RedHanded - FROM THE VAULT - Episode 59 - Danny Casolaro: The Man Who Knew Too Much

Episode Date: March 1, 2024

Now that a new Netflix doc has got everyone talking about Danny Casolaro – we wanted to rerelease one of our favourite past episodes, to give you the full RedHanded rundown. Let us know your theories on our socials!Governments kill people who try to uncover their dirty dealings, that’s a fact. But is that what happened to Danny Casolaro? Danny claimed to be on the verge of connecting the dots between multiple governmental scandals and uncovering an international network of unbelievable crimes. Two days after meeting his final source, Danny was found dead. Could he have been onto something?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Red Handed early and ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. We bet you didn't know. Our new train's panoramic windows are ideal for contemplating whether texting them back so soon was the best decision. Get on board. Via Rail. Love the way. Get ready for Las Vegas-style action at BetMGM, the king of online casinos.

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Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello there, lovely listeners. You might have noticed that we have gone deep into the red-handed archives to pull out this perfectly formed golden oldie for your listening pleasure. Why have we done it? Because I'm obsessed with this case. If you listened to this episode already, you will know it. And if you haven't, well, you're in for a treat. But the reason we're pulling it up specifically now is because Netflix have just dropped a brand new documentary on the Danny Casolaro case called American Conspiracy, The Octopus Murders. We're not sponsored by them. I don't give a fuck. But you know, everybody's going to be talking about this documentary. And I wanted to remind you that we did this years ago. Yes, it's

like episode 50 something. So check it out now in case you missed it and enjoy. I'm Saruti. I'm Hannah. And welcome to Red Handed. Intelligence agencies, by which I mean the government, definitely assassinate slash murder people who know too much. That is a fact. So the question this week is not could they have, but simply did they murder 44-year-old investigative journalist Danny Casolaro? Or did Danny kill himself after he realized that the story he had been following for the last year of his life, a story that he thought would blow open a scandal that stretched to the highest levels of government, a story that's pursuit had consumed him completely, was amounting to absolutely nothing? What really happened to Danny Casolaro?

On August the 10th, 1991, in the Martinsburg, West Virginia Sheraton, a maid entered room 517 for daily housekeeping. There, she found Danny Casolaro's body lying in a bathtub full of bloody water. There was blood everywhere, sprayed on the walls and all over the floor. The maid ran screaming, and within minutes, the Martinsburg police were called. A lot of people kill themselves in hotels. There's actually a play that's been written about maids finding dead bodies called Breathing Corpses. Like it's such a phenomenon. Hotel maids finding dead bodies. A lot of people kill themselves in hotels.

It's really, really common. I guess it's just because if you kill yourself in a hotel room, it's just much less likely that someone you love is going to find you and go through that. The information from those who were at the scene is pretty unreliable, and you will see why later on, so hold on to it. But we have done our absolute best to find as many sources as we can to try and piece together this part of the story. When the police arrived, they almost immediately decided that this was a suicide.

And at this point, I can't really blame them. You find a man in a hotel bathtub, his wrists are cut, he's bled out, there's no sign of a struggle, and there's even a suicide note. So of course you judge it to be a suicide because it definitely looks like a suicide. In the bathtub with Danny's body, they found a single razor blade and an empty can of Milwaukee beer and two plastic bin bags. So when I was like looking at this and what they found at the scene, they just keep calling it everywhere you read it, Milwaukee beer. And I was like, is that a brand? What is that? But I couldn't find one. And I just was like, I'm obsessed with details. And I wanted to know what

type of beer it was that Danny was drinking. But all I could find was that it just says Milwaukee beer. So I assume they mean it's a beer from Milwaukee. I keep saying Milwaukee differently every time I say it. I'm enjoying it so much though. I'm going to super cut them and play them one after the other. I honestly feel like I've said it so many times, it doesn't sound like a real word anymore. But when I googled Milwaukee beer to check what it was, like if it was a brand or if it was like, what are the beers? The first three search results, guess what they all said? They all said, quote, for much of its history, Milwaukee was touted as the beer capital of

the world. Is it though? Is it? I'm pretty sure Belgium's older than the United States. Is it not somewhere in like Bavaria? Not like Milwaukee is the beer capital of the world. That is a fucking claim. Of the US, maybe I could buy that, but of the world. Like I'm sorry, America, but you are known for having terrible, terrible beer. That's like internationally known

fact. I'm sorry. Good. So now we have anybody with black bedsheets coming after us and anybody who likes American beer. Well, I don't mind a Brooklyn Lager, actually, but like just put it on the same level as like Belgian beers, I think it's different. There you go, Milwaukee. You are the beer capital of the world, apparently. And Danny knew it because apparently that's what he was drinking. In the bathroom, they also found a half empty wine bottle and a bottle of prescription painkillers. If you're drinking a beer and half a bottle of wine and medication as well, you're going to be having a good time.

In the room, the police found the suicide note that we mentioned before. There was a notepad and a pen on the desk in the hotel room. A single page from this notepad had been torn out and used to write the suicide note. And this note said, To those who I love the most, please forgive me for the worst possible thing I could have done. Most of all, I'm sorry to my son. I know deep down inside that God will let me in. And to be perfectly honest, that does sound like a suicide note. But we'll come

back to this note later on, so put a pin in it. Now, based on the note, given the absence of a struggle, no sign of forced entry, and all the alcohol that was lying around, the police said they took the case as a straightforward suicide. The police further confirmed that their interviews with the hotel staff revealed that no one had seen or heard anything suspicious. So the Martinsburg police contacted authorities in Fairfax, Virginia, where Danny lived, who said they would notify his family. But first, what had led Danny to West Virginia in the first place? Apparently he was pursuing a source, but what was that about? What exactly was it that he was working on that may have led to his death? To delve into this, we need to take a little detour from the world of murder

into that of government corruption, dirty money and international espionage. I fucking love some espionage. I just love it. I bet everybody is like fucking wet for this now. I keep wanting to say things in a dramatic voice, but I can't. Oh, I think I might, you know. Not yet. I'll do it when you least expect it. Because for Danny, what had started is just an interest piece. He's an investigative journalist, remember?

So he'd started this piece on a pretty dry-sounding software theft case that had grown into something much larger. The case evolved for Danny into a story about a global conspiracy that tied together several scandals and alleged scandals like the Iranan contra affair the october surprise the investigation into bcci and the notorious inslaw and promise software scandal this is what journalists pray for like as a journalist you have to go through so much boring shit and we have to do a fair bit of it as well but then to find that one thing that you dig a little bit and it blows up he thinks this is going to make his name this is

what he's going to go down in history for and that's why he gets so into it danny was pulling all of these cases together so all of the ones i just listed all of these incredibly famous scandals and he thought that they were all part of a bigger picture he thought he was pulling all of these incredibly famous scandals. And he thought that they were all part of a bigger picture. He thought he was pulling all of these cases together into a theory or a pattern that he called the octopus. According to Danny, Inslaw was only one part of a much greater story of how intelligence agencies, the US Department of Justice, and even the mob had subverted the government and its various functions for their own profit, like a big shady cabal.

So when he died, Danny was investigating a lot of things simultaneously. And as Hannah just said, he was convinced that they all fitted together. And maybe they did. But I think that if he was murdered because of what he knew, Inslaw seems to be the most likely reason. Because there is no evidence that his octopus theory, pulling all of these different scandals together, had uncovered any information really worth killing for.

Inslaw, however, was a very different matter altogether. This was a real crime with real people who, if found guilty, would face very real and significant jail time and stand to lose millions. I do think there is something to be said for, he's in the market for confirmation bias with this stuff. Do you know what I mean? Like he's so desperate to make the connections to all of these huge cases. And if you're working on it for a year, just on this. Absolutely. And up until this point, Danny, while he calls himself an investigative journalist, had a pretty undistinguished career in that field, let's say. So this was his big chance.

You get this right. You're it. You're the guy. And I think he really wanted to fit these together. And like I said, maybe they did. Maybe they did fit together. But I don't think Danny was onto anything in the larger picture of things with his octopus scandal that would have got him killed. If he was murdered, it was because of Inslaw.

So, because that's what we think, in this podcast, in this episode, we're just going to focus on the Inslaw case. And it's also just too complicated to pull all of these things in together. We'd literally be here for like, we'd have to do so many. So Inslaw, what is it? Well, in the 70s, a company well ahead of its time called Innslaw, which stood for Institute for Law and Social Research, developed a software called Promise, which is P-R-O-M-I-S, which stood for Prosecutors Management Information System. That is just so jazzy. Good at software, bad at naming things. Despite the incredibly shit name, though I do like the name Promise. That is a good, that's a good name.

Like it fills you with safety, right? Does it fill you with promise? Safety. Promise. But despite the shit actual name, this was truly a revolutionary program. Because nowadays, absolutely, the use of technology to perpetually spy on us all is not new. You can safely assume to some extent that all of your activity is being tracked in some way. Absolutely, you can. And also this whole idea of using this notion of our safety to encroach increasingly on our civil liberties and our privacy, especially online, is definitely a hot topic right now. Whenever there's a big sort of security panic in the public eye, world leaders will just say, oh no, like we're protecting you. From what? What

are you protecting me from? I need to be protected from you. But back in the early 1980s, where our story begins, most people hadn't heard of the internet so the governments couldn't keep tabs on us in that way the promise software however offered authorities a way to track and correlate behavior like never before and this was all to help law enforcement keep an eye on us so it would track and enable you to filter people who had, say, been arrested for X, Y or Z 10 years ago and now also turned up at rallies or protest about A, B or C. So what's the link? Are they a danger? Do we need them on a watch list? Probably yes, is the answer they go with. read about the other day which I haven't been able to stop thinking about is that when driverless cars are like ubiquitous thing which I honestly think there will be in about five to ten years not only is it going to completely can change the way we react with our environment because

they'll be programmed to stop if a person walks out in front of them so people are going to stop looking before they cross the road because the car has to stop if you're in a car crash like sometimes you have to make a decision to crash the car rather than crash into the people. So the car is going to have to make the decision to kill the driver or to kill the person who's on the road. So there's going to have to be a global agreement about what kind of person is worth more. And that algorithm is going to have to be fitted into all driverless cars worldwide. So like, do you save a pregnant woman over a man by himself or like this person's earning potential is higher do you kill them like it's fucked but that's the way we're going man well what have you been smoking today it's true

in 15 years you'll uh you'll all see no hannah i agree with you i agree with you it is it's fucking terrifying and this was like the prototype Promise software was like the prototype to what is happening now and what will absolutely happen in the future. Literally, as I was saying that, I just looked up at the duvet fort I'm sat in. I feel like full on conspiracy nut right now. I'm recording in my bedroom under it. Yeah, me too. Maybe we should just start wearing tinfoil hats. That's so cliche. It's so dumb. Let's find something else. I know. And they're checking our phones anyway. It's not our brains. Whatever. Either way, there's nothing we can do about it. Like, we're talking about this, like,

government-level security software, but now, like, Facebook just does it for them for free. Well, not for free, for a lot of money. I'm Jake Warren, and in our first season of Finding, I set out on a very personal quest to find the woman who saved my mum's life. You can listen to Finding Natasha right now, exclusively on Wondery Plus.

In season two, I found myself caught up in a new journey to help someone I've never even met. But a couple of years ago, I came across a social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part, Three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge, but this wasn't my time to go. A gentleman named Andy saved my life.

I still haven't found him. This is a story that I came across purely by chance, but it instantly moved me. And it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues around mental health. This is season two of Finding. And this time, if all goes to plan,

we'll be finding Andy. You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad-free on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. He was hip-hop's biggest mogul, the man who redefined fame, fortune, and the music industry. The first male rapper to be honored on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Sean Diddy Combs. Diddy built an empire and lived a life most people only dream about. Everybody know ain't no party like a Diddy party, so. Yeah, that's what's up.

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From his meteoric rise to his shocking fall from grace, from law and crime, this is the rise and fall of Diddy. Listen to the rise and fall of Diddy exclusively with Wondery Plus. But at the time we're talking about, way before Facebook and driverless cars, this software was super, super impressive, especially considering it was developed by this tiny company called Inslaw, which literally was just run by a husband and wife team called Bill and Nancy Hamilton. And for their innovations in spy software, they won a contract from the U.S. Department of Justice to install Promise into 42 attorney's offices across the U.S., which is for like a mum and pop shop cyber team. That's amazing. 100%. That's a win for them.

That's the dream. It's absolutely the dream. It's absolutely the dream. But the thing is, things started to turn sour pretty quickly because Inslaw, and by which I mean Bill and Nancy Hamilton, started to suspect that the Department of Justice were tampering with the Promise software. And get this,

illegally pirating it out to allies. If that isn't capitalism, I don't know what is. It's crazy. It's fucking, it's shady as fuck. Oh, little man, have you made something that I want? Oh, thank you very much. I will buy it and then I will sell it to all of my friends. But I won't just sell it. I'll fucking tamper with it, put Trojan horses in there, put spyware in there and then sell it to my fucking allies. This is shady as fuck of the Department of Justice because this obviously violates. Not only is it shady as fuck because it's completely morally corrupt, it also very technically violates the licensing agreement. And Inslaw weren't just going to take this fucking lying down. They fucking stood up to the DOJ and took them to court. They claimed that the government weren't paying their contracts. They were illegally selling their software to other countries.

And in an attempt to shut them up, the DOJ were driving them to bankruptcy. We're talking full attack on insular. You probably can't pull the wool over someone's eyes who literally has invented the first ever tracking software. Like they're going to be watching what you're doing. Definitely. But they were like, so we've got loads more lawyers than you. Bring it. Yeah. And also we are. We are it. The Department of Justice.

Exactly. Go fuck yourself. So Bill and Nancy, though, they took them to court and they presented a lot of very compelling evidence, including witnesses who came forward and said that they had even been a part of the software tampering. According to federal court documents, Promise was stolen from Inslaw by the Department of Justice and according to sworn affidavits, Promise was then sold at a profit.

Not even just sold to break even, to get that spyware in. Sold at a profit to Israel and to as many as 80 other countries by Dr. Earl W. Bryan, a man with close personal and business ties to the then president, Mr. Ronald Reagan. And this isn't fucking conspiracy theories, whatever you think of mine and Hannah's rambling since the start of this episode. This is legit. Because they were found guilty. The judge awarded the Hamiltons $6.8 million in damages, which in today's money is about $16 million. So yeah, this isn't us just spinning contherios. This happened. This happened. They were found guilty. The government of the United States was pirating software and selling it at a profit to Israel so they could spy on

them. That is a fact. And to 80 other countries. This is legit. And okay, 6.8 million in damages, right? Sounds like justice. Well, no. Because the corruption doesn't end there, kids. Because the ruling was appealed and overturned when the judge who originally handed out this ruling was fired. Oh, I wonder why. I wonder why originally handed out this ruling was fired. Oh, I wonder why. I wonder why someone was out of a job then. And it gets better because guess what? One of the DOJ's very own defence lawyers took his place.

Oh, how convenient. Oh, absolutely. And to this day, the Hamiltons have never received any money from the US Department of Justice. That's fucking outrageous. Oh, they're still raging they're still raging bill and nancy are not happy but i wonder whether they had a bit like seeing how their program started this whole tracking people tracking information i wonder whether they had a bit of a i am the destroyer of worlds situation like i wonder whether they've

been like we didn't know it was gonna end like this no because i reckon it's like with these things if i don't do it someone's gonna fucking do it yeah that's true if they hadn't done this someone would still be in the same situation we're in now also fuck the it guy at work today was telling me that like he doesn't use contactless on his card because he knows tech savvy people are just a bit more switched on to like how fuck the world is than i am but he's like if you have contactless activated on your card people can just take the money off your card by walking past you if they've got the right software on them they can literally just take your money oh that's why you have to keep your card in one of those little wallets one of those little special silver wallets that like blocks the thing yeah yes i thought it

was like not true but he's telling me about it today get yourself a little silver pouch you can see that there were a lot of people with a lot to lose in this case and that's why they're firing judges left right and center and it's possible that danny who was in close touch with insular owners bill and nancy hamilton it is possible that he might have got too close to something and that's what got him killed. And there's so much to this story and the various other scandals involved with Danny Casolaro's octopus, but we just don't have time to cover it all. If you want to find out more, there is a great article on Wired about the insular octopus and we'll put the link in the show notes for this episode. and you'll be unsurprised

to hear given what a crazy big story this was at the time danny was just one of many reporters working on this story but danny did seem to have been on to something he seemed to have cracked some part of the case he told people that he was going to west virginia to meet a very important source he said that this source was going to break the story and he'd been working on this for a year and he thought it was about to crack wide open. So on August the 8th 1991 Danny arrived in West Virginia but just two days later he was found dead. And yes while the original scene that we described at the start of the show did seem to appear like a suicide this is absolutely where my affinity for the police in this situation ends because the

fuck-ups or the cover-ups come thick and fast first remember danny was found in a bathtub filled with bloody water they drained the tub that danny was found in with nothing in place to stop any clues or evidence that might have been in the water with him from draining away. They literally let potential evidence go down the drain. That's crazy. That's unbelievable. And none of the bath water was saved to be tested or examined or anything. I mean, okay, is that weird? Or am I just being over the top? Because it's not very diligent, is it? No, I don't think it is. I think I just being over the top because it's not very diligent is it no I don't think it is I think I can understand draining the bath to get the body out of kind of I cannot explain why you

wouldn't take a sample of the bath water and draining it is one thing to get the body out but how are you not putting something just a bit of gauze over the plug hole yeah there might be hair there might be anything and it's just it's just not very fucking diligent like i said and i think if you work in law enforcement that's an important attitude you should probably have towards your work is to be diligent i think it is possible though that from the outset they were like oh it's just a suicide it doesn't matter they weren't treating it as a suspicious death which is obviously wrong but it's still a guy's life isn't it oh no totally

totally totally i don't know i find it really bizarre and also the thing that makes me sort of fired up about this is we don't know if it's fuck-ups or if it's cover-ups we don't know why they're really doing this there is the whole thing of are they just pleading ignorance or are they just pleading ignorance to cover up the fact that they were acting nefariously we saw this with gareth williams as well it's one of those, it's like, once the evidence is gone, it's too late. It doesn't really matter when or how or where it went. Exactly. It's not there. You can't prove it, the end.

Definitely. And also, as we said at the start, there was blood on the floor and on the walls of the bathroom. The maid who found Danny's body reported seeing two bloody towels under the sink in the bathroom. Now, obviously, those towels could have been on the floor when Danny killed himself and therefore then been sprayed with blood and that's how they became bloody. But the maid said that the towels looked, quote, like someone threw those towels on the floor then tried to wipe up the blood with their foot. We've all done that.

Oh, the penguin. We've all done that. Oh, the penguin. We've all done that. And as a maid with seven years experience cleaning hotel rooms, I think she is an expert in telling you what kind of situation that is with towels and mess. I reckon she knows what she's talking about. Yeah, probably. A towel expert. A towel expert. But clearly, the police didn't think that these towels were particularly important because they didn't even collect them as evidence. They just left them there. And the very next day, I love this so much. This is my favourite bit of the case.

This is absolutely true. The very next day, a professional cleaning company called Le Scrub were called to clean the scene of the crime. And one of Le Scrub's cleaners later confirmed to journalists that yes, they had found the bloody towels, but they just threw them away. I can understand that from Le Scrub's point of view because they're, let's assume they're not actually government moles. They're cleaners. But I mean, maybe they've planted one in Le Scrub.

Maybe they're like, let's find the most ridiculously named cleaning company so no one will suspect and we'll plant a government mole and they can just throw away evidence. But I can understand it. Let's say they are legit and I'm just making stuff up. It's not their job to preserve the towels. Obviously, they're going to throw them away if they're like, oh, the police don't need them.

Question. Dirty towels. At this point, if this is nefarious behaviour, why did they not just throw the towels away? Is this genuinely incompetence? They just left it and these cleaners threw it away. I honestly think it's because they weren't treating it as a suspicious death. But where it gets interesting is the police withheld this statement made by the maid about the towels we only know about the towels because the maid and the scrub cleaning crew told journalists so if it wasn't a suspicious death why are they lying about it why are they omitting it from the record covering their ass yeah but still and it is very

strange it would be strange enough if this is where our story ended. I could be persuaded if it was just this one thing, I probably would be like, wasn't a suspicious death. It's a fuck up and then they're covering their arses. Yeah, but where that falls apart is there is so much more. For example, let's start with the fact that Danny died and was found on Saturday but his family were not notified of his death until Monday two days later and while the scrub cleaning crew were scrubbing fuck me that's so hard to say and while the while the scrub cleaning crew were scrubbing down a potential crime scene danny casolaro was being embalmed on sunday that's right they embalmed danny a whole day before his family even knew he was dead is it also weird that all this embalming and intensive fucking scrub scrubbing is happening on a sunday

you couldn't fuck me to do anything on a Sunday. Why this urgency? There's a medical examiner in Bachman on a Sunday. Oh, I mean, no, medical examiners don't. Funeral directors do. I think funeral directors is a pretty much around the clock kind of job. Okay, cleaning crew. What's this hotel in such a rush for?

You want to fucking let that room out that someone killed themselves in? What, like the Monday? Am I just, okay. Oh, yeah. Like every hotel room you've ever stayed in, probably someone died in it. Like that's not a thing for them. let that room out that someone killed themselves in what like the monday am i just okay oh yeah like every hotel room you've ever stayed in probably someone died in it like that's not a thing for them like i think it's so common people dying in hotels obviously if you're working in tourism you're working in hospitality you are working sundays it's not that weird i don't think okay to just do a quick turnaround because they're like oh another one dead oh well scrubby scrub

next call a scrub they'll be on it call the scrub. So maybe it's just me being very anti-Sunday. You're just anti-Sundays. Barlers don't do Sundays. It's the day of our Lord, Hannah. It's the day of your Lord, not my Lord. Why is he mine? I don't want him. You're a lapsed Catholic.

So are you, technically. No, I'm a lapsed nothing. Just lapsed. But it's not just us who were shocked by this. So it wasn't just me who was like, what the fuck? Because when Danny's brother, Tony, was told that his brother had died, he immediately obviously asked where his body was and what the autopsy had shown. But when he asked this, he was told by the assistant medical examiner from the state of West Virginia, quote, and there's just so much sass in this.

Well, you know, he's already been embalmed and that's going to make it, meaning an autopsy, pretty difficult. Fuck off. What the fuck? They clear out all their organs and stuff. Like they can't, they can't check his poo to see what he's been eating. His blood's all gone. He's like, well, what do you want me to look for? Like embalming fluid? Because that's all I'm going to fucking find. And apparently, and this is interesting because I went down a bit of a deep dive to try justify why this might have happened.

And apparently in West Virginia, it is illegal, illegal to embalm someone without the consent of their next of kin. Their family hadn't even been notified yet. How the fuck are they fucking embalming him already? Point one. So I read that and I was like, aha. But then I found some cases where funeral directors had been sued for not embalming a body because embalming has to be done in a really timely manner to preserve the body effectively. Also, it seems to be the case that

many places won't allow you to have like an open casket funeral if the embalming isn't done. And I assume if the embalming isn't done quickly enough. Open casket funerals. Let's just let's just not do that anymore. I think I think it's barbaric. I've been to a few in my time and it's so horrible to look at like there's a very different look to an alive person than a dead person and I can't really describe what it is but it's so obvious so then your lasting memory of that person that you knew as alive is them as a dead person which is like this horrible thing you can't scrub from your brain but I guess it's just like one of those personal choices isn't it I don't know I'm yeah I've never been to an open casket funeral Oh it's grim Fucking burn me man

Just burn me as soon as I die Oh god I don't want any of this embalming business I don't want any of this burial business I don't want to be embalmed I don't want to be eaten by worms I want to be burnt please There you go I know

And I've said it and it's on the internet So you know it's true I do know and don't worry I shall deliver Thanks So blah blah blah Let's get off Hannah's own funeral plans the internet so you know it's true i do know and um don't worry i shall i shall deliver thanks so blah blah let's get off hannah's own funeral plans because she thinks about her own funeral probably a little bit too much so again you could say that this was just poor communication between police forces causing a delay in information being relayed to the family or maybe just an

overly cautious undertaker but i feel like if you're an undertaker in the state of west virginia you're going to be pretty familiar with the embalming laws so maybe they just found like a wheeler dealer undertaker that's just like this is the thing because it's either that they they do know the laws they absolutely must know the laws that you have to get permission from the next of kin maybe they were just like fuck if i don't embalm him and they want an open casket i'll'll get sued. That's true. I don't know. That's the thing. We don't know. But we have to say it one more time. There are even more coincidences are coming. And these alone, coincidences or slip ups, we can call them.

But they happen so frequently throughout the case that basically I don't have eyebrows anymore because they have disappeared into my hairline. So when the embalmy autopsy thing was finally finished, it confirmed that Danny had bled to death from the razor cuts on his wrists and on his forearms. These cuts, but maybe to be more accurate, we should call them slashes, are seriously gruesome. And they are so, so deep.

I've seen the crime scene photos of Danny's body and it literally is just like flesh hanging off bone. It is. It's like ribbons. So deep. It's like ribbons of skin. It's like he fucking slashed his wrist to pieces. When I first was reading about it, I was like, oh, like it's a bit weird that if you had a Stanley knife, if you had a really sharp Stanley knife or box cutter for you Americans listening, it probably wouldn't be too difficult to make incisions that deep on yourself if you had a proper grip. But it's a razor blade. So you're, by definition, you have to have it between your finger and your thumb. I just don't think you

would be able to put that much pressure on it to get that deep. It's just, I mean, it's absolute madness. Like we aren't, I'm, I don't know, I don't really want to post the crime scene photos out of respect for Danny and his family. They are on the internet if you want to find them you can just literally type in danny casadaro into google images and you'll find the images tell me those are self-inflicted i will not believe you unless he is like on fucking pcp i do not believe you during the autopsy they said that they couldn't be sure just how many slashes were on Danny, but there were somewhere between 10 and 12 cuts. There were three or four wounds on his right wrist and seven or eight on his left.

Do we know if he was left or right handed? He was right handed. So it makes sense there are more on his left arm. It would make sense for there to be more on his left side. At least one of the cuts had been deep enough to sever the tendon. So unless it was the very final cut, how is he even holding the razor blade and slashing away himself with a slash tendon? He wouldn't be able to grip anything. His arm would, his hand would be limp. His hand would be limp. Your fucking tendon, that is down to the bone. Your tendon is fucking on your bone.

I'm giving away my, giving away my bias about what I think about this case. So they have this autopsy, a very incomplete autopsy, but an autopsy all the same. But what is their story for how all of this makes sense? Well, and this is interesting, the police did a little reenactment and videoed it. I don't mean reenactment as in they wrote down a reenactment. They did a reenactment as in they wrote down a reenactment they did a reenactment filmed it and gave it to the medical examiner and was like there you go this is how it happened you got it this police department did they all go to drama school like they're like i know how this is the only way we can fix it with is with some amateur dramatics step aside i'll direct

myself this is the way for me to just bring my passion into work. I really just need to bring all of myself to work and this is how we're doing it. Get my right side and put a filter on that camera. And this is interesting. There's a little bit of a true crime celebrity in this case because the medical examiner they gave this reenactment to who ruled that this was not inconsistent with suicide,

that's all he said, not inconsistent with suicide, was Dr. Lee. Yes. As in, if any of you have watched the CBS documentary on JonBenet Ramsey, that Mr. Lee, that Dr. Lee, should I say. Oh my God. I know. So, in this reenactment, this is what happens.

They theorize that Danny had filled the tub, poured himself some wine, apparently after he'd already finished his Milwaukee beer and thrown it into the tub, sat down on the side of the tub, cut his wrists with the razor blade, and remember, between 10 and 12 times, they don't even know if it was 10 or 12

because that's how fucking messed up the wounds were. Then lowered himself into the tub, put his wrists in the water and started to bleed out. Now remember the plastic bags, the white plastic bags they found in the tub with Danny? Well, in case you're wondering what they're about, the police claimed that Danny had placed one of these bags over his head to ensure that he would die. And eventually, apparently finding the bag uncomfortable, Danny pulled it off his head, flinging and spraying blood from his cut wrists onto the walls and floor. Someone who's just slashed their wrist to the tendon isn't going to be overly bothered about their comfort,

I don't think. Exactly. They'll be like, oh, I can take these enormous slashes that I'm inflicted on myself, but this bag on my head, too much, oh, I can take these enormous slashes that I'm afflicted on myself, but this bag on my head, too much. It's a bit awkward. I'm not sure I'm into this. I'm just a bit uncomfortable. Because they have to explain

the blood sprayed all over the walls and all over the floor. He's not fucking slashed his throat. The arterial spray from your wrist isn't going to spray all over the walls and floors. It might do if it was arterial spray. I mean, he'd have to flailing about and they have to explain why he's flailing about and why there are plastic bags in the tub with him. And okay, maybe this plastic bag thing seems a bit over the top, but they got this very

conveniently from the fact that a few months before Danny had died, he had spoken to a friend, Anne Klenk, about how an author, Jerzy Kaczynski, had killed himself. Because apparently, Kaczynski had killed himself exactly like this. Okay. So firstly, Kaczynski was an author who was a child in Poland during World War II. And his whole bag was writing about the brutalities that he'd suffered during his life. He, according to him, had been abandoned by his parents at the age of six and left to roam the countryside alone, witnessing rape and murder and incest and constantly fearing for his life. This guy was troubled. At least he had PTSD, because I'm guessing he wasn't exactly treated for that back then.

And so if he had killed himself putting a bag over his head, slashing his wrist, getting into a bath, I mean, I can understand. Because he's gone through a very extreme childhood, a very extreme life. over his head slashing his wrist getting into a bath i mean i can understand because it's very he's gone through a very extreme childhood a very extreme life and danny had never been treated for any kind of mental illness or anything and as for why he was talking about this hell i'd talk about something like that but also danny was an author or at least you know he wanted to be so him talking about this jersey kaczynski guy's suicide hardly seemed that bizarre to me i think it's quite common for writers to have heroes yeah that's true never meet your heroes type thing and jersey kaczynski was very very successful

where tanny yeah so maybe i could see an argument not saying this is what i believe but i could see an argument oh well he was obsessed with this guy who killed himself in this way so perhaps that's why he chose to go the same way i don't necessarily buy into it but i can see why people would argue that that's no that's a really good point that is a really good point but aside from this one of the issues with this method of suicide that anthony and the rest of danny Danny's family and Danny's friends and crucially a lady named Wendy Weaver who had dated Danny for seven years and lived with him all of these people say all of these incredibly close people to Danny all say that he hated the sight of blood Tony and

his dad were both doctors and you could never get Danny to even give a simple blood sample. He was incredibly squeamish. Harvard is the oldest and richest university in America. But when a social media-fueled fight over Harvard and its new president broke out last fall, that was no protection. Claudine Gay is now gone. We've exposed the DEI regime, and there's much more to come.

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Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of The Cotton Club Murder early and ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus. Wendy, his ex, also said that Danny didn't like to be seen naked, so she found it hard to believe that he would kill himself like that either it does seem strange for someone who is squeamish because there are a bunch of ways to kill yourself oh absolutely so much it seems very weird that the guy who's afraid of blood and can't even give a blood sample to his dad who is a doctor would choose to go out by slitting his wrists like it's a very dramatic way to go and not just slitting literally eviscerating hacking at his wrists and his forearms it's not just his wrist it's literally like fucking up to his elbows yeah i mean the nudity thing as well i think that

is i think if you are killing yourself you are thinking about how you're going to be found definitely and if he was like funny about being naked probably wasn't super fun being in a relationship with him but also he probably wouldn't want to be seen like that at all in his like final moments which if he was committing suicide it would have been something that he thought about possibly obviously i'm not saying that every suicide is the same so don't come for me over that. And also, other friends said that they weren't all in mass denial. And maybe Danny was really unhappy. And they just didn't spot the cracks. Just because he's never been treated for any sort of mental health issues doesn't mean they weren't there. And possibly if he's super

squeamish, he's avoiding doctors. Maybe he had a fit like that played into like a fear of the doctor's office in general. So maybe he wasn a fit like that played into like a fear of the doctor's office in general so maybe he wasn't going to get diagnosed to get put on anything but everyone around him seems to think that he was okay does that mean he was absolutely not but that's the evidence that we've gone through but all of his friends said that the idea of suicide by razor was just totally improbable and to quote one of his friends, he said that Danny would have jumped off the Empire State Building with firecrackers. His mates are just like, there's no way that he would have died naked, bleeding to death in a hotel room. That's just not who he was.

Danny, by all accounts of his friends, was like the life and soul of the party. He was the guy at the bar. He was the one, like, he liked pretty ladies. Like, he liked to drink. He was a lad. Even when you see pictures of him, he's got like a cleft chin and big floppy hair. Like, I think everybody said,

even if we got it wrong and he wasn't well, this isn't how he would have gone. And I can kind of believe, I can get why they say that. Another reason Danny's family and all of his friends refused to believe that he would have killed himself was that Danny and Tony had a sister called Lisa who during the summer of love had died of a drug overdose when she was only 17 and Tony Casolaro said quote he was angry at her the effect was so damaging and it makes it just harder for me to believe that he would kill

himself. I also just feel like the bag and the blood on the walls actually doesn't really fit for me that he was pulling a bag off his head. It makes much more sense to me that there was a struggle, right? Like two people maybe, if we do our own like mental reenactment, imagine two people come in, they're holding Danny down, bag over his head to control him, one slashing at his wrists. And in the fight, Danny sprays blood on the walls and on the floor that to me feels like it fits more with the scene potentially i agree i time and time again what's more likely that the guy whose arms are falling off is worried about being uncomfortable with a plastic bag on his head so he takes it off and sprays the walls or is it more likely considering everything else that someone else is there and there's a struggle and a man who is according to everyone who knew him terrified of blood is sat in a literal blood bath bleeding to death but another important clue to come from the autopsy according to tony castellaro was that

he felt it revealed that danny wasn't alone at all in that hotel room because the actual autopsy report described a bruise on Danny's arm and a bruise on his head which were never accounted for and weren't reported by the police or the investigators who attended the scene of the crime. And maybe the bruises hadn't shown up yet. His time of death was placed at nine o'clock. He was found at about midday. So maybe they only turned up in time for the autopsy, but they were never explained why he was bruised. Additionally, the tips of three of Danny's fingers and nails

were missing from one of his hands. That makes me want to be sick. It's so disgusting, isn't it? I don't know why. We literally were talking about his mangled arms, but the tips of the fingers. Oh, but there's something about the tips of your fingers. Oh, it's gross.

And they said it was from holding a razor blade. But like, how? Because I guess if you were to hold a razor blade in your hand and hack, maybe it's like slashing up your hand. Maybe it'd be weirder if he had no marks on his fingers. Yeah, that's true. But it does sound, if the fucking tips of your fingers are missing, it could also mean that this was somebody who cut off the tips of your fingers to stop DNA analysis of whatever may have ended up under Danny's nails after a struggle. Because that's where it is. If you have any kind of altercation with anyone,

their shit is all up in your nails and they can find it, test it very easily. Absolutely. But then the question is, why only the tips of three fingers? What, he fought them off with just three fingers? Yeah, what, like a kung fu master, the tap of death? Oh, I don't know. Why only three? Surely, if you were going to take them for sort of fingerprinting purposes, surely you just take all of them. That's what the Russian mafia do with bodies they dump in rivers. They cut all of the fingers prints off so they can't be identified and pull their teeth out. To take three seems very strange. This wasn't to hide his identity. Everybody knew who he was. This could

have only been to hide DNA. But still, why just three? It doesn't make sense. It does kind of make sense that his fingers were cut up after cutting himself and holding a bare fucking razor blade in his hands. So I don't know. But the other important thing to think about in this because we've talked about it but paramedics and medical professionals have also found issue with this suicide one pathologist who studied the autopsy noted a lack of hesitation marks because you fucking take a like razor blade to your wrist it's gonna take you a fucking sec to cut. And also, even if he did drink that beer and half a bottle of wine, that's not enough to be like fucked up. Like that's like some drinks, three max. You'd have to be on PCP. Like I said, you would have to be fucking done. And also this

pathologist said that the savage and deep nature of the cuts to Danny's wrists and forearms was highly, highly unusual. And this is also backed up by a paramedic who was actually at the scene who told investigators, quote, I've never seen such deep incisions on a suicide. I don't know how he didn't pass out from the pain after the first two slashes. And maybe you're thinking, well, wasn't he drunk and out of his eyeballs on painkillers? Well, even though I don't think half a bottle of wine is very much to drink. Out of his eyeballs on painkillers well even though i don't think half

a bottle of wine is very much to drink out of his eyeballs on maybe but the toxicology report is on our side too because no alcohol at all whatsoever was found in danny's system despite all of the booze at the scene of the crime however how do they know that if all of his blood has been drained? This is the thing I did see people questioning on the internet. I think even after an autopsy, you can do like tissue samples, there would be some blood remaining. And also, they only found mild traces of the painkiller that had been in the hotel room as well.

But they did find antidepressants in Dannyy's system but yet as we've covered he had no medical history of depression and it seemed like he'd never been prescribed the drugs like if there's no record medical record of him being depressed there's no medical record of him being prescribed the drugs they did find medical records of him having been prescribed the painkillers for like a canal procedure like years ago but the antidepressants no there was no record of him having been prescribed those maybe he got them on the black market because like you said maybe he knew something was wrong and he didn't want to go to a doctor to get it diagnosed properly but i don't know there's one more thing that they find in the

autopsy they also discovered that dann Danny had MS. And this was a shock to everyone because nobody in his life knew that he had MS. He had never shown any symptoms of it while he was alive. And at this point, his brother is freaking out because before Danny went on his trip to West Virginia, he had told his brother, if something happens to me while I'm in Martinsburg, it would not be an accident. He had also told Tony that for the first three months before his death, he was being harassed with threatening calls at night. And this was backed up by Danny's housekeeper, Olga Mokros, who claimed to have answered several of those threatening calls. Olga told Danny about these calls and Danny had told her not to pick up

the phone anymore. Olga also told the police that the day Danny was leaving for Martinsburg, a man had called at 9am and said, quote, I will cut his body and throw it to the sharks. That's not me just making a mistake, that's actually what she said that this person said. Less than an hour later, she said a different man called and said, quote, drop dead. Olga said that there was then a third call, but she remembered only that no one spoke and that all she heard on the phone was music as though there was a radio playing. Mate, I'd have fucking left. I'd be too scared to leave the fucking house

if someone's calling me with shit like that. I'd hide under my bed, is what I'd do. I'd hide on top of my bed and pretend to be asleep. Because it gets worse. Because a fourth call came and a fifth call came and these were silent. I can't handle that, man. That's the fucking worst. That's like some fucking ring shit.

Like, I can't. I can't with the phone calls. Absolutely not. Now, this is another red flag in this case. Because the official police reports lie about Olga's story. And there's no other way I can put it. Lie is the word. And we know this because we have read the official reports. And we have also seen photographs of

the handwritten notes taken by investigators when Olga made her statement. The handwritten notes back up the fact that Olga answered threatening calls to Danny and witnessed Danny receiving such calls for months and this is important for months before his death. In the official report though they state that Olga did answer a few threatening calls on the day before Danny left but that she couldn't recall any other specific occasions on which she had seen Danny get such calls or on any occasion where she had answered such calls even though she was in the house every day because she was his housekeeper they fucking lie they just lie like there's no other way to describe it and they also state in the official report that Danny had

told his friends about the calls and that now with hindsight his friends believed that he had quote invented some of the threatening calls so that people would believe after his suicide that he had been murdered fuck me with friends like that you don't need enemies do you jesus christ it's bollocks i don't believe either i don't believe that he's a storyteller and he bigs himself up and blah blah blah blah or like this is all an elaborate plan. Or they found some guy who didn't like him and they were like, his friend said it. Yeah.

That's his mate. If he's onto something enough to get killed, it wouldn't be too difficult for a government agency, if a government agency is involved, for them to just find a person and then be like, go to the press and talk shit about him. That's not hard. So the information in the official report him that's not hard so the information in the official report is not just not supported by the evidence and the statements made by witnesses it actively contradicts it and there is so much more so buckle up but before we dive into any more let's talk

about danny's behavior and actions before his death the The day Danny arrived in West Virginia, there is no record of where he was between the evening of August the 8th until about 2.30pm on August the 9th, the day before he died and the day he met with his first source, who was William Turner, an engineer and former employee of major defence contractor Hughes Aircraft. In an interview, Turner said that he met with Danny in the Sheraton parking lot because Casolaro feared that his room was being bugged. According to William Turner, he gave Danny papers showing the corruption that Danny believed was tied to the octopus scandal. And Turner said that, quote, Casolaro seemed enthusiastic and said that this all fit into the other

things that he had uncovered. But, and this is the interesting thing, William Turner says that when Danny left him, he was enthusiastic. But the next reported sighting of Danny is in a Martinsburg restaurant sitting alone and, according to the bartender there, looking lonely and depressed. Had William Turner's information not proven to be as revelatory as Danny had hoped? Well, after his sad lunch, Danny was reported to have been seen in Heatherfields, a cocktail lounge at the Sheraton, at about 5pm. The waitress there

said Danny was with a man who looked Middle Eastern. Could this possibly have been another source? After this meeting, Danny headed back to his room, where he ran into his temporary neighbor at the Sheraton, a man named Mike Looney, who was staying in the room next to Danny's. The two chatted for a while, and they ran into each other again for a second time at 8pm. They decided to go for a drink, and according to Mike, Danny told him he had a source to meet at 9pm. And so promptly, at 9, Danny left Mike to his drink to go make a phone call. But Mike said that he returned just a few minutes later, saying that he thought he'd been blown off. Mike Looney described Danny as likeable and intelligent. He said that he was never convinced by Danny's

conspiracy theories, but that he took a devil's advocate kind of position because he could see that Danny was excited about what he was doing. Quote, he thought he was onto something big. At about 9.30, Mike said Danny left to go buy some coffee from a local convenience shop, and that was the last time anyone saw Danny alive. The autopsy, as we said earlier, placed Danny's death at 9am the following morning, and he was found at noon that day.

But what has never been discovered are all of Danny's notes or any of the documents that William Turner said that he'd given him the day before he died. And to this day, not one of these papers has been found. This is another vital piece of evidence in this case. Danny had been working on this case for a year and this is the 90s. And of course, like there are laptops out there but Danny didn't have one. He had a brown accordion briefcase where he kept all of his notes and the manuscript for his book and we know this again because of witnesses. Remember Olga, Danny's terrified housekeeper, she told police that she had helped Danny pack a dark brown leather briefcase the day he left for Martinsburg.

And again, this is a huge part of the conspiracy because just like with the threatening calls, the police totally contradicted and covered up what the actual witnesses said. The investigators seem to claim that the briefcase never even existed. The official report stated that only one witness, a hotel front desk employee named Mr. Lopez, thought that he might have seen Danny with a briefcase and that, quote, no other hotel employee recalled seeing Mr. Castellaro with a briefcase. And in light of the uncertainty and the fact that none of the other hotel employees recall seeing such a briefcase or documents, we believe that Mr. Lopez was probably

mistaken. That's in the official report, even though they have a statement from this guy saying he saw it. So they're very clearly stating that only Mr. Lopez saw the briefcase. And even then they claim that he only ever said that he may have seen one. But again, as we saw before, the original police notes, so the handwritten police notes by those on the ground, show that there was a second witness at the hotel who saw the briefcase. On August the 9th, Danny had gone to the front desk where Mr. Lopez was

to tell him that he'd be staying one more night. It was about 1.30pm. On his way back to his room, he saw Barbara Bettingerer a maid at the hotel he asked barbara if someone could clean his room right there and then because he had some work to do and he didn't want to be disturbed so another maid named roxanne willis went into the room and cleaned danny's room while he stood outside and waited in the handwritten notes from the police officer at the scene who took barbara's statement she said as he stood there

he seemed nervous and kept looking over his shoulders towards the elevators okay so if you're that nervous why are you making someone clean your room i thought that also he's only staying there for like what two three nights it's not desperate he's he's only extended it by one so like why is he that bothered about it being clean like that seems very if he's nervous and like he thinks his room's being bugged and you're not gonna let other people in there because they might be rebugging you yeah it doesn't make sense why stand outside and look shady and shifty as fuck and ask a maid to go in and clean your room that's not true it's made up why i've? I've decided. But more importantly than that, again, in the handwritten notes,

it shows the officer asked Barbara if she'd noticed any paperwork or luggage in the room. And Barbara said, yes, a briefcase open with papers sticking out of it. And, you know, we can say, oh, we don't know if he had a briefcase. Maybe Olga's wrong. Maybe Barbara's wrong. Maybe Roxanne is wrong but William Turner the source said that he gave Danny

those papers the day before he died so where are those papers even if they can pretend that Danny didn't have any of his notes from his year-long investigation with him where the fuck are the papers that William Turner says that he gave him exactly because they're not there yeah the briefcase isn't really like here nor there really like we know that his source has given him papers and they've disappeared whether the briefcase was there or not is kind of irrelevant so all of the documents had disappeared but the police did find something at the scene they found a scrap of paper folded up and tucked into danny's shoe and the note hidden in his shoe contained an outline for a chapter of the book he was writing, Behold a Pale Horse,

which is not the same as the 1991 book by, is it Bill Milton? Is that his name? Because there is a conspiracy theory book called Behold a Pale Horse that does exist, but it's not this one. It's a completely separate thing. This is for Danny Casolaro's version of behold a pale

horse he had written an outline for the final chapter which read and this is a quote chapter on 1980 terrorist underground afghanistan middle east iran john philip nichols after arrival indian reservation fred alvarez paul mascara philip Philip Arthur Dempson, Fresno, Hercules, Bill Kilpatrick, The Big Tex, Riconno, San Francisco. Finish up chapter with Paul M and Fred A Ord. There was no indication why Casolaro had put this piece of paper inside his shoe. But the last words on the note clearly revealed where his investigation had ended, i.e. finish up chapter with Paul Mascara and Fred Alvarez. Fred Alvarez was 32 and he had been the vice chairman of the Cabazon Tribal Council

prior to his execution-style murder and the murder of his friends, Ralph Boga and Patricia Castro, on 29th 1981 in Rancho Mirage in California. Paul Mascara was 31 at the time and he had been appointed to manage the Cabazon Casino in Indio prior to his murder six months later in San Francisco on January the 14th, 1982. And the mention of Recona was to a man named Michael Recona Stuto, who came forward and confessed to police that he had been the one who had tampered with the Promise software at the request of the Department of Justice. He said that the illegal tampering had happened on Native American land in Indio, California. And now we really can't go into the backstory of all of the software tampering. It's so complex. And we'd be here for about seven

weeks with like a 25 million parter and we just don't have the strength. But there is so much more out there. You can read all about it if you want to go out there, change the world, find it out, read it. Absolutely. But the thing that's really interesting is exactly what you said. The DOJ, as we said before, had outsourced this tampering of the Innslaw software. And this guy, Makura Konosuto, comes up again and again and again. And he's saying that he was the programmer who tampered with the software at the request of the DOJ. He says that he did it on Native American land in India, California, so that, I guess,

they wouldn't be beholden to jurisdiction in the same way they would if they weren't doing it on that land. And he came forward and spilled all of this information. He never dies. But the people who are involved in this and where they were doing it, there's a lot of money laundering, there's weirdness. Basically, they just get fucking gunned down, slaughtered. No one has ever found guilty of their murders. So it does seem like Casolaro might have been onto something. Exactly. I feel like this whole side of the Reconosciuto,

the India-California, the tampering stuff came out after Danny's death. But the note folded up and hidden in his shoe shows that he had made links with Alvarez, with Marasca, with Reconosciuto, and he was bringing all of these things together with the Promise software scandal. So it does seem like Danny was onto something. But here is my question. Roll with me on it. If the police are throwing away documents and they're hiding the crime scene, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Why would you not just throw away the piece of paper in his shoe that is like, this is tying it all together. This is what he was onto. Like surely that would be the first thing to throw away. That's the most the most important bit exactly and very easy to throw away as well it's like a tiny piece of paper it's not a briefcase absolutely why throw away all of the other documents and

publicize what that piece of paper said feels like a plant to me doesn't make any sense but what are they plant what are they trying to make you think uh that maybe it's a cover-up of an even bigger scandal maybe they're like oh we'll just give them the baby one and then they won't keep looking absolutely i mean nothing better to distract from a scandal than another scandal i think it's too weird man like to throw away everything else and then just plant this like perfect linear thing that brings in all of the stuff together is is odd i think it's very weird but as we said you can go full-on fucking rabbit hole reddit black hole if you want to on this and we'll post a couple of the best articles that we came across in the facebook group but all you really need to know was that these men whose names were written

down on this piece of paper allegedly folded up and hidden in danny's shoes were as we said identified as being part of the inslaw scandal and had all been murdered. So again, if it isn't a plant, is it all just too big of a coincidence that Danny was found dead under what I would say are reasonably suspicious circumstances? Oh, yeah, and the rest. Yeah, exactly. But let's look at the other side. Could it have been suicide? Because let's look at Danny's life. As we said before, by most measures, Danny's career was not a success. His pursuits into journalism, as we said, were not massively successful. His attempt to entrepreneurship hadn't paid off well. And he was in debt. He was in huge amounts of debt.

He's still got a housekeeper, though. It can't be that bad. That's very true. He had a housekeeper, but he was in the process of selling his house. And also, I really think that people get accustomed to a quality of life. Like, you get into debt. I just think some people can't get rid of that housekeeper they love, you know? And Danny had also been going around telling people that his octopus story was so big that he had a book and even a movie deal wrapped up. But nothing could have been further from the truth.

This just isn't the case. Because according to Roger Donald, the top editor at Little Brown Books, where Danny had submitted his manuscript, said that, quote, I'll tell you this, anybody who killed him over that manuscript made a mistake. That was not a book that was going to be published.

I just imagine everyone in this story is so shady. That's so savage. I know. I just imagine him with like a cigarette in his mouth as he's saying it as well. Yeah. Like no one was going to publish that shit. I know. What a wasted life.

I know. But, you know, Donald's there for the business, you know. He's not going to publish something pointless. And apparently Danny had already like in his earlier life like self-published a book. I don't think he was just. Oh, like Business Secrets of the Pharaohs, like that kind of... Exactly, exactly. Oh, dear.

Oh, no. And Donald went even further than this, because he decided to give some critique on Danny's book and said that he and Danny had met nine months before he died, and that he found the book, and he found the book proposal to be hyperbolic and very unprofessional. Oh, not good. And apparently, according again to Donald, a couple of weeks before his death, Danny had called him again and told him that he'd now got the whole thing together. And that, you know, this was the time he was ready. But Donald said that the revised document was still no better. His professional career was tanking. But it also sounds like it was never really a career in the first place it's not like he was a soaring success and then like it's like

oh yeah you've got your whole life to make your first album and two years to write your second it's not that kind of situation he never had a first album of note so what's new about his situation if he's always been struggling to get his work published to get recognition like that's just his life so So what is new? What's this new situation that has driven him to suicide? Is it because he spent so long pursuing this one story? But according to sources, the note in Danny's shoe proves that he was onto something.

He had made the right links. But, you know, again, why were the notes missing? Because if he commits suicide, why are the notes missing? Where he commits suicide why are the notes missing where did he put them where are they this is the thing i mean i think you could argue like he seems there seems to be some evidence of him being quite a paranoid and neurotic person so perhaps i feel like either he's stashed the document somewhere for safekeeping and i think also the note in his shoe kind of plays into that idea of hiding things like he thinks he's being watched. So he's carrying around his final moment in his shoe because otherwise people will steal it. But the maid saw the briefcase and the papers in his room the night before he died. If he was that bothered, would he not have stashed them as soon as he got there?

And also, if she saw them in his room the night before he died and in the morning he's found in the next day he's found dead when would he have had time to stash them? Yeah and like there's not really that many places in a hotel room you can stash things like that's the whole point they're specifically built so you can't stash things and we could look at the other avenue which is that someone killed him and they took the notes. Because if the notes have nothing to do with his death, why are they missing? I think that's the key thing. But again, if they do have something to do with it and the police are in on the cover-up, why do they publish what the note in his shoe said?

I don't know. It's very weird. That's what I can't get my head around. Local police weren't involved. That's why they're taking fucking handwritten notes that explicitly outline all of the things that the witnesses actually said. And they are just fucking things up. The issues we see with the initial investigation are genuine incompetency fuck-ups. And they find the note and tell everybody about it. And the FBI or the larger powers you know the

intelligence agencies that killed him are like shit shut up but it's too late i don't know mate what i could see it's you know local police department they find this what looks like a suicide easy easy easy and then suddenly the fucking fbi show up and they're like oh shit fuck like we we didn't know but that does seem like if it is a government funded assassination essentially if it is that they're gonna have known when they were gonna do it and you would think they would have alerted the local police to be like leave this to the big boys would they or would they want it to be found because Because if you're killing somebody and you want it to make it look like a suicide or an accident, you want to go in, do the job

and you want to leave and you want local police to pick it up and be like, this is clearly an accident or this is clearly a suicide. You need the official investigation to back it up, to give your story legitimacy, don't you? Yeah, absolutely. But you don't want them taking handwritten notes that disprove your argument. But what if they didn't know? What if the local police found the note in his shoe and the FBI didn't know it?

Or not the FBI, what if the intelligence agency, if we're saying they're the ones who did this, didn't know that the note was there and the local police department find it and they're like, oh, what's this note mean? And the people who did it are watching like fuck we didn't check his shoes oh maybe i quite like that actually so they kill him they then are like this police department is shit we'll leave them to fuck up the investigation it will be ruled a suicide the investigation will be completely

botched they'll never link it back to us we take the notes we take the briefcase we're out of here they missed the note in issue the local police department find it don't know what the fuck they're looking at show everybody and it's the one thing that was a massive indication that this wasn't a suicide potentially maybe there is also another reason that you see out there quite a lot about this case is that Danny killed himself because he secretly had MS, which, as you'll remember, was only discovered during the autopsy. But the thing was, Danny wasn't showing any symptoms of MS. Both his dad and his brother were doctors and they were shocked. Nobody in his life knew that he had MS.

So he can't have been showing the symptoms because if he was, they would have known. They would have known that he had MS. Surely if anyone's going to know, it would be your two medically trained members of your immediate family. So I don't know. I just feel like this doesn't really make any sense because according to everyone as well, pretty much everyone who knew him and even the publisher who kept telling him that his book was shit, said that he was excited. And even if Danny thought that he was going to go rapidly downhill because of the MS, Danny was a man who had spent thousands, like we said, self-publishing a book years before. And he'd spent a year working on this. This was his chance to go out with a bang. This was his legacy. he believed like it appears that he was on the cusp

of finishing this case why would he pack it all in when he still wasn't even showing the symptoms of ms yeah i don't really buy into that either the only thing i've just been thinking is what if he goes and sees his source and his source gives him this information and then he's like shit i'm wrong i've wasted a year i've told everyone that i know that i've got a book deal and a movie deal and i've spent all of this time and this money and what if it's all fallen apart and then he kills himself however what doesn't fit with that theory is his fear of blood and like the whole way he did it so that still doesn't totally answer all of the questions it still leaves a question over

you would have to assume that he had got to a stalemate he'd got to a dead end but that note in his shoe proves that he had made connections so he wasn't unless it was unless it was a plant but then why why i've got i've got nothing we're b. Okay, final verdict. I don't think Danny Castellaro killed himself. I don't think so either. What do you think? We'd love to know. So come as ever and join the Facebook group. Come follow us at RedHandedThePod on Twitter, at RedHandedThePod on Instagram.

And tell us what you think because this is a fucking, this is a weird one. I'm going to be thinking about this for a long time, I can tell. Like sometimes we record them and I'm like, yeah, that one's in the brain drawer forever. And we started this off, I thought we'd bang this out quickly. We've been recording for an hour and a half. If you like these kind of stories, let us know. We'll do more of them. And follow us on Twitter and on Instagram at RedHandedThePod.

And leave us a nice review on the iTunes, please. It really helps other people find the show. And we will see you next week. Bye. Bye. You don't believe in ghosts? I get it. Lots of people don't. in ghosts? I get it. Lots of people don't.

I didn't either, until I came face to face with them. Ever since that moment, hauntings, spirits, and the unexplained have consumed my entire life. I'm Nadine Bailey. I've been a ghost tour guide for the past 20 years. I've taken people along with me into the shadows, uncovering the macabre tales that linger in the darkness. And inside some of the most haunted houses, hospitals, prisons, and more.

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