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Nancy Grace

Officers Raid Benoit`s Physician`s Office

Aired June 28, 2007 - 20:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


NANCY GRACE, HOST: Tonight, breaking news. A major superstar WWE wrestler and his entire family found dead inside their upscale gated community, Atlanta suburbs. Tonight DEA agents, local sheriffs come down on Chris Benoit`s personal doctor, reportedly raiding the doctor`s office. Whiles theories fly that Benoit himself was actually murdered, the clock is ticking on toxicology results.
What role, if any, did anabolic steroids play in the crimes? The DEA reportedly meeting with the local district attorney about possible charges. And tonight: Tensions between Benoit and his wife over the care of their 7- year-old little boy, who suffered from a very rare medical condition, fragile X syndrome, and a form of mental handicap many claim Benoit actually hid from the rest of the world.

Tonight, police still combing over cryptic text messages Benoit sent before and during the murders. And was the crime spree reported on line hours before police actually discovered the bodies?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Some new developments in the double murder/suicide of pro wrestler Chris Benoit and his family. We learned today drug agents raided the office of the wrestler`s personal doctor (INAUDIBLE) Georgia. Authorities say Dr. Phil Astin prescribed anabolic steroids and other narcotics to Benoit. Steroids are being closely looked at in this tragedy, as you know, specifically the side effects, things like depression, paranoia, and as you have heard several times, rage.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: And tonight: Is there finally a break in the case of a 3-year- old little girl snatched on a luxury resort vacation while her parents had dinner just 100 yards away? Tonight, two arrests go down in the baby Maddy kidnap mystery.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: An Italian man and a Portuguese woman have been arrested in Spain, apparently in connection with the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Now, Madeleine vanished eight weeks ago from her parents` villa in Praia da Luz on the Algarve.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: Good evening. I`m Nancy Grace. I want to thank you for being with us tonight. First to breaking news. A superstar WWE wrestler and his entire family wiped out inside their own home, the Atlanta suburbs. Tonight, we are live for the latest.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There`s new details in the deaths of pro wrestler Chris Benoit, his wife and their 7-year-old son. Prosecutors say bruises show that Nancy Benoit was strangled by her husband while he kneeled on her back and that Benoit`s son, Daniel, may have been killed by a wrestling chokehold.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I never saw (INAUDIBLE) I never saw any kind of a violent nature in Chris at all. He was always a caring, good guy. He loved his family. And I don`t know where this came from. I don`t know how it happened.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Federal drug agents and members of the Fayette County, Georgia, sheriff`s office have now raided the office of Benoit`s personal doctor. It began last night and concluded this morning. They say they were looking for records and other items, but they wouldn`t be more specific. No arrests were made.

Yesterday, an attorney for World Wrestling Entertainment said Benoit and his wife argued over their son`s medical care in the days leading up to their deaths. The arguments involved whether Benoit should stay home more to take care of the boy, who had a rare genetic syndrome called fragile X syndrome.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: The entire family wiped out in an upscale gated Atlanta community. What is behind these murders? Let`s go straight out to senior investigative reporter with "Sports Illustrated," Luis Fernando Llosa. Thank you for being with us, Luis Fernando. What can you tell us about the raid on the doctor`s, his personal doctor`s offices today?

LUIS FERNANDO LLOSA, "SPORTS ILLUSTRATED": Well, I think that what`s going on now is that the local authorities and the DEA are trying to find out, through maybe combing through medical files and medical charts, what exactly he was being prescribed in terms of the steroids and to get an idea of what the problems might have been that he was having.

GRACE: And to Jean Casarez, Court TV news correspondent. Jean, do we know whether anabolic steroids were found in the home?

JEAN CASAREZ, COURT TV: Yes, it`s believed authorities did find anabolic steroids. But the search warrant that was executed on the personal physician`s office of Chris Benoit is very important because the nexus here, the direct nexus, is that Friday morning, he visited that physician, and later on that day or evening, authorities say his wife was dead. And we do believe they took files and computers from that search warrant.

GRACE: Files and computers, Jean. Are they the files relating to Benoit?

CASAREZ: I think that would be the probable cause that they would have to take those computers and files, yes.

GRACE: Back to Luis Fernando Llosa. What can you tell us about the Florida outfit through whom anabolic steroids are ordered?

LLOSA: Well, what you have here in general, as we`ve discovered, is a pipeline that provides -- compound pharmacies make up the steroids and the human growth hormone, and anti-aging sites deal with customers and direct their orders to these compound pharmacies, which then send them to the customers.

And the question is -- in the investigation that we`ve been conducting since last summer, we found out that in many cases, and not necessarily specifically in this one, doctors who were not even treating their patients were signing basically bogus scripts which allowed these individuals to get testosterone and human growth hormone sent to them and to be used. And in many cases, these people didn`t even know how to -- you know, how to inject themselves, what they were using, how to -- you know, how to be careful about these substances, which can be very dangerous if used inappropriately.

GRACE: Out to Mike Brooks, former fed with the FBI. Mike, the little boy, the 7-year-old little boy, murdered there in the home, apparently had track marks on his arms for human growth -- human growth injections. What do we know -- what else do we know about the crime scene?

MIKE BROOKS, FORMER D.C. POLICE, SERVED ON FBI TERRORISM TASK FORCE: Well, apparently, the crime scene was just very, very bizarre, Nancy. You had -- he apparently had been asphyxiated. The wife had her hands and feet had been tied. There was blood under her head, which indicated a possible struggle.

And then when he killed himself, apparently, he tied a cord around his neck from his gym and then released 240 pounds of weight that went ahead and choked him. Also, I`m hearing that there was an empty wine bottle next to -- very close to his body, as well as 10 empty beer cans.

But putting together the timeline of exactly when the wife died, when his son died, and when he took his own life, that`s going to be very important, as well as the toxicology reports, especially now since they went back and raided his personal physician, taking a look at all the medical records to see if the treatment matched up with the scripts that were written, and then also what kind of drugs were in the bodies of all three. Were they lethal? Did he knock them out before he did that?

But it looks like he and his wife, there was some kind of struggle, but apparently, it`s been a tumultuous relationship going back to at least 2003.

GRACE: Long story short, there has been an uproar in the wrestling community at the suggestion that Benoit had used anabolic steroids. But the reality is -- out to Susan Moss -- what are the choices, that he was on an anabolic steroid and he went into a fit of rage and did this thing, or that he may have murdered an unarmed woman and a 7-year-old child that is mentally handicapped? I mean, how do you rate those two factors, Susan?

SUSAN MOSS, FAMILY LAW ATTORNEY: Apparently, O.J. Simpson isn`t the only athlete who should be referred to as the juice, and unfortunately, maybe with similar consequences.

It makes no sense. This is a guy who was beloved by his friends and beloved by the community, and he snapped and he snapped in a big way over an extended period. Certainly, he might have been depressed, but the authorities really are going to have to look at what was in his body in those toxicology reports to see what the real story is.

GRACE: To Dr. Marty Makary, a physician and professor of public health at Johns Hopkins. Fragile X syndrome -- I had never even heard of it until now. What is it?

DR. MARTY MAKARY, PROF. OF PUBLIC HEALTH, JOHNS HOPKINS: Well, it actually has nothing to do with the patient or person being fragile. It`s a chromosome, and there`s an instability in the gene. It`s actually the most common cause of an inherited mental disturbance. And about 15 percent to 30 percent of all cases of autism are associated with it.

GRACE: And how does it affect the victim?

MAKARY: It can cause a broad range of symptoms, ranging from a mild learning disability all the way to severe mental retardation.

GRACE: Everyone, joining us tonight is a name I know you know very well. It is Chris Jericho, world famous wrestling star and also a dear friend of Benoit`s. Mr. Jericho, thank you for being with us.

CHRIS JERICHO, FORMER WWE WRESTLER: Thank you.

GRACE: I knew the whole time we were talking and discussing the crime scene and the possible use of steroids and the death of the little boy that you, as a friend of Benoit, is hearing all this. How has all of this hit you?

JERICHO: It`s almost a tale of two cities, a tale of two people. There is the Chris Benoit that had these horrendous acts of extreme psychopathic lunacy in the last couple days of his life, and then there`s the Benoit that I myself traveled with, lived with, said I love you to on many occasions. He was my mentor. He was one of my best friends. And he was a brother to me in so many ways.

And the 15 years I knew him and the two days that he decided to do these horrible, horrible acts, it`s hard to kind of discern the two. And that`s why we have to figure out what would cause such a mild-mannered, polite, influential, tremendous person and performer to do such things.

Is steroids a reason? I think it goes a lot deeper than that. I think you`re seeing a man with some severe psychological, troubled issues that held them in for far too long, until everything combined to cause him to snap in such a horrible way.

GRACE: Mr. Jericho, you spent so much time with Benoit over many, many years. Did he ever tell you about his son`s handicap?

JERICHO: No. And see, this is the thing. That`s why I really wanted to come talk with you, Nancy, and try to explain a little bit of Chris Benoit, the man, to some of the people that never heard anything about wrestling and don`t know anything about him, or you know, the millions of fans and hundreds of co-workers that he influenced in such a positive way, entertained.

Chris was a very quiet man but not a recluse and not a hermit, just quiet. He minded his own business, but he was always around. If there was a joke, he would laugh. And of all the years I was with him, I never once saw anything -- if there was a fight -- if I went nuts and wanted to beat somebody up, he was the guy that would contain me. And a lot of people can tell you that.

And as far as knowing about Daniel`s condition, it wouldn`t surprise me -- and I`m saying this seriously -- if even his own parents didn`t know because if Chris had decided that he wanted to keep it to himself, you wouldn`t have been able to pry that out of him with anything. I don`t know anybody, myself or any of his close friends, his co-workers, his boss, that knew or even suspected anything about him having the fragile X. Yet as soon as I read the symptoms of fragile X, it fit Daniel to a T all across the board.

GRACE: In what way? In what way, Mr. Jericho?

JERICHO: The lack of social skills, the never -- hard to make eye contact, intense shyness. Flapping of the hands is one thing I read. I remember him being a little bit very hyper, ADHD, very kind of a hyper little guy. And even to the point of his ears were kind of a little bit bigger. His head was a little bit larger. And you just don`t think about those things. Some kids grow into themselves over the years. But now that you read it, you can kind of really see where all this ties in.

I remember at a Wrestlemania party two years ago, my son, who was a year-and-a-half at the time, spoke more and better than Daniel did, who was about 4-and-a-half at the time, when they were playing. I just thought Daniel was like his father, just quiet and naturally withdrawn. Now you can see some of these indications that maybe it was more than that.

GRACE: With us is former WWE wrestler and superstar Chris Jericho.

To Dr. Marty Makary. What are the symptoms of fragile X? Are they as Chris Jericho is describing?

MAKARY: Absolutely. There can be a broad range of symptoms, including anxiety. Oftentimes they did not socially fit in in a regular setting. They are extremely broad because we don`t know that much about fragile X, and all we know is that it is loosely associated with a lot of these abnormal behaviors. But ADHD is certainly one of them.

GRACE: In this particular case, Doctor, did it also stunt the boy`s growth?

MAKARY: Not really. I mean, that`s a tough call to make based on the little information we know about fragile X syndrome.

GRACE: What you are seeing is Chris Benoit on WWE wrestling. That airs on USA network.

Out to Bethany Marshall, Dr. Bethany Marshall, psychoanalyst and author. Dr. Marshall, wouldn`t a child like this, with autistic-type syndromes, need special treatment to develop, to fully develop as much as they can? I mean, why would someone keep it a secret from the whole world? Chris Jericho is one of his best friends.

BETHANY MARSHALL, PSYCHOANALYST: Yes. Well, to put a frame around this, you know, 4 percent of all homicides include a suicide, OK? And men who kill their wives, children, and then themselves usually are extremely personality-disordered, and often, they`re married to a normal woman, so the normal demands of being in a relationship are extremely overwhelming to them.

So what happens, and could have happened in this case -- if his wife wanted him to be home more, the little boy was about to go off to school, so the illness was about to be exposed. And given that this wrestler was homicidal, he could have felt that his wife and child were exposing him to danger, him to some harm in his career, him to humiliation. You combine that with steroid use...

GRACE: Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Dr. Bethany Marshall, I don`t see it. By all accounts he adored the boy, loved the boy.

MARSHALL: Yes.

GRACE: But on the other hand, he kept the illness a secret.

MARSHALL: But we have to remember, he adored the little boy but he killed him, OK? He faced him away from him, put him in a chokehold and killed him. So we have to look past the superficial adoration to what we know about the homicidal mind that men who create -- who commit crimes of passion -- they feel that the other person is exposing them to danger, so they expose that person to danger. It`s a reversal.

GRACE: Out to the lines. Erin in Ohio. Hi, Erin. What`s your question, dear?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hey, Nancy.

GRACE: What`s your question, dear?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I was just wondering if Chris had had any prior criminal record or maybe mental health issues or anything like that.

GRACE: To Jean Casarez, Court TV`s news correspondent. What do we know?

CASAREZ: There was early on in his life a DUI, DWI, and then his wife had filed a petition for divorce, actually, in 2003, saying that he had violent tendencies and got very angry and destroyed furniture, but she withdrew that petition because they reconciled.

GRACE: Back to former WWE wrestler Chris Jericho, also a very dear friend of Benoit`s. A lot of people have perceived him moving down to the "ECW" as a demotion. You say that`s not a demotion. Why do you say that, and why the perception?

JERICHO: I`m glad that -- once again, I`m glad I got to talk to you about some of this because that`s -- that`s just such a fabrication and totally wrong. The WWE operates with three separate TV shows, "Raw," "Smackdown" and "ECW." They`re three separate brands. There`s a champion of each brand. Chris was the WWE champion on the "Raw" brand. That`s where you see him where he`s hugging his family and all the confetti`s coming down.

Then he moved to "Smackdown," which they moved the wrestlers around to freshen things up. And on "Smackdown," he was kind of in the middle level. So to better utilize his talent, because he was across the board probably the best wrestler in the WWE, and anyone would probably tell you that -- so to move him to "ECW" was twofold. One, he was about to become the "ECW" champion. And two, "ECW" is more with some younger guys that are just learning, and Chris was a great trainer and so well respected, they wanted him to be kind of more of a trainer to some of these younger guys to help them with their future endeavors.

So to move Chris to "ECW," Chris would not see that as a demotion. He would see it as doing his job, which is to help the business and to continue the business going, the business that he loved.

Chris never had a job, ever, except for wrestling. He never delivered papers. He never worked at a convenience store. He wrestled. So for him to go help some of the younger guys, he would take that as an honor.

GRACE: Well, it sounds like to me he was turning into more of a trainer.

JERICHO: Well, no because he was about to become the "ECW" champion. A champion is a champion, right?

GRACE: OK. OK. I`m glad you cleared that up because I didn`t understand it.

Out to the lines. Beth in West Virginia. Hi, Beth.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hi. Nancy, I was just wondering, you know, Chris Benoit was such a beloved figure and he was, you know, a good wrestler. Everyone has such good things to say about him. And with the way that he was tested negative for the steroids in April, are they sure, judging by the evidence, that there was not someone else involved in this? Are they sure that it was a murder-suicide, or could there have been someone involved to make it look like that?

GRACE: Rumors are flying, theories are flying that his death, Benoit`s death, was actually a murder. To Luis Fernando Llosa with "Sports Illustrated." What do we know? Is there anything to support a theory that Benoit was actually murdered?

LLOSA: Well, I`ve talked to investigators, Nancy, and I`ve talked to the district attorney, and so far, nothing that they have seen and conveyed to me would lead us to believe that this is a possibility. What we most likely have is somebody who was deeply depressed, and you know, possibly on anabolic steroids and may have suffered the side effects. We just don`t know. I mean, what we need is toxicology reports, which will prove what happened.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Before the 40-year-old pro wrestler Chris Benoit murdered his family and took his own life, he was at the top of a profession where stars seem to die young. A 2004 investigation by "USA Today" determined the professional wrestlers are 20 times more likely to die before age 45 than professional football players.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: Is Benoit just one of many to die within WWE? Out to Dr. Gary Wadler with the World Anti-Doping Agency and the NYU School of Medicine. Doctor, so these are just a few of the many wrestlers that have died before their time. What`s the deal?

DR. GARY WADLER, WORLD ANTI-DOPING AGENCY, NYU SCHOOL OF MEDICINE: Well, there`s no question that anabolic steroids are something one has to factor in and looking at that data. These drugs clearly have adverse effects and adverse effects on the heart and have resulted in sudden deaths, stroke, in people at a young age. So it`s multifactorial, but clearly, anabolic steroids is one of the real considerations.

GRACE: I don`t understand how, Dr. Wadler, an anabolic steroid creates such a rage in someone. I`m more familiar with crack cocaine doing that. I did have a couple of steroid cases, but not anything like this. What happens to the body?

WADLER: Well, in terms of the brain, you can see energizing of the individual and assertiveness. Move up the scale, they become aggressive. Go up further on the scale, and you become absolutely full of rage, and that`s why it`s called `roid rage, meaning steroid rage, which is really a difficulty in impulse control. And one can be easily provoked into doing physical harm to oneself or to somebody else.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I know Chris, and just -- he`s a quiet, gentlemanly kind of guy, and you never, ever would have expected any kind of violence or that kind of carnage. It`s just unthinkable, the things that are coming out. I can`t even imagine.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: Tonight, as rumors and theories fly that WWE superstar Chris Benoit was actually murdered himself, we are waiting on toxicology reports to determine whether anabolic steroids were involved.

Out to Elisha in West Virginia. Hi, Elisha.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hi, Nancy.

GRACE: What`s your question, dear?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What about his other two kids that are in Canada? Has anybody talked to them or anything?

GRACE: Let`s go to Chris Jericho, WWE wrestler and superstar himself, a friend of Benoit. What about the other kids? What do we know about them?

JERICHO: Well, I mean, they`re doing the best they can to deal with this, obviously. And I think everybody is still processing it. Chris`s son is 14, his daughter is 10 or maybe 11. So I mean, think of it from that respect, losing your father at an age, also a hero, and the way that it happened. I know they`re going to do good, but right now, it`s as devastating as it is to all of us. I mean, what do you expect?

GRACE: And very quickly to Dr. Wadler. How did he pass his April urinalysis?

WADLER: Well, we only know that they reported that he passed his urinalysis. We know nothing about the collection. We don`t know anything about the chain of command (SIC). We know nothing about the period of time he was told he had to give a specimen until he gave the specimen. So there`s many opportunities for that information to be misleading.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There`s new details after the deaths of pro wrestler Chris Benoit, his wife, and their 7-year-old son. Prosecutors say bruises show that Nancy Benoit was strangled by her husband while he kneeled on her back and that Benoit`s son, Daniel, may have been killed by a wrestling chokehold. A lawyer with the World Wrestling Entertainment says the Benoits had argued over Daniel`s care. The lawyer says Daniel had Fragile X Syndrome, which is a form of mental retardation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: It`s seemingly that, during the murders themselves, which apparently lasted over a span of days, Benoit was text messaging very coherent messages to others. What about it, Jean?

JEAN CASAREZ, COURT TV: Well, it started in the early morning hours of Sunday, all right? And it was 3:54 a.m. was the first one, sent to two co-workers from Benoit`s cell phone himself. The second one said, "The dogs are enclosed and the door is open." And then there were several more, five altogether, finally from Nancy Benoit`s cell phone.

GRACE: And what about the odd pop-up on Wikipedia online?

CASAREZ: OK, this is bizarre. Make a long story short, Wikipedia, which is online sort of a bibliography type of situation, at midnight, Monday morning, or 12:00 a.m....

(CROSSTALK)

GRACE: ... listed on there as living in New York with three kids?

CASAREZ: Shows you can`t believe everything you read. Anyway, at 12:01 a.m. on Monday, there was an entry made that Benoit`s wife, Nancy, was deceased and that`s why he didn`t do the show Saturday night. But law enforcement didn`t find the bodies until Monday afternoon.

GRACE: And so what does that suggest?

CASAREZ: It suggests that possibly he told someone before law enforcement found out.

GRACE: Out to the lawyers, Jason Oshins, Kathleen Mullin, and Susan Moss, Jason Oshins, if he had actually told someone what was happening within the home and they did nothing, and then the little boy was murdered the next day, would that constitute any criminal liability?

JASON OSHINS, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: No, that`s a stretch, Nancy. Obviously, a dereliction of duty as a sympathetic person to the human race not to respond in some way to what would be a serious crime, but a lack of doing something, for the most part in law, unless you have a duty to do it, is really absolved from legal liability.

GRACE: And very often, to you, Kathleen Mullin, if you do have a duty to do it, some type of guardianship duty or trusteeship, fiduciary duty, the reality is that`s usually a civil lawsuit. In our jurisprudence system, there is no duty to be a good Samaritan, to help out in any way. My question to you, Kathleen Mullin, is what about this doctor? His office raided today, according to reports. If he was giving anabolic steroids to Benoit inappropriately, what is he facing?

KATHLEEN MULLIN, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Nancy, I wish I could represent the doctor. I`d like to see the search warrant that authorized...

(CROSSTALK)

GRACE: Yes, that`s not what I asked you.

MULLIN: ... a search warrant inside of his office. What liability is he facing? Nancy, we don`t even know that he gave this guy anything that was illegal. Chris Benoit passed a drug test four weeks ago. There is nothing to support the idea that Benoit...

GRACE: I thought it was in April.

MULLIN: ... well, it was in April but, I mean, a little bit over four weeks ago, he passed a drug test. The doctor...

GRACE: April, May, June, we`re heading into July.

(CROSSTALK)

GRACE: It`s almost four months.

MULLIN: ... faking his urine tests. Look, we have Jericho on the program telling you...

(CROSSTALK)

GRACE: OK, you know what? I just asked you about potential criminal liability.

MULLIN: And I`m telling you I don`t see any.

GRACE: That`s it. What about it, Susan Moss?

MULLIN: I don`t see it.

SUSAN MOSS, FAMILY LAW ATTORNEY: Possible accessory to murder, that`s all. It certainly is the case if he brought -- if he gave him medication that he should not have been taking, and that medication led him to snap, there`s going to be substantial liability.

MULLIN: There`s nothing, nothing that connects those.

MOSS: We don`t know. We don`t know the facts yet. They can`t come out.

MULLIN: I know, but why would we assume? Why would we assume that steroids are related to this incident when all the evidence shows the contrary?

GRACE: Hold on. Hold on. Well, we do know this, Kathleen. We do know that the home was full of anabolic steroids. Now, maybe they were old steroids that he wasn`t going to take and they were just sitting there for no reason.

MULLIN: Nancy, maybe this guy`s toxicology report is going to show that he is clean, just like his drug test showed us. Maybe the autopsy reports are going to show that the child was killed first, maybe by the wife. She was a pro wrestler. Nobody knows what happened inside of this house, Nancy. And for us to vilify Chris Benoit and say that he was in the middle of a `roid rage...

(CROSSTALK)

GRACE: Hold on just a moment, Kathleen Mullin. Hold on just a moment. No one is vilifying Benoit. Benoit was a hero, not just to the wrestling community, but to all of the charities that he worked with, to all the people he tried to help.

And this is the choice, as you`re screaming about anabolic steroids, here are the choices. According to police, he killed his wife and his little boy, his mentally handicapped little boy. So if you can sleep better at night, Kathleen Mullin, thinking he did that cool, calm, and collected, fine. I would rather believe myself that, for some reason, he lost his mind.

And I want to go to his friend, Chris Jericho. Jericho knows him better than any of us. He`s known him for years. They`re very dear friends. Mr. Jericho, can you imagine him doing this cool-headed?

CHRIS JERICHO, AUTHOR, "A LION`S TALE": Absolutely not. And that`s why I think, once again, just by the little repartee you had there, it`s getting away from the source. Steroids or no steroids, there`s still a man with a very severe mental problem that was so well-hidden that nobody knew about it, not one person. Nobody knew about it, or maybe his wife did. I don`t know. But nobody I knew that actually Chris talked to or knew about had any indication of these tendencies, and that I think is the major problem.

This is not about steroids. It`s not about wrestling. It`s about finding out about the mental problems this man had to cause him to snap in such a brutal form. I love Chris Benoit; I hate the fact of what he did.

GRACE: I`ve got to tell you something. I, like a lot of other people, have been struggling with what happened. What happened? We don`t know. The murder victims can`t speak. He killed himself, according to the evidence, although there are theories he was murdered. And it`s very hard for me to take and to reconcile this guy that so many people looked up to could cold-bloodedly kill a mentally handicapped little boy.

JERICHO: Of course.

GRACE: In fact, it would ease my heart to know maybe he was on steroids, maybe he flipped for a moment. I`d rather think that than think that he could do that. When he died, the little boy had a little statuette by his bed of his father. He worshipped his father. And from what I`ve been told, the father adored the boy. So what are we supposed to think?

JERICHO: Nancy, that`s the thing. That`s such the dichotomy of this case. This is the problem. Chris loved his children. I`m not just saying he loved his children. He loved his children, all three of them, talked about them constantly, would go out of his way to go home even just for a few hours to see his son, to see Daniel, for sure.

This is the type of father he was and this is the type of guy he was, and that`s why it`s such a crazy -- you can`t comprehend it. That`s what the problem is. Was it steroids? Maybe. But I don`t want to hang everything just from the fact they found steroids. He did not take a shot of steroids and go, "I`m going to go crazy."

This is something that had been building in him for many, many years, obviously, for him to snap like that and go absolutely insane and take away the most important thing in his life. And I know it, because he told me, all three of his children.

GRACE: Back to Louis Fernando Llosa with "Sports Illustrated," Kathleen Mullin brought up a point, how do we know the wife didn`t kill the little boy? Now, police, the investigators at the medical examiner`s office, have gone into the home. It is very apparent, if you`ve never been on a murder scene, when someone has been dead three days and when someone has been dead one day. What do we know about the chronology of the deaths?

LOUIS FERNANDO LLOSA, "SPORTS ILLUSTRATED": You know, I`m not quite sure the chronology has changed, has shifted in its reporting over the past three days. But I don`t want to get off point here. I think we really have to take the WWE to task and ask them to further instigate rules and regulations and take care of their talent.

GRACE: Are you talking about anabolic steroid use?

LLOSA: I`m talking about the use of anabolic steroids and human growth hormone.

GRACE: OK, I want to go back to Mike Brooks. Mike, what do we know - - and I agree with you 200 percent, Louis Fernando Llosa with "Sports Illustrated" -- to Mike Brooks, tell me about the scene. It`s very obvious, as you know, from being on many homicide scenes how long somebody has been dead.

MIKE BROOKS, FORMER D.C. POLICE: Absolutely, Nancy. And I`d like say to Kathleen Mullin, you know, if he did this or she did that to him, what did she do, then tie herself up? I don`t think so. It was just apparently very, very just ugly, ugly scene, Nancy, with Bibles set next to her, set next to the little boy. And, you know, we don`t know exactly, exactly what happened. We don`t know the timeline, the exact timeline as of yet.

GRACE: But she was, in fact, bound hand and foot.

BROOKS: With blood under her head, and what I`m hearing is it looks like there had been signs of a struggle. So, you know, as I said, I don`t think she could tie herself up and then, apparently, the little boy was asphyxiated with some kind of wrestling chokehold.

The other thing, Nancy, as Louis pointed to -- and I`d like to ask Chris, what are the procedures the WWE goes through for their drug testing procedures? Who does it? When? How often? Is it random?

GRACE: Chris, we`ve got about 15 seconds.

JERICHO: It`s random testing done by an independent corporation that Vince McMahon has nothing to do with. If you are caught, you are fined and suspended. There is a list of performers who have been fined and suspended over the last six months. Ask Vince for them. He`ll supply it. It is a real, true, stringent drug test that gets results.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(NEWSBREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Early this day, in a luxury development in southern Spain, right next to Gibraltar, Spanish police arrested an Italian man on a French arrest warrant on an unrelated case for apparently torturing a child. A Portuguese woman was also arrested with him -- she doesn`t figure in the French arrest warrant -- but she was with him, his romantic partner. They were both taken into custody. Once in custody, the Spanish police began investigating and came up with this possible link that they may have made this call to the McCann family or people connected to the McCann family trying to get money out of them.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: What, if anything, does this couple know about the disappearance of 3-year-old baby Maddy? Baby Maddy snatched from a luxury resort vacation while her parents were nearby at a dinner party. The search has been on, no leads yet, until now. Is there finally a break of any type in the case?

To you, Phil Black, joining us from London. Who are these people? What happened?

PHIL BLACK, CNN LONDON CORRESPONDENT: Good question. This is another twist in this intriguing tale. As you have just heard, Spanish police are holding two people in custody, and they`re being investigated for possible suspicion or connection, I should say, to Madeleine`s disappearance.

Now, how this came about is all very strange, as well. They were arrested at the request of French authorities over a matter that we`re told is not in any way related to Madeleine`s disappearance, but at some stage after picking these people up -- an Italian man and a Portuguese woman -- they`d been alerted, they`d been tipped off that there may be some connection.

We should say there is no suspicion that these -- or there`s no suggestion that they do know what happened to Madeleine or are in any way involved in her actual disappearance, but the reports coming out of Spain indicate that they may have been involved in some sort of extortion attempt against Madeleine`s family -- Nancy?

GRACE: But, to Jean Casarez, do they know something, or do they claim to know something about her disappearance and were trying to get the reward?

CASAREZ: This is what`s so interesting. Before they were arrested, police were investigating them, because allegedly their phone number had called the tip line wanting to claim the money for finding Madeleine. And then it was found that there was this warrant out from French authorities for, quote, "criminal activity." And CNN confirmed that it was actually alleged torture of a child, was what the warrant was for, for this man.

GRACE: You know, Mike Brooks, the coincidence that they`re injecting themselves in the baby Maddy investigation and he has the torture of the child in his history, allegedly, something is not right there.

BROOKS: Not right at all, Nancy. And my first question, as soon as I heard about this, was, "OK, what do they really know?" OK, they were trying to extort money, they were trying to get some of the reward money. But maybe after law enforcement went there and talked to them, then maybe there was some information that they had that hadn`t been released to anyone yet that law enforcement said, "Well, wait a minute, they know a little bit too much about the scene, they know a little bit too much about this or that." You know, do they have any connection to this? That remains a question.

GRACE: And to the lawyers, Jason Oshins, Kathleen Mullin, Susan Moss, Jason Oshins, extortion, explain.

OSHINS: Extortion is the opportunity that someone uses to leverage to get something out of the other person, either for economic gain or to have power and control over them. And here in New York and in most states, it`s a felony.

GRACE: And to you, Kathleen, do you see any connection to Maddy`s actual disappearance?

MULLIN: Nancy, it`s hard to tell. The police investigation with respect to Maddy`s disappearance has been, in my humble opinion, bungled since the beginning. So it`s hard to know if these folks are truly connected to Maddy`s disappearance or they`re just out-of-the-woodwork kooks trying to capitalize on the despair of the parents.

GRACE: Susan Moss, weigh in.

MOSS: It ain`t over until it`s over, and this ain`t over. We`re going to hear a lot more about what these two -- what their connection may or may not be, and we`ll be able to decide then.

GRACE: You know, Phil Black, when I first heard that there had been an arrest, I was elated that maybe we were going to find baby Maddy. Where are these two tonight? And what has happened to prime suspect Murat?

BLACK: Yes, you and many people across Europe and the world felt that way, Nancy. We believe these two people are still being held by the Spanish police. Portuguese police say they were involved in this in some way, and they say they`re trying to speak to the Spanish police to try and work out precisely what this connection may be. Now, in terms of Robert Murat, that is the man who was first named as a suspect in this case, a British man who lived not far from where Madeleine was taken, well, he is still a suspect. The Portuguese police still don`t have evidence connecting him to any crime here, Nancy.

GRACE: And now, "CNN Heroes."

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TINA FRUNDT, "FIGHTING FOR JUSTICE": Men, women and children are being sold each day for somebody else`s profit. I think when we hear about trafficking, we automatically think about what goes on overseas. However, our own children in the U.S. are being out every day at 9, 10, 11 and 12 years old.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Sometimes they beat you. They make you go out there, make you stay out all night. They really don`t care. You can be 9 years old, and you can work for them.

"ANGELA": People are raped and beaten into submission to do it. You can be killed, and it wouldn`t really make a difference to other people, because other people would think of you as just a prostitute.

FRUNDT: My name is Tina Frundt. I`m a survivor of child trafficking within the United States at the age of 14. In my situation, I was a child, and a grown adult, who was then in his 20s, started paying attention to me, telling me how beautiful I was, picking me up from middle school.

I found out that he was actually a pimp by going with him to another state. Some of the things I went through was the manipulation, the violence, and the abuse. I went through it, so that`s why I think I`m so dedicated to helping others.

I`m the director of outreach for Polaris Project, and I fight to end human trafficking. I don`t want what happened to me happen to somebody else. What we do is offer services for women and children who want to get out.

Basically, our outreach program started two-and-a-half years ago. We go out to the street and hand out information. We actually go into the courtroom and do outreach. We take clients of all ages. Our youngest client has been 9. The oldest so far has been 40.

Please get the number, call, anytime, even if it`s just to talk. Our lines are 24 hours a day.

I think, in this job, you have to love what you do and have a passion for it, because it`s not a job to me. It`s my life, and I couldn`t imagine doing anything else.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We truly believe that a member of the public holds the information to unlock where Madeleine is being kept.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: This couple now behind bars after trying to apparently extort money from Baby Maddy`s parents. Out to Dr. Bethany Marshall, Bethany, you`ve done so many criminal profiles, who would have the chutzpah to get into that exclusive area into the condo and take the girl, a childnapper?

BETHANY MARSHALL, PSYCHOANALYST: Well, I was smiling for a second there because I was thinking about the John Mark Karr, the John Mark Karr syndrome, where he fell in love with JonBenet Ramsey and then tried to insert himself into the crime, but that might be what we`re seeing at this point. But, really, what you see with a guy who would get into a compound is someone who is so predatory he has more than one perversion. Beyond pedophilia, he is a sadist. He wants to take the child, pose the child, very exploitive and very opportunistic.

GRACE: Everyone, we will keep you updated on the baby Maddy story, but let`s stop to remember Army Sergeant Andrew Higgins, just 28, Hayward, California, killed, Iraq. On a second tour, awarded the National Defense Service Medal and the Iraq Campaign Medal, dreamed of starting a family and going to college, loved fishing and his two dogs. Higgins leaves behind proud, grieving parents, Jerry and Cheryl, and widow, Rachel. Andrew Higgins, American hero.

Thank you to our guests, but most of all to you for being with us, inviting all of us into your home. See you tomorrow night, 8:00 sharp Eastern, and, until then, good night, friend.

END