Considering the peak level of fitness athletes maintain over the course of their careers,
it’s shocking to realize how many of them have died young.
What’s even more shocking is the chilling diagnosis many of them shared.
Keep watching to find out about the condition known as C.T.E.
Phillip Adams was an NFL mainstay for half a decade, playing for several of the biggest
teams in the league — including the San Francisco 49ers and the Oakland Raiders.
But one fateful day in the spring of 2021 would forever alter his public image.
On April 7, 2021, six people were shot and killed in York County, South Carolina.
The suspect was later named as Adams, who then turned the gun on himself, according
to The Charlotte Observer.
He was just 32.
Adams shot his doctor, Robert Lesslie, along with the physician's wife and two grandchildren,
leaving both investigators and Adams' family and friends puzzled, due to the NFL star's
mild demeanor and lack of any prior criminal history.
However, Adams' sister, Lauren, has shed some light on his health leading up to the incident.
She told USA Today:
"His mental health degraded fast and terribly bad.
There was unusual behavior [...] that was not like we had ever seen."
Lauren emphasized that Adams' violent final act shouldn't tarnish his impressive legacy,
suggesting that something out of his control may have caused his sharp decline.
In December 2021, a post-mortem revealed that Adams had "unusually severe" C.T.E. — which
stands for chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a form of brain damage linked to repeated
head trauma.
Dr. Ann McKee said:
“[CTE] might have contributed to Adams's behavioral abnormalities."
In the male-dominated world of wrestling, Daffney wasn't afraid to mix it up with the
men.
She often competed in mixed-gender matches, winning the men's WCW Cruiserweight title.
Ultimately, this came at a cost to her health.
Daffney suffered from persistent and debilitating headaches, believed to be the result of multiple
concussions.
Fellow wrestler Jamie Lynn Senegal told USA Today:
"It would be like her brain was so messed up that if she was looking at the phone screen
she would have to put a blanket over her windows and have the lights off because she would
get headaches.”
In September 2021, Daffney did an Instagram Live stream, where she was seen brandishing
a gun and appearing agitated.
Shortly after the stream, TMZ reported that she had died by suicide at the age of 46.
Daffney's live stream, filmed mere moments before her death, demonstrates her firm belief
that she had C.T.E., which may have been responsible for her frequent headaches.
According to People, she said in the video:
"The most important thing to remember is that C.T.E. and head injuries and concussions [...] They
can now really only be diagnosed after you are dead.
So, I don't want to do anything to hurt my brain.
I want to be studied."
While it has not been confirmed whether Daffney actually did have C.T.E., some of the last
words she uttered remain a stark reminder of the pain seemingly inflicted upon her by
her profession.
It was the irascible nature of ice hockey star Derek Boogaard that first endeared scouts
towards him.
At the age of 15, Boogaard was participating in a hockey game when he began swinging at
his opponents, as chronicled by The New York Times.
This display of bravado impressed scouts for the Regina Pats, who watched from the sidelines.
“It was pretty impressive what he did, like, how strong he was and mean.
And you thought maybe this guy could be an animal one day.”
Boogaard was subsequently offered a life-changing career opportunity, paving the way for his
time in the National Hockey League.
But while these outbursts were the catalyst for Boogaard's professional hockey career,
they were also his downfall.
As the New York Post highlights, his mantra was "Live by the sword, die by the sword,"
reflective of his innumerable hockey fights.
A profile by The New York Times illustrates that Boogaard began suffering from severe
headaches to the point of nausea and intolerance to light.
Subsequently, his professional career had to be put on hold.
According to his friends, this caused him to become deeply depressed.
Tragically, at the young age of 28, he died in 2011 — the result of an accidental overdose.
Following Boogaard's untimely demise, his family sought answers, and a brain analysis
was conducted.
Their worst fears were confirmed when it was announced that he had C.T.E.
caused by persistent head trauma due to hockey, according to The New York Times.
Had he not suffered that fatal drug overdose, doctors predicted that Boogaard would have
developed dementia by the time he reached middle age.
NFL fullback Kevin Turner had an impressive professional record, playing for the Philadelphia
Eagles and New England Patriots.
However, a number of injuries forced him to retire in 1999.
In 2010, Turner was diagnosed with the degenerative disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and
he died six years later at the age of 46.
ESPN reports that Turner hypothesized that his condition may have been linked to C.T.E.,
both of which he believed were caused by head injuries during his footballing career.
“I really believe that, you know, had I not played all those years, um, that I wouldn't
have this condition.”
Subsequently, he donated his brain in the hope of aiding head trauma studies following
his death.
Sadly, Turner admitted that he would not have pursued an NFL career had he known of the
potentially devastating ramifications.
He revealed:
"Football had something to do with it [...] If they would have come to me and said, 'I've
seen the future.
This is what happens,' of course, I would stop playing immediately.”
After conducting an analysis on Turner's brain, The Boston University School of Medicine concluded
that the football player had advanced C.T.E.
What's more, the condition appeared to have caused his ALS.
Researcher Ann McKee said:
"The severity of Mr. Turner's C.T.E.
was extraordinary and unprecedented for an athlete who died in his 40s.
While he had typical cognitive symptoms and problems with impulse control associated with
C.T.E., it also appears that C.T.E.
decimated the motor cortex of his brain at a young age, likely leading to his ALS symptoms."
Chris Henry was a talented wide receiver for the Cincinnati Bengals, with an impressive
career record.
But the young sportsman's NFL career was cut short after just four years.
As chronicled by Bleacher Report, the Bengals decided to cut Henry from the team following
some legal issues.
However, he was given a second chance, one he was determined not to blow.
Thereafter, Henry's teammate Carson Palmer noted his renewed commitment to the game.
According to HuffPost, Carson said:
"He's a great kid with a great heart.
He's changed his life around [...] and has done everything he can to make himself a better
person."
But things took a turn for the worse a week before Christmas, 2009.
Following a dispute with his fiancée, Henry fell out the back of a pickup truck, resulting
in catastrophic injuries, according to HuffPost.
He died the next day at the age of 26.
The circumstances surrounding Henry's death remain mysterious.
That tragic day continues to baffle his fiancée, Loleini Tonga, who told ESPN that Henry was
not trying to die when he threw himself out of the pickup truck she was driving.
“I think he thought maybe he was going to land…he was gonna, um, land right.”
A C.T.E.
diagnosis in 2010 may help to explain his poor impulse control.
However, as Dr. Julian Bailes told The New York Times, unlike many of his fellow athletes
who died with C.T.E., Henry did not have a history of concussions.
Bailes pondered:
"Is there some lower threshold when you become at risk for this disease?”
Dave Mirra was a BMX icon, but his passion for the sport would ultimately spell his downfall.
As he prophetically once said:
"They'll die.
Just like I would when I was younger.
I would have died to win."
Mirra died to win, but he also lived to win, so when his career came to an end, he struggled
with the aftermath of a life without extreme sports.
Friends told TMZ:
“[Mirra] couldn't find anything in his life to even approximate the adrenaline rush he
got from BMX."
“What I know with myself is that, you know, it was something where you started small,
you started out riding and you just kept taking things to another level, pushing limits.”
Subsequently, Mirra died by suicide in 2016.
He was just 41.
Those who saw Mirra in his final months expressed their concern for his seemingly deteriorating
state, with Rolling Stone describing him as such:
"[...] stuck on one topic, returning to it again and again, forgetting what he'd just
said [...] emotionally fragile, breaking into tears in the middle of everyday conversation."
Throughout his short lifetime, Rolling Stone notes that Mirra suffered several potentially
fatal injuries, including a 16-foot fall in 2006 and a 14-foot fall a number of years
later, resulting in the athlete "momentarily losing consciousness."
So, when Mirra died, his C.T.E.
diagnosis came as little surprise.
Dr. Lili-Naz Hazrati told ESPN:
"It's assumed it is related to multiple concussions that happened years before.”
Mirra's widow, Lauren, confirmed to the publication that he had grown increasingly unrecognizable
in his final days.
She poignantly revealed:
"He was lost.”
NFL star Jovan Belcher appeared to have it all: a glittering career as a linebacker with
the Kansas City Chiefs, a $1.9 million contract, and a loving girlfriend and baby daughter.
However, the seemingly perfect life of the football player began to unravel amid a shocking
display of violence.
In 2012, Belcher shot his long-term girlfriend, Kasandra Perkins, following an argument.
As The Kansas City Star reports, Belcher apologized to Perkins as she lay dead, confessed to the
police, and then turned the gun on himself in the parking lot of Arrowhead Stadium.
He was just 25.
Friends of the late star have struggled to fathom why someone they knew and loved, someone
who appeared so placid and amiable, could commit such a horrific act of violence.
A Chiefs employee, Josh Looney, told Bleacher Report:
"We used to do these school visits, and Jovan would just light up around kids.”
Inexplicably, this was the same man who went on to murder the mother of his child.
Another friend, Thomas Jones, told the outlet:
"I loved him [...] But what he did was a horrible, horrible act.
There's no getting around that."
At the request of his family, desperate for answers, Belcher's body was exhumed a year
later.
Dr. Bennet Omalu, who also examined wrestler Andrew Martin, told USA Today:
“I would bet one month's salary that (Belcher) had C.T.E."
ESPN reports that doctors did find signs of C.T.E.
upon analysis of Belcher's brain, hopefully providing his family with some much-needed
answers.
The death of wrestling superstar Chris Benoit shocked the world.
An icon within the WWE, no one expected Benoit's life and career to end in such a harrowing
way.
When the 40-year-old was found dead by suicide in 2007, police soon made a chilling discovery:
Benoit had also killed his wife and 7-year-old son.
The tragedy left the wrestling world aghast, as both fans and peers struggled to fathom
what had occurred.
A stunned Hulk Hogan told Us Magazine that Benoit was a "peaceful" person.
However, Benoit's co-workers had noticed a recent shift in his behavior, as he appeared
obsessed with proving his worth in the ring, which led to some extremely dangerous stunts.
Fellow wrestler Christopher Nowinski told The Guardian:
"One time I was watching Chris fight and he allowed someone to hit him on the back of
the head with a chair.
It was a really bad idea in terms of brain trauma.
Chris always wanted it to look realistic."
Accordingly, in the lead-up to that nightmarish day, Nowinski observed "signs of strange behavior.”
He said:
“He was depressed, becoming paranoid.
These are issues we've seen in other athletes who've suffered head traumas."
According to ABC News, a note in his post-mortem analysis reads:
“Benoit's brain was so severely damaged it resembled the brain of an 85-year-old Alzheimer's
patient.”
NFL star Aaron Hernandez appeared to have it all.
After signing with the New England Patriots, he was awarded a contract that would see him
earn $40 million.
Why, then, would such a gifted and financially privileged athlete commit a violent act that
would not only end his career but forever tarnish his reputation?
In the summer of 2013, Hernandez was arrested and charged with the murder of his friend,
Odin Lloyd.
Lloyd had been killed a week earlier near Hernandez's mansion.
To make matters worse, police then began investigating the NFL star's possible roles in a 2007 double
shooting and a 2012 drive-by shooting.
Hernandez was found guilty of murdering Lloyd and sentenced to life in prison, though he
was acquitted of double murder in the 2012 shooting.
The Hernandez case remains bizarre; why would a man who had everything throw it all away
over a dispute with an ex-pal?
In 2017, Hernandez died by suicide in his prison cell.
He was 27.
Following his death, medical examiners confirmed that Hernandez had what The Washington Post
calls, quote, "the most severe case of chronic traumatic encephalopathy ever discovered in
a person his age."
Dr. Ann McKee explained further:
"Individuals with C.T.E. [...] of this severity have difficulty with impulse control, decision-making,
inhibition of impulses for aggression, emotional volatility, rage behaviors."
Defensive lineman Shane Dronett made an impressive 139 NFL appearances over a 10-year period,
playing for renowned teams such as the Denver Broncos and Atlanta Falcons.
But his career, while undeniably formidable, was blighted by frequent injuries.
Although he signed a $20 million contract in 2000, Pro Football Weekly wrote at the
time that a spate of injuries had a major impact on his career.
Once a congenial and easy-going man, friends and family began to see a marked difference
in Dronett's demeanor.
His wife, Chris, told CNN:
"He woke up in the middle of the night and started screaming and told everyone to run
out of the house.
He thought that someone was blowing up our house.”
The publication notes that the athlete was beset by paranoia, instability, and recurrent
night terrors.
Then, one winter's day in 2009, he brandished a gun in front of his wife.
Chris recounted the harrowing incident:
"I saw the gun, and I ran out the front door.
He had gone into the kitchen, and as soon as I put my hand on the front door, I heard
it."
Dronett was just 38 when he died.
As CNN reports, Dronett's post-mortem examination revealed evidence of C.T.E.
Chris told Beaumont Enterprise:
"He thought everyone was turning against him."
Chris went on to add that while her late husband's C.T.E.
diagnosis may help to decipher his paranoia, it’s not something they’ll ever be able
to get over.
Vincent Jackson, a wide receiver for the San Diego Chargers and Tampa Bay Buccaneers, was
much loved during his all too brief lifetime.
When he was found dead at the age of 38 in 2021, tributes poured in from both fans and
fellow athletes alike.
Pewter Report outlined that chronic alcoholism played a role in the sportsman's untimely
death, and, eventually, a post-mortem examination of Jackson's brain revealed that he had stage
2 C.T.E.
According to The Athletic, expert Dr. Ann McKee stated:
"Vincent Jackson was a brilliant, disciplined, gentle giant whose life began to change in
his mid-30s.
He became depressed, with progressive memory loss, problem solving difficulties, paranoia,
and eventually extreme social isolation."
Jackson's decline remains a stark reminder that riches and fame do not guarantee health
and longevity.
His wife, Lindsey, told The New York Times in a heartbreaking interview:
"His whole plan in the N.F.L.
was to set himself up to not have these struggles.
It's not the ending he wanted."
But, as Lindsey went on to highlight, neither she nor her husband knew about the potentially
deadly ramifications of repeated concussions.
She said:
"I think the message is, if you played for a long time and you're experiencing symptoms,
it's very likely that this is what it is.
I didn't know that; Vincent didn't know that.
We thought it was just concussions, and we'd love for people to realize it's more than
that."
Justin Strzelczyk enjoyed a successful NFL career with the Pittsburgh Steelers for almost
a decade.
When the 36-year-old died in a car crash in 2004, there initially appeared to be little
to distinguish his tragic death from any other roadside fatality — particularly those that
are the result of driving under the influence.
However, the mystery of Strzelczyk's death only really manifested when toxicology results
came back completely clean.
But the puzzle didn't end there.
As the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports, the events leading up to Strzelczyk's demise were
nothing short of eerie.
After offering "cash and a crucifix to two strangers” whom he pleaded to, quote, “take
their children to higher ground," Strzelczyk drove the wrong way down the road, refused
to stop for a state trooper signaling him down, and crashed his vehicle.
A state trooper involved in the incident told the Post-Gazette that the athlete's death
was neither a suicide nor an attempt to harm others.
He explained:
"When you consider what else he could have hit or who else could have been hurt, it could
have been much worse.
But it wasn't his intent.”
His wife told ESPN:
“Whoever died in that car was not the man I was married to.
This person was a different person than the person I was with for ten years.”
A few years later, Dr. Bennet Omalu diagnosed Strzelczyk with C.T.E.
He told The New York Times:
"This is irreversible brain damage.
It's most likely caused by concussions sustained on the football field."
Ashley Massaro's tenure within the mainstream wrestling circuit, albeit brief, nonetheless
turned her into a superstar.
Although she was reduced to the arguably sexist "Diva" role with the WWE, The Nation said:
"Massaro had charisma and athletic talent a decade ahead of a time when it would have
been actually appreciated."
But Massaro's three-year role within the WWE was enough to have a devastating impact on
her health.
The Boston Globe notes that repeated injuries during Massaro's wrestling career left her
with permanent maladies, including, quote, "a hairline fracture of her spine, two herniated
discs, and an ankle fracture that required the insertion of a five-inch metal plate to
repair."
Accordingly, she filed a lawsuit against the WWE, alleging:
"I was thrown in the ring after winning the 2005 diva search with absolutely no training
which ultimately caused many injuries.
I've had multiple documented concussions during my career."
She added that she was, quote, "beat down, broken, and being almost forced to perform"
and had to "see pain management doctors on a monthly basis for 10 years."
Tragically, she died in 2019, aged 39.
TMZ states that her cause of death was suicide.
Prior to her passing, CNN reports that Massaro requested that her brain be donated to C.T.E.
research.
It has not been confirmed whether Massaro had C.T.E.
as of this video, but her apprehension regarding the disease highlights the growing concern
over long-term head injury connected with certain sports.
If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide
Prevention Lifeline​ at​ 1-800-273-TALK (8255)​.