Last weekend, police found the bodies of professional wrestler Chris Benoit, his wife Nancy and son Daniel in Benoit's suburban Atlanta home. The details that have emerged are grisly and strange. Over two days, police believe, Benoit strangled his wife, then his son and then hanged himself in his gym.

It's just the latest tragedy in the big business that is professional wrestling. Benoit worked for World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), the $1.1 billion company that dominates the industry. Last year, performer Eddie Guerrero died of a sudden heart attack that many believe was brought on by years of steroid abuse. Other performers have recently died young, including Curt Hennig, who wrestled under the name "Mr. Perfect."

Though it's tempting to dismiss the Benoit murder-suicide as one deranged act that shouldn't tar an entire industry, it's very difficult to do so in light of journalist Irvin Muchnick's recent book, Wrestling Babylon ($18, ECW Press, 2007).

Muchnick has covered wrestling for various publications for decades, and this book collects his articles about some of wrestling's most sordid moments. Though WWE Chairman Vince McMahon has successfully sold his scripted sport as mainstream entertainment, wrestling seems mired in its carnival roots. Performers are overworked and need painkillers to deal with their frequent injuries. They're expected to have godlike bodies while traveling 200 days a year, and so they turn to steroids. Failed marriages are normal, and high jinks on the road sometimes get out of hand.

Writing about the Von Erich family, who were heroes in Texas wrestling during the 1980s, Muchnick reveals how the family patriarch, Fritz von Erich, basically sacrificed his entire family to his World Class Championship Wrestling promotion. He promoted his sons as clean-cut All-American heroes. Son David died of a likely drug overdose while wrestling in Japan. Son Mike killed himself after he couldn't cut it as a wrestler. Son Kerry shot himself. This is just a partial death list.

Muchnick also exposes a little-known story about wrestler Jimmy Snuka, who in 1983 took up with a 23-year-old groupie; she wound up dead at an Allentown, Pa., hospital from "undetermined craniocerebral injuries." Snuka was never charged with a crime, but Muchnick makes a compelling case that the popular wrestler, known as "Superfly," had battered his girlfriend.

According to Muchnick, in a discussion with an attorney who had considered representing the girl's family in a wrongful-death suit, McMahon said, "Look, I'm in the garbage business. If you think I'm going to be hurt by the revelation that one of my wrestlers is really a violent individual, you're mistaken."

Muchnick ends his book with an appendix detailing which wrestlers have died and from what causes, since 1985. It's 11 pages long, and "natural causes" are rare. There have been murder victims, suicides, drug overdoses and untimely organ failures.

There's something dark about a business that should be full of light. After all, when it works, wrestlers make kids believe that grown men can fly. Muchnick captures some of that sentiment as well. But he also reveals a lot of tragedy that's gone unnoticed in the marginalized but big-money world of professional wrestling.