The Chris Benoit biography entitled “Dungeon of Death” by Scott Klein does not unquestioningly blame steroids for the murder-suicide tragedy. Instead the author examines the significant brain damage that Benoit incurred during the course of his career as the likely culprit (”There Was No Way to Tell This Man Was a Monster,” December 2).

Spin-control was the order of the day for WWE CEO Vince McMahon, who faced accusations that he’d turned a blind eye to years of rampant steroid abuse on the part of his employees, the implication being that “roid rage” drove Benoit to commit murder and suicide. While the accusations of steroid abuse were not without merit (have you seen a professional wrestler lately? Or Vince McMahon himself, for that matter?), the consensus, 17 months later, is that the blame for Benoit’s heinous act more likely lies on his stubborn policy of refusing to protect his own body when performing his admittedly preplanned and choreographed but nonetheless destructive professional wrestling maneuvers every night.

Neurological tests performed on Benoit’s corpse revealed that years of taking steel chair blows to the head had rendered Benoit’s brain indistinguishable from that of an 85-year-old Alzheimer’s patient. Still, many want to blame steroids, while others prefer to believe that Benoit was simply a sick man; how many 85-year-old Alzheimer’s patients commit murder or suicide?

Keith suggests that unprotected chair shots to the head are to blame for Benoit’s madness.

Dungeon of Death has received several negative reviews for its tabloid style and factual inaccuracies regarding steroid use by Chris Benoit.  Klein’s biography is criticized for suggesting that steroid use could not be determined during an autopsy and that steroid use can simply be determined by visual inspection (”411 Book Review: Dungeon of Death: Chris Benoit and the Hart Family Curse by Scott Keith,” November 6).

Obviously there is a fair amount of discussion of drug use throughout the book, and its pages are also replete with examples of Keith’s lack of understanding of the topic. Perhaps his biggest blunder is noting that it would be impossible to determine whether Chris Benoit was taking steroids at the time of his death because there was no urine in the body to test. This completely ignores toxicology reports issued after Benoit’s death and made widely available on the internet, which indicated that, at the time of his death, he had a testosterone to epitestosterone ratio of over fifty to one. This clearly indicated that steroids were being used. Yes, Keith is correct in that a standard piss test may not have been conducted, but there is still clear evidence of what the Canadian Crippler was putting in to his body within his final days and weeks on Earth.

Perhaps equally as ridiculous is Keith’s wavering back and forth as to whether one can pick a steroid user out of a lineup by his “look.” In one chapter, he notes that it is almost impossible for the Big Bossman to have been a steroid user because, if he was, he would have had a better body. Yet, in a different chapter, Keith refers to Shawn Michaels and Bret Hart as guys who didn’t look like they were on steroids but probably were. Given that drug suspensions are currently a matter of public record and given that Scott does in fact have an internet connection and access to numerous professional wrestling websites, one would think that he would be able to figure out that not everybody who takes steroids looks like Dave Batista. After all, Jimmy Yang and William Regal both recently failed WWE wellness tests, and neither has the body that most would associate with rampant drug use. However, despite this evidence to the contrary, the author still at least partially seems to cling to the outdated notion that the second a man shoves a syringe in to his keister he swells up and develops a Herculean physique. 

Dungeon of death : Chris Benoit and the Hart family curse by Scott Keith was published by Citadel Press on November 1, 2008.