Monday, MARCH 3 - 9:55 A.M.

Last Sunday night, I was waiting on hold for a radio appearance on the “Crime and Punishment” show when I heard host Mike McIntyre plug an upcoming segment. He teased listeners with a story about an elderly man who confessed to killing his wife, yet would not face prison time.

My first thought was that it had to be a mercy killing. I assumed the woman had been suffering physical pain or was in a vegetative state, and her husband chose to end her life because he couldn’t stand to sit by and watch her suffer.

Rather, McIntyre stated the man was suffering from dementia. He pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was given a conditional sentence of two years with three years of probation. You can find a full story at the Edmonton Journal website.

This story made me feel sad that Chris Benoit will always be remembered as a monster by so many people even though he could have been suffering from similar issues when he took the lives of his wife and son and then committed suicide.

Do you consider the elderly man a monster or do you feel pity him for him because he was mentally ill when he killed his wife? If you feel pity for elderly man, then should you also feel pity for Benoit if there’s a chance the brain damage he suffered drove him to murder his wife and child?

I understand the anger people feel toward Chris Benoit. I also understand that we’ll never know what triggered his horrible actions. We’ve heard all the theories, including the possibility that the numerous concussions he suffered over the years caused permanent damage and played a part in his actions that night.

I’m not trying to defend Benoit. The mere mention of his name conjures up a wide variety of emotions inside me. Anger is certainly one of them and, yes, pity is another.

A few years ago, an industry source told me he asked Chris Benoit why he was still performing the top rope headbutt after undergoing neck surgery. I’m paraphrasing, but Benoit told this person that he performed the move because the fans wanted to see it.

The most tragic aspect of this story is unquestionably the loss of Nancy and Daniel Benoit and nothing will change that.

Yet it also saddens me to think there’s a chance Chris Benoit lost his mind and committed those horrific acts because he gave everything he had to the industry he loved and to the fans he wanted to please. And if the concussions are to blame for these acts, how sad is it that the industry is trying to erase his name from its history books, while most of the fans he wanted to please are now too ashamed to admit they ever followed his career.

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