About three weeks before he was found in the bathtub of a West Virginia hotel room with 12 cuts between his wrists, journalist Danny Casolaro told his brother, “There was an accident,” according to a new documentary. “It wasn’t an accident,” he said.
According to Netflix, Mr. Casolaro has been embroiled for years in an investigation into an international cabal he calls “Octopus,” and has told potential book publishers “20th Century “It will be the most explosive investigation story ever,” he said. Documentary series “American Conspiracy: The Octopus Murders.”
On August 10, 1991, a room cleaning staff member at the Sheraton Hotel in Martinsburg, West Virginia, found Casolaro in a bathtub with his wrists cut and covered in blood. He told his friends and family that he was there to interview key sources for his upcoming book.
The journalist’s brother, Tommy Casolaro, was informed later that day that Casolaro, 44, had died, and police ruled it a suicide.
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Mr. Casolaro was facing financial difficulties at the time of his death, and wrote to his agent: [he would] Regardless, whether Casolaro committed suicide has been hotly debated since his death, according to the Washington Post.
“In my six years as a doctor, I’ve never seen anyone cut their wrists so many times. He apparently had eight cuts on his left arm and four on his right arm. “It didn’t look like he cut his wrists. He physically could have done that,” Don Shirley, a firefighter who responded to the scene, told the documentary.
“This was a deep cut…so much so that the tendon was severed…I can’t grip anything because I cut the tendon. Those are the simple facts,” Shirley continued.
Casolaro, who covered Watergate in the 1970s and wrote for Computer Daily, a technology publication he owned at the time, was assigned to study Inslow for the rest of his life. I started investigating.
The technology company went bankrupt after building a novel software called PROMIS (short for Prosecutor Management Information System) for the U.S. Department of Justice.
For the first time, this software allows case information to be searched within a computer database. Former Attorney General Elliott Richardson said at the time that in 1986, the Justice Department was accused of intentionally driving the software’s parent company into bankruptcy by withholding payments “by trick, fraud, and deception.”
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Danny Casolaro (right) told his publisher that he is writing a book “about a handful of people who have successfully exploited the secret empires of spy networks, big oil and organized crime.” He was found dead in his hotel room on August 10, 1991, at the age of 44, with a cut on his wrist. (Netflix)
Based on the PROMIS investigation, Richardson said then-President Ronald Reagan’s Justice Department was up to something “much dirtier than Watergate.”
Bill Hamilton, the founder of Inslaw, which was the driving force behind Casolaro’s research, said in court that the Justice Department said Earl Bryan, owner of rival computer company Hadron and former director of the California Department of Health, He claimed in court that he deliberately avoided paying for the software to corner the company. When Reagan was governor of California, Care Services could take control of its assets.
Additionally, Hamilton claimed that Brian called him to buy Inslaw before the company filed for bankruptcy and said, “I have a way to do something.” [Hamilton] When I said no, I’ll sell it.
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American Conspiracy: The Octopus Murders follows Christian Hansen’s attempts to follow Danny Casolaro’s investigation in order to complete his book and hopes to gain further insight into his mysterious death. (Netflix)
Mr. Inslow later won a software theft lawsuit against the Justice Department in 1998, alleging that the government intentionally stole and illegally distributed the software, but the case was overturned on appeal. .
One of the elements of Casolaro’s so-called “Octopus” theory is that the Justice Department sold software overseas for the purpose of illegally spying on the agencies that purchased it.
From there, Casolaro began unveiling one theory after another from interviews with numerous secret contacts.
Casolaro’s family has publicly questioned the suicide designation, citing the increasing number of threatening phone calls Casolaro receives and the sensitive nature of his job, and newscasters and reporters have publicly questioned the suicide designation. There was widespread speculation about his death. However, as the years passed, the case was solved.
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In the 10 years he has spent studying octopuses, Christian Hansen has come to resemble the subjects of his research. (Netflix)
But 10 years ago, inspired by a Netflix documentary, journalist Christian Hansen became fascinated with the case and decided to finish reading Casolaro’s book to find out how he died.
Zachary Treitz, Hansen’s childhood friend and director of the four-part Netflix series, is concerned about Hansen’s infatuated sidekick and wonders if he’s onto something. I set out to investigate to find out.
In his research, evidenced by Mr. Casolaro’s calls to cryptic sources and documents laid out over pages, Mr. Hansen has come to resemble Mr. Casolaro. Even stranger, Anne Klenk, a longtime friend of the late journalist, said the men even looked similar.
Mr. Casolaro’s far-reaching theory is supported by a bizarre cast of prominent government officials and associates, as well as ties to the criminal underworld. Among them are suspected serial killer and government operative Philip Arthur Thompson, globe-trotting John Philip Nichols, potential spy Robert Booth Nichols, and prominent technology expert John Philip Nichols. Contains magician Michael Riconosciuto.
Tommy Casolaro told the filmmakers that about three weeks before his brother died, he told him, “If an accident happens, it’s not an accident.” (Netflix)
The Iran-Contra scandal and the 1991 collapse of the International Bank of Credit and Commerce, the financial institution that Mr. Casolaro believed had enabled the web of schemes, were linked to a widespread conspiracy.
So is the government’s secret weapons factory on the Cabazon Indian Reservation in Indio, California. Tribal officials Alfredo Alvarez and his friends Patricia Castro and Ralph Borger, at the behest of Nichols, the tribe’s non-Indian financial consultant, reported that Jimmy Hughes, Cabazon’s casino security chief, He was allegedly murdered because he asked too many questions about where the casino money was going.
Hughes was charged with a felony, which was later dropped. Nichols was later jailed for the plot, according to the documentary and local news outlets.
Mr. Hansen and Mr. Treitz supported the theory advanced by informants like Mr. Casolaro and Riconosciuto, who was released from a decades-long prison sentence on 10 charges related to methamphetamine and methadone. I’m wavering as to how much I agree with this.
Mr. Riconosciuto was jailed just eight days after submitting an affidavit to the House Judiciary Committee supporting Mr. Inslow’s claims that he worked under Mr. Bryan’s direction in connection with the software. He said his arrest was retaliation despite drug charges earlier in his life.
Director Zachary Traitz (left) and Christian Hansen, along with his friend, connect with Danny Casolaro’s former source.
Ultimately, the pair revealed new details in the case that had not been made public since Martinsburg police granted Hansen’s public records request from 2013.
Paper documents in the evidence box also include a statement from another woman who was at Casolaro’s hotel and said she saw a dark-haired man come into the blonde-haired Casolaro’s room on the night Casolaro died. He claimed to have witnessed it. This detail had not previously been included in news reports or in FBI files on the controversial case.
Based on the circumstances and a composite sketch, the filmmakers believe that Joseph Cuellar, a former military intelligence official who had spoken to Casolaro about his theories at a diner in the weeks before his death, was the second man in the room. I am guessing that it is.
Ms Treitz told the Mirror that she had been “haunted” since her relationship with Mr Hansen. In the documentary, Cuellar’s son said his father specialized in “psychological warfare” and detailed his abilities.
Michael Riconosciuto, a computer expert who claims to have knowledge of covert government operations, was filmed being picked up from prison by documentary makers. He was jailed eight days after the Justice Department filed an affidavit regarding Inslow’s claims that he intentionally bankrupted him and stole software for drug charges.
Ultimately, Treitz and Hansen told GQ that neither had determined whether Casolaro was murdered or committed suicide. In completing the documentary, the two learned what Casolaro had to have and what drove him to commit suicide.
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“You have to decide for yourself, and so did I. Are you going to go back to your usual boring life and enjoy little things like movies and barbecues instead of calls from the underworld?” California Cheri Seymour, a based author and investigative reporter who wrote “The Last Circle,” about Mr. Casolaro’s reporting and death, told the filmmakers.
“I had a choice between knowing all the secrets or realizing that I would never do it, but being happy and having fun,” Hansen said at the end of his 10-year study. , the documentary was as puzzling and complex as it reflected its content. story.
