• 9 months ago
When journalist Danny Casolaro was found dead in a hotel bathtub, police ruled it a suicide. But his family and colleagues believe he may have been murdered for investigating a conspiracy he called “The Octopus” - a hidden organization connected to stolen government spy software, a string of unsolved murders, and some of the biggest political scandals of the 20th century. Years later, researcher Christian Hansen pushes to uncover the secrets behind Casolaro’s death, and the story that killed him. From Stardust Frames, Duplass Brothers Productions, and director Zachary Treitz - this four part docuseries untangles a mystery decades in the making.
Transcript
00:00 Reporter Danny Casolaro was found dead over the weekend in a motel in
00:04 Martinsburg, West Virginia. Local authorities quickly ruled his death a
00:08 suicide. It just didn't, it didn't sit right. In my mind I'm thinking they
00:15 killed him.
00:17 The book that Danny was writing, he starts looking into these powerful
00:28 people and realizes there's something much bigger going on. These eight men,
00:33 they're no longer government officials, but their tentacles can reach into any
00:39 part of government in almost any country. I've come to call this group the octopus.
00:45 Most of us were convinced that he had been hurt for him covering this story.
00:49 If the federal government says, "I don't know what you're talking about," it's
00:53 beyond what a couple of local detectives can do. It all started with the software
00:59 promise. These programs allegedly allowed the CIA to spy on the intelligence
01:04 agencies that bought it. The two of them transferred in excess of 40 million
01:09 dollars. This money was used to buy off.
01:14 It was a disturbing conspiracy. A lot of people that were on there dead. All
01:23 three of them had been shot in the head. We knew who was involved. No one was ever
01:28 brought to justice. We found the body. There was a wire running from around his
01:33 neck to his ankles. There's just too many people dead in this case. This former NSA
01:42 guy says, "I don't know how you heard that name, but you can get killed just
01:47 knowing that name." Can you turn the camera off? I told him not to talk to certain
01:54 people, not to raise certain issues. Danny became obsessed with this story. You have
02:02 the same curiosity that Danny had.
02:07 If you think for a minute that you're gonna go expose somebody, you're gonna get yourself killed.
02:16 you
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02:32 [BLANK_AUDIO]