Joseph Daniel Casolaro (June 16, 1947 – August 10, 1991) was an American freelance writer who came to public attention in 1991 when he was found dead in a bathtub in room 517 of the
Sheraton Hotel
Sheraton Hotels and Resorts is an international semi-luxury hotel chain owned by Marriott International. As of June 30, 2020, Sheraton operates 446 hotels with 155,617 rooms globally, including locations in North America, Africa, Asia Pacific, Cen ...
in
Martinsburg, West Virginia
Martinsburg is a city in and the seat of Berkeley County, West Virginia, in the tip of the state's Eastern Panhandle region in the lower Shenandoah Valley. Its population was 18,835 in the 2021 census estimate, making it the largest city in the E ...
, his wrists slashed 10–12 times. The medical examiner ruled the death a suicide.
[Ridgeway, James and Vaughan, Doug. "The Last Days of Danny Casolaro", ''The Village Voice'', October 15, 1991, p. 34 ff.]
His death became controversial because his notes suggested he was in Martinsburg to meet a source about a story he called "the Octopus". This centered on a sprawling collaboration involving an international
cabal
A cabal is a group of people who are united in some close design, usually to promote their private views or interests in an ideology, a state, or another community, often by intrigue and usually unbeknownst to those who are outside their group. Th ...
, and primarily featuring a number of stories familiar to journalists who worked in and around
Washington, D.C.
)
, image_skyline =
, image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...
in the 1980s—the
Inslaw
Inslaw, Inc. is a Washington, D.C. based information technology company that markets case management software for corporate and government users.
Inslaw is known for developing PROMIS, an early case management software system. It is also known f ...
case about a software manufacturer whose owner accused the Justice Department of stealing its work product, the
October Surprise
In U.S. political jargon, an October surprise is a news event that may influence the outcome of an upcoming November election (particularly one for the U.S. presidency), whether deliberately planned or spontaneously occurring. Because the date f ...
theory that during the
Iran hostage crisis
On November 4, 1979, 52 United States diplomats and citizens were held hostage after a group of militarized Iranian college students belonging to the Muslim Student Followers of the Imam's Line, who supported the Iranian Revolution, took over t ...
Iran deliberately held back American hostages to help
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan ( ; February 6, 1911June 5, 2004) was an American politician, actor, and union leader who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. He also served as the 33rd governor of California from 1967 ...
win the
1980 presidential election, the collapse of the
Bank of Credit and Commerce International
The Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) was an international bank founded in 1972 by Agha Hasan Abedi, a Pakistani financier. The bank was registered in Luxembourg with head offices in Karachi and London. A decade after opening, BCC ...
, and
Iran–Contra.
Casolaro's family argued that he had been murdered; that before he left for Martinsburg, he had apparently told his brother that he had been frequently receiving harassing phone calls late at night; that some of them were threatening; and that if something were to happen to him while in Martinsburg, it would not be an accident. They also cited his well-known
squeamishness
Squeamishness typically refers to feelings of faintness, repulsion, disgust, or physical illness brought on by exposure to certain external stimuli.
Causes
Anything can cause someone to feel squeamish. Some examples of common triggers are the sigh ...
and fear of
blood test
A blood test is a laboratory analysis performed on a blood sample that is usually extracted from a vein in the arm using a hypodermic needle, or via fingerprick. Multiple tests for specific blood components, such as a glucose test or a cholester ...
s, and stated they found it incomprehensible that if he were going to commit suicide, he would do so by cutting his wrists a dozen times.
[Lee, Gary]
Area Writer Investigating Inslaw Case Found Dead
''The Washington Post'', August 13, 1991, p. A8. A number of law-enforcement officials also argued that his death deserved further scrutiny, and his notes were passed by his family to
ABC News
ABC News is the news division of the American broadcast network ABC. Its flagship program is the daily evening newscast ''ABC World News Tonight, ABC World News Tonight with David Muir''; other programs include Breakfast television, morning ...
and ''
Time
Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...
'' magazine, both of which investigated the case, but no evidence of murder was ever found.
[Committee on the Judiciary]
House Report 102-857:The Inslaw Affair, Investigative Report
, September 10, 1992, accessed August 22, 2008. Also se
House Report 102-857
subsection "Findings", item 13, page 110.[Lee, Gary]
Inslaw
Inslaw, Inc. is a Washington, D.C. based information technology company that markets case management software for corporate and government users.
Inslaw is known for developing PROMIS, an early case management software system. It is also known f ...
, BCCI, ''The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...
'', August 19, 1991.
Early life and career
Casolaro was born into a Catholic family in
McLean, Virginia
McLean ( ) is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in Fairfax County in Northern Virginia. McLean is home to many diplomats, military, members of Congress, and high-ranking government officials partially due to its proxim ...
, the son of an obstetrician, and the second of six children. One of his siblings fell ill and died shortly after birth. A younger sister, Lisa, died of a drug overdose in San Francisco's
Haight-Ashbury
Haight-Ashbury () is a district of San Francisco, California, named for the intersection of Haight and Ashbury streets. It is also called The Haight and The Upper Haight. The neighborhood is known as one of the main centers of the counterculture ...
in 1971. Casolaro attended
Providence College
Providence College is a Private university, private Catholic Church, Catholic university in Providence, Rhode Island. Founded in 1917 by the Dominican Order and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence, local diocese, it offers 47 undergradua ...
until 1968. He married Terrill Pace, a former Miss Virginia. The couple had a son, Trey, and divorced after ten years, with Casolaro granted legal custody of his son.
[Rosenbaum, Ron. "The Strange Death of Danny Casolaro", '' Vanity Fair'', December 1991.]
Casolaro's interests included amateur boxing, writing poems and short stories, and raising purebred Arabian horses. He also dabbled in journalism, looking into issues such as the
Soviet
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...
naval presence in Cuba, the
Castro
Castro is a Romance language word that originally derived from Latin ''castrum'', a pre-Roman military camp or fortification (cf: Greek: ''kastron''; Proto-Celtic:''*Kassrik;'' br, kaer, *kastro). The English-language equivalent is '' chester''.
...
intelligence network, and
Chinese communist
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), officially the Communist Party of China (CPC), is the founding and sole ruling party of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Under the leadership of Mao Zedong, the CCP emerged victorious in the Chinese Civil ...
smuggling of opium into the U.S. according to his own ''
'' (though it remains unclear how much he had published).
[ At the time of his death, he had written and published one novel, ''The Ice King'', with Whitmore Publishing Co.
Towards the end of the 1970s, he dropped his interest in journalism and acquired a series of computer-industry trade publications, which he began selling towards the end of the 1980s. In early 1990, he decided to take up journalism again and, soon after, took an interest in the Inslaw case, of which his IT contacts had made him aware.][
]
Research
Shortly before his death, Casolaro told people that he was nearly ready to reveal a wide-ranging conspiracy involving the Inslaw case, Iran-Contra, the alleged October Surprise conspiracy, and the closure of BCCI.[Linsalata, Phil. , '' The Columbia Journalism Review'', November/December 1991, accessed October 20, 2008.] David Corn
David Corn (born February 20, 1959) is an American political journalist and author. He is the Washington, D.C. bureau chief for ''Mother Jones'' and is best known as a cable television commentator. Corn worked at ''The Nation'' from 1987 to 2007 ...
writes in ''The Nation
''The Nation'' is an American liberal biweekly magazine that covers political and cultural news, opinion, and analysis. It was founded on July 6, 1865, as a successor to William Lloyd Garrison's '' The Liberator'', an abolitionist newspaper tha ...
'' that the papers Casolaro left behind reveal few clues, except that he was in over his head, but was tenacious.[Corn, David. https://archive.org/details/Danny-Casolaro "The Dark World of Danny Casolaro" (PDF)">!--http://www.thenation.com/archive/detail/9111041951 (dead link, 03/2012)-->https://archive.org/details/Danny-Casolaro "The Dark World of Danny Casolaro" (PDF) ''The Nation''. October 21, 1991, p. 511.]
His papers included old clippings, handwritten notes that were hard to read, and the names of former CIA officers and arms dealers. Corn writes that the notes show Casolaro was influenced by the Christic Institute
The Christic Institute was a public interest law firm founded in 1980 by Daniel Sheehan, his wife Sara Nelson, and their partner, William J. Davis, a Jesuit priest, after the successful conclusion of their work on the ''Silkwood'' case. Based on ...
and that he had pursued material fed to him by a reporter who worked for Lyndon LaRouche
Lyndon Hermyle LaRouche Jr. (September 8, 1922 – February 12, 2019) was an American political activist who founded the LaRouche movement and its main organization the National Caucus of Labor Committees (NCLC). He was a prominent conspiracy ...
.[ Richard Fricker writes in '']Wired
''Wired'' (stylized as ''WIRED'') is a monthly American magazine, published in print and online editions, that focuses on how emerging technologies affect culture, the economy, and politics. Owned by Condé Nast, it is headquartered in San Fra ...
'' that Casolaro had been led into a "Bermuda Triangle of spooks, guns, drugs and organized crime."[Fricker, Richard L]
The Inslaw Octopus
''Wired
''Wired'' (stylized as ''WIRED'') is a monthly American magazine, published in print and online editions, that focuses on how emerging technologies affect culture, the economy, and politics. Owned by Condé Nast, it is headquartered in San Fra ...
'', March/April 1993.
Inslaw case
Ron Rosenbaum
Ronald Rosenbaum (born November 27, 1946) is an American literary journalist, literary critic, and novelist.
Life and career
Rosenbaum was born into a Jewish family in New York City, New York and grew up in Bay Shore, New York. He graduated fr ...
writes that the Inslaw story alone is enough to drive a sane man to madness. "If they ever make a movie of the Inslaw suit," he writes, "it could be called ''Mr. and Mrs. Smith Go to Washington and Meet Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a German-speaking Bohemian novelist and short-story writer, widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of realism and the fantastic. It ...
''."[ Inslaw's founder, William A. Hamilton, in a previous position with the ]U.S. Justice Department
The United States Department of Justice (DOJ), also known as the Justice Department, is a federal executive department of the United States government tasked with the enforcement of federal law and administration of justice in the United State ...
, had helped develop a program called PROMIS, short for Prosecutor's Management Information System
PROMIS (Prosecutors Management Information System) was a case management software developed by Inslaw (formerly the Institute for Law and Social Research), a non-profit organization established in 1973 by Bill and Nancy Hamilton.Steve DitleaIn Ne ...
. PROMIS was designed to organize the paperwork generated by law enforcement and the courts. After he left the Justice Dept, Hamilton alleged that the government had stolen PROMIS and had distributed it illegally, robbing him of millions of dollars. The department denied this, insisting that they owned it because Hamilton had developed it while working for them. As a result of this dispute, Hamilton and the department had been in litigation since 1983. A federal bankruptcy judge ruled in 1988 that the department had indeed taken the software by "trickery, fraud, and deceit", a decision upheld by a federal district court
The United States district courts are the trial courts of the U.S. federal judiciary. There is one district court for each federal judicial district, which each cover one U.S. state or, in some cases, a portion of a state. Each district cou ...
in 1988, but overturned on appeal in 1991.[
A conspiracy theory was developed around the case, with allegations that " back doors" had been inserted into the software so that whoever bought a copy of it from the Justice Department could be spied upon. The major source on the conspiracy-theory aspect of the case, both for Hamilton and, later, for Casolaro, was ]Michael Riconosciuto
Michael James Riconosciuto is an electronics and computer expert who was arrested in early 1991, shortly after providing Inslaw, Inc. with an affidavit in support of their lawsuit against the U.S. Dept. of Justice.
Riconosciuto professed a defens ...
, described by Rosenbaum as a "rogue scientist/weapons designer/platinum miner/alleged crystal-meth manufacturer".[ Riconosciuto had been introduced to a friend of Casolaro's by Jeff Steinberg, a longtime top aide in the LaRouche organization.][
Riconosciuto told Bill Hamilton that he and ]Earl Brian
Earl Winfrey Brian, Jr. (1942 – November 2, 2020) was an American physician and businessman who served as Director of California's Department of Health Care Services, and then as Secretary of California's Agency for Health and Welfare under Gov ...
, a director of Hadron, Inc., a government consulting firm, had paid $40 million to Iranian officials in 1980 to persuade them not to release the American hostages before the conclusion of the presidential election that saw Ronald Reagan elected president of the United States; this is the claim now known as the "October Surprise". In exchange for his helping the Reagan administration, Brian was allegedly allowed to profit from the illegal distribution of the PROMIS system, according to Riconosciuto.[ Brian, a close friend of then-]Attorney General
In most common law jurisdictions, the attorney general or attorney-general (sometimes abbreviated AG or Atty.-Gen) is the main legal advisor to the government. The plural is attorneys general.
In some jurisdictions, attorneys general also have exec ...
Ed Meese
Edwin Meese III (born December 2, 1931) is an American attorney, law professor, author and member of the Republican Party who served in official capacities within the Ronald Reagan's gubernatorial administration (1967–1974), the Reagan pre ...
, has denied any involvement in either October Surprise or the Inslaw case.
In addition to this allegation, Riconosciuto also claimed — in a March 21, 1991 affidavit submitted to the court in the Inslaw case — that he had modified Inslaw's software at the Justice Department's behest so that it could be sold to dozens of foreign governments with a secret "back door", which allowed outsiders to access computer systems using PROMIS. These modifications allegedly took place at the Cabazon Indian Reservation
Cabazon (Spanish: ''Cabazón'') is a unincorporated community in Riverside County, California, United States. Cabazon is on the Pacific Crest Trail.
In the 21st century, the area has become a tourist stop, due to the Morongo Casino, Resort & Sp ...
near Indio, California
Indio (Spanish language, Spanish for "Indian") is a city in Riverside County, California, Riverside County, California, United States, in the Coachella Valley of Southern California's Colorado Desert region. It lies east of Palm Springs, Califo ...
. Because the reservation was sovereign territory where enforcement of U.S. law was sometimes problematic, Riconosciuto further claimed that he had worked on weapons programs there for the Wackenhut Corporation
G4S Secure Solutions (USA) is an American / British-based security services company, and a subsidiary of G4S plc. It was founded as The Wackenhut Corporation in 1954, in Coral Gables, Florida, by George Wackenhut and three partners (all are fo ...
, such as a powerful "fuel air explosive
A thermobaric weapon, also called an aerosol bomb, a vacuum bomb or a fuel air explosive (FAE), is a type of explosive that uses oxygen from the surrounding air to generate a high-temperature explosion. The fuel–air explosive is one of the be ...
". On March 29, 1991, eight days after submitting the affidavit, Riconosciuto was arrested for, and later convicted of, distributing methamphetamine
Methamphetamine (contracted from ) is a potent central nervous system (CNS) stimulant that is mainly used as a recreational drug and less commonly as a second-line treatment for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and obesity. Methamph ...
and methadone
Methadone, sold under the brand names Dolophine and Methadose among others, is a synthetic opioid agonist used for chronic pain and also for opioid dependence. It is used to treat chronic pain, and it is also used to treat addiction to heroin ...
, charges that he said were a set-up to keep him from telling his story.[
In the summer of 1990, Casolaro arranged to meet Bill Hamilton, expressing an interest in pursuing the Inslaw story. Hamilton gave Casolaro a 12-page memo Riconosciuto had written detailing his allegations. Rosenbaum writes that, "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 a kind of covert-ops version of '']Dungeons & Dragons
''Dungeons & Dragons'' (commonly abbreviated as ''D&D'' or ''DnD'') is a fantasy tabletop role-playing game (RPG) originally designed by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson. The game was first published in 1974 by TSR (company)#Tactical Studies Rules ...
'', with that memo as his guide and Michael Riconosciuto as his Dungeon Master."[
]
Final days
On August 5, 1991, Casolaro phoned Bill McCoy, a retired CID
CID may refer to:
Film
* ''C.I.D.'' (1955 film), an Indian Malayalam film
* ''C.I.D.'' (1956 film), an Indian Hindi film
* ''C. I. D.'' (1965 film), an Indian Telugu film
* ''C.I.D.'' (1990 film), an Indian Hindi film
Television
* ''CID'' ( ...
officer to tell him that ''Time'' magazine had assigned him an article about the Octopus. He further claimed to be working with reporter Jack Anderson, and that publishers Little, Brown and Time Warner had offered to finance the effort. All of these claims were later shown to be false:[ Little and Brown, for example, had rejected his Octopus manuscript over a month earlier.][
On the same day, Casolaro's friend Ben Mason agreed to talk to Casolaro about his finances. A few days later, Casolaro showed Mason a 22-point outline for his book and expressed frustration at having been tied up with a literary agent who was unable to sell it for the last eighteen months. He also allegedly complained about his sleep being disturbed for the previous three months by calls during the night.][
The following day, a neighbor of Casolaro's and long-time housekeeper, Olga, helped Casolaro pack a black leather tote. She remembers his packing a thick sheaf of papers into a dark brown or black briefcase. Casolaro said he was leaving for several days to visit Martinsburg, West Virginia, to meet a source who promised to provide an important missing piece to his story. This was the last time Olga saw him. Olga told '']The Village Voice
''The Village Voice'' is an American news and culture paper, known for being the country's first alternative newsweekly. Founded in 1955 by Dan Wolf, Ed Fancher, John Wilcock, and Norman Mailer, the ''Voice'' began as a platform for the crea ...
'' that she answered several threatening telephone calls at Casolaro's home that day. She said that one man called at about 9:00 a.m. and said, "I will cut his body and throw it to the sharks". Less than an hour later, a different man said: "Drop dead." There was a third call, but Olga remembered only that no one spoke and that she heard music as though a radio were playing. A fourth call was the same as the third, and a fifth call, this one silent, came later that night.[
]
Last known sightings
According to ''The Village Voice'', Casolaro's whereabouts between late in the day of August 8 and the afternoon of August 9 are unknown. The day before he died, according to '' The Martinsburg Morning Journal'', he ate at a Pizza Hut
Pizza Hut is an American multinational restaurant chain and international franchise founded in 1958 in Wichita, Kansas by Dan and Frank Carney. They serve their signature pan pizza and other dishes including pasta, breadsticks and dessert at d ...
, where he told the waitress he liked her eyes and quoted ''The Great Gatsby
''The Great Gatsby'' is a 1925 novel by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. Set in the Jazz Age on Long Island, near New York City, the novel depicts First-person narrative, first-person narrator Nick Carraway's interactions with mysterious mil ...
'' to her. He met Honeywell
Honeywell International Inc. is an American publicly traded, multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina. It primarily operates in four areas of business: aerospace, building technologies, performance ma ...
engineer William Richard Turner at the Sheraton at about 2:30 p.m. on August 9. Turner says he gave Casolaro some documents, and that they spoke for a few minutes. Witnesses reported that Casolaro spent the next few hours at a Martinsburg restaurant. A bartender there told police that he had seemed lonely and depressed. The police further learned that Casolaro was seen at Heatherfields, the cocktail lounge at the Sheraton, at around 5 p.m. with a man described by a waitress as "maybe Arab or Iranian."[
At about 5:30 p.m. that night, Casolaro happened to meet Mike Looney who rented the room next to Casolaro's room 517. They chatted on two occasions—first at about 5:30 p.m. and then again at about 8:00 p.m. Looney later explained, " asolarosaid he was there to meet an important source who was going to give him what he needed to solve the case." According to Looney, Casolaro claimed that his source was scheduled to arrive by 9:00 p.m. Around that time, Casolaro left Looney, explaining that he had to make a telephone call. He returned a few minutes later and said that his source might have "blown him off." Casolaro and Looney talked until about 9:30 p.m. At about 10:00 p.m., Casolaro bought coffee at a nearby convenience store. That was the last time anyone reported seeing him alive.][
]
Death
At about noon on August 10, 1991, housekeeping staff discovered Casolaro naked in the bathtub of room 517. His wrists had been slashed deeply. There were three or four wounds on his right wrist and seven or eight on his left. Blood was splattered on the bathroom wall and floor; and according to Ridgeway and Vaughn, "the scene was so gruesome that one of the housekeepers fainted when she saw it."[
Under Casolaro's body, paramedics found an empty ]Milwaukee
Milwaukee ( ), officially the City of Milwaukee, is both the most populous and most densely populated city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin and the county seat of Milwaukee County. With a population of 577,222 at the 2020 census, Milwaukee is ...
beer can, two white plastic liner-trash bags, and a single edge razor blade. There was also a half-empty wine bottle nearby. Ridgeway and Vaughan write that nothing was placed in the bathtub drain to prevent debris from draining away, and none of the bathwater was saved.[ Other than the gruesome scene, the hotel room was clean and orderly. There was a legal pad and a pen present on the desk; a single page had been torn from the pad, and a message written on it: "To those who I love the most: Please forgive me for the worst possible thing I could have done. Most of all I'm sorry to my son. I know deep down inside that God will let me in."][
Based on the note, the absence of a struggle, no sign of a forced entry, and the presence of alcohol, police judged the case a straightforward suicide. After inspecting the scene, they found four more razor blades in their envelopes in a small package. Police interviews further revealed that no one had seen or heard anything suspicious. The Martinsburg police contacted authorities in ]Fairfax, Virginia
The City of Fairfax ( ), colloquially known as Fairfax City, Downtown Fairfax, Old Town Fairfax, Fairfax Courthouse, FFX, or simply Fairfax, is an independent city (United States), independent city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth ...
, who said they would notify Casolaro's family.
Police investigation
The first autopsy was performed on Casolaro's body at the University of Virginia
The University of Virginia (UVA) is a Public university#United States, public research university in Charlottesville, Virginia. Founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson, the university is ranked among the top academic institutions in the United S ...
on August 14, 1991. The coroner determined that blood loss was the cause of death, and that death had occurred from one to four hours before the body was discovered, or roughly between 8:00 a.m. and 11:00 a.m. on August 10.[
The day after Casolaro's body was found, ''Village Voice'' editor Dan Bischoff received an anonymous telephone call alerting him to Casolaro's death.][ By Tuesday, August 13, Ridgeway and Vaughan write, the "rumors were flying, ... and by the next day, the crazies started coming out of the woodwork. There were vague unsubstantiated rumors that the ]Mafia
"Mafia" is an informal term that is used to describe criminal organizations that bear a strong similarity to the original “Mafia”, the Sicilian Mafia and Italian Mafia. The central activity of such an organization would be the arbitration of d ...
was somehow involved, and the wildest story even suggested that the undertaker was an employee of the CIA
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian intelligence agency, foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gat ...
, hired to clean up after an agency assassination." Even at the funeral, they write, the family felt "engulfed by mysteries". As the ceremony drew to a close, a highly decorated military officer in U.S. Army
The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cla ...
dress reportedly arrived in a limousine. Accompanied by another man in plain clothes, the military man approached the coffin just before it was lowered into the ground, laid a medal on the lid, and saluted. No one recognized either man and, to this day, they have never been identified.[ Further, Casolaro was known to have complained numerous times about threatening or unsettling phone calls directed at him, often occurring late at night, including those received by his housekeeper during his absences from his home.
After Casolaro's death was reported by several mainstream news organizations, police re-examined room 517. The adjacent rooms had been rented the evening of Casolaro's death — one by Mike Looney, the other by an unnamed family. No one reported hearing anything unusual either on the night of August 9 or the morning of August 10.
In January 1992, about five months after Casolaro's death, Dr. Frost of the Virginia state medical examiner's office performed another autopsy; he returned a second suicide verdict, citing blood loss as the cause of death. Frost said there was evidence of the early stages of ]multiple sclerosis
Multiple (cerebral) sclerosis (MS), also known as encephalomyelitis disseminata or disseminated sclerosis, is the most common demyelinating disease, in which the insulating covers of nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord are damaged. This d ...
, but the degree of severity was probably minor. Toxicology analysis uncovered traces of several drugs: antidepressant
Antidepressants are a class of medication used to treat major depressive disorder, anxiety disorders, chronic pain conditions, and to help manage addictions. Common side-effects of antidepressants include dry mouth, weight gain, dizziness, hea ...
s, acetaminophen
Paracetamol, also known as acetaminophen, is a medication used to treat fever and mild to moderate pain. Common brand names include Tylenol and Panadol.
At a standard dose, paracetamol only slightly decreases body temperature; it is inferior ...
, and alcohol. He wrote: "There was nothing present in any way that could have incapacitated Casolaro so he would have been incapable of struggling against an assailant, let alone been sufficient to kill him."[
Ron Rosenbaum, a journalist acquaintance of Casolaro's, speculated in '' Vanity Fair'' that Casolaro may have intended his suicide to appear to be murder triggered by his research, in order to have others look into the story after his death.][
Later investigations showed that the ]FBI
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic Intelligence agency, intelligence and Security agency, security service of the United States and its principal Federal law enforcement in the United States, federal law enforcement age ...
misled Congress about investigating Casolaro's death. Members of an FBI task force looking into Casolaro's death "questioned the conclusion of suicide" and recommended further investigation. This level of doubt "was especially significant, because even at that time (December 1992), it was understood that to express those views risked one's career." FBI documents show that some files on Casolaro are being withheld from public release, which is contradicted by the FBI saying the files are missing entirely.
In popular culture
Dominic Orlando, Casolaro's cousin, wrote a play based on Casolaro's story in 2008 called ''Danny Casolaro Died For You''.
In January 2013, Aviation Cinemas Productions and Caliber Media optioned the film rights to the story of Danny Casolaro based on Orlando's play. Adam Donaghey, Eric Steele, Dallas Sonnier and Jack Heller were set to produce with Eric Steele directing. Production was set to begin in 2015.
References
Further reading
*.
* (chapter VI : « La pieuvre »).
External links
* Danny Casolaro's research files and notes
* Danny Casolaro's research at the Missouri State Historical Society
* FBI File on Danny Casolaro
{{DEFAULTSORT:Casolaro, Danny
1947 births
1991 suicides
20th-century American non-fiction writers
American conspiracy theorists
American investigative journalists
People from McLean, Virginia
Providence College alumni
Suicides by sharp instrument in the United States
Suicides in West Virginia