By James Caldwell, Torch columnist

An investigation by wrestling author Irv Muchnick into the events surrounding the Chris Benoit family tragedy has revealed new details into WWE's apparent knowledge of the events. In question is whether WWE knew more details on the Benoit double murder-suicide prior to airing the tribute to Benoit on the Monday, June 25 edition of Raw.

Muchnick obtained 911 phone records from Fayette County, Ga.'s public records that indicate WWE's head of security, Dennis Fagan, called at 1:16 p.m. EST on Monday afternoon for a "welfare check" of the Benoit residence after several WWE wrestlers received the strange text messages from Benoit's phone on the morning of Sunday, June 24.

In the conversation with 911 on Monday afternoon, Fagan said the text messages were received "at three o'clock this morning (Monday)," which could be interpreted as Fagan making a mistake on the timeline with WWE frantically searching for answers. Muchnick isn't as quick to pass it off as a simple misstatement.

"If WWE executives did not get their own chief of security faithfully briefed on the facts prior to his being assigned to call 911, then what does that tell us about how urgent an effort they were making to get to the bottom of what had happened to the Benoit family over the weekend?" Muchnik writes.

He continues, "Critics would speculate that WWE chairman Vince McMahon knew that the incident was a double homicide/suicide well before he went on the air at 8 p.m. Eastern time with the tribute to Benoit on Monday Night Raw.

"This new information that Fagan, seven hours earlier, had participated in the creation of an inaccurate record in his 911 call fuels those accusations.”

Muchnick contacted Fagan for comment, but Fagan said he would have nothing to say about the manner and referred Muchnick to WWE's VP for government relations. WWE spokesman Gary Davis told Muchnick he's not sure what point is trying to be made.

- Full details and audio clip of 911 call available at Muchnick's website.

JC Analysis: The key question is why does this matter nearly a year after-the-fact? It matters because WWE led the public to believe that they only had a limited set of facts on the deaths at the time they went live with Raw, and had to make a quick reaction on how to handle the situation for TV that Monday night.

Muchnick providing evidence that WWE possibly knew more about the murder situation, and still went forward with a tribute show to Benoit, calls into question WWE's credibility in how they handled all aspects of the situation - from the initial text messages to providing information to Georgia investigators. Muchnick is essentially building a case against WWE, a publicly-traded company, that there was more information available that they knew of or had strong evidence in support of, yet still aired the tribute show.

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