Robert Evans and Jamie Loftus dissect the Finders cult, debating whether Marion Petty's group was a sex trafficking conspiracy or merely an abusive cult utilizing isolation and blackmail. They analyze specific allegations like the 1986 Tallahassee incident, where misinformation regarding child hygiene and non-diagnostic physical symptoms fueled false satanic panic claims. The hosts examine how conflicting accounts and redacted FBI records obscured the reality of communal child neglect versus actual trafficking, ultimately suggesting the group's legacy is defined by media hysteria rather than proven criminal enterprise. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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San Francisco Show Plans00:07:03
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When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands.
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My next guest, it's Will Farrell.
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But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hang in there.
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There's a lot of life.
Listen to Thanksgiving on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
In 2023, bachelor star Clayton Eckard was accused of fathering twins, but the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax.
You doctored this particular test twice, Miss Owens, correct?
I doctored the test once.
It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern.
Two more men who'd been through the same thing.
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My mind was blown.
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This is Love Trapped.
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As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.
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I'm a P-R-A-U-X.
You can spell pro that way.
Anyway, this is Behind the Bastards, a podcast.
Bad people.
Tell you all about it.
I'm Robert Evans, and I'm enjoying a beautiful day here in the Bay in the city of San Francisco, where I'm hanging out.
Jamie, how do you feel about San Francisco?
Jamie Loftus, guest host, not a murder.
I look, here's what I'll say.
I did nothing wrong.
Did I consider robbing a grave when I was, you know, seven?
Yes, but live, laugh, learn.
I like San Francisco, which I'm saying mainly because I have a show coming up there at the beginning of February.
So I'll tell you what I really think about February.
I'll tell you what I think about San Francisco truly off mic, but for public fancy purposes, what a town.
What a moment.
The wealth disparity doesn't freak me out at all.
What a place that didn't invite me to Sketchfest this year.
So I'm angry.
Wow.
But more importantly, Jamie, it's a place where I suffered easily the greatest trauma of my life.
You know, do you know, you know, Jaws?
You know, Quint, the shark hunter?
Who's obviously?
Yeah, the dead eyes like a dollar.
Uncle to the world, eccentric uncle to the world.
You know how his character's backstory is?
This was a real battle, too, in World War II.
He was like a Navy man and his ship got sunk and everyone but him got eaten by sharks.
That's his backstory.
And then like Madman, the guy with the silver hair, who's a lot of fun most of the time, but he fought in the Pacific.
And so there's that one episode where those Japanese businessmen come in and he gets real uncomfortable very quickly.
This is my version of that without the racism.
Yeah, Roger Sterling.
He gets traumatized, right?
I'm telling you my story of the thing that traumatized me and now has forever ruined me.
Okay.
Yeah, we're getting heavy, starting right off the gate.
So 2018, I go to CorgiCon, which is where all of the Corgis in the Bay Area gather by the beach and romp around.
Several hundred Corgis.
Romp around and some would say start making plans.
Perhaps, perhaps.
I can't speak to that because I was being confronted with the worst thing that I have ever seen that day, which is a makeshift sign outside of CorgiCon that said, welcome to San Francisco Sco.
Now, Jamie, I wake up screaming when I think about how angry that sign makes me.
Like San Francisco was right there.
You've told this story on Mike before.
You are a story.
You were a traumatizing, Sophie.
Yeah.
Yeah.
This did permanent damage to my psyche, my soul, my ability to trust and love people.
Yeah, it wasn't the pun.
It was that the pun was wrong.
It was a bad pun.
They picked the wrong pun.
San Francisco, that doesn't make any fucking sense, Jamie.
I know.
If you wrote that sign and there's like a 20% chance you're listening to this podcast right now, I will find you and I will take my vengeance.
Robert, go, Nisa, go.
Get it together.
If you tell this story a third time, I will fire you.
I'm never going to stop telling the story, Sophie.
You can't stop the signal.
Speaking of the signal.
No, Vrara, I need to call you out really quick because you were able to describe an episode of Mad Men in detail to Sophie and myself.
And moments before we started recording, needed to guess three separate times before correctly remembering what sport Tanya Harding played.
Just a reminder that we just live on different planets.
Can anyone tell the difference between a gymnast and a skier, a skater?
She did one of the two.
They're the same thing.
And you know it's not true.
You're just trying to get it.
It's all boring.
You know why?
Because there's one actual sport, Jamie Loftus, and it is playing second edition Shadowrun with your friends in 1999.
Oh, my God.
That's the one real sport, Jamie.
I thought you were going to say that.
That's what the Greeks play.
I thought you were going to say that.
Say it was Simon says, and then you were going to do the podcast.
Are you going to do the podcast?
No, I am going to do the podcast.
The only real sport is what happens between periods at the hockey game.
The only real sport is the guy in the Zamboni.
I don't disagree.
I don't disagree with the take.
We're back on the same page, and now we can actually get back on the same page by talking about Marion Petty and the founders.
Now, I'm a pretty tolerant guy.
I've lived in multiple communes.
I've stayed in several more communes, multiple countries, in fact, of communes.
I don't know if I would call you a pretty tolerant guy, but continue.
I've never flinched.
What are you?
What are you?
How am I not tolerant?
I don't know.
I've got like a bunch of people.
Free Love Period Brainwashing00:15:36
I don't judge people except for that lady who made the sign at the Corgi convention.
Listen to what, yeah, listen to what you just said about the sign lady.
Listen to what you just said about gymnasts and man.
I don't know who made the sign.
Wow, that was problematic of me.
Anyway, let's move on.
Jesus Christ.
So so far, nothing Petty or the Finders have done is like abusive, weird, questionable, definitely destined to end badly, right?
When you're telling people that they should hook up or have kids and how they should raise them, it's only a matter of time before that becomes a problem, but it hasn't been a problem yet, right?
Here's where we get into the problems.
Now, what's interesting to me is that because the reputation these guys have among conspiracy nuts is this was like an evil sex trafficking cult moving children across the country, the like counter argument by people who rightly are like, boy, the satanic panic was a real bad time is like, eh, they were weird, but it was pretty benign.
That's not true.
This is definitely a cult and they definitely abuse people in really fucking weird ways.
It's just not the ways that they got famous for.
That's the QAnon way to identify an issue and make a big deal about things that make no fucking sense, therefore meaning they'll get away with shit forever.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Cause there's, and they did for a long time.
There's no evidence that the finders like sexually trafficked children across like fucking national boundaries or state boundaries for that matter.
But we do know for a fact that they did the thing all cults do, which is demand their members isolate themselves from their families and then attack those families when they tried to inquire as to whether or not their loved ones were okay.
That city paper article by John Cohen includes an interview with a man named David, whose brother joined the Finders cult and then cut off contact with his family.
David, as you would, sends his brother a letter just being like, hey, man, just wanted to make sure you're okay in this weird group where you're pretending to be spies with your landlord.
You know, like, not hard to see why he does this.
Yeah, any true crime document or like any cult-themed documentary, that's always like one of the saddest parts when you see the family member that's like, so yeah, she moved in with this lady who called herself Mother God and I don't.
And then she just woke up a happy story, though.
Everyone got what they wanted out of that one.
Good lord.
So David sends this letter to his brother and he gets a response.
It's on the letterhead of a company that's like one of the game projects for one of the members, right?
Petty tells one guy, hey, make a company with this name.
And so the letter, he gets a response on that company's letterhead, but it's written by another cult member who's basically Petty's secretary.
And I'm going to quote from Cohen's article here.
The letter reads, this is to testify that your son, Douglas, aka Ernest Angel, I. Betterson, Danny Proper, Kenny Rogers is a true master of the art of fucking.
The shape of his cock is unique and he is truly an artist at using it to give us the most pleasure.
The depth, the width, the heights.
No other man touches us this way.
His hands have magic as they stroke our slender limbs.
And I'm not going to continue reading that.
No, please.
It's really, it's really, it's like an extremely explicit letter.
Why did you read so much of that?
I want it because you should feel uncomfortable.
Roberts is like, no, no, no, no, just let me get to slender limbs.
Let me get to slender limbs and then I'll stop.
I didn't want to read moist.
You know what comes after moist in this letter, right?
I don't have to say that.
They're describing his dick like it's like a three-story apartment building.
Like it's so.
So you know how like the Church of Scientology, you speak out or like you leave or whatever, and they have guys stalk you.
They'll poison your pets.
You're an SEAL.
Yeah.
Their version of this, which is like both a lot less fucked up and also still not good, is they will, when your family members or whatnot, like try to contact you, or if you leave, they'll send letters to your loved ones describing what sex with you is like and sometimes showing pictures of you naked.
Not, it's not blackmail.
Because they're not asking for anything.
Yeah, there's no exception.
From what I can tell, they're not saying do anything or stop doing something.
They're just like make fucking with them, making them uncomfortable.
It's weird, and it's definitely bad.
I'm not saying it's not bad, but I don't think there's like an exchange attempted.
I know that, well, it, I don't know.
I feel like the discomfort is an exchange of sorts where it's like, well, what is this person going to do to make it stop?
Like, it's a weird, tacit form of blackmail where it's, they don't want an item, but they want the behavior to change.
I think that's probably fair.
It is pretty unique.
I haven't heard about this being done to anyone and all of the cults I've read about.
And I find that kind of interesting.
I mean, it just sounds like revenge porn, like proto-revenge porn, basically.
It is a little bit of that.
Confusing.
It's definitely like a lot of bit of that, although all of it, there's not always pictures that exist, right?
Some of it's just text.
Yeah, I'm trying to square myself with it because also some of the things I've read, I don't know that everyone involved in the cult would have thought of it.
I think Petty sees this as revenge porn and is using it that way.
It seems like a lot of the kind to the extent that there's brainwashing, this is during that kind of like free love period shit.
Like all these people came out of that movement.
And I kind of think some of it may be we need to shock the normies because they shouldn't feel uncomfortable and awkward about talking about sex this way.
You know, maybe this is our way of reaching them and stuff, like, which is also bad and unhinged, but I kind of get the feeling that's at least how this is justified internally.
So they don't feel gross.
We're not just being abusive to these.
We're not trying to hurt these people.
Like no one should have a problem with this stuff.
And if they can't take it, then, you know, they need to mature as divine thinking beings or whatever.
I don't know.
That's the feeling that I get reading stuff here.
It's very uncomfortable.
It's yeah, it's like the letters are like, they go on and on.
That's the intersection of a lot of disgusting tactics.
And also like the sort of thing where it reminds me of like hearing stories about and like stuff that I've like of like how people can get away with shit like that by not having a direct threat stated, not asking for anything clear.
So you're like, well, what is legally actionable?
It's harassment.
But like usually if you report harassment, all the fuck all anyone will do is be like, well, call us back when they threaten to kill you, which a lot of people know better than to do.
Like it's also like with a lot of these cases, like in the case of this guy's family member, it's not harassment, technically, right?
Because he sent the letter first.
They're responding to a letter.
So like legally, even I'm not, again, it's not good what they're doing.
I'm saying legally, I don't know that you would have a leg to stand on if you tried to claim harassment because they are just responding to a letter in a fucked up way.
That's why it feels like it's very, I don't know.
I mean, it seems like it's pretty, you know, like this whole organization is pretty calculated.
To what end, I still don't understand.
No one does.
And you will not get an answer to that question at all.
No, because it is like, cause it is, if your goal is to, you know, be disgusting and scary in a way that it's like there's not a direct way to nail you for it.
Like that's what they're doing.
And I think, again, a cult is an organization made up of multiple people.
So you can have there be multiple motivations for the same act that are independent of each other.
Petty, I think, is doing this as a way to maintain control, as a way to be aggressive, to attack his enemies.
I do believe, based on what I have read of them, most of his followers kind of buy that.
Well, we're trying, this is about shocking the normies for a purpose, too.
We're not trying to shock these people to hurt them.
It's healthy to not have hang-ups about sex and we're trying to break through their unhealthy.
Like, I, again, That's a good reason to send people naked pictures of their loved ones.
I'm saying I think that's how regular people in the cult justify this.
And are we still in the 70s at this point?
Because this all scans for like, you guys are so like, why don't you want to see a picture of your brother's dick?
You're like, yeah, you're so scared of your brother's huge throbbing cock.
We're all humans.
You're like, also, especially your brother in his unique shape.
Like, unique shape.
A big thing for them was like describing, and they don't just do it with penises.
These are equal opportunity.
And to be fair, most of the people running the cult aside from Petty are the women in the cult.
That's like universally agreed upon by former members that like this was not a misogynist cult.
They would describe your sister's body to you in a gross letter, but they'd do the same for your brother, you know?
So they're like, won't be disgusting to anybody.
Relax.
They are described multiple times by the cops and others as feminists, as specifically a cabal of feminists.
That's very like second wave feminism.
They're like, yeah, second wave feminism, you know, run a cult, queen.
One of the things that makes the finders interesting is they are, they are the nexus point of a whole bunch of shit, right?
There's more than a little sign-in on, like, you know, that like first get out of drugs program that turns into a cult where they sit in a circle and scream at each other and male people rattlesnakes.
There's some of that in there.
There's a little bit of Scientology in here.
There's a lot of Keith Ranieri in here.
He's definitely descended from this guy.
But there's also, there's these really unique aspects of like New Age occultism and kind of like spy pulp novels from the 60s.
Like it's, it's such a different things going on.
Like there, I don't know.
I mean, the hearing that women were meaningfully included in this, unfortunately, like, especially in New Age cult-y movements, like that, it's like the perceived inclusivity that gets a lot of people interested.
I mean, and it's like that still happens now on what, you know, whatever wave of feminism we're on.
Final, because we have like three years to live.
When we talk about like how a lot of really educated and successful people are in this cult for the women who are that and in this cult, that's part of what makes it make sense is that this is a lot less misogynistic of an environment than the world of the 1970s, like than mainstream society, right?
You are ordering men around, you run things like, you know, that's a part of the appeal to some of the people who find this thing.
Right.
So they're like, okay, so the cost of participation is I might need to send someone a picture of their brother's dick.
Yeah, and describe it in loving detail.
Yeah.
And they'll do more than that, Jamie.
Sorry, you're right.
I'm getting hung up on that.
Yeah.
This is from a Maryland police report based on what happens once the story of this cult explodes.
And they talk to a bunch of former family members.
Detective Blank interviewed all the family members who were willing to talk.
Specifically, they all stated that Blank, probably Petty, had brainwashed their children and prevented any contact with either their children or grandchildren.
Members of the Finders, according to family members, would stop any contact by sending letters describing explicit sexual acts involving current members, including photographs and drawings.
In one case, members of the Finders attempted to take over Blank family residence and force Blank out of her home.
We don't get more than that.
And I don't know, is this armed men showing up to steal someone's house?
Are they pushing her out of a property?
The cult, this detective sucks, by the way.
He also can't spell their right.
Yeah.
So we don't get any like, I don't know, was this some people showed up and like harassed her?
Was this like somebody called her on the phone and she felt uncomfortable and so she moved?
It could really anything could be kind of included in that.
It doesn't sound like a thing that got handled by the police.
And so there's not a report on it.
I guess I'm not like completely shocked, but just like there seem to be a number of critical moments in this story where it's just unbelievably vague.
That's the fun thing about the finders.
That's why they're the center of so many conspiracy narratives.
And so this like wasn't, this wasn't like a story that was, that there was any like public interest in until the 80s, right?
So they're kind of just operating.
Okay.
So there's police records and cult member records, two of the least possibly like reliable sources you could ask.
Wow.
Okay.
And one of the other things about it is, so there are a number of people who are abused significantly and harassed significantly by this cult.
It does a lot of ugly things.
From what I can tell, most people who are in it walk away even afterwards with a pretty good opinion of their time in it, which is why we don't know much because there's not a lot of narratives.
People didn't come out and be like, here's what happened in this.
They're like, yeah, it was fun like five years for me.
Yeah.
It was like the best decade of my life.
You know, the time I spent in this cult.
That's more common than the bad cases.
Sure.
Which doesn't mean they weren't, again, they were abusing and harassing people.
A lot of people say that about their time at improv theaters.
Yeah, exactly.
It has that kind of improv wall of silence, right?
The thin blue line, as we call it.
That's where that term comes from, is the Chicago school.
Yeah.
Yeah, that comes from I.O.
Yeah.
So anyway, the 70s turns into the 1980s, which everyone would agree was a mistake.
Petty grows more and more vengeful and starts to get kind of increasingly aggressive.
They move on from just mailing people or their family members sex stuff to like bombarding local media with graphic stories about like people's behavior when they have again.
This is yeah, why?
Because they're to some extent see, I think some of it's him getting offended that people might not always want to follow his games, you know yeah, and some of it's probably like cult leader defending himself whatever right, so it is.
So there does it seem like it by the 80s, there is an element of like he's just kind of unraveling, not unraveling.
He's getting more obsessed with control.
Okay right, that escalate.
The more power you get as a cult leader, the more power you tend to take, right up until there's a serious pushback.
Yeah they, this is the same way all of these people work.
Hold on um, whether they become the president or run a weird little spot.
Are you saying this corrupts?
Absolutely no no, I would never say that.
That's hack as shit.
You're right.
I would say maybe we should keep giving men like this power.
Um, this time it'll work, one more time it'll end well, we just need some nukes.
If this guy had nukes, there wouldn't have been any problems.
FBI Arson Evidence Redacted00:03:31
So yeah, I will say for, for petty's sake, I don't think his cult murdered anybody.
Um, that said, it is very unclear uh, how violent they got uh.
Several ex-members were.
Were threatened directly.
This is just beyond the weird sex stuff.
From one police report that interviewed 21 former members on their experience, quote, they stated that the organization began as an alternative lifestyle in the 1960s, and many of them became disenchanted with the quasi-military order under the direct supervision of Petty.
Many of the former members stated that they feared retribution from the finders organization.
In the case of blank, she needed police intervention to stop the harassment of the finders.
In the blank case, such and such property was burned down and remains an open arson.
In the blank case, members of the finders attempted to infiltrate, and then there's about a whole sentence blanked out.
I don't know what the fuck's going on there in sentence ends in the United States.
In general, all members of the finders who had left the group felt that harm would come to them if they spoke out against Petty or his organization.
So, yeah, what did they infiltrate?
Also, I really want to know more about that arson.
Again, these are the cops, so you don't get a lot of that.
It's like, wait, wait, what do you mean a house was burned down and remains an open arson?
Why, like, I want to, that seems like there should be more on that.
Now I feel like I'm getting conspiratorial.
Is there any way that, like, because of his connections through his wife question mark, who is probably not alive at this point, that like he has any sort of shield or like institutional protection?
Yeah, like it seems, it seems like not out of the question.
This is so much redacted.
There is some evidence that suggests that.
Yes.
Okay.
Okay.
Maybe.
This is, again, part of why this is such a boon for the conspiracy community is that something real, there is a conspiracy here, and we don't know all of the details of it, right?
Something really shady is going on, and the extent of it is unclear.
I do get why people latch on to this fucking story, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, that's a lot.
I mean, I know that it is not unusual at all for there to be stuff redacted, but it's like, this feels like, you know, they're not operating really in a way that is advantageous to the state.
So I don't understand.
What's weird to me about this?
Because I've read through, I don't know, like 200 pages, something like that of FBI files, because all of them got released fairly recently on this case.
And if I were an FBI agent trying to fuck with people by creating a case that was guaranteed to like have the biggest impact in the conspiracy community, in my fanfic, you are.
I would have redacted it exactly this way.
Like, this is the perfect way you're giving them just enough, but like then cutting out just the piece that's going to like, if I'm writing a fucking book and I want to like have a conspiracy, like bits of like include little pieces of police reports and stuff to like make the true detective conspiracy case, this is how I redact it, right?
Like it's, it's so on the nose.
God.
Yeah.
This, I, it's, I, I understand why it's easy to fall down the water slide of like, what the fuck is going on?
And why did they get away with this for so long?
Like people go way too far on the finders.
Yeah.
But it is an Epstein style thing where I'm like, oh yeah, I get why it's, you don't, you're not irrational for being like, well, something's happening here and we don't know it, you know?
Right, right.
This is a fucked up case.
Yeah.
Not in the same way Epstein is, but yeah.
Stanley Cup As A Weapon00:08:22
So again, definitely a fucking cult, but a fairly careful cult.
You know, I wouldn't actually be surprised if that arson was unrelated to the cult, just because it stands out.
I don't see any other allegations like that.
And they go 20 years without any serious media or law enforcement attention, which suggests either most of their activities were benign or they were really good at keeping a lid on shit, you know?
Yeah.
Maybe for some of the institutional backing we had, but they don't make a splash for a long time.
Which unfortunately, like, that doesn't even move.
Yeah, that doesn't even move the needle a lot for me because both of those are very, like, feel plausible.
You know what else is plausible, Jamie?
Oh, tell me, Robert.
I want you to think about all the problems in your life, every way in which your current existence doesn't match, you know, your dreams for yourself, your beliefs of your own capability.
Don't worry.
Now, Jamie, you got that in your heart?
It was there, anyways.
Do you want to know how you can solve all of that and finally become the being that you were always meant to be by divinity?
Yes.
All you got to do, hand your credit card over to whoever advertises next.
Wow.
I hope it's something bad for me.
That's almost a guarantee, Jamie.
There's two golden rules that any man should live by.
Rule one: never mess with a country girl.
You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.
And rule two: never mess with her friends either.
We always say, trust your girlfriends.
I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of The Girlfriends, oh my God, this is the same man.
A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.
I felt like I got hit by a truck.
I thought, how could this happen to me?
The cops didn't seem to care.
So they take matters into their own hands.
I said, oh, hell no.
I vowed I will be his last target.
He's going to get what he deserves.
Listen to the girlfriends.
Trust me, babe.
On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
What's up, everyone?
I'm Ago Modern.
My next guest, you know, from Step Brothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network.
It's Will Farrell.
My dad gave me the best advice ever.
I went and had lunch with him one day, and I was like, and Dad, I think I want to really give this a shot.
I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings.
I'm working my way up through it.
I know it's a place they come look for up and coming talent.
He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet.
Yeah.
He goes, but there's so much luck involved.
And he's like, just give it a shot.
He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat.
Just hang in there.
Yeah, it would not be.
Right, it wouldn't be that.
There's a lot of luck.
Listen to Thanks Dad on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
10-10 shots fired, City Hall building.
A silver .40 caliber handgun was recovered at the scene.
From iHeart Podcasts and Best Case Studios, this is Rorschach, murder at City Hall.
How could this have happened in City Hall?
Somebody tell me that.
Jeffrey Hood did.
July 2003.
Councilman James E. Davis arrives at New York City Hall with a guest.
Both men are carrying concealed weapons.
And in less than 30 minutes, both of them will be dead.
Everybody in the chamber ducks.
A shocking public murder.
They scream, get down, get down.
Those are shots.
Those are shots.
Get down.
A charismatic politician.
You know, he just bent the rules all the time, man.
I still have a weapon.
And I could shoot you.
And an outsider with a secret.
He alleged he was a victim of flat down.
That may or may not have been political.
That may have been about sex.
Listen to Rorschach.
Murder at City Hall on the iHeartRadio app.
Apple Podcasts are wherever you get your podcasts.
And we're back.
This is, again, a podcast sponsored entirely by convincing Jamie to pay money for scams.
It is what, yeah, it's really, some people get into podcasting to make money.
I'm getting into it to set it on fire and buy a lot of steel cups.
Yeah.
Oh, I sell her a Stanley Cup every week.
Every, yeah, I have them mounted on my wall like something's wrong with me.
See, that's the, this is one of those things where I get frustrated.
There's this like thing on, I think it's big on left Twitter of people like posting mostly white women's collections of Stanley cups, like the company that makes thermoses and like being like, wow, this is an insane thing.
It's like, who gives a shit?
I ultimately like.
You have Funko Pops or something or like a thousand copies of the same old Marks book.
It's fine.
It's all the same deal.
I just am curious why, because it's like, there's all sorts of like bizarro collections that people like do that you could latch onto.
I'm curious why like Stan, like why the cups are the ones that like Twitter has picked up on.
There's so many collection.
I don't know.
Every bit of discourse around the cups, I'm just like, enough.
It's just 2024.
If there is a well-made product, there is a group of people who center more of their identity than is rational around it.
But it looks like it's a free cup you get if you're in the hospital.
Yeah.
Sure.
Yeah.
I don't, I just, I don't know.
I, I, I've seen every angle on the cup discourse, and I was like, hmm, ultimately.
I didn't even having a cup unless you're in a place where you can't carry a weapon.
And so you want to have something that you could bash someone's skull with.
You could bash a skull with a Stanley for real.
You kind of do some damage.
I have a similar cup that I only take out when I know I can't carry a gun somewhere.
I have a fighting cup.
I have one good cup, and Sophie gave it to me for my birthday a couple years ago.
And I use it every day.
Yep.
The end.
I knew a lady when I lived in Guatemala whose tactic, she got mugged very badly once.
Whenever she was going out on the town, she would have a full bottle of wine with her.
And she was like, because as an expat or whatever in a foreign city, you never look weird carrying a bottle of wine somewhere.
But if you hit someone in the face with a bottle of wine, it tends to disrupt whatever they're doing, like pretty effectively.
I'm like, all right.
That's, that's not an unreasonable way to look at it.
I like, I mean, in the best case scenario, you have a bottle of wine.
Like you kind of got a bottle.
It's not useless.
I mean, I can really get behind that reasoning.
And, you know, women have to innovate.
Absolutely.
I believe in the Stanley Cups as a weapon.
I have no opinion on this round of discourse.
I'm just excited for the new Ariana Grande album.
Ladies, if you have a weird Stanley thing, this is your podcast.
I think there's probably a lot of money in saying that.
So that's why I'm saying it.
Anyway, I think the only real Stanley Cup I observe is the one that comes out right after the Zamboni at the end of the season.
That's the Stanley Cup that I like.
Anyways, what are we talking about?
What's the show?
Oh, man.
You know, this is, we've gone too off too far, but I did hear from a friend recently that a hockey player killed a guy by cutting his throat with his skates on accident.
Oh, come on.
And that sounded like a thing that would happen in a movie, but it's real.
So was this like, I was like, I bet, was this like a long time ago?
No, I think this was pretty recently.
It was recent, really.
Raising Kids In The Cult00:14:58
I was like, my dad definitely told me about skate energy, but it was a kill.
I think my dad talked about like some 80s critical injury where that happened.
This was a kill.
This was a kill with the skates.
So it works.
Brutal.
Anyway.
Occupational hazard.
Yeah.
Back to the Finders cult.
We know a few ex-members made complaints to the police over the first 20 years or so of the cult.
And there's a couple of reports you get from cops after this all blows up into the big case that we're building towards where police officers in like the DC area would be like, yeah, we knew about them.
They were weird.
We kept trying to find a way to like arrest them all, but they weren't committing any crimes.
It's a very, they're all very cop quotes where they're like, yeah, we kept looking into them, but couldn't find any justification to ruin their lives.
So we just moved on.
But we're really happy something finally happened because we knew they were weird.
Cop brain.
Now, over the course of almost 20 years of existence, a number of children are born into the cult.
They were raised communally and they were known to tell interviewers when they were asked, like, who's your dad?
And they would say, he's my dad, and he's my dad, and he's my dad.
And that sounds like it could be fine.
There's, God knows, thousands of cultures and societies over the course of human life where like that's the way it worked to some extent, in part because they did not fully understand the way genetic inheritance worked and in part because like had different attitudes on monogamy and stuff.
Like that, that kind of thing has been done.
It's a way kids can be raised.
That's not fully what's happening here, right?
Because the kids are told that like, oh, all of the men here are your dads.
But most of the men in the cult had no desire to raise those children, right?
They're just being told by Perry, all of the kids are your responsibility.
And they were like, sure, I guess, and then didn't pay any attention to the children.
So as a result, it was not uncommon for kids to kind of get neglected because the actual biological dad is being told all of the men are also their father.
So it's like, well, I don't have to work as hard.
And also all of the other men are like, well, I didn't have that kid.
I'm not going to take care of it.
Oh, God.
Yeah.
Whenever you hear stories, I mean, it's like it's frequently cults, but also just like it takes the, it takes a village logic resulting in a whole herd of adults failing to take care of a child.
So frustrating.
Yeah.
Yeah.
There's, there's like, one of my favorite stories, and I think I caught, I think I read this in the book Sex at Dawn, was this like an indigenous group in, I believe somewhere in South America where like, and this is, you know, we're talking about an older set of beliefs, but like their, their attitude was like, it's not children aren't made by like one father, right?
Like once you're you're pregnant, you like sleep with other guys who have skills that you like and they all contribute to the kid.
And the pragmatic result of this is that like, well, this woman says that like, well, these four men are the men who made that baby and they're all responsible for taking care of the kid.
So it's a, it's an adaptive strategy when you're dealing with like higher rates of mortality in the community, right?
The kid doesn't have one adult looking after him or two.
It has like five or six and that's functional.
Very much not what's happening here.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
And that also just sounds like building a video game character, not a human cult.
I wish it worked that way, actually.
Yeah, that's a better way.
You're like, well, this guy isn't, you know, very like handy.
Let me just go fuck a guy who is.
Yeah.
That dude's got a hammer.
I'm going to go fuck him real quick and really level up the kid.
I wish it was like that.
That would be great.
You would be having so much.
That would be so much better.
The greatest nine months of your life.
Just like creating super soldiers.
Just a crowd showing up outside of the Olympic village every four years.
My God.
Okay.
Well, that's a fun.
I mean, that's a fun idea.
I wish it was a fun idea.
At least a good short story in that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's a George.
That's it.
That's a George Saunders B-side waiting to happen.
Yeah.
So kids in this cult are kept out of schools and given an eclectic education.
It's one of those things where, like, it kind of depends when in the cult and like what adults you're around because they're in a couple of locations.
Some of those kids learn a lot of stuff, right?
They're around really smart, educated people who take it upon them to like train those kids.
They hang out and like, you know, helping to start these businesses or do these spying missions.
I'm sure they learn a lot.
And other kids run around on like a farm and don't learn how to read, right?
Like it's, it's a mix of those things are all happening.
What a beautiful gradient.
Yeah, this will become meaningful later, but on one occasion, the cult slaughters a pair of goats and like let the kids kind of help in that process, play around with the remains too.
What is it with this group and remains?
It's just, I don't know, kids like, kids like dead animals.
You know, that's that's classic.
That's like that famous gift you get a kid, you know, a dead animal, bring them to a child.
I mean, walk them in a room together.
That's how parenting works.
Kids like goo.
Maybe that's a good guy.
Kids do like goo.
I liked goo.
Yeah.
Don't we all like goo?
That's why Starship Troopers was such a, such a hit.
So George, George Petty, Marion's son, would later give a description of the cult's child rearing practices to the Washington Post.
Quote, he said the lives of the children are unpleasant because group members rear them collectively.
Frequently, Marion Petty, now 66, would assign a follower to a game or adventure overseas or in another city.
And the group member would not see his children for months.
George Petty said the group engaged in constant babysitting.
I wouldn't want to be a child there without a reliable day in, day out parent figure.
He said if the children found in the van in Florida, I bet you a buck you'll find their biological mothers live in W Street.
That's the occult's other location.
And if they're not up there now, they're off on some adventure.
This is later when those kids get found, as I opened the episode, right?
Like he's saying basically, these kids are neglected a lot.
I don't think they're ever, there's no goal to abuse them.
They believe things because Petty has all these theories about child rearing that wind up not being great for these kids, but they're not like going out of their way to harm them, right?
It's just a bad social experiment.
Yeah.
And again, like the goal, the goal that is leading to these children being neglected is so mysterious.
Like, I just don't understand.
I might not agree with that, Jamie, because like, oh, what I think is happening here, all these people as cult are raised between the 20s and the 40s.
Not a famously great time for raising kids.
A lot of problems.
A lot of kids getting the shit beat out of them.
Very authoritarian education or kids being pulled out of education to like make money, you know, for their families or they'll starve.
Yeah, being enlisted, being forced into labor too young.
Sure.
And so I don't think it's unreasonable that these people are like, I bet there's a better way to raise kids.
I think what's unreasonable is that they say, and we'll let this one guy decide what it is.
Yes.
That's where the problem comes in.
Yeah.
That is interesting.
I've never heard of like alternative parenting, like, i.e., semi-abusive parenting techniques being framed in that way.
That makes a lot of sense.
Yeah.
Yeah.
This is what it is, right?
Yeah.
Right.
Like, well, this is, it's almost like bad boyfriend logic where you're like, well, it's not what happened to the last time.
So let's see if it works.
And it's usually, it usually doesn't.
Yeah.
Might as well change it up.
Yeah.
So yeah, that article, that Washington Post article also includes some quotes from neighbors who visited the Petty family farm early in the cult's life.
And they, this is like some random man on the street encounters towards how the cult raised children that I found interesting.
In the summer, neighbors saw as many as a dozen children at the farm.
There was always hollering and screaming going on, said Wilmer Richards.
They were always hollering about mama and daddy.
One time I heard one say, I want milk.
Another person said, shut up.
You ain't going to get it.
Again, bad journalism there because it's like, well, was that a kid saying, shut up, you ain't going to get it?
Because that does kind of sound like a kid being angry at another kid.
Or is that an adult saying, fuck you, you don't get milk?
In which case, that's a more abusive scenario.
Right.
Yeah.
I don't know.
Yeah.
But, you know, these kids, this is not, I don't think, the ideal way to raise kids.
Just keeping them boxed in on a farm and not educating them.
I'm going to bravely say I think they're doing a pretty horrible job of raising these kids.
Not a good job with these kids.
Yeah.
Although, again, it's the 70s.
Is this worse than an average parent?
Sure.
Is this massively worse than a lot of people are doing?
Well, I don't know.
I'm just, I think they're doing a bad job, but they're doing, I understand, in the context of like, they're doing a different bad job than the previous generation because there's a wave of new parenting skit that ends up, you know, fucking, I don't know.
We're just fucked.
We're just fucked.
Yeah, we're just fucked.
Again, this is bad.
It's not surprising.
We all, I'm going to guess everyone listening to this knew kids were friends with kids whose parents took variations of this attitude where like, we're different.
We don't, you know, watch over our kids.
Like we're more, we have this more enlightened attitude towards child rearing, but that was just a way of them justifying, I don't pay any attention to my child as opposed to actually trying to give them more freedom, which is good.
Like parents who just like had no idea what was going on with their kids.
You all knew that kid.
We were all or you were that kid, right?
Like what I'm saying is that this is not great child rearing, but it's not weird, right?
Sure, yeah.
In the same way that like, I don't know, I think about like growing up in like an age of like helicopter parenting being on the come up and having some parents that like just were like, well, I don't do that.
I'm doing this brave new thing called not paying attention to my child at all.
You're like, surely we can split the difference.
You literally never met my child.
Yeah.
In 1986, Petty had an idea for a new game.
For reasons that are somewhat obscure to me, he ordered the membership to split into an all-male and all-female dwelling.
Some women who lived independently were ordered to live separately from the men.
The closest thing that I found to an explanation as to why they did this is that some of the women had complained that their baby daddies were using the cult's attitude towards child rearing as an excuse to ignore their kids.
So this is kind of a mark in the less abusive thing as like, yeah, they did this for a few years and like the men were ignoring the kids.
So they changed shit up.
And the way they changed it is Petty has all of the women move into separate apartments from the men.
They live in a separate house and the men are living with the kids and taking care of them.
Right.
He's basically saying, okay, you men have been shirking your job.
We're going to cut the women out of it.
They can all, they're all going to go off and have an adventure and you have to focus on raising the kids right now, which is, again, not misogynist.
Now, is it a good idea for those kids to put up with these guys who don't know what they're doing?
Maybe not.
Yeah, there's many things that are true here.
Yeah, it's a complicated situation because it is like, that is progressive from a gender standpoint, but also really not very responsible.
But we got to vet these dads.
We just got to vet these dads.
We can't count on them learning on the job.
They need, look, again, it's not fair that like, because the women are the ones who have kept these kids from dying, they should have stayed involved in keeping them from dying.
But, you know, you probably should have had like training wheels on the guys, right?
That's all I'm saying.
Yeah.
No, I mean, it's like the child rearing is always going to unfairly fall to women.
That's something we all know.
But it's also like, if I'm leaving my child to a guy that doesn't know how to like exactly.
You know, that's, I think about like when my parents, I mean, and I love my family very much, but when my parents got divorced and my dad, I was like, my dad doesn't know how to do laundry.
What are we going to do?
Like, we're going to die.
I'm not making a general statement about like.
I'm not saying that like, yeah, men should not be allowed.
I'm saying that in this specific case, men can be excellent parents had ignored these kids for years and you shouldn't just give the kids to them without having someone there to make sure they know what they're doing, right?
Yes.
Yeah.
That's all I'm saying.
Yes.
I mean, there's, yeah, obviously there's, there's good male parents, just not in this group.
It doesn't sound like it doesn't seem like a lot of good ones in this group.
Now, what the men are actually pretty good at, and I think the women too, is making money.
And this is an interesting thing.
I think this cult doesn't steal most of the money it gets from its members.
Members, when they join, fold their finances into a big account.
But there are a number of claims from members who are like, if you wanted to take your money out, you could.
Nobody stopped you, right?
That will change eventually.
But for the first like 20 years or so, it's like a big bank.
And the money that people are putting in, they're starting businesses.
And some of those businesses are pretty successful.
And the idea initially from Petty is that like the children that we're having and raising within the cult will inherit these businesses and they'll continue on our mission.
It's never clear what the mission is, but like that's the idea.
We're pooling our resources, starting business, and then we'll make money that we'll pass on to these kids who we're going to raise to be super enlightened, you know, people, right?
Right.
Now, Petty obviously is not a guy with any experience running businesses and he has no real interest in running businesses.
A lot of what they do is like training people on computers.
There's a lot of computer engineers and the finders and Petty doesn't know any of that shit.
So a lot of the management tasks fell on the shoulders of Robert Toby Terrell, who writes the book that is a major source for a lot of our details on Marion's life.
Terrell is a former IRS employee who became a venture capitalist and wound up owning an oil company.
Like he's wealthy.
See, I know anytime you throw a three name in there, something is about to go wrong.
Toby's his nickname that he got in the cult, but yes, that does count.
So Perry's an early member.
He joins in 71 and he abandons his family in order to like, he's got a family, he's got a business, he's got like a house, and he just like meets this guy and leaves it all behind.
He would later say, quote, I was looking for a more meaningful life.
I had already made a pretty big pile of money and I couldn't just go on making more.
There wasn't really much point in that.
Petty offered a more personalized life, more community-oriented, reestablishing the kind of extended family that the human species evolved under.
And I'm not 100% clear.
Did he like leave his kids and wife or like, is he still involved in their life?
It kind of sounds like he was a little bit more.
Were they invited?
Dirty Kids And Police Calls00:09:30
Here's your money.
You've got some money.
I'm going to go leave to be in a cult now.
God, which for the right bad parents could be a blessing.
It could be huge.
Honestly, I love what a problem just resolves itself like that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So things are going pretty well by cult terms for the finders right up until the end of 1986.
Now, the cult at this point has started looking at Tallahassee, Florida as a possible place to expand their operations.
It's net cults in Florida go together.
Like, well, there's nothing that goes together better than that, but it goes together well.
They go together real good.
Several adult male members then decide to drive down to Florida in a van to check out possible locations.
They're scoping out.
Like, are we going to expand to here?
Right.
And because of the aforementioned shift in child rearing that had occurred, they had a bunch of kids with them, right?
So you get two men in a van with a bunch of small children.
Neither of those men know much about taking care of small children.
They are feeding them a vegan diet, it sounds like, which you can do with a little kid, but you need to be careful about it to make sure they're getting proper nutrition.
And I don't think these men know much other than to hand a two-year-old a carrot.
The optics are objectively bad.
Yes.
This is not going to look good.
I am not surprised that these guys attracted attention.
Yeah.
So the gist of what happens next is that a group of two adult men in suits are spotted by some busybody in Florida with children who seem dirty.
She gets angry and she reports them to the police because she's sure that something is wrong.
The police are like, we're the police.
The last thing we care about is anything.
Fuck off.
So she starts adding details, right?
She's like, okay, they don't care that these two men in suits are around a bunch of dirty kids.
So she starts adding shit.
And she's, you know, the kind of Floridian lady who calls the police when she sees some men in suits that look like hippies.
So she's.
Hey, don't limit that to Florida.
There's a lot of neighbor.
There's neighbor ladies all over this great nation willing to call the cops for any reason.
Yeah.
And this is the late 80s.
So the satanic panic is in full swing right now.
Right.
So after a couple of phone calls, the cops don't bite.
She starts folding in claims that these people are Satanists, you know, to try to make them do something.
Okay.
And I want to, I'm going to read to you an excerpt from a police report on the arrests that happens after this because it shows how kind of how much this woman who calls them really force, how she's like building, consciously building a story to force the cops to do something.
In December of 1986, the woman's name called the Intelligence Division and reported that she had information concerning a cult operating in the District of Columbia.
Blank was advised that Detective Blank of this office handled cult investigations and was currently out of town would contact her after his return.
She was contacted in late December by Detective Blank by telephone and advised that she wished to be interviewed concerning this cult.
Detective Blank and Detective Blank of the Maryland Park Police, she claims to these guys that a section of the cult was operating in Maryland.
They interview her at her residence and she says that like, yeah, now after making her initial call, she starts claiming that like, oh, these guys actually tried to bring me into the cult and they tried to recruit me.
And the police are like, well, that's interesting, but that's still, there's nothing illegal with trying to get someone to join a cult.
So call back when you have more.
So in January of 87, the next month, she calls back again being like, okay, these guys are Satanists.
I'm aware that they're Satanists.
And the detective, to his credit, is like, well, that's still not a crime.
But then he's like, wow, base police, detective.
Base police.
But he is interested.
Like, I want to figure out what's happening.
So he like calls another detective and is like, let's keep in the loop about this in case something happens.
And so there's like, there's some interest in the police about these guys.
And they get yet another call on February 4th, 1987 and decide to send some police out to check on the matter.
Right.
And the call comes in from someone in the neighborhood who sees like there's these group of men dressed as a ska band with a van full of dirty children.
I called that woman a busybody because like she calls the police repeatedly over these guys and keeps kind of bugging them about it.
Well, and I feel like there is an element of, I mean, I could think of people like shitty neighbors throughout my life as well who like once the police engage with them, they feel, you know, they seem empowered to be like, oh, I'm a part of, I'm a part of this, you know, and continue to engage in sometimes like in increasingly nonsense ways.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it's also, this is kind of the most important thing for me to note is that like not everyone who lives in this neighborhood where these guys have their van and these kids sees anything sinister here.
One of the articles I found cites a college professor who lived in the area, John Matthews, who is like, Yeah, you know, there were like a close-knit group of feminists who like to help people.
They're not a cult.
You know, people talk about them because of their lifestyle, but I think they're pretty harmless.
So there's like not everyone, there's like, it seems to be this woman specifically thought something was wrong here.
Now, to be fair to her, these kids do seem to be like dirty and perhaps not well cared for.
Right.
And like she's totally off base.
She's not totally off base for the wrong reasons.
Yeah.
And it's weird that she like lies about Satanism, basically.
Maybe she believed it.
Like, all, but like, if you see kids that you think are being abused and the police repeatedly won't do anything, maybe that's the action you take.
I don't know.
Yeah, I mean, or, or just, I mean, like, given how low the bar was to believe someone was a Satanist in the 80s, I mean, who knows?
She could be going off of any number of faulty yardsticks there.
So finally, February 4th, after repeated calls, the police send a couple of officers to check on these guys.
And they find two men living with six kids aged two to seven.
The kids are described as being really dirty.
They have a lot of bug bites.
The cops, I think, initially described them, or at least one cop initially describes them as like malnourished.
The van is kind of smelly.
They seem to have been hyping up how like the fact that they were malnourished.
Further reporting and like medical investigation did not show the kids were in like bad health.
And like one of the officers who responds is a woman and she actually kind of pushes back at the idea that the kids were particularly dirty because all of like the news reports when this blows up are like filthy children uncared for in the back of a van.
And this lady officer is like, my first impression is that they were dirty, but I would not say they were unusually dirty for kids.
Right.
Like, yeah, they're kind of like gross, but that's children, you know?
Interesting.
I still don't know where to, where to land up because it's just like, it's such a, yeah, it's such a fraud issue.
And it's like anyone could, everyone sounds like they're a degree of right situation.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's that.
And I think that is kind of where we are.
Cause like, I actually can't blame the police for being like, all right, well, there's this lady really concerned that these kids are being mistreated and they're dirty.
We should probably check in.
And like they're trying to do nothing.
And it would also be very like the police to do nothing.
Yeah.
Let's check in on this.
Right.
And so they do.
And they find, you know, one of the men is the biological father of one of the children.
The other guy has nothing to do biologically with any of the kids.
None of their other parents.
But he had sex with a pregnant woman and thinks that that would make one of these kids good at basketball.
Yeah.
It's good stuff.
One of the officers, the responding female officer wrote this in her report.
This writer spoke to suspect one who stated that he and suspect two were teachers from Washington, D.C., and they were en route to Mexico with the children.
Suspect one stated that they were going to Mexico to set up a school for brilliant children.
When asked about the parents of the children, suspect one became very evasive and stated that the children's parents were in Washington, D.C.
So this is the lie.
And it will later come out that Petty had told them that if the cops ask you why you're driving around these kids, say you're taking them to Mexico to start a school for geniuses.
Like that's, that's his lie that he comes up with to tell the cops.
You're taking these other people's kids to Mexico to make a baby Harvard.
That is like crime mad lips.
So funny.
That's escaping the country mad lips.
Because if you just said like, yeah, we're watching some friends' kids, you know, we're all about to move down here.
We're looking for a house.
Like cops probably leave, but you're like, we're taking them to Mexico to make baby Harvard.
Well, yeah, of course you're getting arrested now.
That's clearly sex criminal stuff.
Jesus.
Okay.
So, so there, I mean, it's like, are they what?
I don't know why I'm trying to understand why they would say this.
Everyone's been behaving weird for two decades, and this is the first time people seem to care.
It's happening.
Baby Harvard, that is just, that's just a step too far.
We have to draw the line at baby Harvard, says the police.
I'm always saying that, and so are the police.
And you know what else the police are saying, Jamie?
Oh, no.
Don't buy the products that support this podcast.
We, the police, hate them.
Yeah.
The perfect cry.
Vorshak Murder Secrets Revealed00:03:30
Well, I just took my wallet out.
My wallet's never been in my pants even once.
Let's not think too deep into the optics of that.
I don't know.
Uh-huh.
Okay.
I actually don't have a wallet.
Yes.
I just keep my cards loose in my pants.
There's two golden rules that any man should live by.
Rule one, never mess with a country girl.
You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.
And rule two, never mess with her friends either.
We always say that, trust your girlfriends.
I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of The Girlfriends.
Oh my God, this is the same man.
A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.
I felt like I got hit by a truck.
I thought, how could this happen to me?
The cops didn't seem to care.
So they take matters into their own hands.
I said, oh, hell no.
I vowed I will be his last target.
He's going to get what he deserves.
Listen to the girlfriends.
Trust me, babe.
On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
What's up, everyone?
I'm Ego Modern.
My next guest, you know, from Step Brothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network, it's Will Farrell.
My dad gave me the best advice ever.
I went and had lunch with him one day, and I was like, and dad, I think I want to really give this a shot.
I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings.
I'm working my way up through it.
I know it's a place they come look for up and coming talent.
He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet.
Yeah.
He goes, but there's so much luck involved.
And he's like, just give it a shot.
He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hang in there.
Yeah, it would not be.
Right, it wouldn't be that.
There's a lot of luck.
Listen to Thanks Dad on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
10-10 shots fired, City Hall building.
A silver .40 caliber handgun was recovered at the scene.
From iHeart Podcasts and Best Case Studios, this is Rorschach.
Murder at City Hall.
How could this have happened in City Hall?
Somebody tell me that.
Jeffrey Hood did.
July 2003.
Councilman James E. Davis arrives at New York City Hall with a guest.
Both men are carrying concealed weapons.
And in less than 30 minutes, both of them will be dead.
Everybody in the chamber's ducks.
A shocking public murder.
They scream, get down, get down.
Those are shots.
Those are shots.
Get down.
A charismatic politician.
He just bent the rules all the time, man.
I still have a weapon, and I could shoot you.
And an outsider with a secret.
He alleged he was a victim of flatmail.
That may or may not have been political.
Confirmed Sexual Abuse Neglect00:12:11
That may have been about sex.
Listen to Vorshak, murder at City Hall on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Ah, we're back and pretending I didn't say the thing that we bleeped out of the podcast.
So the cops are talking to these people.
The Finders members come up with their brilliant lie written by Petty that they're just taking these kids to Mexico.
And the police are like, where are their mothers?
And so the men tell the lie that Petty had told them to say, which is that they're being weaned off of their mothers.
Again, every bit of this is like exactly what you would say if you wanted the police to think you're sex criminals.
This is yeah, it really is a masterclass in what not to say.
In a situation where I think that they are being set up to get away with it, whatever it is.
Yeah, that or Petty wanted to create a conspiracy theory.
And so he sent these guys off to get in trouble.
I don't know.
I don't know.
So the officers at this point decide to arrest these guys on suspicion of child abuse.
Not necessarily unreasonable given what they've been told.
Yeah, I just, you have to say it.
And it's particularly reasonable because they're doing this so that they can have medical professionals talk to and inspect the kids, right?
Are they malnourished?
Have they been beaten?
Have they been molested?
That's pretty important to know, given everything that's happened here.
And so they tell the men, like, you're under arrest on suspicion of child abuse.
And one of the men pretends to faint.
And this is the police officer describing it.
The guy just did a fake faint.
I've seen it several times.
Women are real good at doing it.
Usually when a guy really faints, you don't bend the knees.
This guy did the Scarlet O'Hara thing.
I checked him.
I looked at his eyes to make sure he wasn't diabetic or something.
I said, get up.
I know you're faking this mess.
And he wouldn't get up.
It was like a child playing, like when you go to check if they're asleep at night.
This cult is not finding very strong soldiers.
Okay.
They're just like, he, oh my stars and stripes.
I'm being accused of what?
Child molestation.
This is just, oh, God.
Everyone in this scenario is flopping.
Let's get these kids out of here.
Away from the police.
Away from these guys.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Let's do it.
And so while this is all happening, this guy's fake fainting.
The cops are doing their arrest thing.
A group of local teens sees the commotion and one runs home to get their video camera, returning just in time to film the arrest.
It became a local story and people tipped off the news who immediately jumped on a possible tale of a pedophile van.
Because the initial complaint from that woman said they were Satanists, that's what came out in some of the first coverage of the event and the story snowballed from there.
The fact that fired everybody up and ensured this became a media circus was that a police spokesman had stated at a press conference that, quote, physical examinations showed sexual abuse to one of the children.
Now, this is extremely serious.
Allegations do not get much worse than that, right?
And that is a serious thing if a child was found to have been sexually abused.
Whether or not that's the whole cult or one guy in it who was given like control over children because of Petty's weird game, either way, serious problem, right?
Absolutely.
Much of the reputation of the finders of why they're part of conspiracy theory centers around this statement, right?
That specifically one of these children was found to have been abused.
Here's the problem.
That is not an accurate statement based on what the cops had been told at that point.
Now, In this case, it's not fully their fault because a health and human services caseworker had told a police officer that two of the children were confirmed sexual assault victims.
Now, a couple of things here.
Number one, that means the police are still wrong because they said that one child had been abused and they were told by the health and human services rep that two children had been shot.
But also, the health and human services representative had not been told that a child was a confirmed sexual assault victim.
That was also a lie to the police.
Not a lie, a misstatement at the very least.
It's unclear as to why that misstatement was made, but I'm going to quote from reporter John Cohen here.
The doctor's dictation, the doctor who inspected the kids, transcribed the day after the exam, cautiously described possible sexual abuse of one boy and one girl.
He described abnormal characteristics of one girl's hymen and one boy's anus that might be evidence of assault, but were not diagnostic of it.
In other words, the doctor did his job.
He looked at these kids and he found two kids who had physical symptoms that might have been the result of past sexual abuse.
But here's the thing: you know, the hymen, we know that like that is a thing that can be broken when somebody with a vagina loses their virginity.
But like horseback riding, you can ride.
Yeah, like you could go Jamie style and break it on a bike seat.
Yeah, on a bike seat.
It's very painful.
Likewise, this boy, there were characteristics of irritation in his anus that sometimes are evidence of past sexual abuse, but also like if you have diarrhea, because like the guys watching you are like feeding you old vegetables and like don't not really giving you a good diet, perhaps your anus becomes irritated, right?
It's not diagnostic.
We don't know.
And I hate that like we have to get into like the whataboutism of like determining what constitutes child abuse.
And like, oh, it's just so, I don't know.
And especially in the, during this era with the satanic panic, there's like just a whole history of sensationalism and that goes through the QAnon era that just, it just makes, it makes me so mad because it just like cases like this lead to like real act, like actual allegations being completely blown off.
And like, that's why these movements are so counterintuitive to actually, I mean, I know I'm like a broken record with this shit, but it's just, oh, that's so unbelievably frustrating that it's like, you have to get that granular to, you know, make sure that these children are actually safe without empowering a fucking cult.
It's just, yeah.
It's, it's very frustrating because like what the doctor has done here is his job, which is like, we should look into what's happening to these kids more because this could be evidence of sexual abuse, which is a responsible thing to say.
A health and human services rep hears that and then just says, yep, we've confirmed two kids were raped.
And then the cops say, yep, we've confirmed one kid was raped.
It's just this like, this chain of every adult but the doctor in this situation just being dipshits.
And as a result, suddenly the news comes out and America believes these men were caught taking kids to Mexico and molesting them, right?
And that that's confirmed.
We know that, right?
Which is not the case.
Now, is this evidence of abuse or neglect?
Definitely neglect.
I think we definitely have neglect here, right?
Absolutely.
That's clear.
Maybe even abuse.
Would not be impossible that one or both of the men traveling with these kids did something fucked up too, but they will be found innocent.
Well, and because, well, and that sounds like it's completely because of how incompetent the investigation is.
Yes.
So, you know, I would say you should probably investigate further when something, you know, like this happens before you talk to the press.
But the police just go to the press and say, yep, we've confirmed a kid was raped and the press is off to the races.
I'm going to quote here from that city paper article.
The Miami Herald and Washington Post ran page one stories three days in a row.
The state New York Times reported that some have described the Finders, his bizarre cult of devil worshipers.
Everyone got in on the act.
Connie Chung, Larry King, CNN, even the BBC.
And like, that's so from the New York Times that's such a fucking New York Times thing to be like, well, there's no evidence of anything yet, just a very unclear case.
But some random lady in Florida said they're Satanists.
So let's just say some have described them as a cult of devil worshipers.
People are talking about this.
Yes.
Do the people saying this know anything?
No.
But it's just like the most like satanic panic sensational.
I mean, that still continues, but that's.
Yeah.
And it's like, for what?
This is like, this sounds like the first time in media, at least, where there is some purpose being ascribed to this cult.
Like, you know, they, maybe they were relieved to find out that they were evil Satanists because they're like, we're not really sure what we were supposed to be doing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's uh just let this grave-robbing child like gamify our lives for some reason.
And now we're starting baby Harvard.
To be to be a conspiracist here, again, it's not beyond possibility that Petty was the one who orchestrated the call to the police because he wanted to create a media circus.
Like, that's not impossible.
Um, I don't have any evidence for it, but he, he's going to send once the press gets on this.
He has some members of the finders give statements to the media that are like purposefully crazy or bizarre.
Like, usually not just like unhinged, but like weird in a way that will make people more suspicious because it's part of a game to him.
Like these women's, six women's children have been taken into custody or multiple women's children, because I think one of them had two, have been taken into custody and are wards of the state for a period of weeks.
Their mothers can't take them home.
And he's like, I'm a merry prankster.
Let's keep fucking with the press.
We'll give the police conflicting statements.
What fun this all is.
As these moms are like losing their minds because their kids are locked away from them.
It's their fucking kids.
And then also that it makes it clear that like to whatever degree this neglect or abuse is happening, he doesn't give a shit.
He's like cosplaying as like the fucking lobotomy joker.
Yes, yes.
I'm not a great person.
Do I think it sounds fun to convince the police that you're like running some sort of satanic conspiracy?
Of course.
But once children get taken by the state of Florida, it's time to stop playing.
If you don't want children in the clutches of the state of Florida, that's even worse than these guys watching them, right?
The situation keeps getting worse.
It is very funny.
The police are clearly like just thrilled that they're getting all this attention.
There's like quotes from police officials about like, I'm going to be on Connie Chung, hot dog.
So like, yeah, you won't be surprised to hear that like as this becomes a huge media thing, the police who'd kind of been like, all right, well, let's, let's figure out what's happening.
It's not super clear what's going on.
Let's do an investigation are immediately like, all right, it is time to carry out a series of raids across the country on every property these people own.
Because, you know, this might be, this could be a career maker, right?
If this is a devil sex cult thing, we could really do well by getting big on this stuff.
Sure.
And, you know, so a series of raids are launched.
The police start going after Finders' properties, you know, up in the Northeast around the DC area.
And because these kids have crossed state lines and there's allegations, at least there's some sort of child trafficking going on, that's interstate commerce.
And when interstate commerce gets involved, that means that the feds who are going to get involved are the customs department, right?
So it's customs that's carrying out a lot of these raids.
And that's going to be a real problem because one of the customs agents who gets involved in this is a, shall we say, conspiracy enthusiast.
And he's really going to, really going to cause some fun for us in the next part.
Coolzone Media Weekly Wrap00:04:52
But Jamie.
Yes.
That's all we've got for this week.
I think there's going to be one more.
That's a lot.
That's a lot.
More, maybe two, but probably just one.
But we'll get to that next week.
This week.
We're done.
This is a queasy.
This is this.
This is a fucking queasy one.
I will say, like, there's so many, so many conversations we've had over the years are just straight up clearly bad.
This one is like, it feels, it doesn't feel like it happened 35 years ago.
It feels like it happened recently, unfortunately.
This stinks.
I'll bravely say this stinks.
Well, that's good.
I agree.
It does stink.
But you know what doesn't stink, Jamie?
Well, podcasts, particularly the podcast you're about to launch for us.
It's true.
Yeah.
What are you doing in that podcast, Jamie?
What are you going to be doing?
Thanks for the tee-up, Robert.
Well, I've got a new show coming out on CoolZone Media.
Ever heard of it?
That you and Sophie are letting me make.
It's called 15 Minutes.
It is about some of the most notorious, particularly main characters of the internet, but people who had a strong impression on people for one or two days.
And we see where they're at, what happened to them, if they had impact on the world, and if they are upset that they are remembered as, for instance, 30 to 50 Feral Hogs guy, who I intend to maybe get justice for.
I don't know.
We got to talk to him.
But anyways, that comes out in March.
And Jamie, is that a weekly podcast?
Oh, yeah, it is.
And it's a weekly podcast.
Yeah.
Because there's just so many of these motherfuckers.
I often get asked, how do we get more Jamie Loftus?
And it's your Greenlander Weekly Jamie Loftus podcast.
You're welcome.
Yes.
And soon you'll never be asking that question again.
You'll be asking, could I have less?
And how do I avoid?
And I'm happy to help out there as well.
Well, that's all a good time.
Well, everybody, that's going to do it for us here at Behind the Bastards this week.
You know, until next week, if you start what might be some sort of sex cult or might just be basically DD for you and your friends, don't let children get taken into custody by the state of Florida.
It's not worth it.
Just a thought.
The one takeaway.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's where I am.
Bye.
Behind the Bastards is a production of CoolZone Media.
For more from CoolZone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands.
I vowed I will be his last target.
He is not going to get away with this.
He's going to get what he deserves.
We always say that.
Trust your girlfriends.
Listen to the girlfriends.
Trust me, babe.
On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
What's up, everyone?
I'm Ago Modern.
My next guest, it's Will Farrell.
Woo, My dad gave me the best advice ever.
He goes, just give it a shot.
But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hang in there.
Yeah, it would not be.
Right, it wouldn't be that.
There's a lot of life.
Listen to Thanksgiving on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
In 2023, bachelor star Clayton Eckard was accused of fathering twins, but the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax.
You doctored this particular test twice, Miss Owens, correct?
I doctored the test once.
It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern.
Two more men who'd been through the same thing.
Regalespi and Michael Manchini.
My mind was blown.
I'm Stephanie Young.
This is Love Trapped.
Laura, Scottsdale Police.
As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.
Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.