2025-01-17
9 分钟Welcome to Otherworld Patreon.
I'm your host, Jack Wagner.
As usual, this episode you're about to hear is an interview I did quite a few months ago with Zach Trites and Christian Hansen, the creators of American the Octopus Murders.
The Octopus Murders is a four part docu series on Netflix that delves into the mysterious death of of investigative writer Danny Casalero in 1991.
I'm going to do my very best to explain the general premise of the Octopus Murders and what Danny was researching, but it's extremely complicated and I suggest you watch the series if you haven't before.
Although I think this interview will be interesting on its own if you haven't.
Danny Casolaro was a journalist investigating what he believed was a vast conspiracy he called the Octopus, linking government corruption, corporate greed and covert operations.
Central to his theory was the alleged theft of something called Promise Software.
It was a powerful tracking program and he believed the US Government stole that essentially from its creators.
He believed it was modified for espionage and sold to foreign governments.
Casolaro also connected this to other scandals like the Iran Contra affair and the October Surprise theory, uncovering essentially a web of illicit activities spanning the globe that involved U.S.
intelligence and many other characters.
In 1991, while pursuing these leads, Casolaro was found dead in a hotel bathtub under very suspicious circumstances.
This was ruled a suicide, although there were missing documents.
He also warned people about threats on his life.
His family was also very suspicious that this was a suicide.
It came to a very, very abrupt and suspicious end.
In the series, Christian and Zack tell Dani's story and retrace his steps while continuing the research and uncovering even more information about the Octopus.
What I think is particularly interesting about this series and why I wanted to have them on the show is that while making it over the course of many years, Christian begins to realize that he actually looks quite a lot like Danny Casalero.
To the point where while they're out interviewing some of the people involved in this, people that Danny interviewed years ago, they are kind of creeped out by how similar they look.