Exactly. It was a couple weird things that like, as soon as he knew that he found out that Christmas the match, he like told the WWE and that's when they sent over
01:50:02
Speaker
And the police found them. Sorry. I know I have this somewhere, but I'm remembering it out of order. Yeah. Oh yeah. And he had been found from, he'd wrapped the cord from his weight machine around his neck and hanged himself from the pulley cable after apparently looking up the quickest way to break a neck. Shit. Yeah.
01:50:31
Speaker
And Sandra wondered if maybe that was supposed to mirror some sort of fatal injury he could have got in the ring because maybe he was worried about his neck getting broken. I mean, like that other guys did literally get broken in the ring and the match against him, like maybe with some sort of symbolism. I don't know. Um,
01:50:51
Speaker
He apparently had also researched a Bible story about a prophet Elijah and the resurrection of a dead boy. Don't know much more about that. Apparently they talked about that on the dark side of the ring, which I didn't get to watch. Weird. And he had left behind a note that said I'm preparing to leave this earth.
01:51:13
Speaker
Hmm. Um, one thing that made me really sad is how Sandra has said that now Nancy kind of only gets mentioned as like a footnote in sort of Chris's story. If he gets talked about at all, because apparently he's like, Lord Voldemort, one thing said in the WWE, like you don't like. Yeah. Yeah. Cause like she had her, her totally her own career and everything going on. Mm hmm. Exactly.
01:51:41
Speaker
And now it's just like, you know, you get remembered only for your death or whatever. Yeah. But apparently, yeah, the WWE like almost came crashing down, like Jericho was saying, and he was there. So he would know if that was like, it was so detrimental to the company. Such, such a bad bit of press to get, right? Well, I can imagine like once they start saying all the stuff about like the brain injuries and everything like that.
01:52:08
Speaker
I'm sure you're like, oh, people don't want to support that. Exactly. As much anymore. Yeah. Yeah. Cause we know it's not good and this kind of, you know, horrible things could happen. Although that might be an outlier can happen. Yeah. Um, yeah. He was like erased from the WWE website DVDs. Wow.
01:52:33
Speaker
Um, apparently they did change some of their policies. According to pro wrestling stories and sports Kita, they implemented a no chair shots to the head rule. Yay. Brought in doctors to supervise matches and started conducting more thorough drug testing. So they say, I mean, yeah, if that's true, that all sounds good, but step in the right direction, I guess.
01:52:59
Speaker
Yeah, there's always ways to get around that kind of stuff, though. Yeah, people still getting other shots to the head. Tables, you know, it's not just chairs. And Mike, his dad, Mike said, I think if Chris Benoit had been anything other than a professional wrestler, he would still be alive. I would like people to have an understanding that the tragedy that took place in 2007 happened because of his career choice.
01:53:29
Speaker
Yeah, he definitely is of that opinion on it, which I'm sure that's the kind of thing WWE wanted to get away from. Yeah, I mean, there is like other
01:53:44
Speaker
They get talked about to like, um, people in football and stuff that have also like killed spouses, but they also had that one. What was it? That one Olympic runner, that one guy that had like the one Oscar. Yeah. Like, yeah. Yeah. Something Hernandez. I think he was a football guy that. Yeah. Had a true crime case. Um, yeah.
01:54:13
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. It does happen for sure, for sure. It wasn't just one crazy guy with a skate like I was telling you about the other day. This one's like a recurring type of problem. Yeah, I just want to end with a little bit about how, like you said, Nancy had her own career and then there's a picture of Nancy and Mick Foley on
Listener Engagement and Episode Suggestions
01:54:40
Speaker
the drive. I don't know if you remember him.
01:54:44
Speaker
was very 80s wrestler, long hair. He wants her to be put into the WWE Hall of Fame. Yeah. Thanks. Oh, okay. Yeah. He made a post, I think after talking to Sandra, the sister, he said, for the past 13 years, Nancy Benoit's life has been largely defined in the public eye by how she died. I think it's about time we changed that way of thinking.
01:55:10
Speaker
Wouldn't it be nice if we could pause for a moment to remember instead how she lived, how she worked, and to reflect on what her legacy in pro wrestling should be. I would love to see Nancy inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame, uh, Foley continued in his post. Foley then mentioned several different periods of Nancy's career that are Hall of Fame worthy. These included her time as fallen angel as a manager of the four horsemen and her run in the ECW, um, and inducting Nancy.
01:55:38
Speaker
Tafaloni into the WWE Hall of Fame is the right thing to do. Let us remember her and define her for who she was and what she did in life, fully concluded in the post. And that's all I have. Yeah. I mean, other than like her dating him or them being married or whatever, like,
01:56:01
Speaker
Other than that, he doesn't really have anything to do with her career. So why, why should she get a race like so much just because you don't want to talk to him or talk about him? That's fine. If that's how you want to react to that. But like, why does she have to get a race too? Oh yeah. It doesn't help anything to just push everything under the rug. It doesn't make things really go away. Um, but that's, I think kind of what they're like. I mean,
01:56:28
Speaker
Yeah that's what every sport is. Yeah they just throw money at it or whatever if they can. Yeah try and make you forget, move on to the next thing. Yeah I mean this is what the rich people do. They want to keep being the rich. Yeah wow. Yeah she's really cute though hey they both they seem
01:56:52
Speaker
Like, yeah, it's too bad. In another dimension, in another world, they're, you know, still a happy family. Yeah. Woman, man, and child. Yeah, that's so sad. That's a really sad one. I'm sorry. But yeah. What a bummer of an episode. I know.
01:57:20
Speaker
Literally every time they end and that's where we drink because Christine goes second and she does the crime and then they're like, how many years have we still don't know how to end these? Because we just bum each other. Like you bum me out at the end and then we go goodbye. Yeah, absolutely. We just go and then I go to sleep and then I just go, oh, that sucks. I need to like decompress on my phone. Look at pictures of puppies on Instagram or something. Something happy.
01:57:49
Speaker
Um, I can leave you with a very short, sweet review. It's one sentence. Okay. Yeah. We talked about, I said it's been a few episodes since you read us a review. Let's have a review. Slacking on our whole, um, format. Um, this one is titled fun and informative. Um,
01:58:12
Speaker
Why thank you. Yeah, by CJIM12, I think. Are you 12 years old? I don't know. Please elaborate. CJIM? I don't know. Tell us how to say your name if you're out there. And it just says, the hosts do an exceptional job presenting really interesting topics with great research.
01:58:42
Speaker
No. Well, thank you. We try. We try really hard. I think that's a really good compliment. Yeah. Like great research. I mean.
01:58:52
Speaker
Damn it, man. It's hard work. We didn't know what we were doing. No, it's it's hard. Yeah, but it's it's rewarding when you guys say things like that. Yeah, we love all our reviews and ratings and all the people that subscribe. We're getting more and more subscribers on YouTube, which has been nice.
01:59:16
Speaker
a few more every time I check it. Send us some suggestions too. Speaking of rate and review, if you like what we do. Yes. Comments and shit.
01:59:32
Speaker
Yeah, if you have like episode topics, even you want to suggest or cases you want to throw out there for us to take a peruse over, we'll see. Maybe we'll cover them. I bet you guys find some good ones. Yeah, there's so many out there. It's impossible to know about all of them. So if you have a wild one.
01:59:58
Speaker
you think we would want to cover, you can definitely send it our way. Ooh, do it, do it, do it. Okay, well, until next time. Did we even tell them what we're doing next time? What are we even doing? It's all you, babe. Next time is 1.30. We're on episode 1.30. That's crazy.
02:00:25
Speaker
That's what it will be. It's paranormal. Yeah, urban legends from around the world. She found the spreadsheet. Yeah. I remembered after you said it's paranormal. I went, oh yeah, urban legends.
02:00:44
Speaker
Yeah, we just picked a few ones and yeah, we just picked a few. The which weeks will be off for the holidays. So yeah, yeah, you guys. Yeah. Or we can let you know now. We'll be around for the week of what? New Year's? And then the week after that. So then we'll be January. Yeah, we there'll be.
02:01:10
Speaker
Yeah, no episode on December 29th and none on January 5th. And we'll be back on January 12th. Let's go hang out with your families, your hosers. Okay. Have a good one. Bye bye. Keep it cryptic. Bye.
02:01:52
Speaker
This has been Castles Encrypteds. You can listen to our podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Anchor, Breaker, Pocketcast, and our YouTube channel.
02:02:03
Speaker
Please rate, review, and subscribe wherever you listen. Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Reddit. On our website, you can listen to all of our episodes as well as view pictures for each of our segments. Check out our Patreon page to view all of our tiers and become a Patreon supporter today to unlock monthly bonus episodes and behind-the-scenes content. We are working on an Ask Us Anything. You can submit questions by social media or by email at castlesandcryptids at gmail.com.
02:02:33
Speaker
Do you have a spooky ghost story, a creepy cryptid sighting, or a thrilling true crime tale you would like to share and have us include in a future episode? Send us your listener story by social media or by email. Please include the name that you would like mentioned. Our music is by Cobia Fair. Our logo and artwork is by Antonio Garcia. Thanks for listening!