Netflix's Octopus Murders Has A Diabolical 'Floating Tree' JFK Conspiracy Theory
"American Conspiracy: The Octopus Murders" is a true crime docuseries that's been killing it on Netflix. It focuses on the mysterious case of Danny Casolaro, a journalist and conspiracy theory enthusiast who was found dead in his hotel in 1991. At the time of his death, he was investigating a lengthy series of incidents that revolved around eight mysterious individuals who, Casolaro believed, played a role in several major incidents and had a connection to President Ronald Reagan's administration. His stack of notes about the investigation was never found.
"The Octopus Murders" covers numerous unnerving possibilities and revelations, but one of its strangest points is all about a different American murder mystery: the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963. It comes across as almost a brief aside but nevertheless illustrates eerily well what type of world the people acquainted with the Octopus case say they live in. As journalist Cheri Seymour states in the series, a former CIA operative called Robert Booth Nichols showed her a version of the Zapruder tape that clearly shows the driver shooting Kennedy and then compared it with the commonly-known public version of the same tape. However, Nichols points out that the official version has clearly been tampered with, as shown by a "floating" tree that is missing its lower part.
If true, Nichols' revelation would be groundbreaking — but the thing is, Seymour herself doesn't believe it at all. Instead, she uses the driver tape and the floating tree as examples of the many ways the powers that be feed false information to people who are trying to uncover secrets in an attempt to discredit them.
Viewers have many opinions about the floating tree theory
"American Conspiracy: The Octopus Murders" might just establish itself as one of the best true crime shows streaming in 2024, but the floating tree conspiracy is definitely causing debate among its viewers. On X, formerly known as Twitter, user @RealNateHorsman chose a journalistic approach to the problem. "During that scene after the Zapruder film was shown I paused the doc and watched the Zapruder film again. There was only one video because of course the 'alternate' video was not shown in the doc," they wrote, including a screenshot of the tree that's very much not floating for good measure. Others, on the other hand, took the opposite approach to Seymour's revelation, while ignoring that she herself doesn't believe in the driver video's authenticity. "She's right! Several YT videos you can see the driver kill JFK." @_PochoVilla claimed.
Others, however, had a more difficult time wrapping their head around the tree situation. "The part about the Kennedy video is really bothering me. Is the floating tree a real thing?" u/Beneficial-Lion-2045 wrote on Reddit. "She was saying he doctored it to mess with her. If she went public and said this was the real film, she'd be humiliated. It was undermining her credibility," u/broketothebone replied. "That house was weird, he probably showed that video a lot to intimidate people," u/chuckles25 posted, sharing their opinion about Robert Booth Nichols.
With the combination of "The Octopus Murders" catching attention and "The Program: Cons, Cults, and Kidnapping" docuseries making Netflix subscribers angrier than ever, the streamer has carved itself out a nice spot in the world of true crime documentaries. Well, at least until HBO enters the arena when "The Jinx" Season 2 reveals more details about Robert Durst later this year.