Little noticed in the controversy over the unauthorized edit by Matthew Greenberg of Chris Benoit’s entry at Wikipedia — stating, 14 hours before Chris, Nancy, and Daniel’s bodies were found, that Nancy was dead — was a second Wiki edit.
Two hours after Greenberg’s edit was posted and an hour after it was deleted, a second Wikipedia poster, from Australia, again made reference to Chris’s no-show at the previous night’s pay-per-view show in Houston due to personal issues, “which according to several pro wrestling websites is attributed to the passing of Benoit’s wife, Nancy.” This, too, was eventually removed.
The Australian post was more responsible than Greenberg’s in that the former at least acknowledged its status as a rumor and included some, albeit vague, attribution. Both posts highlight the investigative nexus of the Wikipedia affair: figuring out where those rumors originated. If they were made up out of whole cloth, then fine. However, I am not satisfied on that score after law enforcement agencies in Georgia and Connecticut worked so diligently for so many months to cover up the Greenberg interrogation, and after reviewing the half-assed Greenberg interrogation and computer forensic exam report themselves.
On June 28, 2007, Wikipedia investigators wrote an article about the controversy in which they listed the IP (Internet Protocol) addresses of both of the computers from which the unauthorized edits were transmitted. See http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Death_of_Nancy_Benoit_rumour_posted_on_Wikipedia_hours_prior_to_body_being_found.
Using the online WHOIS tool, I got the name and contact information of the Sydney man associated with the second edit. Yesterday (which was “today” in Australia) I reached the gentleman by cell phone. He denied any connection to the Wiki edit. I don’t know enough about this stuff to posit alternatives: that someone else might have been using his computer, or that someone else on his network could have misleadingly called up his IP address.
The question of which wrestling news and fan websites had information/rumors about Nancy’s demise on Sunday night, June 24, 2007, still obtains. Only examination of those texts, and their sourcing and probity or lack of same, can tell us whether at least bits and pieces of the double murder/suicide in unincorporated Fayetteville, Georgia, were known to some people earlier than Monday afternoon.
Those who think this question doesn’t matter, simply because Chris himself clearly did it and because the drugs weren’t hidden, need to ask themselves how often police reports fail to probe 30-hour gaps between, effectively, the deathbed confession (Benoit’s text messages to Chavo Guerrero and Scott Armstrong) and the discovery of the bodies.
Tips? Send ‘em to [email protected].
Irv Muchnick