ARCHIVE 4/3/08: EXCLUSIVE: WWE Knew Chris Benoit Was the Perpetrator Before Staging ‘Monday Night Raw’ Tribute
May 14, 2009ARCHIVE 4/4/08: What Scott James Said About Benoit Also Supports the Daily News Timeline
May 14, 2009
Chavo Guerrero’s Statements to Fayette County Sheriff Cast Doubt on WWE’s Benoit Timeline
Friday, April 4th, 2008
As noted previously, there are two timelines for the Benoit family death weekend of June 23-24, 2007. One is the official WWE timeline (http://corporate.wwe.com/news/2007/2007_06_26_2.jsp). The other is what I’m calling the Daily News timeline (http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2007/06/27/2007-06-27_chris_benoit_timeline-2.html).I’ve already talked about how the sheriff’s report strongly supports the Daily News version on the question of whether Benoit was booked on a Saturday night flight or a Sunday morning flight from Atlanta to Houston. The WWE timeline says Sunday, but that’s an assertion, just sitting there. The Daily News timeline says Saturday and it is backed up by details of conversations between Benoit and WWE colleagues that day. These conversations link plausibly with the phone logs. In addition, there is a record of Benoit calling Delta Airlines and getting a reservation on the Saturday night flight.
The first entries in the Daily News timeline, starting at 3:30 p.m. Saturday, describe Benoit’s conversations with a wrestler-friend. Obviously, it’s Chavo Guerrero. The sheriff’s report has Guerrero recounting the same basic series of exchanges with Benoit (Chris sounding strange, Chavo feeling so uneasy about it that he calls Chris back a little later to make sure he’s OK). One of my sources told me that Guerrero had related to him the same sequence with the exact same trigger (Chris concluding their call with an out-of-context “I love you”).
So even though Chavo Guerrero has chosen not to return my messages, his statements to Detective Ethon Harper add up to an endorsement of the Daily News timeline. Chavo is in a terribly awkward position, but even in silence he gives us one more reason to wonder just what that WWE timeline was all about.
One element of the WWE timeline makes Chavo look bad, too. WWE would have us believe that Chavo and Scott James didn’t make company executives aware of Benoit’s final text messages to them until 36 hours after they were sent. That is absurd and not credible.
Speaking of Scott James, he’s next up on the blog. And, through him, Fit Finlay.
Irv Muchnick