‘Extreme power and secrecy’: inside shocking Netflix hit The Octopus Murders

Family and colleagues have long suspected Danny Casolaro was murdered for investigating a conspiracy he called ‘the Octopus’. Photograph: Netflix

“Danny is a romantic ideal of what a writer or journalist is,” says the film director Zachary Treitz. “In the Hemingway mould.”

He is describing Danny Casolaro, an adventurer, journalist, poet, novelist and charmer. More than 30 years ago, in room 517 at the distinctly prosaic Sheraton hotel in Martinsburg, West Virginia, Casolaro was found dead in a bathtub. The 44-year-old’s wrists had a dozen slash wounds, deep enough to sever the tendons. There was blood all over the room.