As I said a couple of days ago — and as I’ve told my friend Dave Meltzer directly — the Wrestling Observer Newsletter is missing the boat on the disappeared Chris Benoit voicemail evidence.
“I don’t think any of this would explain anything,” Meltzer says in the new issue, dated May 7. He is wrong.
I guess we need to define “explain anything.” Explain why Chris snapped? Of course not. Explain the crime as anything other than a double murder/suicide? No. But help explain how a huge corporation, World Wrestling Entertainment, practiced crisis management and took its first steps to protect itself from the inevitable onslaught of scrutiny in the post-Benoit world? Obviously yes.
Meltzer also seems unfamiliar with exactly what the Fayette County sheriff has allowed to remain hidden. According to the Observer, “There are a lot of missing messages on the cell phone and also missing text messages from the police log.” Actually the investigation retrieved no cell phone voicemail at all. And as far as I know, they got all the text messages. No one should be making excuses for the poor performance here by law enforcement or rationalizing that it doesn’t matter.
Irv Muchnick