ARCHIVE 10/1/08: WWE Is the Source for BOTH Benoit Timelines

WWE Is the Source for BOTH Benoit Timelines

Wednesday, October 1st, 2008

I have intriguing new information on what I’ve been referring to for six months as the two timelines of the Chris Benoit death weekend. In my forthcoming book Chris and Nancy: The True Story of the Benoit Murder-Suicide and Pro Wrestling’s Cocktail of Death, I’ll be discussing this subject in depth – what’s complementary about the timelines and what’s different, and what those differences might mean.

For now, it’s useful to touch on all this because the search for an authoritative timeline undergirds my current appeal to the Connecticut Freedom of Information Commission for the release of the Stamford police video interrogation of Matthew T. Greenberg, the “Benoit Wikipedia hacker.”

As I’ve said many times, the Greenberg video isn’t going to show that this college kid had anything like solid advance knowledge of Benoit’s double homicide/suicide. However, I think there’s a fairly good chance it will reveal that the Stamford cops, like the sheriff’s investigators in Fayette County, Georgia, shied away from asking Greenberg the most important questions. And almost without a doubt, the two law enforcement agencies’ shell game around disclosure of this public record is of a piece with a general effort to deflect attention from the ridiculous 30-hour gap between Benoit’s final text messages to Chavo Guerrero and Scott Armstrong, and the discovery of the Benoit family’s bodies.

So, back to the two timelines. They are the WWE timeline, which is viewable at http://corporate.wwe.com/news/2007/2007_06_26_2.jsp, and the so-called “Daily News timeline,” at http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2007/06/27/2007-06-27_chris_benoit_timeline-2.html.

Regarding the latter, I have finally heard back from someone at the New York Daily News about its origins: Reporter Christian Red recently spoke on the phone and exchanged emails with me. First, Red told me that the Daily News timeline never appeared in the print edition of the newspaper, only at its website.

Beyond that, Red knew little. He did suggest that, where the Daily News timeline noted at the bottom, “Source: From WWE.com,” it probably meant what it said. He advised me that the best way to pursue the matter was to contact the WWE public relations staff.

Last Thursday, September 25, I emailed the question to Jennifer McIntosh, WWE’s head of publicity. She immediately wrote back: “Irv, Thanks for getting in touch with me. Can I get back to you on this tomorrow? I’m traveling today and need to double check my files to make sure I’m sending you the correct info. If you need it today, I’ll ask my co-worker gary davis to help. Thanks, Jenny.” (As blog readers know, Gary Davis is WWE’s vice president for corporate communications.)

I replied that “tomorrow” would be fine. But McIntosh did not get back to me the next day, and she has not responded to a phone message and two follow-up emails. I’ve stopped holding my breath.

Meanwhile, the answer is becoming pretty clear. The Daily News journalists who put together their timeline sidebar probably did so from bits and pieces published on the WWE entertainment website on Tuesday, June 26, 2007. Those items got pulled after the WWE corporate website released a briefer and more cautious timeline, which was intended to be the company’s last and official word. WWE probably wishes the Daily News timeline would go away. In corporate-speak, it is “inoperative.”

I came to this conclusion because some of the elements of the Daily News timeline – but not the entire document in the same form – are evident elsewhere online. Most notably, contemporaneous wire service accounts, citing WWE as the source, discuss a Saturday phone call between Benoit and a “co-worker” (obviously Guerrero).

As for the Wikipedia hacker police video, we are now at Day 9 since a lawyer in the Stamford city attorney’s office promised the Connecticut FOI Commission mediator in my dispute that he would forward the citation of the court case that is supposed to validate Stamford PD’s position that the record is exempt from public release. I didn’t know it was so hard to email a case cite, which I suspect will prove to be irrelevant hooey.

I look forward to the hearing at the commission office in Hartford. The date has not yet been set.

Irv Muchnick