Episode 37: Welcome to Pushing Up Lilies, I'm your host Julie Mattson. In this gripping episode, I delve into the disturbing connection between head trauma and homicide, specifically examining the cases of the Louisville Shooter and a WWE Superstar, Chris Benoit. I share the research of the impact of concussions on the brain and how they can potentially lead to altered behavior, mood swings, and even violent tendencies. I also delve into the history and background of the Louisville Shooter and the WWE Superstar, examining their experiences with head injuries and the potential effects on their mental health and the complex relationship between concussions and homicide. Join me as we unravel the mysteries behind these tragic cases. Are you ready? Listen in...
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0:06 Welcome to Pushing Up Lilies.
0:08 I'm your host, Julie Mattson.
0:10 Pushing Up Lilies is a weekly True crime podcast with spine tingling, unusual and terrifyingly true stories from my perspective as a forensic death investigator and a sexual assault nurse examiner.
0:24 Do I have some stories for you?
0:26 Are you ready?
0:30 Hey, y'all on April 10th, which was just Monday.
0:35 There was a mass shooting in Louisville, Kentucky.
0:39 Now my husband and I were just there for our anniversary.
0:43 We had an amazing time.
0:45 It was beautiful.
0:47 We went on the Bourbon trail and went to several whiskey distilleries and they had taste tests and all kinds of fun stuff.
0:56 It was really a good time.
0:57 We stayed at a little boutique hotel there downtown.
1:01 There were a lot of restaurants around us and we thoroughly enjoyed it, but April 10th wasn't a great day for anyone there.
1:12 The old National Bank in Louisville actually was the scene of a mass shooting which killed five and injured nine.
1:21 The shooter was a 25 year old by the name of Connor Sturgeon.
1:27 Now he also died after being shot by the Louisville Metro P D.
1:32 Supposedly, Connor was a great student.
1:37 He attended Floyd Central High school in Floyd's Knobs.
1:41 And his father was the basketball coach there.
1:45 He was very popular.
1:47 Smart and was a star athlete.
1:50 So he played basketball.
1:51 He played football.
1:52 He participated in all the sports and he was good at them.
1:56 So after he graduated in 2016, he attended the University of Alabama from 2016 to 2020.
2:05 Before moving back to Louisville.
2:08 Now, he was employed by the old National Bank in June of 2021.
2:14 And he had worked full time there for around two years.
2:18 I believe they said he had gone back and forth doing some part time work while he was in college or something like that.
2:25 But in this building, the bank is on the first floor and then there are offices on the other floor.
2:31 So not unlike many towns I know on the square here in Denton, there is a business downstairs and then other businesses upstairs or even apartments upstairs, which I always thought was kind of cool.
2:44 But the employees that were working there on Monday were actually in a conference room for a virtual meeting at the time of the shootings.
2:55 And now Sturgeon actually began live streaming the event on Instagram until he was shot.
3:03 And I believe that for a short time, that was actually up on his Instagram feed before it was obviously removed as it should have been.
3:13 But five people were killed, Joshua Barrick, who was 40 Thomas Elliot who was 63 James Tutt, who was 64 Juliana farmer who was 45 Deanna Eckert who was 57.
3:30 Now, all of these victims were actually employees of the bank.
3:36 Two of the nine injured were police officers and one of them required brain surgery and I have not yet heard how he is doing, but I have heard that he had brain surgery.
3:49 Three were released on Monday shortly after they were taken to the hospital and then three were hospitalized with nonlife threatening injuries and then three actually required surgery.
4:02 One which would have been the officer before the shooting.
4:06 He messaged a friend and said he was suicidal and said he wanted to kill as many people in the bank as he could.
4:15 Now, most of his social media included pictures of family, pictures of friends, but I believe they said that there was a bit of a dark side to some of his posts.
4:28 He posted something titled Monday vibes on Monday and it included the caption I could burn this whole place down.
4:39 So back when I was younger, of course, we didn't have social media.
4:43 We have the huge brick phones that you had to plug into your car cigarette lighter.
4:48 There was no text messaging and we just didn't have the things that we have now.
4:53 So it's hard to imagine not having them.
4:55 But I do somewhat remember.
4:58 I didn't know it was a struggle back then because it didn't exist.
5:02 So I didn't feel like I was doing without, I actually felt like I had the best, which is crazy looking back at it now because it was terrible.
5:11 But many people post suicide notes and threats and different things on Facebook and on Instagram and even on TikTok nowadays, I know that usually when my friends post something that's a little bit off or not like them, I'll reach out and be like, hey, what's going on?
5:34 What was your post about?
5:36 Do you need to talk that type of thing?
5:38 Now, his friends may have done that.
5:42 I'm not sure.
5:43 And that may have definitely taken place.
5:47 I know that social media now is one way that people make outcries and hope that their friends will see it whether or not they want to be stopped.
5:58 Who knows?
5:59 You don't know what's going through somebody's head.
6:02 But we have seen many suicide notes being posted on Facebook and Instagram, which resulted in a welfare check because a friend would call the police and say, hey, my friend just posted this and it's a little off and looks like a suicide note and lo and behold, we'll go over there and they will have shot themselves or hung themselves or whatever.
6:26 But we see that more.
6:28 Now, I've even had people record their suicide note and leave a note for the police to watch the recording when they get there and they actually record like a facetime video suicide note.
6:42 But the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, tobacco, firearms and explosives are actually assisting in the investigation.
6:51 He used a rifle.
6:53 It didn't appear to be a bank robbery.
6:57 Originally, there had not been a motive specified, but it later came out that he had apparently been told that he was going to be fired and he left a note for his parents saying that he was gonna shoot up the bank.
7:14 And now his parents had probably already left for work when he left the note and then left the house.
7:20 And it wouldn't have been something that they saw until they got home from work that afternoon.
7:25 Of course, they heard about it on the news, I'm sure prior to coming home and finding this note.
7:31 But looking back at the life of Sturgeon, he had actually, like I said, played a lot of sports, he played a lot of football and he had multiple concussions while playing football.
7:45 And actually in eighth grade, they said that he set out most of the year because of injuries and was told that he couldn't play because he had been reinjured multiple times during that season.
7:59 He had to wear a helmet while playing basketball and then he had two more concussions playing football when he was in high school.
8:08 Now, this is with a helmet on.
8:11 We know that they're made to protect them.
8:13 But it's scary when you put your kids out on the football field and you know, they're gonna get hit and you know, they have to hit, you hit somebody in the wrong way and cause a lot of damage.
8:23 But I mean, football's been around for a long time.
8:26 So those boys, they like to play that traumatic brain injuries though or injuries like concussions are gonna affect brain function, especially if you're reinjured over and over.
8:39 I know when I worked at the emergency room, we had a lot of people come in with concussions, they had lost consciousness.
8:46 Some had not lost consciousness, vomiting headaches, like just a lot of terrible symptoms, trouble concentrating trouble with memory.
8:56 They couldn't balance, they were uncoordinated, but this can also cause a depression and sleep disturbance and irritability problems with memory.
9:09 So what happens is these violent blows to the head cause your brain to move, which makes it kind of slide against the inner walls of your skull.
9:19 And you can imagine over time cumulatively, those are gonna cause a lot of damage it happening over and over can't be a good thing for your head.
9:31 So looking back at some murderers who actually had suffered from concussions and brain injuries.
9:42 I know that y'all remember Chris Benoit.
9:46 So he was a pro wrestler back in the early two thousands and he was a W W E wrestler and I grew up watching W W E I don't know if y'all knew but Devon Ericks are all from the town right down the road from where we live and they were super popular here.
10:05 Back in high school.
10:07 They used to set up a little makeshift wrestling ring in the middle of our football field.
10:11 It sounds silly, but they'd set it up in the middle of our football field and then we would all go watch them and our concession stand would open.
10:20 It was like big entertainment.
10:21 We would go up there and watch the Von Eric and I think I have literally every one of their autographs.
10:27 Of course, I think there's only one that's still alive.
10:30 I think a couple of them may have committed suicide.
10:34 They've been struck in the head a lot over their wrestling career.
10:38 Chris Benoit was no different.
10:41 So he died by suicide.
10:43 This was back in oh seven.
10:44 I don't know if y'all remember the story, but he strangled his wife, then he gave his son Xanax and then actually suffocated him.
10:52 So he was super popular, world famous, loved by his fans.
10:58 And so this all happened back in June of oh seven.
11:03 He was born in Quebec, so he was Canadian and he had steadily climbed the ranks.
11:09 So pro wrestling for over 22 years, he wrestled in Japan was just very well known.
11:16 He was a star.
11:17 He had 22 championships under his belt.
11:21 But over three days in June, he had murdered his wife and then his, his son who was seven, Daniel and then took his own life.
11:30 So it shocked the wrestling world.
11:32 There were a lot of questions about drug testing, about his steroid use.
11:36 He was a big guy and then how his long career could have impacted his mental health.
11:43 Some answers emerged after his death.
11:47 When everything was investigated, he had taken steroids and testosterone, of course, that was against W W E policy.
11:56 But he was also, I don't know if y'all remember the days of wrestling is a little bit different now with M MA but they used to like get props from the side of the stage and actually hit each other in the head with him.
12:09 I mean, I guess I always kind of thought, I know big part of it was acting but I never really realized that they were actually hit.
12:16 I always thought they kind of stomped their foot, made it look like they hit him in the head or made it look like they were hitting them hard with something, but they weren't actually like making impact.
12:26 But apparently he was struck in the head multiple times with very heavy objects.
12:32 They would use cables and ladders and chairs.
12:35 It would be like a steel chair, not a plastic PV C chair that's not gonna hurt or that's gonna break it's steel.
12:44 He seemed to be able to function.
12:45 Normally.
12:46 He married twice and had three Children.
12:49 He was occasionally violent and Nancy, his wife had actually filed for divorce shortly after they got married.
12:57 He would get unpredictable when he lost his temper and she was afraid that he was gonna hurt her and her son.
13:05 But then she later decided to stay with him.
13:08 So he was supposed to appear at a pay per view fight and not this happened and it was supposed to be in Houston and he was expected to win this extreme championship and he never showed up.
13:22 His friend received a strange message from him that said the dogs are in the enclosed pool area and the back door is open.
13:31 Of course, his friend thought, well, that's kind of strange, wasn't really concerned until he found out that he hadn't shown up for this pay per view fight.
13:39 And then he let the W W E authorities and the police know that he had gotten this strange text message.
13:48 Nancy was found with her hands and feet tied and there was blood under her head.
13:53 And Daniel, his seven year old was found in bed and then Chris was actually found hanging from a weight machine cable in the gym at their home.
14:04 But it's believed that maybe even a couple of days prior, he murdered Nancy and Daniel before he killed himself.
14:14 So Nancy was strangled first and then it appears that he had given his son Xanax and then smothered him.
14:22 Now he did do some online searches, which is another thing that we many times look at on crime scenes, we have had a suicide before where someone had Googled.
14:34 What's the best place to shoot yourself in the chest to make sure that you don't live things like that.
14:40 But he searched for the easiest way a person could break their neck.
14:45 Now he put Bibles next to Nancy and Daniel's bodies and then he went into the home gym and tied a cable around his neck, attached it to the highest weight on the weight machine and then let go.
14:59 So, of course, there were a lot of questions about what made him so violent and his autopsy answered a lot of those questions.
15:08 He had a severely damaged brain and 10 times the normal amount of testosterone in his body.
15:16 Now they said that his heart was really enlarged and it would have eventually killed him.
15:21 But that's very common in athletes who use growth hormones and abused steroids.
15:29 Of course, they blamed it originally on the steroids and the wrestling association pretty much was on board with that because they didn't want to take any responsibility for his injuries in the rain causing him to have this behavior.
15:49 So a lot of experts believe that his brain injuries led him to kill his family and to take his own life.
15:55 They did say that his brain was so severely damaged that it resembled the brain of an 85 year old Alzheimer's patient.
16:04 It showed evidence of repeated blows to the head, the damage was extensive.
16:11 It went across multiple areas of the brain and was one of the worst that they had ever seen.
16:16 So before this happened, friends said that he seemed a little bit different.
16:21 He seemed depressed.
16:23 He had a fellow wrestler friend actually die suddenly in oh five.
16:28 And he started kind of exhibiting some odd behaviors.
16:31 They said that he would disappear for weeks and that he seemed a little bit paranoid.
16:37 And of course, the wrestling association is like, hey, if it's caused by brain injuries in the ring, like, why was he able to get to work?
16:44 How could he drive, how was it that he could perform these intricate maneuvers in the ring?
16:49 And so they of course, tried to take some of the heat off of themselves.
16:55 But a good thing that came out of this is the no chair shots to the head rule, which also resulted in doctors supervising the matches and then more thorough drug testing.
17:08 So it's interesting to see like how these continuous concussions and injuries to the brain can cause a complete change in someone's demeanor.
17:21 Just the depression and the irritability, they just accumulate.
17:26 I'm sure over time when it keeps happening over and over the investigation is still underway in the Connor Sturgeon shooting and I'm sure that they'll find out more information.
17:39 There's probably some additional information that they'll get from the parents and they'll continue to look into his computers.
17:45 And text messages and those types of things.
17:48 And so we will stand by to see what comes of that.
17:54 In our next episode, we are also going to talk about brain injuries in serial killers.
17:59 We did see that as well in many serial killers, some of the most infamous murderers actually suffered blows to the head at a very young age that could have also contributed to personality changes that led them to perform these murders.
18:17 So, stand by for that.
18:20 Thank you so much for joining me today on Pushing Up Lilies.
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