Danny Casolaro

Joseph Daniel Casolaro (June 16, 1947 – August 10, 1991) was an American freelance writer who came to public attention in 1991 when he was found dead at the Sheraton Hotel in Martinsburg, West Virginia, with his wrists slashed 10–12 times. The medical examiner ruled the death a suicide.

His death became controversial because his notes suggested he was in Martinsburg to meet a source about a story he called "the Octopus". This centered on a sprawling collaboration involving an international cabal, and primarily featuring a number of stories familiar to journalists who worked in and around Washington, D.C. in the 1980s—the Inslaw case about a software manufacturer whose owner accused the Justice Department of stealing its work product, the October Surprise theory that during the Iran hostage crisis Iran deliberately held back American hostages to help Ronald Reagan win the 1980 presidential election, the collapse of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, and Iran–Contra.

Casolaro's family claimed that he was murdered. They state that before he left for Martinsburg he told his brother that he had been receiving harassing phone calls late at night, that some of them were threatening, and that if something were to happen to him while in Martinsburg it would not be an accident. They also cited his well-known squeamishness and fear of blood tests, and stated they found it incomprehensible that if he were going to kill himself, he would do so by cutting his wrists a dozen times. A number of law-enforcement officials also argued that his death deserved further scrutiny, and his notes were passed by his family to ABC News and Time magazine, both of which investigated the case, but no evidence of murder was ever found.

Early life and career Casolaro was born into a Catholic family and grew up in McLean, Virginia, the son of an obstetrician, and the second of six children. One of his siblings fell ill and died shortly after birth. A younger sister, Lisa, died of a drug overdose in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury in 1971. Casolaro attended Providence College until 1968. He married Terrill Pace, a former Miss Virginia. The couple had a son, Trey, and divorced after ten years, with Casolaro granted legal custody of his son.

Casolaro's interests included amateur boxing, writing poems and short stories, and raising purebred Arabian horses. He also dabbled in journalism, looking into issues such as the Soviet naval presence in Cuba, the Castro intelligence network, and Chinese communist smuggling of opium into the U.S. according to his own curriculum vitae (though it remains unclear how much he had published). David Corn writes in The Nation that the papers Casolaro left behind reveal few clues, except that he was in over his head, but was tenacious.

His papers included old clippings, handwritten notes that were hard to read, and the names of former CIA officers and arms dealers. Corn writes that the notes show Casolaro was influenced by the Christic Institute and that he had pursued material fed to him by a reporter who worked for Lyndon LaRouche.

Inslaw case

Ron Rosenbaum writes that the Inslaw story alone is enough to drive a sane man to madness. "If they ever make a movie of the Inslaw suit," he writes, "it could be called Mr. and Mrs. Smith Go to Washington and Meet Franz Kafka." Brian, who was a close friend of then-Attorney General Ed Meese and had worked for Reagan when he was governor of California, denied any involvement in either October Surprise or the Inslaw case.

In addition to this allegation, Riconosciuto also claimed — in a March 21, 1991, affidavit submitted to the court in the Inslaw case — that he had modified Inslaw's software at the Justice Department's behest so that it could be sold to dozens of foreign governments with a secret "back door", which allowed outsiders to access computer systems using PROMIS. These modifications allegedly took place at the Cabazon Indian Reservation near Indio, California. Because the reservation was sovereign territory where enforcement of U.S. law was sometimes problematic, Riconosciuto further claimed that he had worked on weapons programs there for the Wackenhut Corporation, such as a powerful "fuel air explosive". On March 29, 1991, eight days after submitting the affidavit, Riconosciuto was arrested for, and later convicted of, distributing methamphetamine and methadone, charges that he said were a set-up to keep him from telling his story.

In the summer of 1990, Casolaro arranged to meet Bill Hamilton, expressing an interest in pursuing the Inslaw story. Hamilton gave Casolaro a 12-page memo Riconosciuto had written detailing his allegations. Rosenbaum writes that, "The moment he got his hands on that maddening memo, with its maze of illusion and reality, was the moment Danny's life changed and he began his descent into the obsession that would lead to his death. He was slowly, then rapidly, sucked into a kind of covert-ops version of Dungeons & Dragons, with that memo as his guide and Michael Riconosciuto as his Dungeon Master." He met Honeywell engineer William Richard Turner at the Sheraton at about 2:30 p.m. on August 9. Turner says he gave Casolaro some documents, and that they spoke for a few minutes. Witnesses reported that Casolaro spent the next few hours at a Martinsburg restaurant. A bartender there told police that he had seemed lonely and depressed. The police further learned that Casolaro was seen at Heatherfields, the cocktail lounge at the Sheraton, at around 5 p.m. with a man described by a waitress as "maybe Arab or Iranian." FBI documents show that some files on Casolaro are being withheld from public release, which is contradicted by the FBI saying the files are missing entirely.

Martinsburg police released case details to Zachary Treitz and Christian Hansen due to a Freedom of Information Act requested on the closed case. After initially being denied the information as the Department of Justice claimed to have taken over the case, the results found contradicted the statement released by the police department back in 1991. The results revealed there was another person who visited Danny's hotel room that night. The eye-witness provided their statement in a written note and a sketch was performed. This sketch and statement eerily matches the description of a man named Joseph Cuellar. According to Cuellar's son, "Part of what his specialty was to be able to infiltrate, retract information, to find out what someone potentially knows and what they don't know." Cuellar was known well for his "psychological warfare." Based on witness interviews, a friend of Danny's stated he had a brief interaction with Joseph at a bar local to his hometown weeks before Danny's "suicide." In these interactions, Danny shared his knowledge of the "Octopus," revealing information about international intelligence agencies, organized crime, and government corruption. This introduces a new theory - that Danny Casolaro was murdered due to his knowledge of dark crime being committed with taxpayer dollars. This information put whoever was in charge of these operations and their allies at risk for being exposed for their heinous acts.

Dominic Orlando, Casolaro's cousin, wrote a play based on Casolaro's story in 2008 called Danny Casolaro Died For You. In January 2013, Aviation Cinemas Productions and Caliber Media optioned the film rights to the story of Danny Casolaro based on Orlando's play. Adam Donaghey, Eric Steele, Dallas Sonnier and Jack Heller were set to produce with Eric Steele directing. Production was set to begin in 2015. On February 28, 2024, Netflix released the four-part docu-series American Conspiracy: The Octopus Murders exploring the complex case of Casolaro's death.