Episode 64: The Finders Cult & Satanic Ritual Abuse
Q is back. The Aussie prime minister is probably pilled. Plus we address the big question of 2019: is goat sacrifice cool or satanic? The main topic is the Finders "cult" and their leader Marion Pettie. It involves the FBI, the Washington police, the CIA and six children in a van.
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Welcome, listener, to the 64th chapter of the QAnon Anonymous podcast, the Finder's Group and Satanic Ritual Abuse episode.
As always, we're your hosts, Jake Rakitansky, Julian Fields, and Travis View.
Q is back!
I thought I'd get that out of the way.
All right.
We're going to be exploring it more in the QAnon News segment, but I just want to know, how are you feeling, boys?
You know, I feel like Q is a bit of a software schlump.
For fuck's sake!
He took a little bit of sabbatical.
He came back.
I'm expecting him to bring the heat.
I was expecting more.
Yeah, I was very rich from someone who built his career on this guy.
I have to admit, I found the whole thing a little anti-climactic.
Jake often goes on 8chan and expects to climax, and he didn't.
I didn't.
Nobody really knew if it was real.
Like, Sather tweeted, what?
With like a bunch of T's and he was like, he was like, could this be the new Q drops like waiting for confirmation or whatever?
But are you so codependent that you look to Sather to figure out your own emotions, Jake?
No, but I, but if Sather's not 100% on it, then I'm not 100% on it.
And so Sather isn't 100% on being a human being on earth.
Like he's not.
Not clearly made of flesh.
I went to the normal channels, I was looking, and people seemed hesitant, which is really funny because nobody knows if this thing is real, so they're constantly worried about getting embarrassed and trolled, so nobody really wanted to go out on a limb and be like, yes, this is definitive Q or whatever.
So you felt...
So I saw then later in the night, QAnon76 and a couple other people that said, yes, OK, these are different.
They've been added to QMap and all that stuff.
And I was like, OK, so they're legit.
But by then, my boner had already sort of wilted a little bit.
You know what I mean?
OK, well, I just wanted a quick emotional reaction because we're going to cover it in the news.
But if you want to get into your boner wilting, I mean, that's fine, too.
I mean, it was, you know, Travis, back me up here.
Like, it was kind of anticlimactic, you know?
Yeah, yeah.
I was expecting something just big and dramatic, not like all this rot.
We'll get into it.
I don't know, man, because I've read articles about Travis View recently and, like, there's reasons why he's trying to downplay this.
So this week we're tackling the Finders cult, a secretive organization accused of satanic ritual child abuse.
We'll take a look at the original case from 1987, trace where it went from there, and finally take a deep dive into the organization's pre-WWII roots and their outlandish leader, a man called Marion Petty.
The Finders have recently gotten fresh attention when the FBI declassified a trove of documents related to them.
But was this declass just a way of distracting you from the fact that nobody is covering or prosecuting the vast and very real cabal of pedophiles and child traffickers involved in the Epstein case?
Yes.
Probably.
Maybe.
Definitely.
Allegedly.
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You're gonna say it again?
Okay, it's good, I guess, reminding people.
It's like the, what do they call that, when you try to inseminate someone's mind with thoughts?
Inception.
Yeah, it's that.
It's that.
It's Inception.
It's Inception.
Okay, but can I keep calling it insemination?
Alright, moving on.
Before we jump into our main topic, it's time for the dreaded... QAnon News.
Of course, our number one story is 8Koon goes live and ushers in the second coming of Q.
It finally happened roughly three months after the last queue drop on August 1st, and 8chan went down on August 4th to rebrand its site.
8kun went live on November 2nd.
Like 8chan creator Frederick Brennan discussed on our last episode, for the past few weeks he's been successfully encouraging third-party server providers to drop 8kun as a client.
Which we did not found.
This is not just to get the podcast back on track.
Aitkoun was able to go live thanks in part to a Russian company called VDCNA.
Which we did not found.
This is not just to get the podcast back on track.
No, no, no.
Nothing to do with this Russian server house.
Our numbers, by the way, are not flagging.
Yeah.
We keep hearing that from people on Gab, on Vote, on Aitkoun saying that Travis is a shill
and writing long articles about the history of Travis and how he's tied to George Soros.
That article, by the way, amazing.
Yeah, I'm very proud.
I fucking love it.
And our name is all over it.
Thank you so much for giving us the attention, everybody.
So the CEO of that Russian company is Nick Divas.
And on Twitter, Nick did respond to requests to give 8chan the boot.
And here's what he said.
Thank you for the report.
Unfortunately, it's likely it'll take us more than 24 hours to respond due to several factors.
We need to analyze the content.
The website owner is not our direct customer, but rest assured we will act diligently.
So they are taking a look at it.
Maybe they're going to get the boot again.
We'll find out.
Yeah.
He wants to check the boards before.
Yeah.
He's like, okay, fine, I'll let it go.
I'll take it down, but I just want some Q-drops.
Just please.
Please, something.
Anything.
So, but this does not mean that Frederic's efforts were in vain, even though 8kun is up.
So the site is mostly not accessible on the ClearNet right now.
Yeah, it's on and off.
Yeah, so the ClearNet is just the regular Internet you could access directly via browsers like Safari or Chrome.
Do you have any other browsers for us?
No, those are the two browsers.
I'd like to throw Firefox in there.
Why not?
Sure.
I'd like to throw Netscape in there.
If you're reading 8chan and you're a big fan, use Netscape.
We recommend it.
So instead, users have to rely on anonymous networks like Tor or LokiNet in order to view the website.
I'm not familiar at all with LokiNet, but apparently they're using that.
Ooh, it's a trickster network!
Brother Thor!
So even on the Darknet, though, the site is very slow and buggy already.
There have been several long hour stretches with no new posts anywhere on the site because the posting feature wasn't working.
So just imagine a child pornographer somewhere just cursing and beating his computer screen as he tries to upload a single JPEG.
For fuck's sake!
Okay, but despite that, Q was able to create a few new drops.
Create?
Wow, you think he's an artist?
He is an artiste.
You're very excited about this, aren't you?
So after 3,570 drops, the QAnon community was eagerly awaiting the first drop since 8chan went down.
And here it is.
is drop 3571 slash BAS underscore test slash to Wow Yeah, that's it.
Drop 3,571.
That was that.
That was the first guess how he announced his return.
See, this is what I'm talking about.
It's like, well, what the fuck is this bullshit?
That's how you feel about dramatic.
Well, because the because the thing is, I would prefer to I'm back.
I'm back would like would be an awesome.
Yes.
Yes, that would be.
But the thing is, you've got to remember, you've got to remember this is this is a military LARP.
And so there's no There's no, like, English sentence that you could put together that could sum up the gravitas of this, you know, this three-month absence and then return, I think.
I think people would be disappointed.
So, I do think that it was smart to go with something that people would be like, oh, clearly he's signaling to the big team.
This is stuff that's over our head.
This is military intel codes.
Well, that's how we know that this is serious.
He's back.
He's doing it.
I don't know.
I can see Brad Pitt being like, this is the raw intel.
Yeah, because it's like just numbers and letters.
This is the kind of shit that makes them come because they know that on, you know, on some message board somewhere, someone is like putting this into a fucking Excel spreadsheet they've been working on for two years and they're going to output some conclusion.
And they did.
They fucking did.
But let's go through the other.
What do you guys think BAS stands for?
Bullshit, ass, stupid.
Got that one locked and loaded, baby.
All right.
But let's do the other drops as well.
OK.
I've got them saved, of course.
They're all so amazing.
I think my favorite one is the YouTube link.
OK, so the I think the second one was another list.
Yes.
Please go through the list.
OK.
All right.
Enjoy this drop, by the way, listener.
slash sec underscore config underscore a slash one slash sec underscore config slash a one slash two slash sec underscore config slash a two slash three.
I mean, this is... Not to interrupt you Q, but... Not to interrupt you Q, but it goes on like that.
All right.
Give us the last three, four lines.
Give us the last three, four lines.
You get the idea.
E is for espionage.
Welcome to Sesame Street.
Okay, give us the last three lines though before The last three lines are slash D O T underscore route underscore twenty to twenty nine slash D O D.
I mean, incredible stuff.
underscore nine nine nine nine nine nine nine nine slash slash D.O.D.
underscore PAC underscore one two ninety nine slash slash my grandparents
basement slash the log file for my Wi-Fi router slash.
I mean, incredible stuff.
The next post was, if I'm not wrong, just a YouTube link.
Yeah. To a video of a what is described as a slow motion waving American flag.
That's right.
That's right.
That's it.
Flapping American flag.
What do you think?
What do you think it could mean?
Do you think that there is a message coded inside the flag or?
Absolutely.
That America is a great country.
That the flag in the way it's rippling or whatever is actually like Morse code?
Yes, you should definitely study this.
I will.
It won't drive you crazy.
I will, I shall, I have.
I mean, they will anyways, right?
I mean, they're going to.
They're going to.
I'm curious to hear what the interpretations are, but I mean, with a bunch of string of numbers and a floating flag, I mean, you can really do anything.
These are sometimes what I call like raw, raw posts where it's not, it's not about like actually delivering you coded information.
It's about like rallying the troops, getting kind of giving side.
It's like, it's like if this is supposed to be like, uh, if I sort of my sort of channel to, uh, military intelligence, like give us some, some shit, link to a YouTube video.
You have super secret intel and you're giving me links to YouTube videos and Twitter tweets that have already existed before.
on Hillary Clinton's writ like, Oh God, where's the shit?
Where's the fucking shit?
You've been gone for three months.
Where, where is the progress report?
Like, don't go back to fucking, you know what I mean?
Like, where's the progress?
You have super secret Intel and you're, you're giving me links to YouTube
videos and Twitter, you know, tweets that are of already existed before.
Yes.
You're giving me nothing.
Yes.
Dry.
So one of the tweets that he linked to in the last post that he made is to a Twitter account called Three Days and Three Nights.
This was the fourth post?
This was the fourth post.
There were just two links.
This Twitter account references Qdrop3570 that contained the phrase in the kill box, 93DK.
1970 that contained the phrase in the kill box 93
DK so people have said that this stands for 93 days dark.
Yep Now, let's get into... It's a D and a K, that's not even... Donkey Kong.
Dazed Kark?
No, let's actually analyze this, because this kind of... It's Donkey Kong?
This kind of... It broke the immersion for me, to be honest.
I was in, and now this is... You had some screen tearing?
Because what they say... So the last Q Post was August 1st, and they're saying that Q knew That he was going to be down for 93 days exactly.
But it only works if you count it from when Q stopped posting.
So they're taking the 93 days from not the day that he left and the day that he came back, but the day that he left and then two days after he came back and that was the last post so far.
So that's 93 and that works.
I've got problems with this.
It doesn't really track.
Also, I have another problem.
Oh, God.
I have another problem.
This entire thing was dependent on... Jake's head has actually, like, fallen back and, like, it's opened at the neck and there's, like, a voice coming out from a neck hole.
This entire thing was dependent on Jim Watkins getting 8chan back online.
Yeah.
Right?
And he was trying to get it on earlier.
Remember he said it was gonna come on on the 17th and then it didn't and then it was supposed to come on on the 18th and then it didn't.
Yep.
So why is Q quoting a tweet showing that Q knew exactly how many days it would take to come back when The whole thing was dependent on, there's no way he could have known that because Watkins was absolutely trying to get it back up earlier and, you know, a lot of Frederick's efforts, you know, kept it from being back on.
So what this does, at least to me, this moves into more biblical territory.
This is not like, oh, I knew that arrests were coming or I knew that this information was coming out.
This is like, I knew exactly the day that everything would fall into order and 8chan would be put back online.
This is getting into this biblical 40 days and 40 nights shit.
You know what I mean?
As opposed to like, Intel that you're gonna be like, okay, like yeah
I guess you could say that this news report that came out now is
Similar to this post from three months ago or something like that. You know what I mean?
I think you might be like fingers deep in a turd attempting to read it as literature, right?
I you know, you're yeah You know, I understand.
You're disappointed in your God.
I'm just saying that's not a great proof.
I'm saying it's not a great proof.
Of course, even then, as opposed to the other great proofs.
It would rely on Q knowing that the El Paso shooting was going to happen, and then knowing that Cloudflare would drop them, and then knowing the day that Ron Watkins would get the site back up.
And he did.
End of story.
So, second link is true.
Well, there you have it.
That's the argument.
Thank you very much.
It doesn't matter because he did, and it's real, and he did, and he's true, and he's a good man.
Good Christian man.
The more you fight him, the more he's powerful.
Okay, so, Jake, what's the second link?
Okay, the second link is to an account that has blocked me.
So this guy, we didn't even know him, but he blocked every single one of us.
But I can bring up the post because my wife, who shall remain unnamed, has given me a little screen grab.
Okay, so he said, this guy's called Wyatt at Say When LA.
Veteran mob prosecutor John Durham was not appointed by a G bar Durham served as interim u.s. Attorney since October 28th
2017 after sessions appointed him Coincidentally the same day Q began posting President Trump
nominated Durham as a u.s. Attorney on November 1st 2017 fuck me it's happening
So what is he trying to say here Travis Help me.
Help me, please, sir.
Please, daddy.
Right.
So, I think he was trying to say October 28th, 2017 is obviously about, like, okay, he appointed this U.S.
attorney the same day as the Q-drop.
That's code that Q and Durham are aligned.
And the November 1st, 2017 reference is a future-proves-past thing.
So they're saying like, okay, and then two years to the day, almost, that 8chan comes back online from when Durham was nominated.
That means that he's down with Q2.
It's just, they're just lining up things and saying that it's meaningful.
When of course, this is all random data that they're imposing meaning upon.
Okay, you think that, but someone called Murky Rivers says, Q sent me, sunglasses emoji, boy does it feel good to say that again, smiley face.
So what do you have to say to this, Patriot?
I say your family misses you.
Chris Hawkins says, Jesus is Lord.
Focus on, not just Q, but they sure do help.
Warriors help us focus.
And then here Pamela says, on, I get it now.
Had no idea he helped take down, down, down the mob.
The silent but deadly prosecutor.
Hey Q, missed you.
These people are amazing.
I'm so glad he's back.
You guys are fucking cynics and bitches and you don't fucking realize what this podcast owes the beautiful mind behind Q and all these beautiful people out there.
You've actually got it wrong.
See, we're even deeper red pilled.
You're happy that he's back because you're happy for all the content.
You're happy for the people going, oh, daddy, daddy, Q, welcome back.
All that stuff.
That's why you're excited.
Travis and I are waiting for the storm and these posts did not signify any sort of storm happenings, no sort of winds picking up, no sort of... There's not even really something really meaty to decode, you know, it's just... No cold front moving in, no...
It's just nothing.
It's just like back after 30 days, flagging a win.
What I'm saying is that I like Q's earlier work and just not impressed with his latest output.
You know, true heads down.
Yeah, he feels like he's phoning it in a little bit.
You know what I mean?
I hate you both so much.
I'm going to literally kill you one day.
I want, I want, I want something, yeah, a little bit more substantial.
That's, that's, yeah, I was, yeah.
What even are we doing?
What is this podcast?
I don't understand anymore!
I'm gonna fucking lose my mind.
I don't even know.
I don't even know.
It doesn't mean anything.
How are we?
I don't even know.
I feel, you know what I feel like?
I feel like a sandwich with nothing inside of it.
Just two pieces of bread with a thin layer of air in between it.
That's what I feel like.
Empty, empty, unfulfilling, tasteless.
And I want to fuck it.
Julian, so you have a second news item for us.
Oh, I indeed do.
It's my first spot.
I've been allowed by the boss to do some QAnon news this week.
Wow.
Australian Prime Minister's QAnon influencer friend claims to have influenced a speech of his.
A new development in the scandal known as MateGate.
MateGate.
Which links Australian PM Scott Morrison to Tim Stewart, a QAnon influencer who goes by BurntSpy34 on Twitter.
Now, in October of 2018, Morrison addressed Parliament to deliver a formal apology to the survivors of institutional child abuse, which is a very serious thing, but he used words that had not been mentioned in any of the related findings.
Ritual sexual abuse.
Now, Aussie media outlet Crikey has found evidence that... which... Come on, Australia.
Come on, guys.
Give me a fucking break.
You know, at least go for something like The Sun or The Telegraph.
Like, you're gonna just call it by the thing we... Matt, it's Crikey.
We make fun of you with this shit.
Nah, it's, but it's, you know... Yeah.
It's crikey.
Okay, yeah.
So... The crikey times.
Aussie media outlet Crikey has found evidence that Stewart asked his wife to text the Prime Minister about the importance of including the word ritual in his speech.
A conspiracy theorist and QAnon guy going by Eliahi Priest leaked encrypted signal messages between him and Stewart, Burn Spy, as well as posting a statutory declaration, which he had, like, fucking stamped by the government and everything, detailing their relationship.
Priest claims that he acted as a funnel for passing QAnon beliefs to Stewart, who in turn used his wife to get the information to the PM.
Now, the question is, was it successful?
And the morning of the speech, Stewart sent Priest a message saying, quote, After the speech Stuart and his son Jesse celebrated on Twitter, the latter even specifically using the hashtag ritual abuse alongside the usual hashtag where we go on we go all.
This is fucked!
I mean, this basically means that the Australian Prime Minister actually has closer direct ties to QAnon than President Trump does.
Now I have a source close to the matter, I can't reveal anything more than that, but that a very credible source that has revealed that it is entirely, more than likely, highly probable that this did in fact occur, and that Morrison is not only like down with all this stuff, but has actually reviewed Burn Spy's account and agrees with it and is fine with it.
Oh fuck!
I wonder if he's like reading to the Q-drops too.
Fully red-pilled Prime Minister.
Wow, what does it mean?
It means a lot.
Here's the crikey article.
Priest points to more than 50 mentions of Scott in text messages with Stuart.
He's assigned a statutory declaration which claims Stuart told him he had passed on several letters to Morrison via Stuart's wife.
Stuart is on the record telling Priest of a massive connection with Scott tonight.
We are moving fast, he texted.
Scott is awakening.
It's just great.
It's just great to hear that about a Prime Minister.
He is awakening slowly, moving out of his membrane-y cocoon and turning into a beautiful moth.
Alright, the article continues.
In one exchange, Priest points out a reference in the Victorian school's curriculum that 13-year-olds will be taught about anal intercourse.
I am in shock, Stuart responds.
This is going straight to Scott.
I love to send my buddy 13 year old school curriculums about anal sex.
I'm just like, hey, I've been like really reading the hell out of school curriculums today.
I just know it's absolute Christian panic that anybody would be taught about something like that, which by the way,
like I had to learn about that shit.
Yeah, everyone learns about that.
Shut the fuck up!
Like, that doesn't make you a freak.
I became a freak because of other stuff in my life.
Yeah, I had a teacher.
In my school, back in the day, the gym teacher would also do sex ed.
And so the guy who was, you know, doing, like, volleyball and field hockey would then teach you about sex ed.
And my gym teacher, who was 80% deaf in one ear and 60% deaf in the other ear, got up in front of the class and he went, well, now we're going to be doing sex ed.
I'm going to read a bunch of words off a list.
Get your giggles out now.
And I swear to God, this like 60 year old man pulled out a piece of paper and he just started going, penis, vagina, anal sex.
Yeah.
Oral sex.
Jake's specific asshole.
Can you imagine what the reaction was?
Oh, yeah.
Pandemonium.
Of course!
Delight.
Yeah, delight.
It's hilarious.
It's hilarious.
No kid walked out of that class going like, oh, I'm gonna experiment with anal sex tonight.
They went out of that class laughing because, you know, Mr. Gustafson just said fucking penis in front of the entire class.
You know what this reminds me of, actually?
I went to middle and high school with this kid who had really, really religious parents.
He was an American.
And he was so scared of seeming gay, I guess, that he basically said that he didn't wash his asshole.
Like, and we're like, what do you mean?
He's like, yeah, dude, I don't even, like, I don't, just don't, like, he just doesn't.
I don't even want to touch butt.
I don't even touch my own butt.
The idea that you can deny that your asshole exists is just like, that's the level that this is on, you know?
No, no, no, my asshole is fictional, you know?
And you sickos who keep talking about that shit need to stop it, because that's satanic.
This is what I do.
I walk into the bathroom.
I walk in the bathroom, I click my heels together three times, and a poo appears in the bowl, I flush it down, I leave, that's it.
That's what he would say.
No wiping, no nothing.
I walk into the bathroom, I turn around three times, a turd appears in the bowl, I flush it, that's it.
Sometimes I don't even touch the flusher, it flushes itself.
Sometimes when I'm left alone at home, I like to squat over a mirror and just yell at it.
Okay?
I'm furious.
The article continues detailing Priest's claims.
On several occasions, Mr. Stewart made reference to me on Signal to passing information to Prime
Minister Morrison and also attempting to influence the Prime Minister politically,
especially in relationship to the information he had learned from the mystery 8chan poster
Q, whom is at the center of a QAnon conspiracy cult.
Oh, this is so funny.
Yeah, but Priest and Stewart fell out partly due to Stewart's, quote, continuing support of QAnon on 8chan.
So I'm not sure what happened.
Priest doesn't really like, I guess, QAnon anymore.
He used to be definitely 100% red-pilled.
It was an internal feud between two conspiracy theorists who had conspired originally to influence Scott Morrison, the PM, a plan that was complicated by the Guardian article detailing the PM's links to Burn Spy.
Pre-statutory declaration, if false, is punishable by four years in prison.
So it seems that he's quite serious about his claims and was rubbed the wrong way by the Guardian article.
I mean, he did not have to do the statutory declaration.
He went online and was like, I'm going to sign a thing that would bind me to four years in prison if it's false to say that this happened and to leak those signal stuff.
Those signal conversations.
Damn.
So, I mean, he must really believe that, you know, he's got a legal leg to stand on.
Oh, yeah, but my source tells me that absolutely Morrison's on board with this shit.
It's legit?
And Morrison's just, basically, it sounds like off his fucking rocker.
Just out there, red-pilled, like, up the wizz-off.
How long has he been in power?
He became Prime Minister in August of 2018.
Okay, okay.
So it's been a year.
Okay, so he's been in power a year.
And their Prime Minister, that's kind of like the President.
Is that their top, top guy?
That's the President, yeah.
Oh shit, okay.
So their top, top, top guy is more into QAnon than, say, maybe Donald Trump is?
And the funniest shit, yeah.
Yes, I actually would venture to say yes.
If anything, I feel like people like aides around Trump are trying to keep him away from QAnon.
Yeah, yeah.
Like Trump doesn't go up and talk that much about child trafficking and ritual abuse.
He definitely has never said ritual abuse.
No, he's never said that.
I mean, I'm going to definitely keep an eye out for that now.
Sure.
But I mean, I believe in Trump, you know, he can do it.
But I think he just doesn't give enough of a shit.
This guy's way more of an evangelical, like satanic panic guy.
Trump doesn't care.
He doesn't give a shit.
He's not even fucking Christian.
He's just, he's full of shit.
Yeah, he's just... He's a casino magnate, sex pervert, degenerate.
Yeah, I feel like Trump's probably peripherally aware of Q, but just in a manner of like, oh, do they like it?
Do they make them like me more?
Okay, great, all right, fine.
Whatever, figure out what to do with him.
Either way, this is all great, and things are fine.
The case of the Finders.
In the 1980s, the case of the sort of weird cult-like group known as the Finders became a national news item after two arrests.
So that's a good place to start with that incident.
So, on the morning of Wednesday, February 4th, 1987, the Tallahassee Police Department in Florida received a tip that two men were at a local park with six kids in a blue van.
So, Tallahassee Police arrived and questioned the two men, who are both very well-dressed.
They're wearing a suit and tie.
Their names are Douglas E. Ammerman, 27, and Michael Houlihan, 28, and they're both residents of Washington, D.C.
But the children, whose ages range between 2 and 7, looked very dirty.
They were covered in insect bites, apparently hadn't bathed in several days, and most of them weren't wearing underwear.
Documents later revealed that the children's names were Honeybee, John, Franklin, Bebe, Max and Mary.
When the van is searched, please discover 20 floppy computer disks and quote, a device that can be used to hook into a computer in another location by telephone.
Not floppies!
It's got two copies of Leisure Suit Larry, Day of the Tentacle.
It's always very, very disappointing when they do like a kind of live action version of something, you know, but this is clearly Scooby Doo.
So, uh, the two men say that they're taking the, uh, the kids to a school for brilliant children in Mexico.
Ah.
Hmm.
It's actually, the exact words they used was smart children.
The men also say that the children are being weaned from their mothers, which is a weird thing to tell the cops, I guess.
Yeah.
So the cops aren't impressed by the story, and so they arrest the men for misdemeanor child abuse.
So one day after the arrest, the Tallahassee Police Department contacted U.S.
Customs and the Washington Metropolitan Police Department to assist in determining both the adult abuser's identities, alleged abusers, and the children's identities.
This led authorities to a far-reaching investigation that included a group of people known as the Finders.
So this is a group of about 40 people who are led by a man named Marion Petty.
They have a sort of a communal living, alternative lifestyle kind of situation.
Within the basically cult, Marion Petty was known as the Game Caller.
The investigation included their various homes, including an apartment building in Glover Park, a Northeast Washington warehouse, and a 90-acre farm in rural Madison County, Virginia.
A Washington Post article from the time explains what was allegedly retrieved from that Washington warehouse.
D.C.
Police, who searched a Northeast Washington warehouse linked to the group, removed large plastic bags filled with color slides, photographs, and photographic contact sheets.
Some photos visible through a bag carried from the warehouse were wallet-sized pictures of children, similar to school photos, and some were of naked children.
D.C.
police sources said some of the items seized yesterday showed pictures of children engaged in what appeared to be cult rituals.
Officials of the U.S.
Customs Service called in to aid the investigation, said that the material seized yesterday includes photos showing children involved in bloodletting ceremonies of animals and one photograph of a child in chains.
Customs officials said they were looking into whether a child pornography operation was being conducted.
So a confidential anonymous police source had previously told authorities that the finders were a cult that conducted brainwashing techniques at the warehouse.
The source also claimed that the finders tried to recruit this individual with promises of financial reward and sexual gratification.
The source also claimed that one of the finders members invited this person to explore Satanism with them.
Now, it's important to put these sorts of things in context in the 80s.
This was sort of the height of the nationwide satanic panic, where everyone sort of believed baselessly that there was just satanic cults in every town snagging children and sacrificing animals.
It was just part of the environment.
It was kind of hyped up by the tabloid media.
It's also important to note that this source, if you look at the documents leaked by the FBI, Came to the police first saying, this place is a cult, there's like brainwashing stuff happening.
They told her, well, unless there's something illegal, we can't really do anything.
And then she came back a second time, at which point, suddenly, it was about Satanism.
Does it need to add a little bit of spice to the story, apparently.
Yeah, and also that's when they brought in the child abuse stuff, which was not mentioned the first time they approached.
So it was like, please look into this cult.
There's nothing illegal.
Come back a second time and you've got a nicer story.
Yeah, so she clearly went back, she did a second draft, came back.
That's right, yeah.
Got it.
So the U.S.
Customs Service Agency joined the investigation due to the suspicion that potential crimes may have crossed state or national borders.
And this is where things get kind of weird.
So the Customs Special Agent who investigated the finders was a man named Ramon J. Martinez.
And on February 7th, 1987, Agent Martinez wrote a memo on what he claims he saw.
And here's what it says.
Cursory examination of the documents revealed detailed instructions for obtaining children for unspecified purposes.
The instructions included the impregnation of female members of the community known as the Finders, purchasing children, trading, and kidnapping.
There were telex messages using MCI account numbers between a computer terminal believed to be located in the same room and others located across the country and in foreign locations.
One such telex specifically ordered the purchase of two children in Hong Kong to be arranged through a contact in the Chinese embassy there.
Another Telex expressed the interest in bank secrecy situations.
Other documents identified interest in high-tech transfers to the United Kingdom, numerous properties under the control of the Finders, a keen interest in terrorism, explosives, and the evasion of law enforcement.
So obviously all that sounds really, really horrifying, but we're going to put it in context in the moment here because it basically was not really able to substantiate some of the claims he's making in this memo.
No, the FBI later followed up and he was unable to produce any of those things about the children being transferred.
We'll also take a look a little later at the practice of the finders Uh, you know, of like kind of living communally, and so they did set up a set of rules for basically child rearing as a group, because it was a kibbutz-style situation, but yes, it seems... Why did you use kibbutz?
Why not an ashram or something like that?
I don't know if ashrams do the same thing of raising children as a group.
Do kibbutzes?
Yeah, as far as I know.
Am I wrong?
Well, I don't know.
You don't know nothing about being Jewish.
Come on, man.
You're the worst.
Okay.
The report from Martinez also describes a photo album that he says he reviewed.
The album contained a series of photos of adults and children dressed in white sheets participating in a, quote, blood ritual.
The ritual centered around the execution of at least two goats.
The photos portrayed the execution, disembowelment, skinning, and dismemberment of the goats at the hands of the children.
This included the removal of the testes of a male goat, the discovery of a female goat's womb, and the Baby goats inside the womb and the presentation of the goat's head to one of the children I love this because calling this an execution of two goats These fuckers are all eating steaks every fucking night and they would never call what happens in an abattoir even though it's way more fucked up than actually slaughtering the animal yourself the Execution of thousands of cows.
Yeah, they just just like whatever man executing a goat Yeah, what like back of the head?
Like mob-style executing a goat?
Two in the back of the head and then put them in a duffel bag.
You fucking stool pigeon.
What he's actually describing is the slaughtering of a goat on a farm, which is what happens to animals on farms.
I can't believe you guys.
You're covering for this satanic sacrifice.
This is unbelievable.
We're going to go into what they call goat-gate in my section, so don't worry about it.
So, a few months later, in April of 1987, Special Agent Martinez wrote a report based on what he was told from an unnamed third party.
The individual advised me of the circumstances which indicated that the investigation into the activity of the Finders had become a CIA internal matter.
The Metro report has been classified secret and was not available for review.
I was advised that the FBI had withdrawn from the investigation several weeks prior and that the FBI Foreign Counterintelligence Division had directed MPD not to advise the FBI Washington Field Office of anything that had transpired.
No further information will be available.
No further action will be taken.
Okay, so here we have the actual document that was leaked by the government of the District of Columbia, the Metropolitan Police Department, and here is the summary that they wrote out.
It is the writer's belief that the FINDERS organization is and has been utilized by the Central Intelligence Agency as a disinformation service spreading non-essential, non-critical information to various organizations throughout the United States and overseas.
This group, to the most part, is made up of over-educated, non-achievers who lacked the inborn initiative to succeed on their own.
Therefore, they fell in with a charismatic leader who gave them direction and self-importance.
To the most part, this organization individually is harmless.
However, when directed and monitored by a controlling factor, they are capable of destructive and illegal activities.
As in any cult structure, the main drive is for the group and individual values and ideology is lost.
Therefore, when a member is asked to perform a task that heretofore may have been objectionable, he or she may perform this mission for the good of the group.
As to the abuse of the children, I do not think that child abuse was a planned tactic of this group, as is in any cross-section of society, sick and demented subjects belong to a cult as well.
I do believe that the shaping of the children is a planned experiment of this group, as in the case of the Nazis.
They strove for a perfect society, thereby, in their own way, tried to form a group of children and ultimately adults that did not suffer from the ills of normal society, but took only the benefits that afforded them perfection.
Lastly, I do not feel that the finders have disbanded as reported by their leader.
B. Instead, as reported in their master plan, have appeared to disband to prevent further detection by law enforcement or social service officials.
I firmly believe that this group should be monitored in a general sense, and if further developments occur, they should be noted.
So that is the basis for this other guy, Martinez, to claim that they're CIA assets.
Gotcha.
Unclear.
There are several CIA links, but they're incredibly tenuous.
Yeah.
The Finders worked briefly as computer specialists for an agency that was, in turn, had a contract with the CIA on something, like, very broad.
And that's about it, honestly.
There was also reported that the son of Marion Petty worked for Air America, which was basically an airline that was run by the CIA, but But that's, I mean, whether or not he was aware of that was a CIA operation or what involvement he was and what that means for the finders, it's really, really thin, thin link.
Yeah.
And there's another, as part of the documents that I was reading earlier, it's also apparent that basically they went and spoke with the CIA and they asked them, are we stepping on your toes?
And the CIA, very literally, they're quoted as saying, sort of.
So it's like, yeah, kind of.
But they say we're on it since it hit the news.
So the CIA got interested in the finders and the idea that they were involved in the CIA was just a reference to the CIA researching the finders, sort of, once the news had hit.
Probably sort of because the FBI was already on it.
Right, and also because there were pictures of, like, children killing goats.
Like, they probably just, at that point, they were like, well, we gotta check it out.
Anytime we see a kid holding separated goat testes, you know, in their hands, and the kid's naked, and one of the kids is holding the head of the goat, well, we'll check it out just to make sure, you know?
It does seem that the FBI basically went and took a look at some of these evidence claims later, the ones about like those pictures and all of that stuff.
And other than this very specific photo album, which we'll get into surrounding the goat, there was absolutely no sign of anything satanic, any ritual abuse, any trading of children, sending of children, none of that was substantiated.
Those documents were not there, and you could claim, oh, because they were covering up for the CIA.
But then why would they claim the CIA was linked to the Finders?
They're both calling out the CIA and covering up for them?
Doesn't make any sense.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So really, all you're saying has happened here was kids living on a hippie farm and they live off the land and they were part of... No.
More stuff happened.
And it is a weird-ass cult.
We'll be getting into it.
But... Oh, goody.
Goody, I was afraid that this was going to end like just a regular Scooby-Doo episode where they take the mask off and they go, oh, it's just you, weird hippie commune on a farm.
Yeah, no, there's definitely more to it.
It's pretty funny and weird.
And I mean, it's not the best to take pictures of children sacrificing goats, right?
Especially when you're wearing a robe or two.
What's a robe or two?
What's a robe or two?
What's a blood splattered robe or two?
When you get a robe involved, everything changes.
I know this from my personal life.
Life before my bathrobe, totally different.
Life after it, much drier and more satanic.
So the whole Finders incident fell out of headlines after the charges were dropped against the two men who were spotted with those six children.
The Washington Metropolitan Police Department held a press conference to say it had found no evidence of wrongdoing or satanic activity by the Finders.
Health officials in Florida then said that they had found no evidence of sexual abuse.
And the FBI said that it did not uncover any evidence of federal violations.
Uh, they also said that there was no evidence of kidnapping or using the children for, uh, pornographic purposes.
So, and here's the bit that, like, never gets mentioned on conspiracy theory websites about the Finders.
The mothers of the children were, in fact, part of the Finders commune, and the mothers were aware that the two men had taken the children on what they called a vacation camping trip.
So, according to a 1987 Chicago Tribune report entitled FBI Dropping Investigation of Washington Commune, the five mothers of the children were in San Francisco when the children were taken into custody.
In fact, the names of the mothers were released, and I have them here.
They were Judith Evans, Carolyn Sayed, Kristen Knuth, Yeah, but what freak called them BB and Honey Bee?
Paula Riccio and Paula was the mother who had two children from the group.
An attorney representing the mothers later said, quote, All of these people are caretakers
of the children.
It's a co parenting arrangement.
Yeah, but what freak called them BB and honeybee?
Well, you know, again, weirdo hippie commune.
So after the children were taken into custody in Florida, the mothers had attempted to call
the Tallahassee police, but as a result of the media coverage, apparently hundreds of
women had called the police department claiming to be the mother.
So they were initially ignored.
Um, so eventually... What?
Yeah, because people freaked out, because it was the news, and it was the satanic panic.
Yeah.
Okay.
So what was initially treated as a case of child sex trafficking by a satanic cult turned into a basic child custody case.
Eventually the mothers won back custody of their children from the state of Florida and that was basically that for
for the for police for Them. Yeah, I mean I'm gonna go ahead and say that children
entrusted to the state of Florida are probably in a way worse shape
Being driven around by two guys in a van In the early 90s actually interest in the case was revived
because of a citizen researcher named Skip Clemens Definitely sounds like a citizen researcher.
Dude, I looked into this guy and he later got into, like, a huge litigation around citrus.
Really?
Yeah, he was the owner of, like, a citrus thing.
Unless there's literally a guy with the exact same name from the same tiny town.
Interesting.
But, uh, yeah.
What do you mean?
Like, citrus in general?
No, like he owned a citrus company and he got like defrauded by a bunch of people who had invested and they basically from one day to the next they were like your company's worth nothing and he lost it all.
He was pissed as fuck and then he was like vindicated later and it's the whole thing.
Oh boy.
So he claimed that the fine-ears were really a front for CIA agents.
Allegations of a government cover-up were also referenced in the document in a document from the recent FBI declass
About the finders. Here's what one release memo said Redacted has alleged that the finders are involved in a
well-organized child abuse scheme and that Redacted in conjunction with the State Department and the
FBI's foreign counterintelligence section Conspired to cover up those abuses skip Clements even
convinced at least two members of Congress to look into it and sparked a
Justice Department investigation This was in the 90s, by the way.
It was like way later.
The FBI was like, oh god.
They're like, fuck, we have to look into this again.
So a report from the Metropolitan Police Department references a possible link between the CIA and the Finders, but doesn't offer much clarity.
Here's what that memo says.
The FBI had contact with the Finders since 1971, including a recent report dealing with CIA involvement with at least one of the members of the Finders passing information overseas concerning the activities of the Central Intelligence Agency.
When it became apparent that no federal laws were violated, the FBI vacated the investigation.
So they alleged that they were sending information overseas about the CIA?
We'll look a little bit into the kind of games that the Finders played.
And yeah, like intelligence gathering and passing between the members would be par for the course for what they did.
But we'll see why.
So so yeah, we talked briefly about the sort of the tenuous connections, but sort of allegations of like direct CIA involvement into the finders were never really substantiated.
No, they fizzled out in general.
So the only source that really describes just really crazy shit in relation to the finders is the Martinez memo.
And like you mentioned, when he when people came back to try and substantiate the Telex documents about they just couldn't couldn't He couldn't provide any of the photos.
Like the police department couldn't provide the photos, which my suspicions is that they
got information.
They leaked it, like some idiot cop leaked it to the media and they kind of like worked
that in a loop.
In fact, when they claimed like, oh, through a transparent bag we could see photos, my
suspicion is that the cop was like, OK, this is what I saw.
And then the guy's like, well, fuck, how am I going to say that I got this other than like from a police source?
And he's like, well, just maybe say like you saw it through a bag, because like, honestly, that stuff was not not found again, nor were any of the documents proving the kidnapping of children and all this shit.
So I tried to figure out who this Ramon Martinez guy was, and there wasn't a lot of information about him, but I was able to find that he apparently was a close associate of the prominent militia activist and shortwave radio broadcaster Mark Korenki, who is better known as Mark from Michigan.
Mark Korenki is most famous for popularizing the Black Helicopters conspiracy theory.
So here's what a 2001 Time article says.
Gorenke did manage to attract a few friends.
One of these was Ramon Martinez, then an upperclassman and now with the U.S. Customs Service in Washington.
The majority opinion was that he was nuts to have around, Martinez says now, but I saw
it differently.
I saw a guy with his own way of doing things.
Hell yeah, dude.
Citizen Researcher!
His own way of doing things.
Gonna make a few keystrokes on a keyboard.
Find some websites.
Jake did manage to attract a few friends.
One of these was Julian Field, then an upperclassman at the QAnon Anonymous podcast.
Quote, the majority opinion was that he was nuts to have around, Julian says now, but I saw it differently.
I saw a guy with his own way of doing things.
That's right.
I go against the grain, baby.
In 1977, Martinez says that he was the godfather to Korinky's newborn daughter.
So, you know, Martinez, he seems like he was super tight with these conspiratorial kooks, which may have sort of influenced what he saw and how he viewed things.
Yeah, and if you look at, like, police cases, they always try to fucking railroad whoever they got, because they want to justify that they went and got these guys.
Right, right.
Especially when the press starts to get involved, it's like, fuck, we have to prove that there was a reason we did this.
Yeah, exactly.
And so then suddenly you're leaking stuff to the press, and suddenly there's allegations, and you'll see later, the Finders did not help, because they made a fucking huge mess on purpose.
Meet the Finders.
In the late 60s, during a period where many Americans were experimenting with alternative lifestyles and communal living, a retired Air Force Master Sergeant called Marion Petty started an organization called Finders.
Petty, who had dropped out of school after 9th grade, believed that direct experience was the ultimate education tool.
In his words, I consider my whole life an education, and that's all I do is work on my education.
I dropped out of school because it was interfering with my education.
During his time as an army sergeant in pre-WWII Washington, D.C., Petty claims to have rented two apartments and instored a sort of open-door policy to encourage the free discussion of philosophy, psychology, and human development.
Marion would learn from those visiting him in a structure he would later reference as Topsy-Turvy University.
In his words, The idea in my head was that the people coming in were going to teach me something about power, money, By the late 60s, this ship of fools, as he also called it,
had firmed up into a community centering, of course, around Marion Petty and his theory
that about 500 years ago, it was very common for ships to take
persons that are nowadays called neurotics or psychotics and keep them moving. And they
found that it was very therapeutic.
That's one of the ideas that I had there, that people, if you kept them moving, they were better
off.
This manifested as a series of investigative assignments.
Marion would send people out into the world to find out about certain specific things and report back to him.
He would later explain to a journalist that, My goal is to know everything and say nothing.
I run a private intelligence game and I send people out undercover to find out various things.
I've been investigating the CIA before it was the CIA when it was the OSS.
But these fact-finding missions were hardly just that.
They often involved elaborate lifestyle experiments, false identities, disinformation campaigns, and pranks.
A Washington Post article from 1987 explained that, Sometimes they approached businesses, from a major Washington law firm to a leftist think tank, and offered their expertise in computer programming and other services, sources said.
Other times the group went through the motions of setting up a business, sometimes printing up phony business cards.
Some members used up to 20 aliases, ex-associates said.
This was rooted in Petty's theory of game-calling, which relied on a larger communal structure to support the ever-morphing game.
Here's from a Washington City paper article from 1996.
At their peak in the 80s, the Finders boasted nearly three dozen people in their experimental community.
Based in various domiciles around Washington and headquartered in a converted warehouse off Florida Avenue, they played an elaborate game run by Petty, the Game Caller, traveling the globe as freelance journalists, computer consultants, and information gatherers.
Many joined the Finders because they had grown alienated and bored with the daily grind and were seeking something new, whether self-realization or just a more exciting day-to-day.
on mutual trust rather than blood relations, to learn and earn and raise free children.
Many joined the Finders because they had grown alienated and bored with the daily grind and
were seeking something new, whether self-realization or just a more exciting day-to-day.
Robert Turrell, a member who went by Toby, explained that Marion Petty was
my entertainer.
It's so funny you use that voice, because he does have, like, a little curled-up mustache, and, like, they all dressed.
Yes, my free-range children, I stack them in an egg carton, and they're free.
The same guy years after he had left the Finders would attempt to explain games to a reporter.
Petty used the term pressure cooker.
The idea was to explore your own person and discover your own true nature.
You can't do that just sitting at a desk or on a couch in a routine way.
You have to have some experiences.
So Petty was good at structuring experiences from which you could learn.
He called himself the Game Caller.
And what that meant was that he'd call a game for you to do something where you would gain experience.
So like an RPG, you level up.
Yeah, an ARG.
He was.
He was organizing like a global kind of fact-finding ARG.
The same Washington City paper article elaborated.
For Terrell, game-playing ranged from working a temp accounting job in a downtown D.C.
law firm to catching a flight to Japan on two hours' notice to gather information on Japanese companies to report back to Petty.
It was a subculture built on whimsy and intrigue, undergirded by a sense of tribal affiliation.
As far as communes went, the Finders seemed to have been quite bourgeois and organized.
They were not into weird music or drugs and emphasized the value of studying and staying
busy, even when it was in the service of their particular mix of live-action role-playing and
amateur spycraft. The Finders would, of course, eventually be accused of being a front for real
intelligence, but Wendell Minnick, author of Spies and Provocateurs, an encyclopedia of espionage
and covert action, had a slightly different take after researching them for two years.
The Finders would love you to think they're a CIA front, but I would say they're really nothing.
You're going to hear a lot of bullshit on the finders because they lie.
These are dysfunctional adults, but they're all working their asses off.
They're constantly working on some project.
If you have a cult, the best way to control people is to keep them busy, to keep their minds occupied.
If you have people standing around doing nothing, then they start thinking.
The early 80s were a period of transition for the group due to the death of member Barbara Sylvester, a close friend of Petty who passed due to an untreated appendicitis, which is kind of irresponsible of them.
According to former Finders who spoke to the Washington Post, the group became, quote, increasingly secretive, hostile, and arrogant towards non-members.
Members stopped seeing relatives and friends who were not in the group.
Former associates found themselves shunned or treated brusquely.
In this more cloistered environment, children were raised by the group instead of solely by their biological parents.
What exactly that meant remains controversed.
Petty originally claimed that he believed children should be... Raised like Indians on the plains, strong and tough.
Which kind of explains why they were like half nude and just wandering around and being dirty a lot of the time.
I would like to smell them with mud and rub their bodies with corn cobs.
What?
Yeah, the original corn cobbing.
At the time, the Finders lived in two locations, a group of farms in Virginia and two side-by-side apartments in Washington.
There was also a warehouse in Washington that they sometimes kind of hung out at, but no one really seemed to live there.
Neighbors told the Washington Post that the latter was inhabited only by women and children, although men did visit frequently.
The gender dynamics in the Finders is another point of contention.
Petty believed women should be the ones to initiate sex, not men, but also seemed to build a power structure within the cult that leaned male.
Whatever the case, the neighbors were no fans of the lifestyle, believing the children to be dirty and strange.
One neighbor referred to the group as leftover hippies.
Unfortunately, it seems like raising the children was an undesirable role to play within the Finders.
Many ex-members, although denying that there had been any serious abuse, did admit that the children were often neglected, and that taking care of them was considered a chore by some in the group.
It seems like the Finders' children had difficulty building relationships with other youngsters in the local community, whether due to stigma or the fact that they were, in the words of the Washington Post, dirty and full of sores on their body.
They were often not permitted to play with other neighborhood kids at the local playground.
Now, this was the place that Travis explored where, in 1987, Tallahassee police, tipped off by an anonymous caller, found a group of six children being supervised by two Finders members.
They were promptly arrested, charged with child abuse.
The police, who kept their sources confidential, made multiple claims around the time, and an affidavit was written claiming that the children had been used in rituals.
The source claimed to not have witnessed any abuse, but that, quote, several round stones gathered near the Finders' residence could have been, quote, used in satanic rituals.
I can see those being used in satanic rituals.
Also a fire.
Like many things.
Sitting around and telling ghost stories.
I don't fucking know.
They have animals and stones and fire.
All satanic things.
Incredibly satanic.
The Washington apartments were searched and the Washington Post claimed that, quote, some photos visible through a bag carried from the location were wallet-sized photos of children, similar to school photos, and some were of naked children.
Oh.
Yeah.
U.S.
Customs claimed that the materials seized included photos showing children involved in bloodletting ceremonies of animals and one photograph of a child in chains.
Like, yeah.
Like Travis mentioned earlier, the claims were obviously disturbing.
But a deeper look at the material that these claims were made about, and the fact that both men were later cleared of any wrongdoing, reveal a little bit of a different story.
The Washington City paper, looking back on the affair nine years later, stated that, quote, nothing illegal was uncovered, which might indicate the police were using their interpretation of the material to justify the arrests at the time.
One of the items they found was a photo album labeled The Execution of Henrietta and Igor.
The Washington City paper described it as a series of snapshots depicting berobed adults and children
slaughtering goats in a wintry wood wood scape. One photo depicted giggling toddlers pulling
dead kids from a womb.
Baby goats ran the caption. Another showed a grinning adult presenting a goat's head to a
startled child. It's so funny because like this is to them it's like a funny scrapbook or whatever
and everyone's like look at this ritual abuse and like yeah it's not the best maybe to have
kids pull out like dead no baby goats. It's not a good look.
But, like, on a farm that shit probably happens quite a bit.
I mean, kids grow up fairly quick.
They have to deal with death and animals.
They wanted to, like, raise them, like, strong, you know, like, independent, like, young Indians of the plain, obviously.
Yeah, you do the, you kill the goat, you take the dead babies out, you do all the stuff.
We make funny label later.
Yeah.
So, at the time, instead of playing ball with the normies in the media, the Finders refused to break character.
From the same article.
The two dozen members had been thriving outside of the mainstream for years, pooling their resources and raising kids in a free-form family.
They enjoyed life on the fringe, and even though the investigation put a spotlight on them, they weren't about to step out into the light of day.
Instead, they sparred with reporters in mock interviews and leaked fake investigative leads about their activities.
The episode was a fever dream, stoked by media reports that turned out to have no basis in fact.
The group deftly kept the mystique level cranked up and simply waited for the heat to die down.
It worked.
The child abuse charges were dropped, the feds backed off, the children were returned to their mothers, and the finders returned to their mysterious activities, eventually fading from the media's freak of the week radar screen.
This was later referred to as Goatgate within the community.
And it caused... Mategate, Goatgate.
Mategate, Goatgate, Manigate.
And it caused an internal rift that would never fully heal.
Robert Turrell, the guy who had previously described Marion Petty in glowing words, later explained that... It changed everything.
The mothers didn't like the way Petty handled it, apparently, and they left right after that.
It changed the course of the Finders.
It was never the same.
So yeah, it looks like the moms of those kids didn't like the fact that he was fucking around in the aftermath of the arrest.
They were like, dude, we're trying to fucking get our kids back from the dumbass state of Florida, and you're fucking doing like more ARG shit.
Fuck you, we're taking the kids.
So none of the mothers told the police that the children had been abused, and Terrell emphatically claims that.
We were just slaughtering goats for food.
It was Petty's stoking of the media spectacle in the aftermath of the arrest which seemed to piss them off.
Terrell stayed on for four more years, but he also soured in 1991 and bailed on the Finders.
That's because it appears that Marion Petty had continued down his increasingly authoritarian path and begun to change the way the Finders handled money.
From the article again.
Petty tried to change the game, says Terrell.
When they came around, there was no doubt that if you put your money in the group, you could get it back.
It was referred to as the invisible bank.
But somewhere along, Petty came up with the idea of what he called the last man's club.
Implication being that once you put something in, you never got it back again.
That's the club!
It's like, I've got a brilliant idea.
It's a new game.
It's called the Last Man's Club.
It's a delicious game.
And how it works is like this.
You give me your money, you put it into the group, and you never get it back.
How could you give that a name?
That's like me being like, okay, I've got a new game, and it's called... I'm keeping all the Patreon money.
It's called The Sleeping Giant, where I stay in bed and don't show up to work.
I love that game, actually.
I'm fucking down for The Sleeping Giant.
About half our audience has lost their jobs because they played The Sleeping Giant.
For sure.
It's a good game.
Eventually, 4X members sued Petty, asking that the money they invested in the group be returned to them.
Nonetheless, Terrell maintained that, If you look at the history of utopian movements in America, the Finders have a legitimate place because of the experimentation that went on.
It was a good experiment, a lot of people learned from it, and I wouldn't trade it for anything.
It lasted for 20 years while I was there, and I wouldn't call it a failure.
One of the neighbors of the Washington Apartments, a college professor, called them a close-knit group of feminists who like to help people, explaining that, quote, the neighborhood talks about them because of their lifestyle.
After Goatgate quieted down and nobody was sent to jail, the Finders continued operating without children in the picture.
Petty was busy fighting the lawsuit and relocated to a small town called Culpeper, which he had resided in on and off growing up.
In his mid-70s now, he continued cultivating an image of himself as an eccentric.
A few journalists and conspiracy theorists interviewed him around this time.
He was followed around by a bodyguard-slash-assistant, and was clearly unable to drop the shtick and move on.
Despite it being the mid-90s, Petty seemed stuck in his boomer beatnik ways.
He seemed increasingly prone to treating his followers like they were neurotics and he was somehow curing them.
Finders roved Culpepper, taking notes.
Petty grew to be known as The Stroller because he was seen constantly walking through the town, usually sporting a cane and carrying a notepad.
A finder wrote a tongue-in-cheek but incredibly tiresome official report on him.
It said this.
A cavalier gentleman emanating a southern traditional style.
Very large proportioned male with barreled chest and lanky long legs, a gray hair still fleckled with sandy highlights, cropped shorts, and looks like a home cut.
Radiate's a very casual, but completely confident sense of self.
A sort of Gaddafi without the ego.
Makes jokes about switching roles, yet always carries himself like an active duty officer.
Does not fidget.
When seated in car or domicile, assumes a position and holds it.
No fast movements.
Steady, modulated voice.
Not bass.
Sometimes speaks in a clenched teeth fashion, yet other times has a hint of Virginia drawl.
Maintained that he likes young pussy more than old pussy.
Moreover, upon questioning, stated that, quote, twice a week since the age of 13 or so has been the optimum amount for me.
Farts a lot.
Eccentric in urinary habits, walks 10 to 20 miles a day and has done so for years, reports that the secret of his health and happiness is having consistently associated only with people he likes and who likes him.
So yeah, hold on.
Just everyone's having a fancy old funny old time talking about each other and they can't.
It's like this may sound creepy in a way, but it's also just that 60s way of like, oh yeah, easy rider.
I likes me some young pussy.
Yeah, I just imagine this guy going around with his like cane and like shit and just going like.
Yeah, he's hilarious.
Farting all the time.
Everyone has to laugh and it's what a funny good life we have.
His old friend Tyrell, who had become somewhat of a normie in reintegrated society at that point, seemed to feel sorry for his former idol.
I don't know why Petty is turning outward and doing things like he's doing in Culpepper.
When I was there, we always subscribed to the philosophy of keeping a very low profile, being invisible and doing our thing.
Why he's choosing to prod or poke, I...
I don't know why he's doing that!
Petty held a grudge against his former disciples.
In an interview, he stated that... The only conflict I've ever had in my life are with those ungrateful wretches that are suing me now.
They were dope fiends and emotionally disturbed people, and they got cured in my mental hospital and they left.
Now they come back and want to take the hospital.
Referring to the lawsuit.
The small town of Culpeper doesn't seem to know what to make of the group's remnants.
The Washington City Paper article again.
Townspeople say the finders constantly walk the streets following people home and taking extensive notes and pictures.
They often appear at local council meetings, never saying a word, but simply observing the scene.
At other times, they plunder the visitor center brochures, maps, and local travel guides.
And they haunt the courthouse, scouring land needs to find out who owns the local real estate.
Rumors fly.
Did you hear what the Finders are doing at the old theater?
They're planning a stage production of Paradise Lost with an all-nude cast.
Or was it a gay burlesque version of Dante's Divine Comedy?
Were the Finders gathered for some ritual in the back lot, or were they simply taking trash to the dumpster?
People have seen glowing lights in the windows of the Finder's group house at the edge of the town, along with visitors coming and going at odd hours.
The lawn is mowed in a peculiar circular pattern.
That's the place where they sacrifice pot-billed pigs.
One of the Finder's locales in the town was an old theater, and Petty had members post up cryptic sayings on the marquee, including John 832, which is, And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
The same is engraved in the lobby of the CIA headquarters.
So just fucking with people.
These are just fucking LARPers.
These are LARPers.
There was also a newspaper clipping displayed upside down in the window with this highlighted passage.
The group's practices, police said, were eccentric, not illegal.
Seems like years later, Petty enjoyed triggering the normies just as much as ever.
So he was just living life as a troll, basically.
Yeah, he's like a theater.
This is like a like an experimental performance artist.
I went to college.
I lived in a fucking kind of like group artist house like there were characters like this and if they had been a bit more assertive and maybe raised in the army like he was doing.
Yeah.
Their brains would have maybe made people organize around them like this.
Like, I don't know.
He sounds like a dick.
It was a bit of a fucking cult for sure.
Yeah.
But this shit is not a ritual abuse club or some sort of satanic child trafficking operation.
They're not CIA.
No, this is just weird.
This is just weird.
Maybe the CIA once in a while tapped him to get information that he had sussed from, like, these fucking endless ARGs, because he did collect a lot of information.
And yes, they did have, like, stupid written plans of, like, let's all make babies now and raise them like strong children, and so they used those documents to prove that they were, you know, inseminating women and farming children, where, really, it was just dumb.
I mean, it was, like, I guess if you look at the difference between the way that they portrayed the goat thing in the media and in these reports, and what that fucking photo album was, you basically get the picture of what the whole thing was.
Like, the disparity between, is it a bit weird?
Of course it is.
Is it anything more than like dumb 60s and 70s, like, we're just living life on life's terms kind of shit?
Not really.
Not really.
They're kind of fun, actually.
I don't know.
It's an interesting concept.
It's an interesting story, yeah.
Certainly more interesting than the fucking FBI.
Well, I mean, yeah, I mean, to me, the most interesting aspect is that, you know, he kind of was like, yes, we are, like, more important than we are.
And we need to go out and, like, get intelligence from, like, all around the world.
And, like, actually sort of, like, just decided that he was going to be an intelligence asset and then kind of became one just because, you know, our, you know, our Or maybe.
I doubt he actually was, like, an asset.
I mean... Not an asset, but, like... Maybe if some, like, CIA gentleman came in and did an interview with him, he would, like, probably... He'd probably just fuck with him, though.
He'd probably have a... Yeah.
He's so unreliable.
The problem was he was unreliable, yeah.
He was purposefully unreliable.
They ran disinfo campaigns constantly.
They pretended to be this or that.
They moved towns.
They started a company.
They closed the company.
They made new names.
Just, like, it was just, like...
It feels like, yeah, the CIA wouldn't partner with someone this sort of flamboyant and outlandish and sort of running into the law like this.
Yeah, he was way too, he created too much heat.
He openly called himself, like, we're an intelligence game.
I was researching the CIA, like, fucking idiot.
They just sound like a group of Koppelischmachers, you know?
Yeah, just a bunch of mischief, troublemakers.
I bet in the early days when they were like having orgies before they decided to reproduce, before that woman died of appendicitis, I bet this was a good-ass time.
Sure.
Fun, constantly ongoing ARG with tons of sex.
Yeah.
And just like a fucking, not, less drugs, so less destructive.
In fact, a lot of them moved on to just be normies.
Yeah.
They didn't burn out or die.
Yeah.
Everyone was still alive.
The guy died of old age.
He spent most of his time walking around and taking notes and doing dipshit interviews.
And tooting.
If you read his interviews, he's infuriating.
He's so annoying.
I'm sure, I'm sure.
Especially in his 70s, just like, oh God.
Everything, like tying everything back and, and that comes back to what I previously said about, you know?
Yeah.
He's like that annoying kid from theater school that like actually like took some real initiative and, and sort of, you know, played for real.
Do you guys remember when hipsters, like, very early on, when the term still meant, like, people with, like, bicycle mustaches that wore, like, kind of, like, turn-of-the-century shit, and, like, unicycles was still a thing associated with hipsters?
Yeah, there's still a guy... Not hypebeasts!
There's still a guy around Melrose who's got a fucking unicycle that I see cycling around.
Well, those guys wish they were this guy.
Right.
And these people doing real shit in the 60s and 70s.
Yeah, kind of steampunky.
And then, in the 90s, Radiohead made a song where he's talking about, I wish it was the 60s, I wish something would happen.
And that's fucking, we yearn for that shit, man.
Because people like this, they get fucking accused of pedophilia, then the FBI investigates them, then everyone falls out, then they fucking sue each other, and now we're living in hell.
Yeah, I'm ready for the FBI to start investigating us.
Yeah, well we need to be a bit more fanciful.
Yeah.
Right now you're dressed a little too normal, my friend.
I'm pretty normal, yeah.
Maybe you want a little mustache?
I don't know if I can grow one.
You need a face tattoo.
That I agree.
Would you consider tattooing, um, my entire nude body on your head?
Yes.
Okay.
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It's not a conspiracy, it's fact.
And now, today's Auto-Tune.
Former CIA Director John McLaughlin.
You have to agree that now the impeachment inquiry is underway sparked by a complaint from someone within the intelligence community.
It feeds the president's concern and often used term about a deep state being there to take him out.
Well, you know, thank God for the deep state.
Former CIA Director John Brennan.
And the professionals that carry out their daily responsibilities in this place are going to continue to do what it is that they are expected to do.
The reason why Mr. Trump has this very contentious relationship with the CIA and FBI and the deep state people.
