The Trail Went Cold - Episode 287 - Danny Casolaro

Transcript

we would like to send out a special thanks to the fun and challenging best fiends for supporting the trail went cold best fiends is the binge worthy mobile puzzle game download best fiend for free from the app store or Google play plus earn even more with $5 worth of in-game rewards when you reach level 5 that's friends without the r best fiends enjoy the show August 10th 1991 Martinsburg West Virginia the nude body of 44-year-old freelance investigator a journalist Danny Castello is discovered in the bathtub of his hotel room each of his wrists have been slashed multiple times but since a suicide notice found and there's no evidence of Foul Play dany's Death is ruled to be a suicide prior to his death Dany claimed that he was working on a massive story about widespread government corruption which he titled the octopus and had traveled to Martinsburg to meet a source who would provide important information since the investigation uncovers a number of suspicious discrepancies Danny's loved ones believe he was murdered and that a coverup took place but there no conclusive answers about what happened after that the trail went cold [Music] [Music] hello everyone and Welcome to our latest episode of the trail went cold I'm your host Robin wer and today I'm finally going to be tackling a case which I've been wanting to cover on this podcast for a long long time The Unexplained 1991 death of Danny celero or rather we're going to EXP the bizarre conspiracy known as the octopus this case was featured on Unsolved Mysteries and has always been one of my most highly requested cases since the Inception of this podcast but the whole thing is such a massive Rabbit Hole containing a wealth of information I had to make sure I was in the right frame of mind before I took this on and as a result this is going to be one of our longest Standalone episodes Danny Casto was a freelance investigative journalist who decided to take on a story involving stolen software but the the whole Endeavor wound up becoming much bigger than he ever could have imagined Casto eventually came to believe that he had uncovered evidence of an international cabal which he named the octopus because it was controlled by eight powerful men who all had the ability to sink their tentacles into any government around the world after performing his own independent investigation for a year Casto claimed he was planning to meet an important Source in Martinsburg West Virginia who might provide him with the necessary information to break his story but instead he would be found dead in a hotel bathtub with his wrist lash even though the authorities ruled that Danny's death was a suicide his friends and family disagreed as he was apparently so squeamish about blood and needles that they could not comprehend the idea of him slashing his wrists several times indeed the original investigation was so mishandled that it gave Danny's loved ones the impression that he was the victim of Foul Play and then a massive coverup took place regardless of whether you believe Dany was murdered or really did take his own life there are a lot of odd discrepancies and bizarre details which have never been adequately explained I'll state right up front that this story is rif with conspiracy theories so one of the biggest challenges of putting together this episode was trying to figure out which sources out there are reliable and which ones are nothing more than sensationalistic nonsense but I've done my best to try and provide the most fair and balanced look at Danny casto's death that I could manage there's a lot of material to get through so brace yourself for a wild and lengthy ride however before we get started just a quick reminder that the trail went cold is a weekly podcast which is currently available for download on several platforms including Apple podcast Stitcher Google podcast and Spotify so if you like this podcast be sure to subscribe to it and please leave us a rating or review on any of those sites to help spread the word and Garner us more exposure the trail wi cold is on patreon so if you would like to learn how to support the show please visit our page at patreon.com thra went gold for as little as $1 a month you can gonner access to exclusive rewards which may include stickers and thank you cards early accessed episodes and bonus content so with all that out of the way let us now Venture down the rabbit hole and delve into the suspicious death of Danny Castello [Music] [Music] [Music] Our Story begins in 1991 and our central figure is 44-year-old Joseph Daniel celero who goes by the name Dany originally born in mlan Virginia Dany hailed from a prominent upper class family and was the second oldest of seven children during the late 1960s he decided to attend Providence College in Rhode Island in order to pursue a degree in journalism but he showed signs of his adventurous Spirit when he made the abrupt decision to drop out in order to travel to Ecuador and spend 6 months on an unsuccessful attempt to search for Inc and treasure when Danny returned he got married to a former West Virginia beauty queen named Terell pace and the couple had a son named Joseph Daniel celo Jr though he always went by his nickname Trey Dany and Terrell's marriage lasted for 13 years before it ended in divorce and Dany wound up getting custody of Trey throughout the 1970s Danny worked as a freelance reporter who mostly wrote for tabloids such as an National Inquirer as well as computer industry trade Publications however Danny developed such an interest in information technology that he decided to personally acquire one of the companies he wrote for computer AG Publications taking out a second mortgage on his home in order to purchase it but by the time 1990 rolled around Danny was being contacted by the IRS about back taxes that the company's previous owner had not paid so Danny was forced to sell computer age Publications at a loss while heef attempted to continue working there as a writer for the company's new owners he had trouble adjusting the situation and was forced out so Danny decided to take a crack at freelance investigative journalism again and became particularly interested in a scandal involving a Washington DC based information technology company called The Institute for Law and social research AKA inslaw Incorporated the full details of the inslaw Scandal are far too complicated to get into here and would probably require an entire long form podcast but it all started when inslaw developed a case management software called the prosecutor management information system AKA promise in 1982 inslaw licensed promise to the United States Department of Justice aka the doj so they could use the software to organize the millions of paper hardcopy Case Files they had at that time the two parties had signed a 3-year $10 million contract but after only one year the doj started withholding their promised payments to inlaw and the company was eventually forced to file for chapter 11 bankruptcy if that wasn't enough insw also learned that the doj had illegally sold promise to the Canadian government without their knowledge or consent this prompted inlaw to file a lawsuit against the doj and in 1987 a federal bankruptcy judge ruled in in law's favor he stated that the doj had taken promise from inslaw through quote unquote trickery fraud and deceit and ordered them to pay nearly $8 million in licensing fees and legal expenses while by August of 1990 inlaw had still not received any of that money since the doj had appealed the ruling and when Danny Calo got wind of this story he arranged a meeting with ins Law's Founders Bill and Nancy Hamilton The Hamiltons would show calero a 12-page memo they had received from an electronics and computer expert named Michael Ron audo who claimed he had worked for the CIA on a number of top secret projects raudo is a pretty colorful character to say the least and I'll delve further into his backstory later on but for now I'll share this quote from journalist Ron rosenbom who published an extensive article about Danny castelo's death and Vanity Fair in December of 1991 he wrote quote the moment he got his hands on that maddening memo with its Maze of Illusion and reality was the moment Danny's life changed and he began his descent into the obsession that would lead to his death he was slowly then rapidly sucked into kind of a covert Ops version of Dungeons and Dragons with that memo as his guide and Michael raon audo as his dungeon master end quote ranoso told the Hamiltons that the Department of Justice had hired him to make modifications to the promise software after they acquired it from inslaw According to rosuto he had installed what he described as quote unquote back doors into the software which meant that if the doj or the CIA sold promise to a foreign government they could use this back door to spy on them and access their computer systems after Danny cello started interviewing rudo he learned about a number of shocking allegations and conspiracies which made him believe that his story about the insl Scandal was much bigger than he anticipated as an example many of you are probably familiar with the Iran hostage crisis from November of 1979 where 52 United States diplomats and citizens were taken hostage by militarized Iranian extr at the US Embassy in tran leading to a standoff which lasted a total of 444 days before the hostages were finally released in January of 1981 this crisis has always been surrounded by a conspiracy theory known as the October surprise which alleges that Iranian officials were bribed into not releasing the hostages until after Ronald Reagan defeated Jimmy Carter in the 1980 US presidential election while raudo claimed that this conspiracy theory was 100% true and had been orchestrated by Earl Bryan who had worked as the Secretary of Health and Welfare under Ronald Reagan while he was governor of California and became director of a consulting firm named hadron Incorporated after hadron paid $40 million to Iranian officials not to release the hostages the Reagan Administration would reward the company by allowing them to profit from the illegal distribution of the promise software now Earl Bryan would always deny these allegations rudo made against him and no evidence was ever found to support them but they definitely compelled Castello to keep pursuing the story over the course of the next year the story became a complete Obsession for Castello who devoted all his time and energy to it and would sometimes work as much as 16 hours per day he eventually came to believe that the inslaw affair was just one of many scandals that were orchestrated by an international cabal who were responsible for such scandals as the October surprise the Iran Contra affair and the collaps of the bank of credit and commerce International calero believed that this criminal Network dated all the way back to the early 1950s and while it involved numerous us officials intelligence agents and members of organized crime it was run primarily by eight men here is how Calo described the cabal in a book proposal quote this is the story of eight men whose real life impossible mission intrigues have dominated key events that span the globe for nearly half a century they are the men who make up the octopus they not government officials but their tentacles can reach into any part of government in almost any country including legitimate and Rogue spy networks end quote while cillero continued working on this story the US House Judiciary Committee had opened up a formal inquest into the inslaw Scandal on March the 21st 1991 Michael raudo agreed to submit an affidavit to the committee in which he repeated his allegations about the Department of Justice installing back doors in The Promise software in order to help the spy on foreign governments rudu also claimed that these modifications to the software had taken place at a lab located on the Cabazon Native American reservation in California this site was specifically chosen because the reservation was Sovereign territory so there was no government regulation or oversight and trying to enforce American law there might be complicated in addition rakan shudo said that the reservation had been used by a private security company called the wacken hot Corporation in order to develop chemical and biowarfare weapons well on March the 29th just 8 days after submitting his affid David Rano Shuda was arrested in Tacoma Washington on 10 different drug charges which involved the manufacturer possession and distribution of methampetamine and methadone he later wound up being convicted and received a 25-year prison sentence in spite of this Rano Shuda maintained that the doj had set him up and framed him as retaliation for a testimony in May of that year inslaw would suffer another setback when the US court of appeals overturned the nearly $8 million ruling which have been made in their favor against the doj the decision was based on a technicality as the court of appeals ruled that the case should have been tried in Federal District Court instead of Bankruptcy Court the Supreme Court declined ins Law's request to hear the case and it would ultimately be referred to the court of federal claims who ruled against inslaw years later while by the summer of 1991 Dany was living alone in a rural home in Fairfax County Virginia as his son Trey had since moved to Colorado he was still spending most of his time working on his Mammoth octopus story and hoping to use his findings to Garner a book deal on August the 5th Dany had a conversation with his brother Tony Castello and told him that because of his investigation he'd been receiving a number of harassing and threatening phone calls at all hours of the night Danny also said that within the next few days he was planning to leave on a trip to Martinsburg West Virginia to meet up with a source who would provide him with important information which could blow his story wide open Danny then told Tony that if anything happened to him while he was in Martinsburg he should not believe it was an accident well sure enough Danny arrived in Martinsburg 3 days later on August the 8th and checked into room 517 at the Sheran Inn alongside Interstate 81 at around noon he was planning to return home the following day and attend a birth birday party for his niece taking place at his mother's residence in Arlington however on August the 9th Danny decided to extend his stay at the hotel by one night and around 6:00 p.m. he called his mother's house from a pay phone to say that he was still in Martinsburg and would likely be late for the party if he even made it at all but this would turn out to be the last time Danny's Family ever heard from him at 12:51 p.m. on Saturday August the 10th Danny had still not checked out and when a housekeeper showed up at room 517 and knocked on the door there was no answer when the housekeeper unlocked the door and walked inside she was shocked to discover that blood was spattered all over the bathroom and Danny's nude body was lying in some water in the bathtub the Martinsburg Police Department were soon summoned to the scene and when they examined Danny's body they noticed that both of his wrists had been slashed he had four slash wounds on his right wrist and eight wounds on his left wrist and one of these Cuts was so deep that it severed ATT tendon Danny also had had a shoelace tied around his neck and a second shoelace as well as a pair of white plastic trash bags were floating in the water other items in and around the bathroom included a half empty wine bottle a broken drinking glass a paper coaster an ashtray and a single edged xacto razor blade an empty Milwaukee beer can was also found in the bathroom and five other beer cans were inside a trash can but even though the bathroom was a blood bath the hotel room itself was very clean and Danny's wallet which contained cash and credit cards was still there a handwritten note which had been torn from a legal pad was on the desk and it read to my loved ones please forgive me most especially my son in be understanding God will let me in end quote handwriting analysis would later conclude that Danny likely wrote the note himself and his fingerprints were the only ones found on the paper given the evidence the Martinsburg PD immediately ruled that Danny's death was a suicide however when the Casto family learned about what happened they immediately became skeptical of the suicide ruling particularly since the authorities did not inform them about dany's death until Monday August the 12th 2 days after his body was found furthermore after Danny's body was removed from the hotel room it was taken to a local funeral home and EMB bombed without the family's consent even though no autopsy had been performed and EMB bombing a body without informing next of kin was illegal in West Virginia it wasn't long before Danny's death received Nationwide media coverage in a number of newspapers and the public pressure prompted the West Virginia deputy chief medical examiner to finally perform an autopsy on Dany since Danny's body had been emomed there was concerned that this might taint the accuracy of the Blood and Tissue tests but a blood sample had been taken from Danny's heart before the embalming took place as well as samples of urine Vitus fluid and his liver the autopsy showed that he had an Al alcohol content of 04 in his urine and no trace of alcohol in the blood sample from his heart but Trace Amounts of Badin and a tricyclic anti-depressant were found in the samples Danny had actually been prescribed bidin after undergoing oral surgery 3 years earlier and the empty bottle for it was found in his suitcase but Danny's Family was confused about the presence of the anti-depressant as they did not believe he was on any medication of that sort and no bottles or prescriptions for any anti-depressants were found in the room or Danny's personal possessions in spite of this the deputy chief medical examiner still concluded that Danny's death was a suicide as no trace of any additional drugs were found in his system or the half empty wine bottle from the bathroom to suggest he had been incapacitated by a third party Danny's approximate time of death was estimated to be sometime between 7 and 8:00 a.m. on the morning of August 10th approximately 5 or 6 hours before his body was found but there was additional controver y surrounding the investigation by the Martinsburg PD as due to their initial suicide ruling they did not seal off the room as a crime scene furthermore none of the bath water from the tub was saved as potential evidence and when the tub was emptied a strainer was not used to prevent any potential debris from going down the drain while detectives did Return To The Room 2 days after Danny's death in order to perform a further investigation they said they did not find any evidence of Foul Play aside from one unidentified print on the bottom of an ashtray the only prints which could be found in the bathroom were Danny's since the authorities were satisfied that no homicide had taken place a professional cleaning crew was brought in to clean up the scene while Danny's friends and family remained unconvinced that he had died by Suicide as they claimed that he had shown no outward signs of depression prior to his death they found it hard to imagine that Danny would have taken his own life by slashing his wrists a dozen times as he had a lifelong fear of needles it was always squeamish over the sight of blood furthermore the castle family had also experienced a lot of personal tragedy and lost two other children before Dany one of them was an infant named Chris who died of a heart defect only 6 months after birth in March of 1962 and the other was Danny's Sister Lisa who died of a drug overdose in December of 1971 at the age of 18 it couldnot be conclusively determined if Lisa's death was accidental or a suicide but Dany was left pretty devastated by her loss and his family did not believe he would have allowed them to experience that level of pain Again by taking his own life Danny's loved ones decided to backtrack his movements during the last days of his life to try and figure out what happened on August the 6th Danny had asked olda mockros the housekeeper at his residence in Fairfax County to help him pack a black leather tote bag for his trip to Martinsburg she also noticed that he was packing papers into a briefcase which appeared to be documents from his investigation and when Olga briefly lifted it up she said the briefcase was Heavy 3 days later while Danny was in Martinsburg Olga claimed that she received a series of threatening phone calls at his residence during the first call she heard an anonymous mail say quote I will cut his body and throw it to the Sharks and 1 hour later Olga answered a call from a second man who said quote drop dead over the course of the rest of the day Olga then said she received three more phone calls in which no one spoke but but she thought she heard music playing on a radio in the background during the first two calls while the third call was nothing but silence Olga claimed she received one more phone call at the residence from a man who said quote you're dead you son of a [ __ ] and this call took place at 8:30 pm. on August the 10th just under 8 hours after Danny's body was found it was established that Dany checked into the Sheridan in in Martinsburg on August the 8th and several witnesses would Place him at the hotel's cocktail lounge heatherfield for several hours that evening however there would be contradictory accounts from the bartender and one of the waitresses at The Establishment while the bartender only recalled seeing Danny there alone and in the company of another man I'm going to mention momentarily the waitress claimed he was sitting at a table with an unidentified darkskinned man whom she believed was either Arab or Iranian she distinctly remembered this man because he complained that the service was too slow and Danny apologized on his behalf this sighting was particularly interesting because Olga had reported seeing Dany speaking with a darkskinned man in the kitchen of his residence on August the 5th but she never found out who this man was now the other man Danny was seen in the bar with was a hotel guest named Mike Looney who was staying in the room next to Danny's the two men spent quite a few hours chatting and drinking in heatherfields together and Looney said that Danny told him about the octopus story he was working on he said he was waiting to meet an Arab who could help him crack the case and became very agitated when they didn't show up at one point Danny excused himself possibly to go make a phone call but when he returned a few minutes later he told Looney that his Source wasn't as valuable as he thought and would only be able to provide him with travel documents the two men then spent the rest of the evening at the bar together until it closed at 11:30 p.m.

the following day on August the 9th Dany extended his stay at the Sheridan Inn for an additional night and sometime that afternoon he had a meeting inside his car in the hotel parking lot with William Turner a former aerospace engineer with a defense contractor the Hughes aircraft company Turner had worked at their local defense plant but was recently fired for whistleblowing and claimed that he provided Casto with some documents about the mismanagement of funds between the Hughes aircraft company and the Pentagon after Casto and Turner went their separate ways Danny was next seen at a local restaurant called the stone crab Inn where he sat at the bar drinking from around 2:30 to 5:00 p.m. the bartender described Danny is looking lonely and depressed and Danny even told him that he had a quote unquote rough night of course Danny called his mother's resence of course Danny called his mother's residence from a pay phone at 6 p.m. to let his family know he would probably be late and not make it to his niece's birthday party but the last confirmed sighting of him took place when he bought coffee at a nearby convenience store shortly after midnight on August the 10th the EMP coffee cup would be found in the hotel room trash can but no Witnesses could account for Danny's whereabouts during the 12-hour window between when he left the convenience store and his body was discovered but one detail which troubled the castle Aro family is that the briefcase Danny had brought to Martinsburg containing his papers and research was not found in his room or his car in fact the briefcase cannot be found anywhere and the documents William Turner had provided to him were also missing another odd incident took place at around 4 p.m. on Sunday August the 11th when Dan Bishoff the national Affairs editor of the Village Voice in New York City received an anonymous phone call advising him to look into the death of a journalist in West Virginia who had been investigating the October surprise conspiracy while Danny's body had already been found at this point his death would not be reported in the media and become public knowledge until the following day at the time this call took place very few people were aware about what happened to Danny so Bishoff wondered how this caller could have known things got even weirder when Danny's funeral took place at columia garden cemetery in Arlington on August the 16th while Danny's casket was being lowered into the ground a limousine suddenly showed up and a highly decorated black man dressed in a military officer's uniform emerged from it he was accompanied by a white man in a tan Overcoat who appeared to be a bodyguard and without saying anything to anybody the military man walked over to Danny's casket placed a metal on the lid and saluted before walking away after Dany was laid to rest all of the attendees from the funeral went to a gathering at his mother's house and talked about the military man but no one had any idea who he was and he has never been identified the whole situation was pretty baffling since Dany had never served in the military at any point in his life since the controversy surrounding the handling of dany's death would not go away the West Virginia authorities decided to convene a formal inquest and in Jan January of 1992 the West Virginia state medical examiner office would exume Danny's body in order to perform a second autopsy on him the Martinsburg Police Department also agreed to reopen the case but in the end both the new investigation and the autopsy concurred with the original Suicide ruling a new examination of Danny's brain would discover that he had developed possible symptoms of the early stages of multiple sclerosis this came as a big surprise to Danny's Family who were completely unaware of this but it turned out that prior to his death Danny had taken the initiative to approach a nursing teacher friend of his to inquire about the symptoms of multiple sclerosis and brain diseases even though she told Dany that the degree of severity appeared to be minor and she did not believe he appeared to be overly concerned about it this was seen as another potential motive for suicide but curiously this autopsy would uncover some new injuries on Danny's body including unexplained bruises on the top of Danny's head and and his left anterior bicep and the tips of three of the fingernails on his right hand have been chewed off the medical examiner seemed to believe that the bruise on Danny's bicep occurred two days prior to his death and theorized that he may have chewed the tips of his fingernails off on his own though his family insisted that Dany never bit his nails the autopsy also concluded that there were no hesitation marks near the cuts on Danny's wrists but even though a tendon had been slashed on Danny's left wrist he was right-handed and the medical examiner concluded that the sever tendon would not have deprived Dany of his motor ability to grasp the razor in his left hand and make the cuts on his right wrist the house Judiciary Committee recommended that an independent Council perform a new investigation into the inslaw Scandal so Attorney General William bar appointed a retired federal judge named Nicholas bua as special counsel for this in March of 1993 he would release a report about his finding titled the bua report which concludes uded that there was no merit to the allegations that the Department of Justice had stolen the promise software from inslaw there was also a new investigation into Danny calero's death and The Bu report contained a lengthy section which concurred with the original ruling that Cello's death was a suicide as part of his investigation bua had contacted the FBI's National center for the analysis of violent crime and requested that they perform a psychological autopsy on Casto three FBI Behavioral scientist would research castello's background and ultimately came to the conclusion that while he quote unquote wore the facade of the eternal optimist deep down inside he may have perceived himself as a failure as an author an investigative reporter a husband a father and as a businessman end quote indeed they suspected that Danny may have become disillusioned over the fact that his year-long investigation into the mysterious octopus was taking him nowhere and this prompted him to end his own life prior to his death Dany told friend of his that Time Magazine had assigned to write an article about the octopus conspiracy and he would be working alongside pitz Sur prizewinning reporter Jack Anderson he also said that Publishers little brown and Company and Time Warner had agreed to finance his investigation and he would turn his story into a book titled the octopus well all these claims were proven to be false as Danny had no luck getting any Publishers to finance his book in fact months before he shared this story Little Brown had actually rejected Danny's prop proposal for a book because they considered it to be unprofessional and their top editor Roger Donald stated 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 end quote Danny also had a balloon mortgage payment of over $178,000 due on his house at the time of his death and while the mortgage company had granted him a 30-day extension until September the 8th it seemed very unlikely that Danny would be able to pay it and unless he received a substantial advance to write his book and it did not seem like this was going to happen in fact Danny had recently written a letter to his agent in which he saide in September I'll be looking into the face of an oncoming train end quot however Danny's Family did not believe his financial issues would have been a motive for suicide as he had borrowed money from them in the past as he had borrowed money from them in the past and knew that he could always count on them for financial support and on the morning he left on his trip to Martinsburg he stopped by his insurance agents's office and paid his homeowners premium which did not seem like the actions of a man who was planning to end his own life in addition he also phoned a friend of his to arrange a meeting with someone the following week but putting aside Danny's State of Mind at the time of his death the bull reports still belied that the evidence from the scene supported the original Suicide ruling the exacto razor blade used to slash Danny's wrists had actually been part of a package containing four other razor blades which was found found inside the hotel room since a shoelace was wrapped around Danny's neck and two plastic trash bags were found floating in the bathtub it was theorized that Dany initially made a failed attempt to asfixiate himself by tying one of the bags around his head but then decided to slash his wrists instead furthermore the hotel rooms adjacent to Danny's were occupied by Mike Looney and an elderly couple but none of them reported hearing any noise or anything suspicious or unusual on the date Danny died to suggest that an outside party had entered his room and committed murder well in January of 1993 journalist John Connelly would publish a new article about the case for spy magazine which contains some new details which had not been shared publicly before Barbara Bittinger the assistant head housekeeper from the sheritan would claim that when Danny's body was first found she noticed two bloody towels in the bathroom under the sink there were also smear marks on the floor which gave biter the impression that someone had attempted to use the towels to clean the blood possibly with their foot but these towels were not photographed or mentioned in the original police reports the Spy magazine article would also feature a statement from Ernie Harrison one of the employees from the cleaning company which had been hired to clean the room and he would confirm finding some Blood Stained towels on the bathroom floor underneath the sink he subsequently picked up the towels and tossed them away and they were never examined as potential evidence two months following the release of this article the case would be featured on an episode of Unsolved Mysteries the segment went over all the suspicious discrepancies surrounding Danny's death but West Virginia authorities and representatives from the Department of Justice declined to participate in the broadcast in 2008 one of Danny's cousins Dominic Orlando decided to dramatize his story by writing a stage play titled Danny cello died for you which was performed at the Timeline Theater in Chicago over the years a total of two books have also been published about this story The Octopus secret government and the death of Danny cello which was written by Jim Keith and Ken Thomas and came out in 1996 and the last Circle Danny calero's investigation into the octopus and the promised software Scandal which was written by Cara Seymour and released in 2010 both books offered in-depth looks at all the conspiracy theories surrounding this case but even though it has been heavily analyzed and deected these past three decades the original Suicide ruling has never been changed so controversy continu used to surround the death of Danny cillero so I guess you could say the trail went cold but before we continue I would like to take a moment to thank our sponsor best fiends if there's one annoying Trend that I've experienced way too much these past few months it's power outages I experienced one of them while hanging out and chatting with friends but then all of a sudden they noticed I was gone and started wondering if the trail had gone cold for years truly but they didn't need to worry because I just snuck off for a few moments to play best fiends if you're having as much fun with best fiends as I am it's no secret while you sneak off to play best fiends is a free to download mobile puzzle game which contains thousands of 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thank you and enjoy the rest of this episode hi there I would just like to take a few moments to give a shout out to another podcast titled wrongful conviction hosted by celebrated Criminal Justice Reform Advocate and founding board member of the Innocence Project Jason Flom and by Pulitzer prizewinning podcast host in producer Maggie freeling wrongful conviction features intimate conversations with men and women who spent years years in prison for crimes they did not commit each episode peels back the layers to tell the stories of those who have found themselves caught in a legal system gone wrong wrongful conviction with Maggie freeling airs each Monday and Jason flom's episodes air on Thursdays please search find and follow wrongful conviction wherever you listen to podcasts [Music] so where do I begin with this one like I mentioned in the intro one of the biggest challenges of researching a case like this which involves Mammoth conspiracy theories is that you're going to come across a lot of material out there many of which has their own bias slant and you have to figure out which sources are the most trustworthy this was the same challenge I faced when I put together my two-part episode last year about the murders of Don Henry and Kevin IES aka the boys on the tracks case since the crime happened to take place in Arkansas when Bill Clinton was governor the conspiracy theories in that case have spiraled out of control and have likely clouded the truth about what actually happened in fact if you search hard enough online you'll find some sources out there which alleg that Danny calero came up with the infamous Clinton Body Count conspiracy and he was murdered because his missing briefcase contained a list of all the people the clintons had murdered given that cero was looking into scandals which took place during Republican administrations and his death occurred while George HW Bush was still president I'm not entirely sure why the clintons would want to have him murdered but it just goes to show you that conspiracy theories can sometimes become Larger than Life Now regardless of whether calero's death was a homicide or suicide one thing I do believe is that the so-called octopus he was chasing did not actually exist as I highly doubt there was this International cabal consisting of eight men who pretty much controlled all the major events taking place in the world this is why it's not so farfetched to believe the theory that calero spent so much time chasing down this lathian story that he lost touch with reality and may have become so disillusioned by the fact that it didn't lead anywhere that he elected to take his own life but on the other hand even if this all powerful octopus cabal didn't exist Casto did spend a great deal of time and energy investigating scandalous events and interacting with Shady characters so could he have uncovered something which put his life in danger well I first became familiar with this story on Unsolved Mysteries and like many of their segments about suspicious suicides I initially took everything to show presented at face value and automatically assumed that Foul Play had taken place but of course as the years have gone on I become more aware of the fact that Unsolved Mysteries had a tendency to take dramatic Liberties in order to enhance the mysterious aspects of these stories so some of the seemingly suspicious deaths they featured were probably suicides or accidents all along there is a ton of material about the Danny cello case available online and one of the most valuable resources is the bua report which was put together by special counsel Nicholas bua as part of his in-depth investigation into the insw Scandal the report has a very lengthy section detailing Cello's death and quite frankly if you read this report and take everything they say at face Val you'll come away believing that they make a lot of valid points and that Casto really did complete suicide however in recent years the organization Muk Rock has managed to get their hands on a number of additional documents from this case which they believe call the legitimacy of the Buu report into question I'll share some specific examples later on but some of the points made in the Buu report do seem to be contradicted by handwritten notes from the original police investigation that's the thing with conspiracy theories even though you'd assume that original government documents are the most reliable sources of information what if they were intentionally the facts in order to orchestrate a cover up I previously mentioned that two books have been published about this case titled the octopus secret government and the death of Danny Castello and the last Circle Danny castello's investigation into the octopus and the promise software Scandal it's clear that the authors of both books believe that Casto was the victim of Foul Play and while the books are definitely interesting reads they do tend to get sidetracked by spending a great deal of time detailing other government scandals and conspiracies which may or may not be connected to this case one of the big decisions I had to make when putting together this episode is figuring how much of this side material should be included here and how much is completely unnecessary so if you want to learn more details about the inlaw Scandal and some other Shady stuff that was allegedly occurring on the Cabazon Native American reservation during the 1980s I i' recommend checking out those books because I want to keep the focus on Castle ao's Story to further publicate things Jim Keith one of the co-authors of the octopus secret government and the death of Danny castelo died under very odd circumstances only 3 years after the book's publication in September of 1999 Keith fell from a stage and broke his knee at The Burning Man Arts Festival which is being held in the Black Rock Desert in Nevada and after he was taken to a hospital for knee surgery a blood clot was released and entered Keith's lung causing him to die from a pulmonary embolism so as you can imagine there are conspiracy theories out there that Keith was silenced because he knew too much though there's nothing to indicate that his death was anything more than a tragic accident several years ago unsa Mysteries released a couple of commercial DVD sets and the Danny Castello segment was featured on their set about bizarre murders the DVD contained a commentary tracked by the segment's original director David basser and it's quite fascinating to listen to as he went in assuming that this was going to be your standard unexplained death segment but the whole story just kept getting bigger and bigger at one point the producers thought they had locked the story and were ready to air it on television until they were contacted by Michael ranoso who was still in jail on drug charges at that time rakudo had initially turned down the show's request for an interview but then changed his mind 3 weeks after they finished putting together the segment so of course now they had to go back and film the interview and re-edit the whole thing but of course the big dilemma was could you trust one word coming out of Ron aso's mouth however on the opposite side of the spectrum the show managed to film an interview with Elliot Richardson a man with impeccable credibility Richardson had been United States Attorney General under President Richard Nixon until he made the decision to resign rather than follow Nixon's order to fire Archer Bal Cox the special prosecutor who had been appointed to investigate the infamous Breakin at the Watergate hotel at this point Richardson had now become the official offal attorney for inslaw and was representing them during their lawsuit against the Department of Justice in the promised software case during interviews Richardson was never hesitant to express his belief that Danny cello was murdered and well if a credible figure like him believes there was Foul Play then this might not just be some French conspiracy theory what's also interesting is that castello's story also has a loose connection to a pair of other cold cases which were featured on Unsolved Mysteries and were also covered on episode number 20 of the trail went cold you might recall the bizarre unexplained death of 39-year-old Chuck Morgan an escro company owner who was found shot to death inside his car in the Arizona desert in June of 1977 even though Morgan was shot in the back of the head and was wearing a bulletproof vest his death was ruled to be a suicide Morgan did hint to his wife that he was secretly doing undercover work for the treasury Department to help them investigate money laundering which was being done through his escro company through the purchase of gold bullion and platinum and may have involved members of organized crime and the US intelligence Community after the Morgan case was featured on Unsolved Mysteries they produced a follow-up episode about the murder of a 35-year-old computer draftsman named Doug Johnston who was shot through the back of the head execution style inside his car in a parking lot of his place of employment in Phoenix in May of 1990 since johnon was an ordinary family man living an ordinary life and his death resembled a professional hit everyone was completely baffled by his murder but it turned out that Johnston's place of employment just happened to be located across the street from the residence of Don Deo an investigative journalist who had spent years working on the Morgan case Deo was eventually told by sources that a contract hit had been put out on his life and Doug Johnston may have been the victim of mistaken identity because his killer went to the wrong address and shot Johnston because he thought he was Deo if you want more information on these two cases I'd recommend recomend going back and listening to my trail with cold episode but here's the link to Danny casto's story sometime in 1991 calero actually got in touch with Don Deo and asked him to send all the information he uncovered about illegal transactions Chuck Morgan had made involving gold bullion but before Deo could do so calero wound up dead I honestly have no idea why cero would have been inquiring about material related to the Morgan case unless he believed it was all part of some vast conspiracy involving the octopus I am inclined to think that casto's story has nothing to do with the deaths of Morgan or Johnston but I felt it was worth mentioning anyway since unsa Mysteries managed to produce three separate segments about three suspicious deaths which all seem to have a tangental connection to each other so now let's start talking about Danny Castello as a person as well as the circumstances surrounding his death whatever happened to him it seems clear that Danny got in way over his head while trying to write this Mammoth story about the octopus but was it because he uncovered something that angered some very powerful and dangerous people and put his life at risk or did he get in over his head because he was chasing a story which went absolutely nowhere regardless of your thoughts of how he handled the situation it does seem like everyone who knew Dany had nothing but positive things to say about him as a person as he was described as a ladies man and a compassionate and tremendously nice guy who always went out of his way to treat people well even though the octopus story seemed to be causing him a great deal of stress his friends and family described him as being in an upbeat mood most of the time and believed he never would have contemplated the idea of suicide however I've seen enough of these cases to know that suicidal people will sometimes give off no warning signs and appear to be in a good place before they suddenly take Everyone by complete Surprise by ending their own life so when you're dealing with a case involving a suspicious looking suicide it's best to focus on all the facts and evidence rather than the victim's demeanor as you never really know what's going on inside a suicidal person's mind when they make a decision like this what aspect of the story which does not seem to get a lot of discussion is dany's son Trey who was mentioned in a suicide note Dany got custody of Trey when he divorced his wife and at the time of his father's death Trey was 22 years old and living in Colorado it's been reported that Dany and Trey had a good relationship but there are virtually no details out there about Trey and I've never seen him publicly comment on the whole situation however there are some key pieces of information which aren't mentioned in most sources about this case but could be found in The Bu report when Danny and his housekeeper Olga were packing for his trip to Martinsburg Olga asked if she should prepare the house for Trey who would be visiting in 2 weeks and Dany apparently replied that he would not be seeing his son anymore shortly thereafter Dany took Olga into his basement office in order to show her where he kept his will this could be seen as an indication that Dany was planning suicide but on the other hand if Danny legitimately believed that his life might be in danger perhaps he was taking these steps to ensure that Trey was taken care of in the event something happened to him a friend of Danny's named Zoe Gabrielle Milroy also claimed that several days before his death he had shown her a letter he had written to Trey containing what he described as quote unquote heavy fatherly advice Milroy thought this letter seemed to resemble a suicide not and when she asked Danny about this he immediately changed the subject so there definitely were signs that Danny might have been suicidal but those who believe he was murdered have subscribed to the theory that his killer forced him to write the suicide note against his will and one way they could have done that as if they threatened his son's life it does seem very likely that the note was in Danny's handwriting and a lot of significance has been placed on his final Line quote God will let me in Danny was known for being a very devote Catholic and of course suicide is considered to be a mortal sin in Catholicism which could prevent you from getting into heaven so could Danny have written this line to bring attention to the fact that he was under duress or maybe he just threw it in there to reassure his family that everything was going to be okay for him in the next life I do think that Unsolved Mysteries kind of overplayed castello's status as an investigative journalist as it's not like he was a Woodward and Bernstein type who wrote for a large publication like the Washington Post or the New York Times he was a freelancer who had never been employed by a major news organization and mostly wrote for tabloids and computer trade Publications he had also written a short story collection and a fictional novel about mountain climbing titled the Ice King though he apparently had to pay a vanity press to publish it and the novel didn't do much for his writing career for this octopus story cero was working without an editor or any oversight which is why he had no success securing a book deal or getting any Publishers to finance's investigation as they found the material he provided to be amateurish and disorganized the fact that Danny lied to some of his friends about getting a book deal might be a sign that he would have chosen suicide over professional failure I mean we are talking about a guy who once dropped out of college to search for Inc and treasure in Ecuador so as likable as he might have been Danny may not have had the best judgment when it came to pursuing Fame and Fortune furthermore being a freelance journalist meant that Danny wasn't generating any income from his investigation and we know that he had a balloon mortgage payment of over $178,000 due on his house the month after he died it seemed unlikely that he was going to get a large advance on a book deal or any significant income in order to pay that off in time yes Danny's Family have always maintained that he could always rely on them for financial assistance which is why they don't believe his debts drove him to Suicide but $178,000 is a hell of a lot of money to borrow from someone Danny gave off the impression that the so-called Source he was planning to meet in Martinsburg would help him blow his big octopus story wide open in fact shortly before he left he told one acquaintance that he was quote unquote going to bring back the head of the octopus but even if he genuinely believed that Danny's behavior during his trip does suggest that he didn't quite get the information he was looking for after all even though Danny was described as usually being in an upbeat mood one of the last eyewitnesses to interact with him was a bartender who said that Danny seemed depressed on the afternoon before he was found dead imagine if Danny was hit with the realization that he wasted a year of his life chasing a story that was nothing more than a big white whale and he did not have any options for pulling himself out of this hole if this story was nothing more than a dead end Danny's biggest flaw might have been allowing himself to be manipulated by some shady characters who are very unreliable sources and of course right at the top of that list was Michael ranoso his primary source on the inslaw Scandal and the octopus conspiracy now I'm not one to judge a person based on their appearance but if you look up any photos of rakudo or watch any of his interviews your first thought should be if this guy told me it was raining outside I would go to the nearest window to check for myself in his article for Vanity Fair Ron rosenbom described bran audo as a quote unquote Rogue scientist SL weapons designer/ Platinum Miner SL alleged crystal meth manufacturer raudo definitely has an interesting backstory as he was a child prodigy who won a number of science fairs by constructing a working argon laser which led to him becoming a research assistant at Stanford University at age 16 however it sounds like his chances for a legitimate scientific career were derailed during the 1970s when he spent 2 years in prison for manufacturing psychedelic drugs though he always claimed that he was framed of course only 8 days after submitting a sworn affidavit in the inslaw investigation rakuda was arrested on drug charges again though once again he maintained that the Department of Justice framed him for speaking out indeed Rano Shuda was already under investigation by the police in Tacoma Washington long before he submitted that affidavit as he was manufacturing large quantities of methamphetamine from a makeshift Lab at his home when the Tacoma Police reached out to Federal authorities they performed a sting operation in which they flat out videotaped ranoso delivering meth to his customers so I do not believe his arrest on drug charges had anything to do with the inslaw case and the timing was just a coincidence now like I mentioned earlier performing an in-depth exploration into the entire inslaw Scandal would probably require another long form podcast so I'm not even going to attempt to do so here but I will mention that the bu report was very critical of ins Law's decision to use Rano shudo as one of their key Witnesses as he frequently gave inconsistent statements in his various stories for example Rado shudo stated on numerous occasions that he started working on the promise software in 1981 which would have been impossible since insw did not even license it to the doj until 1983 when addressing rud's story that he installed quote unquote back doors into promise to spy on foreign governments the bull report referred to it as a quote unquote historical novel a tale of total fiction w against the background of accurate historical facts when raudo was first arrested on the drug charges calero initially believed his claims that he was being framed and even agreed to function as his volunteer pre-trial investigator however it sounds like calero gradually became disillusioned with fosudo and stopped communicating with him as he refused to accept his phone calls from jail by this point cero had developed a close relationship with another source named Robert bock and this guy is quite a colorful character on his own nicknamed Clark Gable because of his striking resemblance to the iconic actor Nichols was believed to be an international money launderer who worked with the CIA on various intelligence operations he also claimed to be an associate of the gambino crime family and the Yakuza in Japan though much like ranoso Nichols has been accused of fabricating a number of stories as a side note Nichols was also a friend of actor Steven Sagal and was was hired to be the weapons technical adviser on sagal's 1992 action film Under Siege in fact Nichols even has a brief Cameo as a character named Colonel sarak and you can briefly see him on camera during the scene where some nuclear tip missiles are fired at Honolulu and he says the Line quote approximately 1 million people will reach 10,000 de F in less than a second The Story Goes that Nichols and ranoso had worked together on the Cabazon Native American reservation in order to develop the promis soft wear and weapons for the government but they had a falling out sometime during the mid1 1980s in fact it sounds like the two men attempted to play Casto off each other as Nichols would warn him to stay away from ranoso and vice versa but it seems like Casto not only considered Nichols to be a trusted Source but a friend and Father Figure as well as they had a number of lengthy phone conversations in the weeks prior to Denny's death and Nichols reportedly warned him that if he continued on with his investigation he would be put his life at risk now during this time period Castello also had a conversation with Richard stavin a former special prosecutor with the Department of Justice who said that Nichols had once offered to be a confidential informant for them against the mafia during the 1970s in retrospect stavin feared that he may have endangered castello's Life by sharing this information due to his alleged associations with the gambino crime family the mere rumor that Nichols had once volunteered to be a snitch could could have led to his death warrant being signed so if calero told him he found out about this Nichols might have taken steps to silence him however it's worth noting that Nichols was never considered to be a suspect in castello's death on August the 9th the day before Danny's body was found inslaw founder Bill Hamilton actually phoned Nichols in Los Angeles who told him that Danny seemed quote unquote euphoric the last time he spoke to him and was excited about potentially cracking the octopus case shortly after the call ended Nichols left on a flight to London and given the timeline It seems impossible that he could have been in Martinsburg on the morning of August the 10th when Danny was believed to have died but given the Shady backgrounds of both Nichols and ranoso it's possible that both men were manipulating Calo by feeding a misinformation which is why he spent so much time chasing after a conspiracy that had no basis in reality but before we go into the details of casto's death we have to address another unsa murder which took place 8 months earlier and is often mentioned in conjunction with this case it's been reported that one of castello's primary sources for classified information on the octopus investigation was 34-year-old Alan storf who worked for the National Security Agency at the vent Hills Farm station in faier County Virginia on January the 31st 1991 after not being heard from for 3 weeks storf body was found buried beneath some clothing and luggage on the back floor of his car which was part parked at Washington National Airport he had been killed by a sharp blow to the back of the head and since storf had withdrawn $500 from an ATM shortly before he went missing and this money was never accounted for it initially appeared that robbery was the motive for the crime however conspiracy theorists have speculated that storf was murdered because he was a whistleblower who was connected to the octopus investigation but there have been no new developments in the investigation in three decades and the crime is still unsolved to this day now unlike Castle L's death there is zero doubt that Alan storf was the victim of Foul Play but there's no hard evidence to suggest that his murder has any connection to this case it's possible that he was simply the victim of a robbery gone wrong but since there's so little information available about the crime it's hard to know for sure I mean if you try hard enough you can uncover a tangental connection between two completely unrelated deaths and find way to believe that they're all part of some massive conspiracy however I believe that the best way of figuring out what actually happened to Danny Casto is by following his movements and actions in the days prior to his death one of the biggest pieces of evidence that has been used to further the narrative that Dany was murdered is that his missing briefcase which supposedly contained important documents from his investigation could not be found after he turned up dead Danny's housekeeper Olga mockros did confirm seeing the briefcase at his residence when she helped him pack for his trip on August the 6th but there has been controversy about about whether or not this briefcase was ever in Martinsburg to begin with the bu report concludes that Dany never had one as they claimed that the only witness who recalled seeing a briefcase at the Sheran Inn was the desk clerk who wasn't even 100% sure he had seen it the report says that none of the housekeepers at the hotel recalled seeing a briefcase in Danny's room during a stay there but the website mockrock disputes this they managed to dig up the handwritten notes from the original police investigation and they do state that Barbara Bittinger the assistant head housekeeper reported looking through the open doorway of Danny's room on August the 9th and seeing an open briefcase on the dresser with papers sticking out of it so is this a result of some miscommunication or was the boom report intentionally sharing false information in order to further their suicide narrative well even if Danny had the briefcase all along its absence is still not definitive proof that he was murdered we'll talk more about the scario later on but if you believe Danny's death was a suicide it's been theorized that he may have taken steps to intentionally make his suicide look like a homicide in other words he could have disposed of the briefcase himself in order to make everyone believe that someone murdered him in order to steal those important documents now the documents that William Turner provided to Dany on the day before his death have also never been found but we'll talk more about this momentarily first I want to talk more about Olga mockros who claimed that she received a number of threatening phone calls at Danny's residence a few days after he left on his trip to Martinsburg once again the mockrock website has alleged that the buo report contains false information as the report claimed that Olga could only recall one specific instant when she received a threatening call at the house even though Danny claimed they came on a frequent basis and Ola went there nearly every day but the handwritten notes from Olga's original police interview state that she had answered multiple threatening phone calls at the residence with which took place months prior to Danny's death for this reason Danny had advised Olga not to answer the phone but she recalled him receiving a number of harassing phone calls after that there's also been some controversy about whether these threatening phone calls might have been a fabrication on Danny's part as one friend claimed that when he asked Danny why he didn't contact the phone company to trace the calls Danny would just change the subject if you believe Danny was orchestrating a hoax you can assume that he was the one who made the threatening phone calls to Olga while he was in Martinsburg but there's one problem with that theory the last call Olga received which featured a man saying quote you're dead you son of a [ __ ] took place at 8:30 p.m. on August the 10th nearly 8 hours after Danny's body was found so at the very least someone else had to make that one call but you also have to ask why they would be calling Danny's residents to threaten him after he was already dead while we're on the subject of odd phone calls now's a good time to make mention of Dan Bishoff the editor from The Village Voice who received an anonymous call on August the 11th from someone advising him to look into the death of a journalist in West Virginia who had been investigating the October surprise conspiracy it seems obvious they were referring to Danny but the problem is that his death was not made public until the following day how the Casto family had not even been informed at this point so only a handful of people would have known about what happened when Bishop received that call you can infer that the caller was personally involved in Danny's death or had some inside knowledge but Bishop was interviewed during the investigation for the report and he said that because of the nature of his job it wasn't uncommon for him to receive weird phone calls from conspiracy Buffs on his workline while it's unclear how this caller would have known this information about Dany Bishop did state that he personally believed that Danny's death was a suicide so he did not give the call all that much significance so we know that Danny checked into the Sheran mark Marburg on August the 8th and spent a large chunk of the afternoon drinking in their cocktail lounge but there's been controversy about whether or not Danny met with someone there who might have been one of his sources the waitress at the hotel lounge said that Danny spent some time drinking there with an unidentified dark skinn man who looked Middle Eastern but the bartender did not recall seeing this man if you read the bua report they seem to put more Credence into the bartenders account and believe that the waitress might have been mistaken but the problem is that Olga reported seeing Dany speaking with a dark skinned man in his kitchen on August the 5th that just seems like too much of a coincidence but assuming that Olga and the waitress both saw the same guy who could he have been well it's been theorized that he was a man named Hassan Ali Ibrahim Ali the manager of an Iraqi company named Sito which was supposedly a front for arm sales in fact shortly before he left on his trip Danny had shown a copy of ibrahim's passport photo to one of his friends it's not irely clear to me how this Ibrahim would fit into all this but Danny believed that one of the scandals controlled by the octopus was the Iran Contra affair from the 1980s where senior officials from the Reagan Administration secretly facilitated the sale of arms to the Iranian government and then used the proceeds to fund the contras in Nicaragua I have no idea if Ibraham or whoever this Middle Eastern man was might have been the important Source Danny planned to meet in Martinsburg or if this guy provided him with any important materials but we do know that Danny spent the evening hanging out and drinking with a fellow hotel guest named Mike Looney and told him that he was waiting for an Arab who never showed up so assuming that the Middle Eastern man that the waitress saw actually existed was this Arab Danny referring to a completely different person at one point Casto excused himself and later told Looney that the source wasn't as valuable as he thought so he may have gone off to make a phone call once again was the source he was referring to the same middle eastern man or an entirely different Source whatever the case casto's reaction gives off the impression that his trip to Martinsburg wasn't providing him with the big breakthrough he was expecting it's worth noting that during his Unsolved Mysteries interview Michael raudo stated that Dany had a source in the Internal Revenue Services computer data center which was located in Martinsburg and the source was going to give him printouts of IRS information on certain individuals he was investigating but of course anything Rano shudu says should be taken with a huge grain of salt and there doesn't appear to be any evidence to support his claim so it sounds like Danny's original plan was to only stay in Martinsburg for one night and drive back to Virginia in time to attend his niece's birthday party on the evening of August the 9th but since he decided to extend his stay at the Sheran for an additional night what made him change his mind well since Danny's meeting with William Turner took place on the afternoon of the 9th that would seem to be the obvious answer as Turner gave him important documents which supposedly went missing alongside Danny's briefcase according to Turner they detailed the mismanagement of funds between the Pentagon and his former employer the Hughes aircraft company though it's unclear how this was supposed to fit in with the octopus investigation however the problem is that there's some credibility issues with Turner and since he claimed his meeting with Casto took place inside a parked car with no other witnesses around there's been skepticism about whether it actually took place at all you see Turner gave conflicting stories as he initially said that he gave a pile of documents to calero that was about 18 Ines high but then said that calero was actually returning some sealed manila envelopes containing documents that Turner had given to him on a previous occasion furthermore Turner was very inconsistent about the exact time the meeting took place as he said it ranged from noon until 6:00 p.m.

even though Casto could be placed in the stone crab in that afternoon between 2:30 30 and 5:30 only one month after casto's death Turner would be arrested for robbing a bank in Gore Virginia now it turned out this whole thing was just a misunderstanding as Turner had been a customer in the bank while it was robbed and he was arrested after a witness mistakenly said they had seen Turner running away from the scene which was not possible since Turner had a prosthesis after losing part of his left leg in a hunting accident but while he was being detained in jail Turner pleaded guilty to one felony count for an related incident in which he made a false statement to the Veterans Administration in order to improperly defraud them of benefits back in 1988 he received a sentence of 60 days and 5 years probation but in 1994 Turner wound up going back to prison for 6 months for violating his probation after 23 Firearms were found in his home so even if Turner really did provide some documents to Casto was he actually a credible Source what is verifiable is that Danny spent a good chunk of the afternoon on August 9th drinking at the stone crab Inn where he told the bartender that he had a quote unquote rough night and was described as looking depressed if his meeting with Turner actually took place then this seems to imply that Danny may have been disappointed with the information Turner provided to him if the meeting didn't take place then perhaps Danny's disappointment was over his meeting or lack thereof with that other unidentified Source the previous evening the only other confirmed sightings of Danny that day are when he phoned his mother's residence from the pay phone at 6: p.m. and was seen buying coffee at a convenience store shortly after midnight since his body was discovered about 12 hours later there's a large window of time in which Danny's whereabouts are unaccounted for so you definitely cannot rule out a homicide or suicide scenario of course some of the biggest holes in the foul play theory is that there were no signs of struggle or forced entry in Danny's hotel room and none of the guests in the adjacent rooms reported seeing or hearing anything unusual so if Dany was murdered he may have willingly leted his killer or Killers into the room and was taken by complete surprise I can understand the logic of killing Dany and staging his death to look like a suicide but there are some issues with that theory for starters Danny's rist were slashed with a razor blade which was taken from a package of blades that was found inside the room investigators were unable to track down where these blades were originally purchased but it was a brand that was not available for sale in Martinsburg so either Danny or a third party had to purchase them elsewhere and bring them to the hotel but if Danny brought them then the Killer caught a lucky break that the victim just happened to have a convenient murder weapon in his possession and if the killer brought them why would they use one blade and leave the package behind as potential evidence it's also strange that Danny was found with a shoelace wrapped around his neck and a pair of plastic crash bag Liners in the bathtub if his death was a suicide then the implication seems to be that Danny might have made an attempt to as I at himself but when that didn't work out he decided to slash his wrists instead in fact this could provide an explanation for why Danny went through with that even though he was known for being squeamish about blood and needles it's also worth mentioning that a box of Hefty trash bags was found inside Danny's tote bag with two of the bags missing again if this was a murder why would his killer bring these bags to the scene and leave them behind in Danny's bag a search of Danny's residence would also uncover two separate tennis shoes inside a closet which were each missing a shoelace and while these shoes could not be definitively linked to the lace found around Danny's neck or the second lace found in the bathtub they were a close match another interesting detail is that Dany often liked to make mention a famous author Jersey kazinski who died by Suicide only 3 months earlier in May of 1991 kazinski climbed into a bathtub full of water and ingested a lethal amount of drugs and alcohol before wrapping a plastic bag around his head so if Danny had planned to end his own life in that fashion then this might be where he got the idea from I know there's been some controversy over the fact that Danny's body was embalmed without an autopsy being performed but the medical examiner did extract a couple of Blood and Tissue samples before this happened it does seem pretty clear that Danny was drinking a lot of alcohol before he died as in addition to the half empty bottle of wine there were no less than six empty beer cans inside the room but his family have always been troubled by the presence of an unknown anti-depressant in his system Danny was not known for taking anti-depressants and they were unable to figure out where this drug originated from so could he have been forced to take something which incapacitated him but on the other side of the coin there was also a bkin in his system and an empty vikin in Bottle was found in Danny's tote bag the drug was originally prescribed to him when he underwent oral surgery 3 years earlier so why would Danny be compelled to bring this along with him on his trip unless of course he was planning suicide and needed some drugs to numb the pain however while it sounds like I'm expressing a lot of skepticism about the homicide Theory one of the reasons I cannot completely discount it is because the photographs of the cuts on Danny's wrists are available for viewing online even though these photos are black and white I have to say that the cuts on both of his wrists were incredibly deep and of course one of them managed to sever attendant so Danny either inflicted four cuts on his right wrist before using that hand to slash his left wrist eight times or he inflicted eight cuts on his left wrist and somehow used that hand to slash his right wrist four times while he had a sever tendon I mean while the medical examiner believed that Danny still would have been physically capable of doing this I'm not entirely convinced as at the very least he would have been an excruciating pain no matter what painkillers he might have had in his system in fact one of the paramedics who found Danny's body would make this statement for the article INSP magazine 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 end quote but on the other hand we are talking about a small exacto razor blade so maybe he would have had just enough arm strength to grasp it another complication is the allegations of bloodstained towels supposedly being found under the bathroom sink since these towels were never photographed or mentioned in any of the police reports we could not be 100% certain they existed but Barbara Bittinger the assistant head housekeeper was certain she saw them there her story was also corroborated by one of the members of the cleaning crew who claimed that he found these towels days later and threw them away since Danny's death had officially been ruled as a suicide by that point there was no reason for him to believe this might be potential evidence the way these towels were described it almost appeared that someone had used them to make a half-ass attempt to clean blood off the floor and what reason would Danny have to do this after slashing his own wrists well I'm sure that many of you are familiar with Dr Henry Lee who is one of the world's most famous blood spatter analysts and he would be brought in as a consultant to share his expert opinion on the case the Martinsburg Police Department actually went to the trouble of putting together a videotape reenactment of Danny's suicide though this video has never been released publicly but based on the reenactment and other evidence Dr Lee came to the conclusion that Danny's death was quote unquote not inconsistent with suicide however years later when Lee learned about the presence of the bloody towels under the sink he began to question his earlier conclusion and expressed his disappointment that the authorities never provided him with all the key pieces of evidence for his analysis stating quote unquote a reconstruction is only as good as the information supplied by the police of course Henry Lee is not infallible so his analysis doesn't prove anything either way but even though The Bu report agreed with the original Suicide ruling they did acknowledge that the original police investigation was not handled well but I wouldn't take that as an indication that the Martinsburg Police Department were part of some Mammoth conspiracy to cover up casto's death Martinsburg is not an overly large city as it only had a population of around 14,000 at that time so I'm guessing the local police may have had little experience with homicide investigations and probably had no inkling that this would balloon into such a massive story every good investigator will tell you that you should always treat each death scene as a potential homicide at the beginning and only start leaning towards suicide or accident if that's where the evidence leads you unfortunately the Martinsburg PD did not do that but since they found a suicide note at the scene and no visible signs of struggle you can understand why they would have reached the conclusion that they did and overlooked some odd discrepancies the bruises on Danny's body as well as the missing tips on three of his fingernails had never been adequately explained and may Point towards the presence of an outside party but unfortunately these details were not even noticed until a second autopsy was performed months after the fact and even if you believe this was a suicide one of the biggest points in favor of that theory the possible symptoms of multiple sclerosis in Danny's brain was not found until the second autopsy when it really should have been noticed the first time around of course it still seems pretty sketchy that Danny's body was emomed without permission from his family but Martinsburg did actually have a policy in which they performed what they described as quote unquote courtesy and bombings for decedents from other localities and this decision may have been born out of laziness as well as the local Undertaker flat out said that he went through with embal Dany on the Saturday his body was found because he quote unquote didn't want to come back to work on Sunday the castle AO family did attempt to file a lawsuit against the funeral home and the City of Martinsburg for this decision but it was ultimately dismissed now it is pretty ridiculous that the castle arrows were not informed about Danny's death until Monday 2 days after he died but this wasn't entirely the fault of the Martinsburg PD since Danny lived out of state the Martinsburg PD informed the Fairfax County Police Department about his death and asked them to inform next of kin an officer from the Fairfax County PD went to Danny's residence but since he lived alone no one answered the door so the officer left behind a business C asking them to get in touch yes the Fairfax County PD should have tried harder to track down other members of Danny's Family that day rather than waiting another 2 days but again it seems clear that the delay in notification was born out of laziness rather than an intentional attempt to orchestrate a cover up so I suppose now would be a good time to talk about what I consider to be one of the biggest WTF moments I've ever seen in an unsolved mystery and that's the appearance of the unidentified military man at Danny's funeral who placed a medal on his casket and saluted him before walking away now you might be wondering why no one else at the funeral went over and attempted to speak with this guy but Danny was being laid to rest at this point and I'm sure everyone was grief stricken and did not want to be the person who spoke out and made a scene I think there was an assumption that somebody from the funeral would know who the military man was but it was only after talking amongst themselves that they realized no one did a lot of people have pointed out that the actor who who was cast to play the military man in the unsolved mystery segment looked an awful lot like Co and Powell who was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at that time but I seriously doubt it was him as I'm sure he would have been recognized but since the man showed up to the cemetery in a limousine and had what appeared to be a bodyguard with him he gave off the impression of being a high-profile individual one theory is that this man could have been a source that Danny spoke to during his octopus investigation and if he admired what Danny was doing he could have decided to pay his specs by showing up to the funeral and placing a medal on Danny's casket even though he never served in the military of course if the military man was a source showing up to a funeral in a limousine in front of hundreds of people isn't exactly the best way to keep a low profile and if he had admiration for Dany why not offer his condolences to his loved ones or even speak to them at all as goofy as this might sound perhaps the simplest explanation is that the military man showed up at the wrong funeral for all we know there could have been another funeral taking place at the cemetery that day for a fallen veteran but the man got confused and placed the metal on the wrong casket without even realizing it that seems like an incredibly bizarre thing to do but this is an incredibly bizarre case so I'm sure anything's possible unfortunately it's unclear to me if any attempt has ever been made to dig up the metal and check it for potential evidence such as fingerprints if the whole thing was just a misunderstanding and the military man has no connection to this case he is has never come forward to confirm this okay so if Danny's death really was a homicide who could have been responsible for personally carrying out his murder while conspiracy theorists have always pointed the finger at a US Army Special Forces covert intelligence officer named Joseph quar during his investigation into the inslaw Scandal Danny had been trying to arrange an interview with Peter vidx who had been a Department of Justice Contracting officer when they acquired the promise software during the 1980s Michael Rono claimed that videx had attempted to threaten him into not cooperating with the house Judiciary Committee but calero had no luck attempting to speak with vidx however just over two months before his death Casto was hanging out in a bar in Arlington when he had a chance encounter with Joseph qu after they started up a conversation Casto mentioned wanting to interview Peter vidx and quo responded by saying that he knew him and could make it happen even though Castello told friends that he was a bit unnerved by The Coincidence he still kept in touch with quar though the interview with BX never came to fruition well around this time period quer started dating Lyn nolles a friend of Danny's who had been hanging out with him at the bar on the night he met qu following Danny's death qu reportedly Made A Veiled Threat to Lynn and told her that she was asking too many questions about Dany and could end up just like him and according to William Turner when he met with Danny and Martinsburg on August the 9th Danny told told him that he was going to another meeting later that night which had been arranged by quar well according to the bua report quar was investigated as a possible suspect in calero's death but was cleared since he had an alibi during the time period calero was believed to have been killed qua had recently returned from having served in Operation Desert Storm and on the morning of August the 10th he was reportedly in Washington DC working on his out processing from Desert Storm and his inprocessing into the United State Southern command qu's Alibi was corroborated by several witnesses but once again the Muk Rock website has accused The Bu report of publishing false information and has pointed out some discrepancies one issue is that the exact time of casto's death was believed to have been during the early morning hours and since the drive from Martinsburg to Washington DC takes just over an hour and a half quer theoretically still could have killed Dany and traveled to Washington that day to be seen by Witnesses mockrock also points out that a few weeks before Danny's death qu had already gone to Panama to report for Duty there but the problem is that at the time the United States Southern command had jurisdiction over operations in Panama so this meant that qu should have already completed his in processing into the southern command it would not have needed to be in Washington DC to go through the procedure on the morning of August the 10th but regardless of whatever issues there might be with qu's Alibi there does not seem to be any hard evidence placing him in Martinsburg at the time of casto's death so what exactly did happen here well I think it's possible that when Castello started his investigation on the insula Scandal he was initially pursuing a legitimate story involving illegal activities but after being led on a wild goose chase by such sketchy figures as Michael Ron audo and Robert Bo Nichols he wound up becoming entrapped with this Larger than Life octopus conspiracy and found it more difficult to separate fantasy from ity don't get me wrong even though I don't believe this octopus actually existed I can't completely discount the possibility that castle uncovered something he shouldn't have which put his life in danger but I think it probably would have been connected with standard criminal activity rather than an all powerful International cabal however no matter how insistent Danny's loved ones might have been about him never going through the act of suicide it is not unprecedented for suicidal people to intentionally make their deaths look as strange as possible in order to create the false impression that they were victims of Foul Play as an example last year I released an episode about the 2004 death of Richard lanin green the world's foremost Sherlock Holmes scholar who was found dead in his flat in London after he was GED with a shoelace that was wrapped around his neck with a wooden spoon to this day opinions are still sharply divided about whether his death was a suicide or homicide but since there was no hard evidence pointing in either direction the coroner could only return in open ver ICT but if lanin Green's death was a suicide then it makes sense for a Sherlock's home fanatic to kill himself in a mysterious manner that would stomp Sherlock Holmes himself I mean look at the state of Danny castello's life when he died he was in financial trouble after having spent the past year chasing a story which he thought was going to launch his writing career and make a money but he was just not having his expected level of success and while it's Up For Debate just how serious Danny's early symptoms of multiple sclerosis were has been reported by some of his friends that he complained about vision problems and they would witness him have issues with such physical tasks such as opening a window and painting a house Danny was known as a guy who loved life and lived it to the fullest so the prospect of a future where he suffered through a debilitating disease like Ms may have been another contributing factor in his decision to end his own life I mentioned earlier that Danny and his family were very devout Catholics who likely considered suicide to be a taboo subject they had already gone through the pain of losing his sister Lisa to a drug overdose years earlier so if Dany wanted to end his life he may have elected to arrange things so that everyone would believe he was murdered when he told his brother quote if anything happens to be in Martinsburg don't believe it was an accident Danny could have been planting the seeds for this and if that was his plan all along he technically succeeded since his family have always rejected the official suicide ruling regardless of what your personal opinion is on dany's death you cannot deny that it has been endlessly dissected and analyzed these past three decades so in essence if he made the calculated choice to Stage an intentionally bizarre suicide Dany ensured that he would be remembered and his death allowed him to achieve the fame he never attained in life following his death a bunch of Danny's research files and notes were found in his office at his home and they are available for viewing online though his writings are pretty disorganized and do not offer much insight into his death well some of Danny's notes contain cryptic reference to germ warfare and M cow disease and they seem to imply that he may have believed that he' become a victim of biological warfare which may have been causing some of his symptoms of multiple sclerosis however in his aformentioned Vanity Fair article I think Ron rosenal summed up this whole situation perfectly when he wrote quote I believe that in a sense Daddy was correct when he worried that he might have been targeted with a slow acting brain virus not exactly the organic virus you worried about not mad cow disease or multiple sclerosis rather I believe what destabilized Danny was an extremely virent strain of the information virus we've been suffering from collectively as a nation conspiracy theory fever a slow acting virus that has infected our ability to know the truth about the secret history of our age end quote and boy oh boy in today's internet age does that quote have even more relevance now than it did back then in that same article Rosen bound pointed out a number of flaws in the murder Theory but he also acknowledged that there were a number of flaws in the suicide Theory and that neither scenario made 100% complete sense and I'm definitely inclined to agree with that of course back when I first became familiar with this case three decades ago I immediately believe that Danny was murdered but I've changed my stance over the years and spent this episode sharing a number of reasons why the suicide Theory makes more sense overall but I still believe there are some odd discrepancies which cannot be adequately explained such as the missing briefcase the bloody towels the additional bruises and the threatening phone call Olga received after Dany was already dead sometimes I'll reach a point where I firmly believe this was a suicide but then second guess myself when I go back and look at the photos of the deep cuts on Danny's wrists whatever happened I think this story has become so engulfed in conspiracy theories that it would be difficult to figure out what actually took place here all that being said this is still a very fascinating mystery and I would love for Danny's family and friends to receive some answers someday so if you happen to have any information about The Unexplained death of Danny Casto please contact the appropriate authorities but if you just have your own thoughts about what happened feel free to leave me a comment or send me an email to robin. icloud.com that's robin. icloud.com now the reminder that the trail went cold is on patreon so please visit patreon.com thetrain cold to learn how you can support our podcast and become eligible for some pretty neat rewards this past month I released a bonus episode about an Infamous case from Unsolved Mysteries The Disappearance of Anne Sigman who became a wanted fugitive for the murder of her estranged husband Charlie Sigman and she has not been seen in 35 years in addition I've dropped an exclusive bonus episode from my spin-off podcast the path went Chile in which myself and my two co-hosts Jules and Ashley cover yet another case from unsa Mysteries the 1988 murder of Philip Fraser and for our patrons in tier three I've recorded another new audio commentary track which can be played over a classic episode of unsa mysteries I'd also like to give a shout out to our most recent listeners who have signed up with us on patreon this week and they are Katherine C and Dominic F thank you so much for your support next month the trail one cold is going to be appearing at the True Crime podcast Festival which is taking place at the Weston Park Central Hotel in Dallas Texas from August the 27th until the 28th myself and many other prominent True Crime podcasts will be in attendance and there will be a bunch of panel sessions discussions and live episodes so in order to purchase tickets Please visit the website True Crime podcast festival.com that's true Crim podcast festival.com I just wanted to give another shout out to my supporters at the Unsolved Mysteries message board at the sitcoms online forum and the unresolved mystery subreddit I need to provide a big thanks to Miguel foot who edits and assembles this podcast together for me and Vince Nitro who composes the ear music here on every episode if you haven't already you can like us on Facebook follow us on Twitter or leave us a rating or review on Apple podcast Stitcher Google podcast or Spotify so have yourselves a good week and join us next Wednesday for another brand new episode of the trail went cold [Music] oh [Music]