In addition to getting the new 911 audio today (see previous post), I received the CD from the Fayette County sheriff with the messages on Chris Benoit’s home answering machine. That CD had been inadvertently left out of the original open records release.
As soon as I’ve figured out all 23 messages as best I can, I’ll post a report. The task is formidable because of background noise – the recording appears to have been made right at the crime scene on June 25, 2007, and officers and others are heard talking about the chain of evidence and other matters, often making the answering machine audio even more unintellligible.
Let me say right away that this piece of evidence has very little forensic value. A couple of weeks ago, when I blogged Detective Ethon Harper’s summary of the Sunday messages from John Laurinaitis and his staff at the WWE Talent Relations department, I was bending over backward to be fair. I can confirm that there are indeed such messages, and I think they reflect a sincere concern for Benoit’s well-being and a lack of awareness that he and his wife and their son were already dead. But as the 911 audio and other evidence show, the company’s left hand didn’t seem to know what its right hand was doing all weekend – and perhaps that was by design.
I’m inclined not to upload the answering machine audio for public consumption because the only “highlights” are ghoulish, such as the messages of escalating concern from Nancy Benoit’s sister and parents.
I know people are going to be interested in the two oldest messages on the machine, which were left by Eddie Guerrero the day before he suffered a fatal heart attack in 2005. On those messages, Guerrero’s speech is slurred as he asks Chris to tell him when he plans to arrive in Minneapolis. I’m guessing that Chris and Nancy Benoit never erased these messages for purely sentimental reasons.
One final point about the overall category of Benoit telephone audio: Though the home answering machine proves to be a bit of a dud in terms of leads, Chris Benoit, unsurprisingly, used his cell phone far more than his home phone. So a huge missing piece of the Benoit puzzle remains the voicemail on his cell – which, like the home answering machine messages before today, has not been released. I expect to have a lot more to say about this in the coming days.
Irv Muchnick