Found dead over the weekend at a hotel in west virginia. Authorities quickly ruled his death a suicide. It did not sit right in my mind. I am thinking they killed him. The book that danny was writing, he started looking into these powerful people and realizes there is something much bigger going on. These eight men are no longer government officials, but their tentacles can reach into almost any part of government and almost any country. I have come to call this group the octopus. We do not know what you are talking about. It is beyond what a couple of local detectives can do. It all started with the software. These programs allegedly allowed the cia [indiscernible] the two of them transferred in excess of 40 million. This money was used to buy off it was a disturbing conspiracy. Host the octopus murders, this is a pretty complicated story. How do you tell it in a nutshell . Guest if i am in an elevator that is moving very quickly, i would say that it is a murder mystery thriller documentary that centers on the life of the research of a reporter from d. C. Named Danny Casolaro. Host how did you find him . Guest i was studying the private prison industry, and i started looking into the history of a company, which had the first private prison in america, but it also had a huge Multinational Security concern, and i started digging into the company and learned about edit secure an obscure plan to manufacture biological and chemical weapons and night vision goggles and machine guns on a native american reservation in the coach altobelli, and that Danny Casolaro got folded into that research because he was looking into that operation as well as part of a larger book project he was working on in the last year of his life at the end of which he died mysteriously. Host how long have you been working on the octopus m urders. Guest i started in 2012. Host and when did you finish . Guest the movie came out on netflix just a month ago. I am still researching it. I guess i have not quit. Host you are about 12 years into this at this point. Would you consider it an obsession . Guest yes, but i also think other people have a negative connotation to the word obsession. Deep interest i do not know, i will take obsession. Host zachary treitz, how did you get involved in this . Guest i am christians friend basically, and my background is more independent film, fictional film, and christian started telling me about this probably back in 2012, 2013, and i was just his body. He would tell me some of the people he was looking into and organizations and told me about danny, and i was just a sounding board for years, and then in 2017 we took a trip to pick up one of Danny Casolaros main sources are present who had been there for 26 years. We filmed that trip and that was not intended to be anything. We had no designed to make a documentary, but we knew it was a big moment for christian and the story, so as a filmmaker i had to film it. Often on i guess since 2017, and it picked up steam a couple of years ago when we decided to make this Netflix Series. Host the trailer we saw at the beginning of this program said that you also produced a series called wild wild country. What is that . Guest that is our producer, they directed it. So that whole group that made wild wild country, they took us on is their next project. Our shepherds. Host Christian Hansen, zachary treitz, what is Danny Casolaros background . Guest Danny Casolaro was born in mclean, virginia. His father was an obstetrician, delivered a lot of d. C. And virginia babies, and danny was a writer. He actually kind of went to back it up for the between journalism and poetry and fiction in the early 1970s. He had investigated the watergate case. I found evidence of that in the fbi files that they were tracking his watergate investigation, and then throughout the late 1970s and 1980s danny wrote about the computer industry for a small pcased newsletter called mper age, which if you think back to the late 1970s and early 1980s, writing about computers was pretty obscure. The computer industry was small and highly technical, and there were no personal computers really to speak of. These were like huge computers. Anyway, danny published this newsletter. It was not necessarily something he was insanely passionate about. She had a child when he was about 21, so i think it was a stable source of income for him, and he wrote about computers, and he really dug into it, then he sold the publication in about 1990, and started pitching ideas, more interesting, more complex stories, and a basically a former colleague from his computer publication came along and said, hey, ive got this crazy lawsuit, the Software Company is suing the doj. I think you look into this. Host lets show some more video from the Netflix Series american conspiracy the octopus murders. In order to figure out what happened to danny, i wanted to see what he was seeing, then i realized i should just finish the book that danny was writing. [indiscernible] i am scared, you know. It all sounded a little weird to me. It was christian, my friend christian. Was this guy really about to expose the most dangerous political conspiracy of the century . Had already or had he fallen into some kind of paranoid fantasy . So i went along with him as he tried to finish what Danny Casolaro started. And we uncovered the secrets of the octopus. [indiscernible] this is not your thing. You dont know this world. Hey, christian. What is the deal . He said i can come out to his property. I cannot bring my phone, and i have to be blindfolded on the way out there. Host zachary treitz, you sounded a little skeptical when this started. Guest yeah, maybe that is my role in christians life. The beginning of this story was a little bit of a wet blanket, just because a lot of the stuff that danny was looking into and that christian at the time was looking into was so hard to pin down, seems very mysterious, and seems a little i dont know whether these people were great sources or not. A lot of people in this world seemed pretty dangerous, so i was worried for christian and i was worried about his own grasp of reality, because as you see it gets pretty psychedelic and pretty mind altering and terms of the things that danny was looking into, the people, the organizations, the Intelligence Community related things and criminal Community Related things that were looking into. Host at what point, zachary treitz, did you search for financing for this . Guest we are still searching, no. When we pitched it to our producers in 2018, 2019, and they were the first people that just seemed to grasp exactly what we were doing, so they helped us develop a pitch, and we pitched it to netflix. It was the only pitch we did. Host as far as netflix viewership, how is it been doing . Guest it is done pretty well. Millions of people watched it. It was on the top 10 for a couple of weeks at least. It was the number two show on their platform in the united states. I think it was number four worldwide, which i think for a humble operation like we are running pretty good. Host Christian Hansen, and that less video we saw there was a basement setting with lots of boxes. Where was that . Guest a good friend from kentucky owns a duplex and said as long as i was writing and researching on the book back in the early stages, i could work in his lower empty apartment. He lived in the upper two floors and had an empty furnished floor , so i moved in there and just wrote all the time. Another friend who was a songwriter said if christian can have a residency here i can have a residency here too. He got annoyed. That was not part of my process at that point, so i was annoyed, and i had set up an office down at the workbench in this dank basement, and that day and photographer friend from d. C. , he was in town. We both went to the kentucky derby, and that is why i am wearing a suit. I said you should come photograph my weird workspace and look at this letter, so that is the story behind that photo. Host what were you doing in 2012 when you began this project . Guest i had lived in new york for about three years, and i was photographing for the new york times, and then my younger sister got cancer, and i went back to kentucky to be near her. She does find out, and i had dropped out of college, so while i was back i went ahead and took my last few classes to get a degree, and it was in one of those classes i was researching the private prison industry, and that is pretty much referring back to my earlier answer, that is how that came about. Host zachary, you wanted to Say Something . Guest i was just going to i think we mightve been talking about two different basements in that thing. I did not think he was talking about the boxes we found on the west coast, but whatever. Host we have not gotten there yet. We are still at the beginning stages of this. So august 10, 1991, let us look at some more video. They called me on walkietalkie and they said we need you. What do i need to bring . They said your courage. And that is what i walked in and saw what i saw. It was just a mess for lack of a better explanation. It was messy. There were blood handprints all over the world wall and smeared all over the wallpaper and the countertops, just blood everywhere. The housekeepers told me there were not sure if there was someone in the tub or not and i was peeking around the edge to see if there was a body here, and i could see the tub was full of blood. I do not want to look around that corner, there was just something spooky about it. So i decided to peek through here. And at that point i said there was someone in there. Something very wrong had taken place in here. Host zachary treitz, what were we just watching . Guest that was the one of the Maintenance Workers at the Sheraton Hotel describing what he found on august 10, 199 the vet sheraton in martinsburg. She had been called up because a maid had found some blood on the floor, and we met him. We knew his name i think from some Police Reports or something, so we sought him out and convinced him on that day and asked if it would be ok for him to just explain the basis of what he had seen that day, and i think he was reluctant to do that at first. It was obviously a pretty traumatic day in his life, it also martinsburg is a pretty small town. He agreed at the last minute and took us through. Guest he was reluctant, but he was like we do not want your opinions. We just want to know what you saw, and that is what persuaded him. He cannot argue with that. Host just to be clear, Danny Casolaro was found in the bathtub full of blood, correct . Guest yes. Host did you have to rent the room to get all of that footage . How did you get the hotel to agree to all of this . Guest i believe we rented the room and the adjoining room to keep all of our boxes into gear in. Host was Danny Casolaros death a suicide or murder . What was the official report at that time . Guest the official report from the martinsburg lease police was that Danny Casolaro committed suicide, and the fbi and to get jay did review of the findings, and officially upheld the suicide findings. Host did you have trouble getting people in martinsburg to talk besides the Maintenance Worker . Guest i had a lot of trouble getting the police chief who was the chief investigator to talk. Host why do you think that was . Guest he said it would not be proper to discuss a closed case. I do not agree with that. I talked to police about old close cases of the time and they usually like talking about their history, and they are allowed to. Host was there fbi involvement in this case it is point . Guest at this point, yes and no. Denny was talking to an fbi agent in los angeles about organized crime and talking to another fbi agent in the d. C. Area who is kind of a whitecollar crime specialist, then he supposedly was going to meet with two fbi agents from lexington kentucky on that trip in which he died. We got the name of one of those agents, but he had passed and his wife was not able or willing to help us, so there was some fbi involvementish as far as people any was talking to danny was talking to. Host why did Danny Casolaro call this the octopus . Where did that name came from . Guest danny was at the phase that he was preaching his book idea, so that is where you boil down your concept to about a six page enticing synopsis of the story you are writing enter with the characters and why would the publisher want to give you in advance to actually finish the book . So there is a certain level of hype in that style of writing, you know. It was called the octopus because she starts looking into one d. C. Area 1980 scandal, and that takes him over into the irancontra scandal and the october surprise and bci and the same kind of players, nefarious players, their names are popping up here and there and there, so it seems like it is part of an interconnected, more like a web, but the octopus is such a good literary image i guess he went with that. Host we are talking about Ronald Reagan and george h. W. Bush in the mafia and the cia, fbi, iran contra, all of these famous issues we have had throughout our history. Zachary treitz, at what point did you ever think we are in over our heads here . What are we doing . Guest i think pretty much from day one we were in over our heads and kind of acknowledge that. When christian when we were First Talking about some kind of project together, question asked me what about the octopus . What if we did that is a documentary . And i said it is just too hard. It cannot be done. I dont know, you might remember that better than me. Guest zach was looking for his next project. I was stuck. I had been working on this thing selffunded by myself for several years i think, and we were at halfcourt on the tennis court, we play tennis together and we were trying to figure out what we were going to do next and what zach was going to do next, and a few ideas he and i had separate to this, and zach seemed discouraged, and i was like what about the octopus . He sighed and really emphatically said it was too hard, and he had already started writing this pitch and doing the initial steps of reproduction, so i guess at some point she decided it could be done and saw a path forward. Guest what is difficult about this story is that we were essentially researching while we are trying to tell the story, which is always hard. Traditionally do your research, find out what is going on, and complete your book or whatever you are doing, so christian was researching, and i jumped into that as well until essentially the end of the project. We never stop to because there are a limitless number of things to find out in this story, so that makes it really difficult. The complexity of the story it makes it really difficult, a number of names, and the access makes it really hard, because it is a story not only about people and events that happened 30, 40 years ago, and a lot of those people have since passed away including our main character, danny, so there were just a lot of obstacles to being able to find out what happened and being able to tell the story of what happened. Guest Christian Hansen, you were acting as Danny Casolaro throughout the series whenever we would see reenactments, correct . Guest that is true. I think that might be the first time that is been done in a documentary, but i could be wrong. Guest it was not just a vanity project, that choice. That choice came from christian talking to dannys family and friends, and when i was there it just kept coming up over and over again. They would look at christian like they had seen a ghost because you look so similar to danny. It is strange being here with you because you look so much like danny, and christian is trying to follow in dannys footsteps, so when that happened i guess as a filmmaker you dont just let that opportunity go. Christian even took acting classes, and we tried to do it right in pushing forward so that it would not feel strange or too hokey. Host dennys brother tony participated. Danny and i stood in our kitchen and talked for a long time about what was going on. He did not tell me a lot of the details, except that it was a vast, disturbing conspiracy, and in this whole world he had been looking into, some of the same people kept appearing. I do not know why martinsburg, but apparently danny was to post to was supposed to meet with the source in west virginia, but i cannot tell you who he was meeting with. I just do not know the answer. He told me he was getting funny phone calls and some threats, and he said to me, by the way, if an accident happens it is not an accident. Host was the family eager to participate in this, to have this exposed . Guest the family has been approached by researchers ever since it happened, and the last interview that they gave, dannys best friend and brother was in 1993 for unsolved mysteries, and that was it until we came along, and we were able to gain their trust, and i think at that point they did want to have some finality. Things were kind of left up in the air with unsolved mysteries, and we did our best to bring more closure to this very deeply said and really kind of psychically confusing case. Host this is a did you two change in the 12 years he will been working on this . Do you feel that you changed at all . Guest i do, i think i do, but i also try to stay positive and joyful, but yeah, i am definitely curious, but i also know how long it takes to do an investigation of something really complex, which is now something that i find that i love to do, so i kind of feel like i do not know anything until i have really dug into it. Host you mentioned former msnbc producer ann clenk. Who else should we know about who helped you along this path . Guest zach, what guest there is an almost infinite number of people, because the story just to give you a quick overview, we started in d. C. , well, we started in martinsburg and talked about dannys final days and we talked about the Computer Software scandal he was working on, and we head out to the west coast of Southern California into native american reservation where a company was developing weapons and military