Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher reportedly had chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) at the time he shot and killed his girlfriend, Kasandra Perkins, and then himself on December 1, 2012, leaving their then three-month-old daughter, Zoey, orphaned, according to the Kansas City Star.

The newspaper reports that a post-mortem analysis in New York of Belcher's brain revealed that the former Chiefs starting linebacker was most likely suffering from CTE, which is a degenerative brain disease known to cause everything from dementia to confusion, aggression and depression among people who've suffered consistent head trauma; many football players are prone to suffer from the condition.

Hall of Fame linebacker Junior Seau was discovered to be suffering from CTE at the time he committed suicide on May 2, 2012, with many speculating that he shot himself in the chest to preserve his brain for analysis on the abuse it took from 20 years of football. Former pro wrestler Chris Benoit also had CTE when killing his wife, son and himself in a haunting double murder suicide in 2007.

That being said, doctors have hesitated to link violence towards others directly to CTE.

According to the Kansas City Star, Belcher's family requested that his body be exhumed at the North Babylon Cemetery in Bay Shore, NY, last year with the hopes of further analyzing his brain and come up with valid reasons why he shot Perkins nine times at their Kansas City home before driving to the Chiefs' practice and shooting himself in the head. 

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 (Photo: Jamie Squire/Getty Images)