The timeline, reconstructed by the Fayette County Sheriff's Office, spans June 22 to June 24, 2007. On Friday night, Benoit killed Nancy in the bonus room of their home. Her arms had been bound with coaxial cables, her feet duct-taped together. Injuries indicated strangulation. Her body was wrapped in a blanket with a Bible placed beside it. On Saturday morning, Benoit suffocated seven-year-old Daniel in his bed. Toxicology reports showed the boy had been sedated with Xanax and was likely unconscious. Another Bible was left beside him. Throughout Saturday, Benoit called colleagues -- telling fellow wrestler Chavo Guerrero that his family had food poisoning. Guerrero later recalled that Benoit sounded "off," ending one call with an emphatic "Chavo, I love you." Early Sunday morning, five text messages went out from both Chris and Nancy's phones. Four contained the family's home address. The fifth noted that the dogs were in the pool area and the garage door had been left open. Later that day, Benoit hanged himself in his weight room.

Four days after Benoit's death, his father Michael agreed to let neuroscientist Christopher Nowinski -- a former WWE wrestler turned concussion researcher -- have his son's brain analyzed. On September 5, 2007, Julian Bailes, the chief of neurosurgery at West Virginia University, announced the findings: Benoit's brain was so severely damaged it resembled that of an 85-year-old Alzheimer's patient. Tests revealed severe chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, with damage to all four lobes and the brain stem. Neuropathologist Bennet Omalu, who had pioneered CTE research through his work on deceased NFL players, suggested Benoit's brain damage was so advanced he likely would not have survived more than a few additional years regardless. Nowinski pointed to Benoit's willingness to absorb unprotected chair shots to the head as a contributing factor. WWE called the findings "speculative." Meanwhile, Nancy had filed for divorce in 2003 alleging domestic abuse, though she withdrew the filing three months later.

WWE's response was swift and thorough. Benoit's biography was removed from their website. His name was stripped from his entrance song. He was deleted from the SmackDown vs. Raw 2008 video game. Archival footage was scrubbed of his likeness. Entering his name into the WWE Network search function returns no results. Pay-per-view posters featuring him were replaced with new artwork. Matches he appeared in are listed by his opponents' names only. Stone Cold Steve Austin perhaps best captured the wrestling world's conflicted grief: "Chris Benoit as the person I knew, loved him. Chris Benoit as a wrestler, loved him. Chris Benoit as the person who did what he did, unforgivable. Bottom line." Paul Heyman put it more starkly: "Three people died in that house that night, and only one person had the choice behind it." Nancy and Daniel's ashes were placed in starfish-shaped urns for her family. The fate of Benoit's ashes has never been publicly disclosed.

The tragedy triggered a federal investigation. The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform examined WWE's wellness policy and found that in the first year of their drug testing program, 40 percent of wrestlers tested positive for steroids -- even after being warned in advance. The committee uncovered how easily wrestlers obtained therapeutic use exemptions to continue using banned substances. WWE's contracted physician, Tracy Ray, told investigators there was "shadiness in almost every case." In December 2009, Omalu confirmed that a second WWE wrestler, Andrew Martin, had also died with CTE. Bailes told ESPN: "The science tells us that jumping off ten-foot ladders and slamming people with tables and chairs is simply bad for the brain." The Benoit case became a watershed moment in understanding brain injuries in contact sports, extending the conversation about CTE far beyond football into any arena where repeated head trauma is routine.