ATLANTA, June 26 — Chris Benoit, a professional wrestler known as the Canadian Crippler, killed his wife and 7-year-old son in their house in Fayetteville, Ga., over the weekend before taking his own life by hanging himself with a cable from a weight machine in his home gym, investigators said Tuesday.
Mr. Benoit won the World Heavyweight Championship in 2004.
The authorities found the bodies on Monday afternoon as they were checking on the family at the request of Mr. Benoit’s employer, World Wrestling Entertainment, said Lt. Tommy Pope, lead investigator with the Fayette County Sheriff’s Office.
On its Web site, the wrestling organization said it called the authorities after receiving several “curious” text messages from Mr. Benoit early Sunday morning.
Investigators searching the house found Nancy E. Benoit, 43, in an upstairs family room with her hands and feet bound and blood under her head, said Scott Ballard, the Fayette County district attorney.
Deputies found Daniel C. Benoit, 7, dead in his bed.
Investigators said no note was left at the scene, but a Bible had been placed next to each victim.
An autopsy determined that both had been asphyxiated, though mother and son were apparently killed hours apart.
“While we don’t have that nailed down completely,” Mr. Ballard said, “it would appear that some period of time elapsed between the death of the two victims and the suicide, and it struck me as somewhat bizarre that perhaps he would even be in the home with their deceased bodies.”
Mr. Ballard said a number of prescription drugs were found in the home, including anabolic steroids, and that they appeared to have been prescribed legally for Mr. Benoit.
The authorities would not speculate on a motive, but said Ms. Benoit had filed for divorce and had applied for a restraining order against her husband in 2003, saying Mr. Benoit had threatened her and had broken furniture in their home.
She later dropped the complaint.
People who knew the Benoits were shocked by the deaths.
“I’m in the dark,” said Kevin Sullivan, a former professional wrestler who was previously married to Nancy Benoit. “I wrestled with him a lot. I thought he was a great performer.”
Mr. Sullivan added, “Last night when I found out, it was shocking, just shocking.”
Though toxicology tests will not be completed for weeks, the presence of steroids in the home has led wrestling observers to speculate that the wrestler may have snapped in an episode of “’roid rage.”
But Christopher Nowinski, a former professional wrestler who worked with Mr. Benoit, and who was forced to quit because of head injuries, said he believed that repeated, untreated concussions might have caused his friend to snap.
“He was one of the only guys who would take a chair shot to the back of the head,” Mr. Nowinski said, “which is stupid.”
Mr. Nowinski has written a book called “Head Games: Football’s Concussion Crisis” (Drummond Publishing Group, 2006), about chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a condition that can cause memory loss, depression and “bizarre, paranoid behavior.”
Mr. Nowinski said that he had been trying to persuade the coroner examining Mr. Benoit to allow a brain exam to look for the telltale neurofibrillary tangles in the brain’s cortex, but that he had thus far been rebuffed.
“Part of me hopes there was something wrong with his brain,” Mr. Nowinski said. “The Chris Benoit I knew was always more concerned about everybody else’s well-being than his own.”
