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Friday, June 29, 2007

Mystery Surrounds Anonymous Wikipedia Correction about Chris Benoit's Wife's Death

The turn of event leading to Chris Benoit's murder of his wife and children and suicide is one of the wired world's bizzareest incidents to happen, I think.

How else can you explain Benoit killing his wife, children and himself, and someone posting it on Wikipedia this text at 12.01 a.m. in the morning on June 25: “Chris Benoit was replaced by Johnny Nitro for the ECW Championship match at Vengeance, as Benoit was not there due to personal issues, stemming from the death of his wife Nancy,” even before the police discovered the body at 2.30 p.m. in the afternoon, a good 14 and a half hours later.

Here’s the incident as reported by Wikipedia (horse’s mouth):

“News of Nancy Benoit's death was inexplicably posted on Wikipedia 14 hours before the police discovered the bodies. This was initially reported on Wikinews and later on FOXNews.com. The original posting reads: “Chris Benoit was replaced by Johnny Nitro for the ECW Championship match at Vengeance, as Benoit was not there due to personal issues, stemming from the death of his wife Nancy.” The phrase "stemming from the death of his wife Nancy" was added to the English Wikipedia's "Chris Benoit" article at 12:01 a.m. EDT on June 25, whereas the Fayette County police reportedly discovered the bodies of the Benoit family at 2:30 p.m. EDT (14 hours, 29 minutes later). The IP address of the editor was traced to Stamford, Connecticut, which is also the location of WWE headquarters. After news of the early death notice reached mainstream media, the anonymous poster accessed Wikinews to explain his seemingly prescient comments as a "huge coincidence and nothing more".

"The press has reported that police are seeking information about the anonymous editor."

I went in further into Wikipedia’s editing feature where one can identify the exact text content that was edited and came up with this (the portion in red is edited text):



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