58. The Octopus Theory - Danny Casolaro
36:39 Share

You're listening to an Ono Media podcast.

- Hey everybody and welcome back to the podcast. This is Into The Dark with Peyton Morland. Hi, I'm your host Peyton Morland. Now, if you are watching on YouTube, can you please really quick give this video a thumbs up and also turn notifications on so you can be notified whenever I upload. It also just like really helps with the YouTube algorithm which I'm trying to hack right now. So if you could just please give me a like and interact with this video, that would help so much.

And if you are listening on audio, hi, welcome to the podcast. Can you please leave me a review if possible? If not, you guys, I am just happy that you are here for another episode. This podcast is all about true crime, murder, dark, spooky. We dive into all things, literally going into the dark every single week with me. So I'm happy you are here and let's get into it. Now, before the episode, I am going to do my 10 seconds review.

For this week, if you don't know, my 10 seconds is just a little bit of time at the beginning where we talk about something other than murder. Try to start these podcasts off on a lighter foot. So this week, I was just going to give you guys a little life update. I've still been doing my journals. Those are going very well. I've actually stuck to my written journal, which has just been...

Really, really great. And it's fun to notice that once you start, it might feel a little awkward at first if you've listened before I talk about journal prompts. But I don't use journal prompts anymore. I just kind of put pen to paper and just start flowing and whatever comes out, comes out. And you really just become more and more talented at it and it starts to feel more natural, which is great.

I've been meditating, of course. Also, I cut caffeine out in right after Christmas and I was like, hey, I'm just going to do it for January. See maybe if not drinking coffee or soda kind of helps with any anxiety I'd been feeling. And I can't say it's really made that big of a difference, but I just am kind of proud of myself for sticking to something that is really hard. So

If anything, it's just to prove to myself that I can do hard things. So I think I'm going to stick with it. I have so far into February and I think I'm going to keep going. Garrett and I just went to Joshua Tree to celebrate Valentine's Day, which was really fun. We'd never been there. It was out in the desert. It honestly was a blast. We went to Pioneer Town. It was so fun just imagining that people used to live like that. And then we...

We took Daisy and she loved it. So it was a really big blast. But yeah, that's kind of what's going on in my world. I hope everyone is good. I hope you guys are all feeling full of hope and happy. And I hope that you guys are attaining peace in your life. But now we are going to talk about something a bit darker. So come on, guys. Let's go into the dark.

A reminder that every single case source used in the research of these episodes are listed in our episode notes. And again, this episode includes discussions of murder and suicide, so please listen with care. Now, today's story is all about ambition, which kind of can

kind of can be a bit of a double-edged sword. It's good to have aspirations. After all, ambition doesn't even have to be big. It could be as simple as saying, "Today, I'm going to shave one minute off my running time," or "I'm finally going to finish that novel that's been sitting in my to-read pile all month long." But of course, sometimes ambition can be damaging.

People may decide to crush those they see as competition on their way to fulfilling their dreams. Or powerful individuals, including elected officials, might go to murderous lengths to achieve their goals. And in the right or wrong circumstances, ambition can be deadly. That is what we are talking about today.

Now, some individuals have the resources and the means to keep powerful, ambitious people in check, like, say, reporters. So it shouldn't be that surprising that throughout early 1991, accomplished journalist Ron Rosenbaum said,

kept getting calls from a colleague who claimed he had evidence of a massive wrongdoing and a cover-up. This was Danny Casolaro. Ron and Danny actually knew each other because they'd both been researching Watergate years ago. So again, these are just reporters, journalists. They'd connected to compare notes and had very different takes on the developing story.

After all, Ron and Danny were distinct in a lot of ways. Ron actually wrote for Vanity Fair and he had a few published books under his belt. Unlike Ron, Danny wasn't the most established journalist. Sure, he'd published articles in the El Dorado News Times and Home and Auto, but those weren't as high profile as Ron's accomplishments. And Danny was a freelancer, hustling from one gig to the next.

More often than not, he wasn't working at all. According to one profile in the Washington Post, Danny spent most of his adult life in debt, scrabbling for each new job. In fact, most people in Danny's social circle agreed he wasn't particularly successful as a reporter. Like this is what he was doing, but he wasn't very good at it.

And in fairness, he seemed to have a lot of varied interests outside of journalism. He raised Arabian horses. He wrote poetry and he boxed.

Danny's friends knew him to be outgoing, charming, and thoughtful. He hosted get-togethers and made a point of making everyone around him feel welcome. He was also generous with his time and money, the little of it that he had. On one occasion, a friend saw Danny give an unhoused woman $150 cash, then book her a hotel room for that night.

And this detail will actually be important later. Danny's friends said he never drank to excess. Now, sometime around the late 1970s, he got out of journalism for a while. He bought a bunch of tech journals, so he was still publishing articles. But now, instead of chasing down sources and digging up secrets, he was sharing information about new developments in the computer world.

It actually was a lot of work, and it apparently didn't scratch Danny's itch for adventure and excitement, so after about a decade, he sold all the publications in 1990 for significantly less than they were worth. His friends were disappointed at Danny's apparent lack of business sense, and before you know it, he was back to being broke and unemployed.

Once again, he was a freelance journalist, now with something to prove. That he could be a success if given the right chance. That he could break a big, earth-shattering case. He just...

Hadn't done it yet, but that was all about to change because remember when I told you Danny was talking to Ron, his other journalist friend? Well, Danny told Ron that he'd stumbled onto a big story, a really big story. And that was why he kept calling Ron Rosenbaum. He wanted to bounce ideas off of him, talk over some of the information he'd uncovered.

Danny had already reached out to some publishing companies too. He figured his discovery was actually big enough that he ought to just get a book out of it. Unfortunately, he hadn't found a publisher willing to buy the story yet, so he was thinking of adapting his findings into a novel. Apparently, Danny didn't mind if people thought his discoveries were all a work of fiction, just so long as he got the truth out there and he got the credit for being the first to share it.

So he begins working on this manuscript and it's called The Octopus. It was named that because Danny had uncovered a conspiracy involving eight men. Remember, this is a true story. He's just writing about it fictionally. And according to the book, they had their tentacles in everything. Now, the octopus conspiracy theory is complicated. There's no way I could even cover every nuance in this episode. So I'm going to simplify things quite a bit.

Danny first learned about the octopus around the beginning of 1991, thanks to his connections in the tech world. There were rumors about something suspicious going on with a software company called Insla. Insla had developed a program that basically brought crime fighting into the 20th century. It helped police track their active cases and identify which ones were high priority.

and which ones were less so. It was supposed to prevent homicides and other violent crimes from slipping through the cracks, which like, of course, we know the true crime industry, we feel like this is probably needed, right? It was also a tech that would ensure officers didn't get distracted with less important violations. It also worked well with other databases. So police departments could cross reference with different law enforcement agencies.

Inslaw licensed their program to the US Justice Department for $10 million. And for about a year, their partnership worked well.

Then the federal entity violated their contract and the department reportedly stopped paying Insla even though they were still using the program. So Insla created this program, they sell it and the department's like, yeah, we paid you for a year, but we're done. And they allegedly reverse engineered their software, then shared it with other institutions. So basically stole the tech.

InSlaw's founders learned Canadian law enforcement officers were actually using their product in Canada, but they'd never sold it to anyone in Canada. So they figured the US Justice Department was distributing essentially an unlicensed version of the program. And obviously they weren't paying what they'd agreed to. InSlaw was in danger of going out of business at this point. So they took the Justice Department to court.

And won just under $8 million in their lawsuit. Except the Justice Department obviously appealed the ruling, this new trial was still pending. And in the meanwhile, the judge who'd ruled against them lost his appointment. A new judge was put on the case, someone who just happened to be sympathetic to the federal agency.

So it seemed like the Justice Department was obviously inappropriately interfering with the hearing against them, lining things up so they'd have an unfair advantage going into the appeal. Now that's all pretty bad, but it's just the tip of the iceberg. InSlaw's founders couldn't figure out why the Justice Department was so hostile to them. They'd designed a helpful software, so why would the agency steal it and then destroy their business?

It's not like the Justice Department couldn't afford to just license the program. In their confusion, Inslaw's founders eventually connected with a man named Michael Rico-Ashuto. And he explained, the reason this whole case made no sense, it was because there was something darker and more mysterious at play.

Here's where things get really complex. Michael told the folks at Insla and Danny, the reporter, that the federal government stole the program because the software was being used by a huge network of shady people who were all working for the Octopus conspiracy.

The octopus, as Danny puts it, was responsible for basically every major world event of the past four decades. So from 1950 onwards.

To hear Michael tell it, the octopus had been involved in the Bay of Pigs invasion, the JFK assassination. They'd tried to spark a civil war in Albania and they'd succeeded in overthrowing the government of Guatemala. And the conspiracy had helped sabotage numerous banks so they'd fail and in the process make their competitors really rich. Non-coincidentally, these competitors were friends and family members of high-ranking octopus conspirators.

So allegedly the octopus was even developing bioweapons and interacting with UFOs, which doesn't mean they had anything to do with aliens. Danny's research suggested the conspiracy may have been developing top secret spy planes at Area 51 and their test flights may have been the real cause of some flying saucer sightings. So it's the octopus. It's this big group network of people who are basically running the world.

So the main source of this conspiracy theory, Michael, said he knew all of this because he worked on the software for one of the octopus's operations. This one was based in California on a cabazon reservation. Michael said they worked there because the cabazons were designated with sovereign status. This meant some U.S. federal regulations didn't apply on their land and

And the Cabazon Nation was super small. There were fewer than 30 members living on the reservation at the time. There weren't enough of them to keep tabs on everything the octopus conspiracy theory did. So Michael and his colleagues could work there free from oversight from the government or the indigenous people. It was the perfect setup to get away with the things they wanted. And one of those things was murdering people.

In fact, numerous people who got in the conspiracy's way tended to die under mysterious circumstances. Remember, a reporter is bringing all of this to light. And in particular, Danny believed the octopus was killing people with what he called slow-acting brain viruses.

This time, illnesses like mad cow disease were all over the news. This is a poorly understood condition that affects the brain, and it almost always kills an infected person. Danny believed the octopus had the ability to intentionally infect people with mad cow disease or similar illnesses, and

And his contact, Michael, who said he worked for the octopus, confirmed his suspicions. He said he knew of at least 14 people who died of biologically engineered illnesses controlled by the octopus. Basically saying they're testing illnesses on people. And there were nearly 50 individuals who'd been murdered in other ways. Michael claimed that it was very, very dangerous to investigate the octopus. But like I said, Danny was ambitious.

He wanted to be the one who'd bring the conspiracy to light and he wouldn't be intimidated by threats and brain viruses. But when Vanity Fair's Ron Rosenbaum heard about all of Danny's research, his friend Danny calls and says, you are not going to believe what I've uncovered. This is a major conspiracy.

- Okay, most beauty brands don't understand fine color treated hair, but Proz does. They have a formula that can address my specific type of hair needs, which makes sense because it's based on me. If you're wondering whether custom hair care is worth the hype, let me tell you it is, and that's why I'm obsessed with Proz.

Since 2017, Proz has transformed traditional hair and skincare with a made-to-order model that reduces waste, celebrates unique beauty over one-size-fit-all beauty standards, and works better than off-the-shelf alternatives. Developed in Paris and bottled fresh in Brooklyn, Proz combines the know-how of its world-class team of in-house cosmetic chemists with an advanced AI algorithm that personalizes your formulas individually

based on 80 plus unique factors. You literally go on, take the quiz, it asks you all types of questions and then they personalize your hair care. Since I switched to Proz, I've noticed that my hair is so much shinier, stronger, and my color actually lasts longer. And because you're always changing, so is your Proz. Your formulas evolve alongside you and Proz will address any new concerns, adjust your formulas with the seasons, and learn from your feedback with an always custom fit.

You guys, PROSE is so confident that they'll bring out your best hair that they're offering an exclusive trial offer of 50% off your first hair care subscription. Order at PROSE.com slash dark. PROSE.com slash dark. Go on, take the quiz. See what they come up with. Take your free consultation, get your one-of-a-kind formula, and see the difference custom hair care can make with 50% off at PROSE, P-R-O-S-E, .com slash dark.

Let's get back into the episode. Sometimes after a particularly long day, I love to play games on my phone to get my mind off things, and one game I have been loving is June's Journey. June's Journey is a hidden object mystery mobile game that puts your detective skills to the test. You play as June Parker and investigate beautifully detailed scenes of the 1920s while uncovering the mystery of her sister's

murder. With hundreds of mind-teasing puzzles, the next clue is always within reach. Every new scene and chapter leads to more juicy secrets and clues being revealed about this mysterious murder that brings out the detective in everyone. Plus, you get to chat and play with or against other players by joining a detective club. You'll even get the chance to play in a detective league to put your skills to the test.

I have always loved good scavenger hunts and puzzles, and of course we all know I love a good murder mystery, and this is just the perfect marriage of the two. Right now I'm on chapter two. I've been trying so hard not to use the light bulb feature to help me search for clues. I seriously look forward to playing it every night. Discover your inner detective when you download June's Journey for free today on iOS and Android.

Ron wasn't convinced. In his long career as a journalist, Ron had heard a lot of conspiracy theories. And it didn't sound like Danny was adding anything new to the conversation. He was just one more theorist claiming there was something odd about the Kennedy assassination or that the federal government had been infiltrated by malicious agents. From Ron's perspective, the octopus concept didn't rise above all those other unverified allegations.

Plus, Danny seemed to be missing some really key proof. Granted, Ron hadn't seen all of Danny's notes and research. He was just going off of what Danny said on the phone. But even Danny admitted he still needed to do some more investigation to find his smoking gun.

Ron wasn't convinced he ever would or that there was really anything to the octopus. He told Danny, listen, you've got to get ruthless with yourself. He hoped Danny would heed the advice and refocus on just the parts of the conspiracy he could actually prove if there were any.

Ron didn't really expect Danny to produce any hard evidence or ever publish his allegedly game-changing story. So it came as a total shock when Ron learned just a few weeks later that Danny had passed away and that his death was highly suspicious.

Now, officially, Danny had died by suicide. He was staying in the Sheridan Hotel in Martinsburg, West Virginia, when a housekeeper came into the room and found him. It was a little after 12:30 p.m. on August 10th, 1991. Now, I'm going to discuss Danny's injuries and touch on themes about self-harm. So if that's something you'd find especially upsetting, I recommend skipping ahead just about two minutes. Now, Danny's nude body was in the bathtub and his wrists had been slit 12 times.

And one of the cuts was so deep that it actually slashed his tendon. The tub was full of blood and water and nearby investigators found the razor, some trash bags and the remains of an alcoholic drink.

That may have been a can of beer or a partially drunk bottle of wine. It's reported differently in various sources. In the other room, Danny's bed looked like it hadn't been slept in, suggesting he died the night before. His clothes were lying in a pile like he'd stripped, then walked into the bathroom. The police also found a note scrawled on a pad of paper, and it read, quote,

Now, a brief investigation suggested the message obviously was a suicide note and Danny had taken his life in the bathtub, possibly after downing that alcoholic drink. But some details about Danny's death raised questions.

First, Danny was known to hate blood and he also didn't like it when people saw him naked. His friends and family were all shocked that he'd kill himself at all and even more astonished that he'd do it in such a gruesome way.

Then investigators found two bloody towels in the bathroom. They, plus some smeared blood on the floor, made it look like someone had mopped up the mess around the tub. This would be after Danny began bleeding. Now, obviously this would have been hard for Danny to do while he's inside the tub dying.

Plus, when he checked into the hotel, Danny actually had all his papers and research about the octopus with him. Remember, he's a journalist. He's a researcher. He's diving into this octopus theory that he's discovered. So he has all of this with him. And witnesses saw him carrying around a briefcase full of this information. But by the time the police investigated his death, all of his files were gone. No one could account for them.

And Danny's research wasn't the only thing that went missing. When investigators found his body, one of their first moves was to drain the bathtub. So his blood went right down the pipes before they could do any forensic tests on it. Almost like they didn't want to find any potential irregularities. The

The police ruled Danny's death a suicide, but they didn't even give themselves the opportunity to discover if he'd actually been murdered.

And as for why he was in a hotel in Martinsburg in the first place, Danny was there to meet a source in his investigation. Shortly before the meeting, he called all kinds of friends and colleagues to announce he had done it. He had finally found his smoking gun. Apparently, this latest interview would give Danny the one big thing he'd been missing before. The thing that Ron Rosenbaum had told him that he really needed if he wanted to run this story. He needed proof.

When Danny went to meet with this source, he told a lot of precautions. He had good reason to be concerned. One of Danny's tipsters reportedly told him not to trust Michael, that his life was in danger because of Michael.

Remember, Michael is our guy from the octopus who's been talking to Danny. Now, meanwhile, Michael was in turn telling Danny, no, do not trust that person. So they were just pointing fingers at each other. But both were in agreement. Danny was definitely playing with fire and this investigation could get him killed. Someone had been calling him, threatening him. Once a house sitter picked up the phone at his house. The unidentified person on the other line said, you're dead.

The day Danny's body was found, the house sitter got a similar call, but this time the person said, you're dead, you son of a B word. And before then, other contracts had warned him to back off from the octopus story. So the closer he gets to it, the more people are like, hey, do not go looking into this. It was bad enough that Danny made a comment to his brother. He said that if he ever turned up dead in some kind of accident, not to believe what he heard. It wouldn't be an accident.

Strangely, Danny also kept bumping into people with connections to the case. So later on, two authors would go on to write about the octopus conspiracy. It's not just Danny who believes in this and looked into it. Those authors, Ken Thomas and Jim Keith, wrote about how Danny flirted with a woman at a party. Then she admitted she knew all about the conspiracy because a personal acquaintance was a part of it.

And one night when Danny went out to dinner, he spotted a contact with connections to both the Justice Department and INSLA. Almost like the Octopus's agents were following him in his final days. And they might have closed in on him when he finally found that last source. He arrived in Martinsburg around noon on August 8th. Right after checking in, he headed to a restaurant, had a drink, then went to a pizza hut for beer and pizza.

He spent a total of about three and a half hours eating and drinking alone. This was really out of character for him. Danny's loved ones all insisted he wasn't a heavy drinker. It wasn't like him to spend hours at a bar alone without company. Maybe he was waiting for someone that didn't show.

Later that evening, Danny was spotted with an unidentified man and after that, two beautiful women. Danny ran into a friend and told him he was going to meet a source for his octopus story, but the friend noticed that no one else talked to Danny for the rest of the night. When Danny went back to his room around 1130 or so, he was alone, but we know he did meet with a contact the next day, Friday, August 9th. For about 45 minutes, he chatted with his source in his car.

He didn't want to go back to his hotel room because he assumed the octopus had planted listening devices in it.

After that meeting, Danny spent another two or three hours drinking alone in a bar. Again, not like him. That evening, he called his parents to check in. Hours later, at about 10 p.m., he bought a coffee from a convenience store, walked back to his room, and then was found dead the next day. It actually took two days for the police to notify Danny's loved ones of his death. They didn't really have a good explanation for the delay. They argued they thought someone had taken care of it earlier.

Either way, by the time Danny's family learned what had happened, it was too late for a complete post-mortem exam. Danny's remains had already been embalmed for burial. No one in his family had even approved this procedure. How could have they? They didn't even know he was dead, yet they went forward with this. By the time Danny's relatives finally heard what had happened, they found one more big clue suggesting that maybe something wasn't right. One that strangers and casual acquaintances might not have noticed, but his family did.

The so-called suicide note ended with the line, I know deep down inside that God will let me in. Now, Danny was a devout Catholic and traditional Catholic teaching says that people who take their own lives don't get into heaven. If Danny said God would let him in, it could mean he wanted people to know he hadn't really killed himself.

Maybe someone forced him to inflict those deadly wounds, or he knew his murder would be staged as a suicide. And this was his subtle way of saying, don't believe everything that you hear about me, just like he'd warned his brother earlier.

And there was one more final piece of the puzzle that could be meaningful, or maybe it may have been a red herring. Like I mentioned before, Danny's body was embalmed before anyone could perform an autopsy. Now, it was still possible to do a partial postmortem exam. It just meant no one could get reliable toxicology tests. The chemicals from embalming would make it too difficult to detect poisons or drugs in Danny's system.

But the medical examiners still found interesting information, like that Danny had several bruises on his arm and head and his fingernails had been ripped off, suggesting he might have tried to fight off an attacker before his death. And according to the Washington Post, they were able to determine there was no alcohol in his blood, even though there was either a bottle of wine or can of beer in the bathroom where he was found dead.

Danny's post-mortem suggested he wasn't the one who drank it that night, so maybe he had had a guest in his room. And one other finding was especially alarming. The results said Danny may have been in the early stages of multiple sclerosis, or MS. It's an incurable disorder that attacks the brain and the nervous system. In severe cases, it can leave a patient unable to walk, speak, think clearly, and

And remember how Danny believed people were being infected with some kind of brain virus? Well, he was apparently worried that he might fall prey to the virus too. So much so, he voiced concerns to his friends and he reached out to a nurse he knew to ask her about neurological conditions. During their conversation, he was especially curious to hear about MS.

Now it's unclear if he even had that disease. It sounds like the morticians saw signs of it, but I don't know how definitive those signs were. If he did have the illness, it may not have been symptomatic yet. So it would be very surprising if he'd received a diagnosis. On the other hand, he might've suspected the octopus had the ability to infect him with MS if he got too close to the truth. And it turned out he may have had the condition and then he died under such mysterious circumstances.

Well, it's no surprise that Danny's family members still insist he didn't die of suicide. They argue he was murdered because he knew too much. Now, understandably, there's still room for skepticism about all of this. To date, nobody has ever proven that Danny was murdered. And as for the octopus theory, in Vanity Fair, Ron Rosenbaum wrote that he was still doubtful, but even he had to admit there might be something to it. Remember,

Danny first learned about the octopus because of Insla's lawsuit against the Department of Justice, where they alleged that the government entity stole and illegally distributed their software.

That suit was real, and the Justice Department was genuinely found guilty in the trial. However, later they won on appeal on a technicality. In 1994, the Justice Department released a statement. It said there was no evidence of wrongdoing on the agency's part. They'd never stolen or distributed the software, and Danny's death was a suicide. But this report on the Justice Department's innocence was written by the Justice Department. They were basically declaring themselves guilt-free.

So you can decide for yourself how credible that statement was. It seems possible that the Department of Justice really did rip Insla off and they must have had some reason to do it. Plus, there appears to be some truth to Michael's claims about a top secret government entity operating on a Cabazon reservation.

In the San Francisco Chronicle, investigative reporter Jonathan Lippman wrote that the government had spent about $250 million on the lands in about a 15-year period.

So it's obviously undeniable that they were up to something on the territory. If it wasn't related to the octopus, it still had to be pretty big. Okay, you guys, let me guess. Your medicine cabinet is crammed with stuff that doesn't work. You still aren't sleeping. You still hurt and you're still stressed out.

That's how it was for me. So I cleared out my cabinet and reset my health with CBD from CB Distillery. And it has been a real change. Now, CB Distillery's targeted formulations are made from the highest quality clean ingredients. No fluff, no fillers, just pure effective CBD solutions designed to help support your health.

in two non-clinical surveys 81 of customers experienced more calm 80 said cbd helped with pain after physical activity and an impressive 90 said they slept better with cbd and you guys i have taken cbd to help me sleep and i all

I always zonk out so fast and have such a restful night's sleep. Those nights that I'm tossing and turning, I always reach for my CBD. So if you struggle with a health concern and haven't found relief, make the change like I did to CB Distillery. And with over 2 million customers and a solid 100% money back guarantee, CB Distillery is the source to trust. I have a 20% discount to get you started.

Visit cbdistillery.com and use code dark for 20% off you guys. If you wanted to give CBD a try, go to cbdistillery.com, code dark. cbdistillery.com, use code dark. All right, let's get back to the episode. And while a lot of people who were allegedly connected to the conspiracy theory have turned up dead in mysterious circumstances, CBD

The examples below are all from The Octopus by Ken Thomas and Jim Keith, which detailed Danny's investigation and its aftermath. So they basically went on to write the book but included Danny's story in it.

And they listed several key individuals who were murdered, like the man working on one of those top secret Cabazon projects who was tied up and choked to death in San Francisco, or the roughly 40 people who were called as witnesses in Insla's lawsuit against the Justice Department, but they were killed before they could take the stand. 40 people.

Even more people lost their lives in freak accidents. For example, one man allegedly helped share Insla's software with foreign governments. In 1991, he drowned near his yacht. Officials ruled it a heart attack, but he had no history of heart disease and some investigators found indications that he'd been drugged.

Another programmer just went missing sometime in the early 1990s. And finally, some deaths, like Danny's, were just officially ruled suicides. Many of these were journalists who'd been investigating different aspects of the octopus conspiracy when they were found dead.

So let's take a second to unpack what all of this even means. This is a very strange tale, but there's a reason I wanted to cover it on the podcast. It in sense is a conspiracy theory. One possibility is that because his claims about the US Justice Department and secret operations on the Cabazon reservation are likely to be true, Danny's whole octopus theory could be real. Maybe he truly did find that key piece of evidence that would break the whole case open and he was killed for it.

But there's also another alternative. Maybe Danny was clutching at straws when he tried to prove there was a massive global conspiracy responsible for every major world event for decades. But bits and pieces that he uncovered might have still been legitimate. So he's saying, oh, it's this huge thing. And as he's looking into it, he's covering little truths, little truths. There's a lot of

fabricated things in between, suggestions, conspiracy theories, but maybe he's uncovering little pieces of truth. Perhaps there really was something nefarious happening on the Cabazon reservation. Maybe even something big enough that it was worth killing numerous people over. Maybe Danny was just the latest victim of that operation. Or of course, there's the third option. That Danny was just simply duped from the beginning. There was no conspiracy, no octopus, and no there, there.

If so, he may have died by suicide when he realized he'd wasted at least eight months of his time and energy investigating a story that amounted to nothing. After all, Danny was incredibly ambitious. He was desperate to publish a big persuasive book or article that would make his reputation as a journalist. And it would have been devastating if he'd learned the octopus wasn't the golden ticket he thought it was.

it's hard to say which scenario is true but it's all mysterious enough that the fbi actually opened an investigation into danny's death when so many people are coming forward saying hey this is just weird he's looking into the government and then all of a sudden he dies

But the FBI has never released their results to the public. You can read a heavily redacted report on the FBI's website. And when I say heavily redacted, I mean it's virtually unreadable. One paragraph on page two is so heavily censored. It just says, Blank advised that blank and blank in order to blank with blank and other blank. In blank that contains blank. The whole report just goes on like that.

There's almost more censored information than legible text, suggesting that there's something about his demise that's worth keeping secret. If this truly was just a suicide, why redact so much information in the investigation?

All that said, Danny's strange death did make him famous. Today, it's officially still classified as a suicide, but in some circles, his name is essentially synonymous with murder and cover-ups. So if we assume he wanted to bring this story to light and establish his reputation in the process, I guess Danny was successful. The book went on to be written. It's tragic, though, that he was only able to fulfill his ambitions by dying.

And that is a conspiracy theory and story surrounding Danny's death. So this episode was kind of jumping into a conspiracy theory, but also one that involved true crime and a murder. Let me know what you thought about it. I'm just trying all different types of aspects here, all the way from true crime, conspiracy theory, murders, hauntings, anything, anything dark. And if you have any suggestions, please leave them in the comments. Again, you can find me on YouTube, also on Into the Dark Instagram.

on Instagram. I love you guys so much. I hope you have a great day and I will see you next time as we go further into the dark together. Goodbye.