User admits 'death' editing on Wikipedia 14 hours before bodies found

Calls mention of Benoit's wife's death a 'terrible coincidence'

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

A user of the Web site Wikipedia has confessed to making edits to pro wrestler Chris Benoit's profile mentioning the death of Benoit's wife before authorities had found her body.

The anonymous user acknowledged in a lengthy post added to the Web site early Friday being "deeply sorry" and called the situation a "terrible coincidence."

The edits were originally reported by Wikinews, an online news source connected to Wikipedia. Friday's post was added to a discussion page for the Wikinews story. Wikinews said the IP address of the individual is identical to that of the user who edited Benoit's profile early Monday to include that Benoit's wife was dead.

The poster did not identify himself or herself.

The individual acknowledged being from Stamford, Conn. -- the home of World Wrestling Entertainment. In the message, the individual claimed no connection to WWE.

A spokeswoman for Wikimedia Foundation, Sandra Ordonez, said the IP address connected to the individual has a history of editing wrestling-related articles on Wikipedia.

The editing that mentioned the death of Chris Benoit's wife was posted more than 14 hours before police discovered her body, along with her son's and husband's, at the pro wrestler's Fayette County home.

An anonymous user edited the biography of the wrestler on Monday at 12:01 a.m., said Ordonez.

Authorities discovered the bodies at the Benoit's Green Meadow Lane home that afternoon, at 2:30 p.m.

The Monday morning posting said: "Chris Benoit was replaced by Johnny Nitro for the [ECW] Extreme Championship Wrestling Championship match at Vengeance, as Benoit was not there due to personal issues, stemming from the death of his wife Nancy."

Investigators think Benoit, 40, killed his wife Friday and his 7-year-old son Daniel Saturday. He placed Bibles next to their bodies, authorities say. Sometime Sunday he hanged himself using a weight-machine pulley.

The posting raised questions of who, if anyone, knew about the deaths and if so, when.

"We are looking at that, trying to track down the IP address," said Fayette Sheriff's Lt. Tommy Pope in a statement to WAGA-TV. "It's either true or it's a hoax."

Anyone can post and edit content on the Web encyclopedia. Further more, an IP address, which is a unique set of numbers that every machine connected to the Internet carries, does not necessarily have to be broadcast from where it is registered.

The IP address from which the 12:01 a.m. addition was made had been flagged for "vandalizing" other Wikipedia entries in the past, ABC News reported.

Earlier this month, the same IP user also edited a post about WWE wrestler Chavo Guerrero Jr., a close friend of Benoit's who reportedly was the recipient of at least one of the text messages Benoit sent over the weekend before the discovery of the bodies.

In that edit, the IP user took out a damaging description of Guerrero from the post, ABC News said.

Wikipedia does recruit volunteer editors who troll the entries to ensure that facts within posts are properly attributed.

According to a timeline posted on Wikinews, which is the news source of the nonprofit foundation, within an hour of the 12:01 post, the edit had been changed with the comment: "Need a reliable source. Saying that his wife died is a pretty big statement, you need to back it up with something."

Another hour went by. Then a second anonymous edit, using what appears to be an Australian Internet service provider, added the attribution: "according to several pro wrestling websites."

Again, the edit was changed after 20 minutes with the comment: "Saying 'several pro wrestling websites' is still not reliable information."

The posting was brought to the attention of the foundation, based in St. Petersburg, Fla., and an employee left a message with Fayetteville authorities about 11 a.m. Tuesday.

"We provided the IP address, and I guess they were investigating," Ordonez said.

The Chris Benoit entry, updated hundreds of times this week, has now been "locked" to prevent further edits by posters.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.