Part Two: The Finders: CIA Child Trafficking Cult or Just Normal Cult?

After almost twenty years of quiet growth the Finders explode into public awareness when they are accused of sex trafficking children, possibly for the CIA.

(Or the Devil.)

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Also media.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
I'm a p R A U X. You can spell
pro that way anyway. This is behind the Bastard's a podcast,
Bad People tell you all. 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 Loft, this guest host.

Speaker 3 (00:31):
I I look, here's what I'll say. Here's I did
nothing wrong.

Speaker 4 (00:37):
Did I consider robbing a grave when I was you know, seven? Yes?

Speaker 3 (00:40):
But live laugh learn.

Speaker 4 (00:42):
I like San Francisco, which I'm saying mainly because I
have a show.

Speaker 3 (00:47):
Coming up there at the beginning of February. So I'll
tell you what I really think about February. Yeah, I'll
tell you what I think about that. San Francisco truly
off off Mike, but for the public faicy purposes.

Speaker 4 (00:58):
What a town, What doesn't freak me out at all?

Speaker 2 (01:04):
What a place that didn't invite me to sketch Fest
this year? So I'm angry. 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 who's yeah obviously, yeah,
the dead.

Speaker 3 (01:23):
To the world, buncle to the world.

Speaker 2 (01:26):
You know how his character's backstory is, this was a
real battle too. In World War Two. 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 a madman, the guy with the silver hair,
who's 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

(01:48):
that 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.

Speaker 1 (01:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:59):
This we're getting heavy darting right off the gate. So
twenty eighteen, I go to Corgi Kan, which is where
all of the Corgi's in the Bay Area gather by
the beach and romp around. Several hundred Corgis.

Speaker 4 (02:10):
Romp around and some would say start making plants starts.

Speaker 2 (02:14):
Perhaps perhaps I can't speak to that because I was
being confronted with the worst thing that I've ever seen
that day, which is a makeshift sign outside of Corky
Khan that said welcome to sanfran Corgsco. Now, Jamie, I
wake up screaming when I think about how angry that

(02:35):
sign makes me. Like San Franciscorg was right there.

Speaker 1 (02:39):
You've told this story on Mike before your story he traumatized, Sophie.

Speaker 2 (02:45):
Yeah, god, yeah, this this did permanent damage to my psyche,
my soul, so my ability to trust and love people.

Speaker 3 (02:53):
Yeah, it wasn't the It wasn't the pun. It was
that the pun was wrong.

Speaker 2 (02:57):
It was a bad pun. They picked the wrong pun.
That doesn't make any sense, Jamie. Well, if you wrote
that sign, and there's like a twenty percent chance you're
listening to this podcast right now, I will find you
and I will take my vengeance and.

Speaker 1 (03:16):
Get it together.

Speaker 2 (03:18):
If you tell this.

Speaker 1 (03:19):
If you tell this story a third time, I will
fire you.

Speaker 2 (03:22):
Huh. I'm never going to stop telling the story, So
you can't stop the signal. Speaking of the signal.

Speaker 4 (03:28):
No, I need to call you out really quick because
you were able to describe an episode of Madmen in
detail to Sophie and myself and moments before we started recording,
needed to guess three separate times before correctly remembering the sport.

Speaker 3 (03:45):
Tanya Harding play just a reminder that we just live
on different planets.

Speaker 2 (03:52):
Can anyone tell the difference between a gymnast and a
skier a skater? She did one of the two. It's
they're the same thing.

Speaker 3 (03:58):
And you know it's not. You're just trying to take
it's all.

Speaker 2 (04:02):
It's all boring, you know why, Because there's there's one
actual sport, Jamie Loftus, and it is playing second edition
Shadow Run with your friends in nineteen ninety nine. Oh
my god, that's the one, the one real sport, Jamie.

Speaker 4 (04:17):
I thought you were going to that's what the Greeks played.

Speaker 1 (04:19):
I thought you were going to say it was Simon says,
and then you were going to do the podcast. Are
you going to do the podcast?

Speaker 5 (04:24):
Now?

Speaker 2 (04:24):
I am going to do the podcast.

Speaker 4 (04:25):
Sport is what happens between periods at the hockey game.

Speaker 3 (04:30):
The only real sport is the guy in the zamboni.

Speaker 2 (04:35):
I don't disagree. I don't disagree.

Speaker 3 (04:36):
Takes four and we'd cheer.

Speaker 2 (04:38):
For We're back on the same page and now we
can actually get back on the same page by talking
about Mary and Petty and the Founders. Now, I'm a
pretty tolerant guy. I've I've lived in multiple communes. I've
stayed in several more communes, multiple countries, in fact of communes.

Speaker 3 (04:58):
Call you a pretty tolerant guy. Yeah, I'm very flinch
What do you?

Speaker 5 (05:04):
What do you?

Speaker 2 (05:05):
How am I not tolerant? I don't know. I've got like,
I don't judge people except for that lady who made
the sign at the Corgi convention.

Speaker 4 (05:14):
Listen to what Yeah, listen to what you just said
about the sign. Lady, listen to what you just said
about gymnasts or man.

Speaker 2 (05:21):
I don't know who made the sign. Wow, that was
problematic of me. Anyway, let's move on. Correct. So so far,
nothing Petty or the Finders have done is like abusive, weird, questionable,
definitely destined to win badly. Right, when you're telling people
that they should hook up or have kids and how

(05:43):
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 what's interesting to me is that because the reputation
these guys have them on conspiracy nuts is this was
like an evil sex trafficking cult moving children across the country.
The counter argument by people who rightly are like, boy,

(06:04):
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.

Speaker 4 (06:19):
That's that's the QAnon way to identify an issue and
make a big deal about things that make no fucking sense.

Speaker 3 (06:28):
Therefore a meaning they'll get away with shit forever.

Speaker 2 (06:31):
Yeah, yeah, because there's there's and they did for a
long time. There's no evidence that the finders like sexually
trafficked children across you 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

(06:53):
City Paper article by John Cohen includes an interview with
a man named David, whose brother joined the Finder's 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 and this weird
group where you're pretending to be spies with your landlord,

(07:15):
you know, like not hard to see why he does this.

Speaker 4 (07:20):
Anye Prime 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.

Speaker 2 (07:35):
Won that 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

(07:57):
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 Propper.
Kenny Rodgers 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

(08:18):
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. Please, It's it's it's really, it's really,
it's like an extremely explicit letter word.

Speaker 3 (08:34):
Read so much of that I.

Speaker 2 (08:36):
Wanted because you shouldn't feel uncomfortable, right, which is like,
I don't know, just let me get to slender limbs.

Speaker 3 (08:42):
Let me get to slender limbs and then I'll stop.

Speaker 2 (08:45):
I didn't want to read moist. You know what comes
after moist in this letter, right, I don't have to say.

Speaker 4 (08:52):
They're describing his dick like it's like a three story
apartment building like this.

Speaker 2 (08:58):
Is this is you know how like the Church of
Scientology you speak out or like you leave or whatever,
and they have guys stalk you.

Speaker 3 (09:06):
They'll poison your pets.

Speaker 2 (09:09):
Yeah, Like 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

(09:30):
is like and sometimes showing pictures of you naked. Not
it's not blackmail because they're not asking for anything. They're well,
because they're yeah, so 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

(09:52):
it's definitely bad. I'm not saying it's not bad, but
I don't think there's like an exchange attempted.

Speaker 3 (09:58):
I know that will it I don't know.

Speaker 4 (10:01):
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.

Speaker 2 (10:15):
Look, 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.

Speaker 4 (10:28):
I mean, it just sounds like revenge, like proto revenge porn. Basically,
it is a little bit of that confusing.

Speaker 2 (10:37):
It's 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

(10:59):
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
maybe 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

(11:23):
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. Is divine thinking beings
or whatever. I don't know. That's the feeling that I

(11:43):
get reading stuff here. It's very uncomfortable. Yeah, it's like
the letters are like they go on and on.

Speaker 4 (11:50):
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 how people can get away with
shit like that by not having a direct threat stated,
not asking for anything clear.

Speaker 3 (12:10):
So you're like, well, what is legally actionable?

Speaker 4 (12:12):
It's harassment, but like usually if you report harassment, all
the fuck all anyone will do is be like, well,
you call us back when they threaten to kill you.

Speaker 3 (12:21):
Which a lot of people know better than do do.

Speaker 2 (12:23):
Like, it's just 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

(12:43):
are just responding to a letter in a fucked up way.

Speaker 3 (12:47):
But that's why it feels like very I don't know.

Speaker 4 (12:49):
I mean, it seems like it's pretty you know, like
this whole organization is pretty calculated to what end.

Speaker 3 (12:55):
I still don't understand.

Speaker 2 (12:56):
No one does, and you will not get an answer
to that question is.

Speaker 4 (12:59):
No, because it is because 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.

Speaker 3 (13:09):
Like that's what they're doing.

Speaker 2 (13:12):
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

(13:33):
of buy that, Well, we're trying this is about shocking.
The norm is for a purpose too. We're not trying
to shock these people to hurt them. There it's healthy
to not have hang ups about sex, and we're trying
to break through their unhealthy.

Speaker 4 (13:46):
Like I again, that's a.

Speaker 2 (13:48):
Good reason that is people make it pictures of their
loved ones. I'm saying I think that's how regular people
in the cult justify this.

Speaker 4 (13:56):
And are we still in the seventies at this point,
because this all scans for Like, you guys are so
like this, why don't you want to see a picture
of your brother's dick.

Speaker 2 (14:05):
You're like, yeah, you're so scared of your brother's huge
throbbing cock.

Speaker 5 (14:11):
We're all humans, so you're like, oh, also especially in
his unique shape, like hmmmmmm mm hmm.

Speaker 2 (14:24):
A big thing for them was like describing and they
don't just do it with penises. This 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 do

(14:45):
the same for your brother, you know, so well.

Speaker 3 (14:49):
Disgusting to anybody. Relax.

Speaker 2 (14:53):
They are. They are described multiple times by the cops
and others as feminists, as specifically a cabal of famis
like its second wave.

Speaker 3 (15:01):
Second wave second wave feminism. Uh, they're like, yeah, second
way feminism, you know, run a cult queen.

Speaker 2 (15:09):
One of the things that 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
signing on, like you know that that 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

(15:29):
lot of Keith Ranieri in here. He's definitely and descended
from this guy. But there's also there's these really unique
aspects of like New age occultism and uh kind of
like like spy pulp novels from the sixties. Like it's
it's such an.

Speaker 4 (15:47):
Odd 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 culty 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 you know, whatever wa of feminism are on

(16:08):
final because we have like three years to live.

Speaker 2 (16:10):
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 nineteen seventies, like the mainstream society, right, you
were ordering men around, you run things like you know,

(16:32):
that's a part of the appeal to some of the
people who find this thing, right, So.

Speaker 4 (16:36):
They're like, Okay, so the cost of participation is I
might need to send someone a picture of their brothers dick.

Speaker 2 (16:44):
Yeah, and describe it in loving detail. Yeah, and they'll
do more than that, Jamie.

Speaker 3 (16:48):
Sorry, you're right, I'm getting hung up on that.

Speaker 2 (16:51):
Yeah. This is from a Maryland police report based on
what happens once the story this cult explodes and they
talk to a bunch of former family members. I have
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,

(17:13):
would stop any contact by sending letters describing explicit sexual
acts evolving current members, including photographs and drawings. In one case,
members of the Finders attempted to take over Blank family
residents 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

(17:33):
pushing her out of a property? 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

(17:55):
so there's not a report on it.

Speaker 3 (17:57):
I guess I'm not like completely shocked, but just like
there seemed to be a number of critical moments in
this story where it's just unbelievably vague.

Speaker 2 (18:08):
Was this the fun thing about the Finders, That's why
they're the center of so many conspiracy narratives, And.

Speaker 4 (18:13):
So this like wasn't this wasn't like a story that
was that there was any like public interest in until the.

Speaker 3 (18:19):
Eighties right, so they're kind of just operating. Okay. So
there's police records and cult.

Speaker 4 (18:23):
Member records, two of the least possibly like reliable sources
you could ask wow, okay.

Speaker 2 (18:29):
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

(18:50):
what happened in this bookcause 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 on this cult. That's more common than the bad cases,
which doesn't mean they were again they were abusing and
harassing people.

Speaker 4 (19:04):
A lot of people say that about their time at
improv theaters.

Speaker 2 (19:07):
Yeah, it has that kind of improv wall of silence. Right.
The then blue line as we call it, that's where
that term comes from, is the Chicago School.

Speaker 4 (19:16):
Yeah, that comes from IOH.

Speaker 2 (19:18):
Yeah, So anyway, the seventies turns into the nineteen eighties,
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

(19:39):
stories about like people's behavior when they have Again, this
is 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, and some
of it's probably like cult leader defending himself whatever.

Speaker 3 (19:58):
Right, So it is there.

Speaker 4 (20:00):
Does it seem like by the eighties there is an
element of like, he's just kind of unraveling.

Speaker 2 (20:05):
Not unrat 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 seriously push back. Yeah, this is the same
way all of these people were, whether they become the
president or run a weird little aslutely. No, no, I

(20:28):
would never say that that's fucking hack as shit. I
would say, maybe we should keep giving men like this power.

Speaker 3 (20:38):
See this time it'll work one more time?

Speaker 2 (20:41):
Well, we just need some nukes. If this guy had nukes,
there wouldn't have been any problems. So yeah, I will
say for for Petty's sake, I don't think his cult
murdered anybody. That said it is very unclear how violent
they got. Uh, several ex members were threatened directly. This
is just beyond the weird sex stuff. From one police
report that interviewed twenty one former members on their experience quote,

(21:04):
they stated that the organization began as an alternative lifestyle
in the nineteen sixties, and many of them became disenchanted
with a 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

(21:27):
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.

Speaker 6 (21:47):
So yeah, what 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 our?

Speaker 2 (22:00):
Why? Like I wouldn't that seems like there should be
more on that.

Speaker 3 (22:04):
Now I feel like I'm getting conspiratorial.

Speaker 4 (22:06):
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.

Speaker 3 (22:16):
Yeah, protecting.

Speaker 4 (22:18):
Yeah, like it seems it seems like not out of
the question. This is so much redacted.

Speaker 2 (22:22):
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 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

(22:43):
get why people latch onto this fucking story.

Speaker 3 (22:46):
Right, Yeah, yeah, I mean that's a lot.

Speaker 4 (22:48):
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.

Speaker 3 (22:58):
So I don't understand what's.

Speaker 2 (23:00):
Weird to me about this because I've read through i
don't know, like two hundred 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

(23:21):
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

(23:44):
so on the nose.

Speaker 4 (23:47):
God, yeah, this 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?

Speaker 3 (23:56):
With this for so long, like.

Speaker 2 (23:59):
People too far on the Finders. Yeah, but it is
an Epstein style thing where I'm like, oh, yeah, I
get way. It's you know, 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, so again,
definitely a fucking cult, but a fairly careful cult. You know,

(24:21):
I wouldn't actually be surprised if that Arson was unrelated
to the cult, just because it stands out. I don't
see any of their allegations like that, And they go
twenty 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.

Speaker 7 (24:42):
You know.

Speaker 2 (24:43):
Yeah, maybe for some of the institutional backing we had,
But they don't make a splash for a long.

Speaker 4 (24:48):
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.

Speaker 2 (24:56):
You know what else is plausible? Jamie, Oh tell me, Robert,
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, Jamie, you got that in your heart.

Speaker 3 (25:11):
It was there anyways.

Speaker 2 (25:12):
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?

Speaker 4 (25:20):
Yes?

Speaker 2 (25:22):
All you got to do. Hand your credit card over
to whoever advertises next.

Speaker 3 (25:25):
Wow. I hope it's something bad for me.

Speaker 2 (25:30):
That's almost a guarantee, Jamie, and we're back. This is
again a podcast sponsored entirely by convincing Jamie to pay
money for scams.

Speaker 4 (25:46):
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.

Speaker 2 (25:55):
Yeah. Oh, I sell her a Stanley cup every week
every Yeah.

Speaker 3 (26:00):
I have them mounted on my wall, like something's wrong
with me.

Speaker 2 (26:04):
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 if 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 the

(26:26):
thousand copies of the same old Marx book. It's fine,
it's all the same deal.

Speaker 4 (26:30):
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 Stanle, like
why the cups are the ones that like.

Speaker 3 (26:43):
Twitter has picked up on. There's so many collections. I
don't know. I have every bit of discourse around the cups.

Speaker 2 (26:50):
I'm just like enough, it's just twenty twenty four. If
there is a well made product, there is a group
of people who center more of their identity than is
rational around it.

Speaker 1 (27:00):
And that's just the way it free cup you get
if you're in the hospital.

Speaker 2 (27:04):
Yeah sure, yeah, I don't.

Speaker 3 (27:06):
I just I don't know.

Speaker 4 (27:07):
I've seen every ankle on the cup discourse and I
was like, hmmm, ultimately.

Speaker 2 (27:14):
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 skulltash.

Speaker 3 (27:21):
A skull with a Stanley for.

Speaker 2 (27:25):
I have a similar cup that I only take out
when I know I can't carry a gun somewhere. I
have my fighting cup.

Speaker 4 (27:32):
I have one good cup, and Sophie gave it to
me for my birthday a couple of years ago, and
I use it every day.

Speaker 3 (27:39):
Yep, the end.

Speaker 2 (27:41):
I knew a lady when I lived in Guatemala who's 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 ex pat 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

(28:03):
pretty effectively. Like all right, that's that's not an unreasonable
way to look at it.

Speaker 4 (28:09):
I like, I mean, in the best case scenario, you
have a bottle of wine, like you kind of useless.
I mean that I can really get behind that that reasoning.
It's and and you know, women have to innovate.

Speaker 3 (28:22):
They just did.

Speaker 2 (28:23):
Absolutely.

Speaker 4 (28:24):
I believe in the Stanley cups is a weapon. I
take I have no opinion on this round of discourse.
I'm just excited for the new Ariana Grande album.

Speaker 2 (28:33):
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.

Speaker 4 (28:42):
I think I think the real, the only real Stanley
Cup I observe, is the one that comes out right
after the Zamboni at the end of the season.

Speaker 3 (28:51):
That's the Stanley Cup that I like. Anyways, where are
we talking about? What's the show?

Speaker 4 (28:56):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (28:56):
Man, you know this is We've gone too off to
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.

Speaker 3 (29:11):
So I was this like, I was like, I bet
was this like a long time ago?

Speaker 2 (29:15):
No, I think it's pretty recently.

Speaker 4 (29:16):
It was recent, really, I was like, my dad, I'm
sure they taught me about the guy skate energy, but
it was a kill. I think my dad talked about
like some eighties critical injury where that happened.

Speaker 2 (29:26):
This was a kill. This was a kill with the skates,
so it works brutal anyway, occupational hazard. Yeah, back to
the Finder's Cult. We know a few ex members made
complaints to the police over the first twenty 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

(29:48):
knew about him. They were weird.

Speaker 4 (29:50):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (29:50):
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 just
justification to ruin their lives. So we just moved on.
But we're really happy something finally happened because we knew
they were weird. Got rain. Now, over the course of

(30:11):
almost twenty 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 no, thousands
of cultures and societies over the course of human life
where like that's the way it worked to some extent,

(30:33):
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 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

(30:54):
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,

(31:14):
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.

Speaker 4 (31:20):
So God, yeah, whenever you hear stories, I mean, I
think it's frequently cultpital. So it just like it takes
a village logic, resulting in a whole herd of adults
failing to take care of a child.

Speaker 3 (31:33):
So frustrating.

Speaker 2 (31:34):
Yeah. Yeah, 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 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 attitude was like, it's not
children aren't made by like one father, right, Like, once

(31:56):
you're pregnant, you like sleep with other guys who have
skills that you like, can they all contribute to the kid?
And the pragmatic result of this is that, like while
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 kids. So it's a it's
an a strategy when you're dealing with like higher rates
of mortality in the community. Right, the kid doesn't have

(32:17):
one adult looking after him or two, it has like
five or six. And that's functional very much not what's
happening here.

Speaker 4 (32:24):
Yeah, okay, yeah, and that also just sounds like building
a video game character, not a I.

Speaker 2 (32:30):
Wish it worked that way.

Speaker 4 (32:33):
You're like, well, this guy is a you know, very
like handy. Let me just go fuck a guy who.

Speaker 2 (32:38):
Is Yeah, and it's got a hammer. I'm gonna go
fuck him real quick and really level up the kid.

Speaker 3 (32:44):
I wish it was like that. That would be great.

Speaker 4 (32:46):
You would be having this so much better, the greatest
nine months of your life, just like creating super Soldiers.

Speaker 2 (32:58):
Just a crowd showing up outside of the Olympic village
every four years.

Speaker 3 (33:03):
My god. Okay, well that's a I mean, that's a
fun idea. I wish what is that?

Speaker 2 (33:09):
But the idea at least a good short story in that.

Speaker 3 (33:11):
Yeah, Yeah, that's a George that's it. That's a George
Saunders b side waiting to happen.

Speaker 2 (33:15):
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.

(33:36):
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. It's
it's a mix of those things. Are all happening.

Speaker 3 (33:49):
What a beautiful uh gradient yeah.

Speaker 2 (33:52):
Yeah, this will become meaningful later. But on one occasion,
the cult slaughters a pair of goats, and like, oh,
let the kids kind of help in that process, play
around with the remains too.

Speaker 3 (34:04):
What is it with this group and remains?

Speaker 2 (34:07):
It's just I don't know, kids like kids like dead animals,
you know. That's that's classic. That's why that famous gift.
You get a kid, you know, a dead animal, bring
them to a child in a room together. That's how
parenting works.

Speaker 3 (34:18):
Kids like goo. Maybe that's what kids do, like goo.
I liked you.

Speaker 2 (34:24):
Yeah, don't we all like goo? That's why Starship Troopers
was such a such a hit.

Speaker 4 (34:29):
So.

Speaker 2 (34:29):
George George Petty, Maryon's son, would later give a description
of the Colt'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. Mary and Petty
now sixty six would a sign a follower to a
game or adventure overseas or in another city, and the
group member would not see his children for months. George

(34:52):
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. 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

(35:12):
get found. As I open the episode, right, like he's saying, basically, Okay,
these kids are neglected a lot. I don't think there 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 the bad social experiment. Yeah, And again, like.

Speaker 4 (35:39):
The goal that is leading to these children being neglected
is so mysterious, Like I just don't understand.

Speaker 2 (35:48):
I might not agree with that, Jamie, because like, oh,
what I think is happening here. All these people is
cult are raised between the twenties and the forties, 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

(36:10):
they'll starve.

Speaker 4 (36:11):
Yeah, being enlisted, being forced into labor too young.

Speaker 2 (36:15):
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. Yeah, weirdo.
That's where the problem comes in.

Speaker 4 (36:30):
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.

Speaker 2 (36:40):
Yeah, yeah, this is what it is, right, Yeah.

Speaker 4 (36:43):
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.

Speaker 2 (36:55):
Yeah, might as well change it up. Yeah, So yeah,
I had that article. That Washington Post article also includes
some quotes from neighbors who visited the Petty family farm
early in the Colt's life, and they this is like
some random man on the street encounters towards how the
Colt raised children that I found interesting. In the summer,
neighbors saw as many as a dozen children at the farm.

(37:15):
There was always hollering and screaming going on, said Wilma 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 gonna get ituck, and bad journalism there,
because it's like, what was that a kid saying shut up,
you ain't gonna get it, Because that does kind of
sound like a kid being angry at another kid, or
as any an adult saying fuck you you don't get milk,

(37:36):
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 box to them a farm and not
educating them.

Speaker 4 (37:51):
I'm going to bravely say I think they're doing a
pretty horrible job of raising these kids.

Speaker 2 (37:56):
Not a good job with these kids. Yeah, although again,
it's the same seventies. Is this worse than an average parent? Sure?
Is this massively worse than a lot of people are doing. Well,
I don't know.

Speaker 4 (38:10):
I I'm just I think they're doing a bad job.
But they're doing 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.

Speaker 2 (38:26):
We're just fucking yeah, we're just fucked again. This is bad.
It's not surprising. We all, I'm gonna guess everyone listening
to this new kids were friends with kids whose parents
took variations of this attitude, were 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

(38:47):
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 this, Sure, yeah, I'm.

Speaker 4 (39:05):
Going 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.

Speaker 3 (39:21):
You're like, surely we can split the difference.

Speaker 2 (39:23):
Literally never met my child. Yeah. In nineteen eighty six,
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

(39:45):
some of the women had complained that their baby daddies
were using the Colt's attitude towards child rearing. It's an
excuse to ignore their kids. So this is a kind
of a mark. And the less abusive thing as like, yeah,
they did this for a few years and like the
men were ignoring the kids, so they change shit. Up,
and the way they change it is Petty has all
of the women move into separate apartments from the men.

(40:05):
They live in a separate house and the men are
living with the kids and taking care of them.

Speaker 1 (40:11):
Right.

Speaker 2 (40:12):
He's basically saying, Okay, you men have been shirking your job.
We're gonna cut the women out of it. They can
all they're all gonna go off and have an adventure
and you have to focus on raising the kids right now,
which is again not misogynist. Now, no, is it a
good idea for those kids? They're to put them with
these guys, you don't know what they're doing. Maybe not.

Speaker 4 (40:32):
Yeah, there's there's many things that are true here.

Speaker 2 (40:38):
Yeah, it's it's a complicated situation because it is like
that is progressive from a gender standpoint, but also really
not very responsible.

Speaker 4 (40:49):
But we gotta vet these dads. We just gotta bet
these dads. We can't count on them learning on the
job they need.

Speaker 2 (40:57):
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.

Speaker 4 (41:10):
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 was like,

(41:32):
my dad doesn't know how to do laundry, what are
we gonna do?

Speaker 3 (41:36):
Like we're gonna die.

Speaker 2 (41:37):
I'm not making a general statement about like I'm not
saying that like, ye, men should not be led. I'm
saying that in this specific case, men can be as
men 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. Yeah, Yeah,
that's that's all I'm saying.

Speaker 3 (41:56):
Yes, I mean there's yeah, obviously there's there's good male parents.
It's just not in this group.

Speaker 2 (42:01):
It doesn't sound, 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

(42:21):
to take your money out, you could, Nobody stopped you. Right.
That will change eventually, but for the first like twenty
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

(42:44):
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
will pass on to these kids who are going to
raise to be super enlightened, you know people. Right now,
Petty obviously is not a guy with any experience running businesses,
and he has no real interest in running businesses. A

(43:05):
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 Jet 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

(43:26):
capitalist and wound up owning an oil company. Like he's wealthy.

Speaker 4 (43:30):
See, I know anytime you throw a three name in there,
something is about to go wrong.

Speaker 2 (43:35):
Toby's his nickname that he got in the cult. But yes,
that does count. Yeah, So Perry's an early member. He
joins in seventy one, and he abandons his family in
ordered 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

(43:56):
couldn't just go on making more. There wasn't really much
point in that Petty offered a more personalized life, more
community oriented, re establishing the kind of extended family that
the human species evolved under. And I'm not one hundred
percent clear did he like leave his kids and wife
or like is he still involved in their life. It
kind of sounds like, here's the fight it, here's your money.

(44:17):
You've got some money. I'm going to go leave to
be in a cult now.

Speaker 3 (44:20):
God, which for the for the right bad parents, could
be a blessing.

Speaker 2 (44:24):
It could be huge.

Speaker 3 (44:25):
Honestly, I love what a problem just resolves itself like that.

Speaker 2 (44:29):
Yeah. Yeah, So things are going pretty well by cult
terms for the Finders right up until the end of
nineteen eighty six. Now, the cult at this point has
started looking at Tallahassee, Florida, as a possible place to
expand their operations. It's neck colts 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

(44:50):
male members then decide to drive down to Florida in
a van to check out possible location. They're scoping out,
like are we going to expand to here?

Speaker 1 (44:57):
Right?

Speaker 2 (44:58):
And because of the aforementioned shifted child rearing that had occurred,
they had a bunch of kids with them, Right, So
you got 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

(45:21):
don't think these men know much other than the hand
a two year old a carrot.

Speaker 3 (45:26):
The optics are objectively bad.

Speaker 2 (45:30):
Yeah, this is not going to look good. I am
not surprised that these guys attracted attention. 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.

(45:53):
The last thing we care about is anything fuck off.
So she starts adding details, right, 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.

Speaker 3 (46:14):
So she's, hey, don't limit that to Florida. There's a
lot all over them.

Speaker 4 (46:19):
There's neighbor ladies all over this great nation, willing to
call the cops for any reason.

Speaker 2 (46:25):
Yeah, and this is the late eighties, 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 arrest that happens after this,
because it shows how kind of how much this woman

(46:47):
who calls them really forces, how she's like building consciously
building a story to force the cops to do something.
In December of nineteen eighty six, the woman's name called
the Intelligence Division and reported that she had information concerning
a call operating in the District of Columbia. Blank was
advised the Detective Blank of this office handle Colt investigations
and was currently out of town, but would contact her

(47:07):
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 you know, making her initial call,
she starts claiming that like, oh, these guys actually tried

(47:29):
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 eighty seven, 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,

(47:50):
is like, well, that's still not a crime. But then
he's like wow, yeah, base police, base 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

(48:11):
February fourth, nineteen eighty seven, 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 skabhand with
a van full of dirty children. I call that woman
a busybody because like she calls the police repeatedly over
these guys and keeps kind of bugging them about it.

Speaker 4 (48:33):
Well, and I feel like there's 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 it just sometimes like an increasingly

(48:54):
nonsense ways.

Speaker 2 (48:55):
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 sites a college professor
who lived in the area, John Matthews, who is like, yeah,
you know, there were like a close knit group of

(49:17):
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.

Speaker 3 (49:38):
Right, totally off base, She's not totally off base. There
are wrong reasons, yeah, and it's.

Speaker 2 (49:43):
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.

Speaker 4 (49:55):
I don't know, yeah, I mean or or just I mean, like,
given how low the bar was to believe somewhat was
a Satanist in the eighties, I mean, who she could
be going off of any number of faulty yard six there.

Speaker 2 (50:09):
So, finally, February fourth, 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 at least one cop that initially describes
them as like malnourished. The van is kind of smelly.

(50:32):
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 as a woman,
and she actually kind of pushes back at the idea
that the kids were particularly dirty because all of the
news reports when this blows up, are like the children
uncared for in the back of a van, And this

(50:54):
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.

Speaker 3 (51:04):
Interesting. I still don't know where to where to lay out.

Speaker 7 (51:07):
Because it's just such a yeah, it's such a fraud issue,
and it's like anyone could everyone sounds like they're a
degree of right right situation.

Speaker 2 (51:18):
Yeah, yeah, that's that, And I think that is kind
of where we are, because 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 negligy.

Speaker 3 (51:32):
To do nothing. It's like the police to do nothing.

Speaker 2 (51:36):
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.

Speaker 4 (51:51):
Had sex with the pregnant woman and thinks that that
would make one of these kids good at basketball.

Speaker 2 (51:56):
Like, yeah, it's good stuff. One of the office, 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, DC 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,

(52:17):
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

(52:39):
taking these other people's kids to Mexico to make a
baby Harbor.

Speaker 4 (52:44):
That is like crime, mad libs. So funny, that's escaping
the country mad libs.

Speaker 2 (52:52):
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 believe. But you're like,
we're taking them to Mexico to make baby Harvard. Well, yeah,
of course you're getting arrested now if that's clearly sex
criminal stuff.

Speaker 7 (53:11):
Jesus Okay, So so there.

Speaker 3 (53:14):
I mean, it's like, are they I don't know why.
I'm trying to understand why they would say this.

Speaker 4 (53:19):
Everyone's been behaving weird for two decades and this is
the first time people seem to care it's happening.

Speaker 3 (53:27):
Uh, baby Harvard. That is just that's just a step
too far. We have to draw the line of baby Harvard,
says the police.

Speaker 2 (53:33):
I'm always saying that, and so are the police.

Speaker 4 (53:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (53:36):
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.

Speaker 3 (53:45):
Yeah, perfect crime. Well I just took my wallet out.

Speaker 2 (53:50):
My wallet's never been in my pants even once.

Speaker 3 (53:53):
Let's not think too deep into the optics of that.
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (53:57):
Uh huh, Okay.

Speaker 3 (53:58):
I actually don't have a wall.

Speaker 4 (54:00):
Yes, I just keep my cards loose in my pants.

Speaker 2 (54:10):
Ah, we're back and pretending I didn't say the thing
that we believed 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. 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

(54:31):
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 your sex criminals.

Speaker 4 (54:40):
Yeah, it really is a masterclass and what not to
say in a situation where I think that they are being.

Speaker 3 (54:46):
Set up to get away with it whatever it is.

Speaker 2 (54:50):
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

(55:11):
reasonable because they're 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

(55:32):
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 ben the knees.
This guy did the Scarlett 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

(55:53):
like a child playing, like when you go to check
if they're asleep at night.

Speaker 5 (55:57):
Do that.

Speaker 3 (55:58):
This cult is not finding very strong soldiers.

Speaker 4 (56:01):
Oh no, they're just like you.

Speaker 3 (56:05):
Oh, my stars and stripes, I'm being accused of what.

Speaker 2 (56:10):
Like POWD molestation.

Speaker 3 (56:12):
This is just it.

Speaker 4 (56:14):
Oh god, everyone in this scenario is flopping. Let's get
these kids out of here, away from the police, away
from these guys.

Speaker 2 (56:22):
Yeah yeah, let's do it. Eh. 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

(56:44):
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 examination showed sexual abuse
to one of the children. Now, this is extremely serious.

(57:06):
Allegations do not get much worse than that, right, and
that is a serious thing. If a child was found
who 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, and much of the reputation of the
finders of why they're part of conspiracy theory centers around

(57:28):
this statement. Right, that specifically one of these children was
found who 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, Okay, in this case,
it's not fully their fault because a Health in Human
Services caseworker had told a police officer that two of
the children were confirmed sexual assault victims. Now, a couple

(57:51):
of things here. Number one, that means the police are
still wrong because they said that one shelf had been abused,
and they were told by the Health and Human Services
re up that two children had been 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

(58:13):
that misstatement was made. But I'm going to quote from
reporter John Cohen here. Okay, 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 we're
not diagnostic of it. In other words, the doctor did

(58:36):
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.

Speaker 4 (58:54):
You, yeah, it's like you could go Jamis Dowell and
break it on a bike seat.

Speaker 2 (58:59):
Yeah, on a bike seat, very painful. Likewise, this boy
there were characteristics of irritation in his anus that sometimes
are evidence of past of 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
not really giving you a good diet, perhaps your aanus

(59:19):
becomes irritated. Right, it's not diagnostic.

Speaker 4 (59:22):
We don't know sure, and I hate that, like we
have to get into like the what about ism of
like determining what constitutes child abuse and like all 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 and that goes through the

(59:43):
quan On 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
counter intuitive to actually, I mean, I know, I'm like

(01:00:04):
a broken record with this shit. It's just it'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 that they like.

Speaker 8 (01:00:18):
It's just yeah, it's it's very frustrating because like what
the doctor has done here is his job, which is like, yeah,
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 in Human Services
rep here's that and then just says, yep, we've confirmed

(01:00:39):
two kids were raped.

Speaker 2 (01:00:40):
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 then that's confirmed we know that, right,

(01:01:01):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:01:21):
Well and because well.

Speaker 4 (01:01:22):
And that sounds like it's completely because of how incompetent
the investigation is.

Speaker 2 (01:01:28):
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 gonna quote here from that city paper article. The
Miami Herald and Washington Post ran page one stories three

(01:01:49):
days in a row. The stated New York Times reported
that some have described the finders as bizarre cult of
devil worshippers. Everyone got it 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

(01:02:10):
random lady in Florida said they're Satanists. So let's just
say some have described them as a cult of devil worshippers.

Speaker 3 (01:02:17):
Are talking about Yeah, do the.

Speaker 2 (01:02:19):
People say know anything?

Speaker 4 (01:02:21):
No, but it's just like the most like satanic panic sensational.

Speaker 3 (01:02:27):
I mean that still continues, but that's yeah, and it's like.

Speaker 4 (01:02:31):
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 yeah, you know, they
maybe they were relieved to find out that they were
evil Satanist because they're like, we're not really sure what
we were supposed.

Speaker 3 (01:02:48):
To be doing.

Speaker 2 (01:02:49):
Yeah, yeah, it's uh, we just let.

Speaker 4 (01:02:51):
This grave robbing child like gamify our lives for some reason.
And now we're starting Baby.

Speaker 2 (01:02:57):
Harvard to be to be a conspiracy 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. 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

(01:03:19):
of the finders give statements to the media that are
like purposefully crazy or bizarre, like usually not just like
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

(01:03:42):
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 Mary Pranks to let's keep fucking with the press.
We'll give the police conflicting statements. Ha, what fun this
all is. As these moms are like losing their minds

(01:04:03):
because their kids are locked away from them.

Speaker 3 (01:04:05):
It's their fucking kids.

Speaker 4 (01:04:07):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:04:13):
He's like couseplaying as like the fucking lobotomy joke.

Speaker 2 (01:04:16):
Yes, yes, like Jamie, 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.

Speaker 3 (01:04:34):
If you don't want children in the clutches of the
State of Florida.

Speaker 2 (01:04:38):
That's even worse than these guys watching them.

Speaker 3 (01:04:41):
Right, the situation keeps getting worse.

Speaker 2 (01:04:44):
Uh, 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 gonna 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, let's
figure out what's happening. It's not super clear what's going on.

(01:05:05):
Let's do an investigation aer 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. And

(01:05:26):
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,

(01:05:48):
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 int and he's really gonna
really gonna cause some fun for us in the next part.
But Jamie, yes, that's all we've got for this week.

(01:06:10):
I think there's gonna be one more.

Speaker 3 (01:06:11):
That's a lot, that's a lot more.

Speaker 2 (01:06:13):
Maybe two, but probably just one. But we'll get to
that next week. This week, this we're done.

Speaker 4 (01:06:18):
This is a queasy This is this This is a
fucking queasy one. 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 thirty five years ago. It feels like it
happened recently. Unfortunately, this stinks. I'll bravely say this stinks.

Speaker 2 (01:06:42):
Well that's good. I agree it does stink, but you
know it doesn't stink. Jamie. What podcasts, particularly the podcast
you're about to launch for us?

Speaker 3 (01:06:54):
It's true?

Speaker 2 (01:06:55):
Are you yeah? What are you doing on that podcast? Jamie?
What are you gonna be doing?

Speaker 3 (01:06:58):
Thanks for the tea up.

Speaker 4 (01:07:00):
Well, I've got a new show coming out on cool
Zone Media. Ever heard of it that you and Sophie
are letting me make.

Speaker 3 (01:07:10):
It's called fifteen Minutes. It is about some of the.

Speaker 4 (01:07:15):
Most notorious, particularly main characters of the Internet, but the
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, thirty to fifty Faral Hogs guy who I

(01:07:38):
intend to maybe get justice for.

Speaker 3 (01:07:40):
I don't know. We got to talk to him. But anyways,
that comes out in.

Speaker 1 (01:07:43):
March, and Jamie, is that a weekly podcast.

Speaker 3 (01:07:48):
Oh yeah it is. And it's a weekly podcast.

Speaker 4 (01:07:53):
Yeah, because there's just so many of these motherfuckers.

Speaker 1 (01:07:56):
I often get asked, how do we get more Jamie
Loftus and it's You're Greenland Weekly Dreaming Loftice podcast.

Speaker 4 (01:08:02):
You're welcome, Yes, and soon you'll never be asking that
question again.

Speaker 3 (01:08:05):
You'll be asking could I have less? And how do
I avoid? And I'm happy to help out there as well.

Speaker 2 (01:08:14):
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 D and D for you and your friends,
don't let children get taken into custody by the State

(01:08:36):
of Florida. It's not worth it.

Speaker 3 (01:08:38):
Just the thought, the one takeaway.

Speaker 2 (01:08:41):
Yeah, yeah, that's where I am.

Speaker 7 (01:08:45):
Bhie.

Speaker 1 (01:08:50):
Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool
Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio
app

Speaker 3 (01:09:00):
Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.