“A Crumbling Empire”

A look at the “funny money” which allowed Anneewakee’s owners to make a fortune. The upper organization begins to fall apart once arguments over money begin to happen after a head accountant dies under mysterious circumstances.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Camp hell Anawaki is a production of I Heart Radio.
The views and opinions expressing this podcast are solely those
of the author and participants and do not necessarily represent
those of I Heart Media or its employees. Due to
discussion of traumatic, sexual and violent content, listener discussion is advised.
I think once, maybe twice a year, people from the

(00:24):
state would come out to do like an inspection or something.
This is Terry, a former patient at the Annawaki North
Campus in Rockmart, the all girls facility. She remembers during
her time how the staff would handle visits from state
agencies that were meant to check on the treatment center

(00:45):
and how it operated with an Awake now being a
licensed medical facility, it had to be recorded that patients
were getting the proper treatment they were supposed to. And
I remember the first time when they came out, they
picked like three of us girls to be the one
to answer any questions, and so they took the rest

(01:08):
of the group like way way out into the woods,
like a mile out into the woods. And I can
remember when the first inspector lady came, one of the
group leaders told her the girls are out on a
work project about a mile out in the woods. I
guess they just knew that the inspector probably wasn't going
to hike out a mile. But we were available though.

(01:32):
They were like three of us, and we were told
even before the inspector came, if they asked if we
met with a psychiatrist, to let them know that we did,
and that we had thirty to forty five minute sessions.
At this point in time, Annawiki was sold to the
parents of its patients largely as a medical treatment center

(01:54):
with daily therapy. In reality, this therapy was greatly exaggerated,
often amounting to know more than a few minutes at
most with an actual therapist. I don't think my parents
realized until I got out that I really didn't get
the help that I needed. We would see a psychiatrist,

(02:16):
I want to say once a week. It might have
been every other week. But we would literally like get
in a line and go one after the other and
you'd only get a few minutes, and they would just
right on a clipboard and they would literally look at
their clock and say, Okay, time's up next. I mean,
it was a joke. We like going to the psychiatrist

(02:39):
because it gave us like a five minute break from
the heavy labor work. But I mean, we didn't even
get that much time. It was a joke. And I
do know um that my parents were charged for like
a forty five minute visit, I think is what it
was supposed to be. Thirty or forty five minutes, and

(03:00):
we used to laugh about it. I guess we knew
the doctors are making all this money off of us
and they're only seeing us like for a couple of minutes.
Terry says that during these visits from state officials, the
designated patients who were allowed to answer questions were to
downplay the lack of education as well as how their
time was really being spent. They told us to explain

(03:25):
to them that it was an owned privilege and that
some people did go to school. And then there was
another thing that we were told not to let them know.
They like encouraged us not to talk about the manual
labor that we did all day. And the only reason
why I would go along with it because I knew

(03:46):
it wasn't right, like to not tell them the truth
on certain things. But it was another way where I
thought I was getting brownie points, you know, because they
chose me to be the one to talk, so I
thought it just hit me on their good side that
looking back, that was pretty messed up because they probably
could have helped us if I had told the truth.

(04:08):
That that's just the way it went. Although Terry went
along within a week he's plan to hide their abuse
from government officials, she did try to report the wrongdoing
to her family when she had the chance. I did
try to tell my parents on one of my home visits,
especially about the two counselors that I had that were

(04:30):
sleeping together, that had a relationship, and all the sexual
things that were going on, and how uncomfortable I was,
and I really wanted to get out of there. Well,
it backfired because when they brought me back from my
home visit, they met with one of the social workers
and then they called me in and the social worker

(04:50):
just barrated me. She said, you know, one of your
biggest problems, and the reason why you're out here and
you're still out here, is because you're a manipulator and
what you've done um to your parents trying to make
up these things, saying that there's this sexual abuse and
things going on just so you can get out. You're

(05:11):
not gonna get away with that. You know, they see
right through We see right through it. And so it
was like I was a liar, and they didn't they
believe the social worker. They didn't believe me anymore. And
that she said that I wasn't the only patient out
there trying to do that, that there were other kids

(05:31):
saying the same thing just so they could get out.
You know, she tried to intimidate me, saying, do you
know how serious it is to make allegations like that
about your counselors and about other girls doing these things
with each other? I just I backed off. I knew

(05:51):
over the past several weeks we have received number of
very serious allegations concerning both the facility out there in
a number of individuals involved with them. It was just
a form of their therapy. They were told to do it,
and at the time he was fourteen and a half,
fifteen years old, they didn't know any better. I asked him,
why are you letting this happen? Why are you covering

(06:13):
up for Louis Batterer. He had no answer to that question.
Having and this sitution paid its little could be such
shock destrica place and to do absolutely the contrary of
what they should have done. I'm disturbable the fact of

(06:34):
something and he's still going on it. An I wake you.
I'm Josh Stein and this is camp hell an Awake.
By the mid nineteen eighties, an Awaki had reached its
highest attendance numbers. Yet not only was it operating on
three different campuses Douglasville, Rock Martin, and Carabelle, it was

(06:56):
now taking its patients on trips to other countries. In
a board meeting from nineteen eighty three, plans for an
Antawaki University were discussed, a program that would continue on
through graduate degree status. Disruptions in the organization had started
to occur. One catalyst began with a legal dispute over

(07:18):
the recording rights to the songs written by the patients
you just heard from Terry. During this dispute, it was
also brought to her parents attention other wrongdoings which occurred
while her and her brothers attended, in particular that maybe
they weren't getting the treatment which their parents had been
paying for. The fact that Terry's brothers had also been

(07:38):
involved with the annual trip to Mexico made matters even worse.
Here's journalist Albert Edgin. At the same time, there was
a parent whose daughter had written a song about Anna
Wake and there was a complaint. There was some dispute
over the whether she was going to get paid for
the song or how the boarding studio was going to

(08:01):
be paid. But that parent then, in coincidental parallel track
learned about the trips to the Mexican brothels. This cause
for alarm regarding payment to Anawaki was not a rare instance.
With an Awaki now collecting payments from its patient's insurance,

(08:23):
Oftentimes parents would not realize what they were actually paying
for the school. One quota number for yearly tuition to
an Awaki was thirty three thousand dollars a year in
the early eighties, the equivalent of over one d thousand
dollars today. Receiving payment from medical insurance policies was just
one of an Awaki's multiple revenue streams. With the purchase

(08:46):
of land for its three campuses and properties in Mexico
and Canada, and Awaki had set up a shell corporation
called Anawaki Estates. This LLC would own the real estate
and Awake had acquired and would then lease the property
to its other corporation and Awaki Incorporated in essence shifting

(09:08):
funds from the patients back to the owners of aniwaki Estates.
And who were the owners of the shell corporation none
other than Lewis Petter's three daughters, Tina, Rita and Marcia.
They were leasing them just like anybody else would be
leasing real estate from another company, any other business. So

(09:29):
the non profit was paying the profit corporation. The nonprofit
aniwaki E was paying an awaki Estates rent for lack
of a better way of putting it. And I don't
recall the amounts and involved there, but the ownership of
that was the three daughters. This is Frank Win. He

(09:49):
was the d A for Douglas County in the ninet eighties.
He says the business behind Anawaki's financial interest was largely
tied to the pattern family. Pet His daughters would go
on to marry others involved in the organization. Marcia Petter
to Bud Pedigo in a week he's main accountant, and

(10:10):
Rita Petter to James Henry Evans one of in a
week he's heads of management an awaki Estates. Who would
have been the name of that corporation. Anawaki Inc. Was
the not for profit or nonprofit organization that you know.
I believe most of the board of directors thought when
they authorized stuff that they were authorizing purchases in the

(10:33):
name of Anawaki Inc. And actually they were leasing a
lot of the facilities from Anawaki Estates. So the family
that was the big picture of the family's involvements. You
had three of them that owned the for profit corporation.
Both of his daughters were in charge of different departments,

(10:54):
two of his son in law's were involved. His wife
was also involved. All of them in a director type position.
It is around this same time that some changes were
happening in the law enforcement agencies of Douglas County. For years,
the sheriff had been Claude Abercrombie. Sheriff. Abercrumbie two had

(11:16):
close ties with Anna Waki, even teaching a horse breaking
class to the boys who would come and work on
his horse farm. Abercrumbie's term ended in the mid seventies
after his deputy sheriff, Earl Lee, decided to run against
him for the position and was elected. Earl Lee became
a known character of Douglas County Lore. Here's what Frank

(11:39):
Winn remembers about him. Well, Early was sheriff of Douglas
Canty when when I came along, he had a reputation
that clearly was a walking tall type of sheriff. Some
of it was very much talk. I learned the no

(11:59):
Earl and and love him because I could see just
how obsessive he would get investigating a homicide. He couldn't
stand that someone was killed and that there wasn't justice
trying to find who did it, and he would work
very hard. He wouldn't just jump in and arrest somebody.
He's certainly the kind of person that would not back

(12:19):
down or somebody that you didn't want to have a
fight with. So he had developed a reputation with a
lot of people local from Douglasville. Pat Kirkland remembers how
Earl Lee was thought of at the time. Early has
a reputation on his own. Early was an old West lawman.

(12:41):
He was the law. I mean, everybody knew that Earl
Lee is the law in Douglas County. Early was just
a good old boy, old small town you know, sheriff
and everything. Of course he was you know, he was
elected by the people and everything, but he just really
it and put up with too much stuff from anyone.

(13:03):
Back several years ago, there he was, he had a
prisoner in the back of his car, and I remembered
this somehow that prisoner and handcuffs committed suicide in the
back of Early's car. Now how and they had did
that happen? Earl Lee had a reputation in the county.
I think he did a lot of good for the

(13:24):
county and everything. But Earl Lee was an old West lawman,
and it's gonna be my way or you ain't gonna
like the circumstances or the what happens at with it.
I know that there were some a couple of instants
where people got shot. People believe that Earl had shot him.
But I had reviewed the files when I first came along,

(13:48):
just out of curiosity, and had had talked to some
people in the Sheriff's department, and the truth was Earle
had not been the one that shot the people. But
he never for with back down from letting people believe it.
He wouldn't correct them because he felt like it helped
his reputation as far as uh, you know, law enforcement,

(14:11):
as far as the criminal UH elements were concerned. There
were a lot of people. I heard tapes of people
that would we're doing drupe transactions and would say I'm
not going to Douglas County or I'm not going to
Earl Leaves County. That was more likely how they would
say it. It was amazing. Sometimes. I'll never forget one

(14:34):
case where he told me said, I tried to let
my people do the job on their own and let
them branch out and be able to do it. And
they had actually gone and searched an apartment and came
back and told him they couldn't. They just didn't find anything.
And an Earl believed that just didn't make sense in
relation to this case, that that person had to have

(14:56):
been somehow involved. And the body that we found in
Douglas County, Earl, he asked the guy, you still give
us consent search, and Earl went back and searched with
the same officers and the first thing he notices is
just a few little red spots, real minor red spots
on the wall. And he realizes that nobody has turned

(15:21):
the bed over, so he makes his officers flip the bed,
and the first thing they see is some blood, and
then they find some on the bottom side of a pillow.
And whether it's true or not, I remember Earl after
they started, after they clearly had found blood, he said,
let me show you where the gun is. And he said, so,

(15:43):
I took him into the guy's closet and started patting
down the clothes, and the gun had been placed on
the inside pocket of a coat. This was clearly the
murder weapon, but his officers had missed it. And Earl,
once he found the blood, he knew exactly where somebody
might hide a gun, and and that his officers might

(16:05):
not have looked at and that still might have been
a problem. But he he brings the guy into his
office and very politely interviews him and and goes over
his rights with him and talks to him for a
little while, reaches under his desk and pulls up the
jacket and says, tell me about this jacket, and the
guy immediately starts explaining why the gun was there. And

(16:27):
Earl had made had spent thirty minutes never mentioning the gun,
never told the guy the point of the coat, And
like Earl told me when we were prosecuting the case,
it was better than a confession. Frank says that while
Earl Lee had his suspicions about an AWAKEI, he never

(16:51):
had enough of a case to make an arrest or
conduct a formal investigation. This outlook changed after a tragic
incident occur on the Douglasville campus. From Earl's Lee's standpoint,
one of the things that had caught his attention had
been that there was a situation where UH kid had

(17:14):
killed himself. He had jumped off of I'm going to
call it an old rock or brick type of chimney
structure and landed onto a concrete slab. And that was
something that Earl was very uh touched anytime a kid
died and he would get involved, uh and he would

(17:38):
become obsessive, compulsive. Carl Moore remembers his reaction when he
was informed there had been a suicide at Annawaki. There
was a a chimney of one of the cabins that
was left. I can't I think it was just a
chimney with the slab. I don't remember why it was

(18:00):
that way, but he climbed to the top of that
and uh dove off. I had been on a trip somewhere.
I can't remember what I was doing now, but I
had someone had picked me up the airport and told
me that one of the kids who killed themselves. It

(18:21):
just devastated me to hear that. I think I actually
arrived back at the campus as the ambulances were still there.
I got the idea that a lot of the kids
knew him. It was a big deal. That was something
he never could figure out why that kid did what
he did. That just he wasn't provided with enough information

(18:44):
from Mannawaki that made him comfortable that it explained the
kid committing suicide. And so that was just something that
bothered him, and he spoke to me about it, and
so it was something that we sort in our minds
had in the back of our thought process when when

(19:05):
other things developed. By eighty Lewis Petter's friend and confident

(19:27):
Jim Parham had completed his term as a part of
Jimmy Carter's presidential cabinet and had returned to serve as
a member of the board of directors for Anawaki. With
Anawaki licensed as an official medical hospital, it was now
subject to receive state funding as a mental institute as
part of a new mental health program put in a

(19:48):
place by the DHR, the same organization which Parum was
once head up. In a document from the Georgia Department
of Human Resources from January eighteenth night, it is recorded
that the State of Georgia paid an Awake the sum
of eight hundred and seventy two thousand dollars of taxpayer money,
the purpose of which was to build a brand new

(20:11):
evaluation and observation or E and O building that could
house up to forty five additional patients. While Annawaki was
clearly still in good graces with state government agencies, others
were beginning to become suspicious of the tax exempt organization.
Following the suicide on campus in Antawaki's resistance to investigate it,

(20:34):
local authorities were now looking more closely into the financial
organization behind in Awaki. In nine two, Douglas County decided
to revoke an Awake's nonprofit tax exemption, followed by an
attempt to recoup hundreds of thousands of dollars in back taxes.
The county felt it was owed. Insurance companies, who were

(20:56):
now being charged hundreds of thousands of dollars also began
to question the validity of an Awaki's treatment. An early
correspondence from shows Blue Cross Blue Shield arguing that the treatment,
costing upwards of one thousand dollars for a patient was
not covered under their plan. Another correspondence from the United

(21:16):
States Department of Defense Division of Health Affairs regarding the
son of a retired Army officer shows a decline to
cover the treatment provided it Innawaki upon further review and
called the treatment quote not medically necessary. While state agencies
and insurance companies alike were beginning to grow skeptical of

(21:38):
Anawaki's practices, other things were starting to make parents of
the students and even board members of an Awaki suspicious.
One of these board members that would greatly affect the
future of an Awaki was one Sarah Tillis. Here's journalist
Albert Edgin. Sarah Tillis was the mother of several children

(22:01):
who had been treated in an Awake and who are
still being treated at an Awake in the eighties, but
also an important member of the board, a very influential
member of the board of directors, and eventually the chairman
of the Board of Directors. She and her husband were
very involved in all sorts of activities there and very
supportive friends with Petter and wealthy in their own right

(22:24):
and had been seduced by Petter. Petter made sure that
her children were given special attention. At the end of
the day, Petter was a good counselor. If he wanted
to be a good counselor, he could be a good counselor.
So if he had somebody he needed to curry favor with,
and the way to do it was to counsel her
children in a very professional and accomplished way, he did it.

(22:46):
And that's what he did with Sarah tell Us, he
lured her in. He seduced her in the same way
that he seduced those boys through his manipulation of her emotions.
So Sarah became an Antiwaki advocate on deroids. I mean,
she was the she was an awake's face. And in return,
her children were taken care of, and she was introduced

(23:08):
by Petter to the you know, political hierarchy in two
different states. You know, she could go to all sorts
of affairs and events with the governor of Florida or
the governor Georgia away. It was very you know, very
high cotton for a suburban housewife in Atlanta. He gave
her those avenues. During one of an Awake's annual Mexico trips,

(23:30):
in a group of board members joined along a number
of incidents occurred which gave alarm to Sarah Tillis and others,
in particular witnessing what she believed to be an inappropriate
relationship with Carl Moore and Petter's teenage granddaughter Shari. You
have to think that was a pretty well developed system

(23:53):
by four when Sarah stumbled onto just one aspect of it,
and the aspect of it that she stumbled on was
is important in the narrative because it changed her opinion
of Petter, and that was that Petter's granddaughter, who was fourteen,
was engaging in sexual for play with the driver of

(24:16):
a van that was taking an Awakey officials around Mexico,
and Petter knew this was happening. It was his granddaughter.
A couple of the the board members, Sarah Tillis being
the main one, noticed that and complained about it. Looking
back on it, it's amazing and it's sort of as
a testament to Petter's um sheer control over the over

(24:41):
people he could control people's opinion of him, and so
even though this was something that that Sarah disapproved of,
she was able to put that in some sort of
a uh place where it was something that troubled her,
but it didn't completely alter her opinion and initially, Peter

(25:02):
I asked Carl Moore about his involvement with Petter's then
teenage granddaughter. He says this was just another sign of
how bad things had gotten for him. There was a
larger context to it. Um doesn't justify or really change

(25:22):
anything about it. I think it was another example, in
a way of how twisted things were for me at
the time. And I don't think it's I don't think
I can say anything else about it. I have to
think it was smoke screen in some ways. After this
episode published, I was contacted by both Carl and Sari.

(25:46):
Carl and Shery both stated that their relationship was strictly
as friends and never sexual. When asked about her relationship
with Carl, Charis stated quote, Carl has never been anything
but good to me. He cared about what happened to
me without ever wanting something in return. When asked again

(26:07):
about his relationship with Shari, Karl stated quote, I was
being her friend without being sexual. I knew there was
a risk that my affection was being misunderstood by others,
and I did not care what they thought. It is
ironic to me that, after all these years, that an
act of kindness caused the outrage required for the Board

(26:29):
of Directors at Annawaki to ultimately act. Sarah Tillis would
later give a written statement outlining this trip to Mexico.
A group from Anauake's board of trustees flew to Mexico
City to join the rest of the group from Anawaki.
A lavish trip is recorded, with the group being housed
by presidents of different areas in Mexico and other government officials.

(26:54):
She describes inappropriate behavior involving Karl Moore, then Petter's fourteen
year old granddaughter Sharie. When Petters confronted by some of
the board members, he states, quote, it's not any of
your goddamn business or the trustees as to why I
brought Cheri to Mexico, even stating that he will call

(27:16):
a board meeting himself to tell the trustees the same thing.
No such meeting ever happened. I think the turning point
was when he was dismissive of the complaints about the
relationship that was observed between his granddaughter and Karl Moore.

(27:37):
What he said after that he heard complaints about this
relationship with Karl Moore was something like, she's going to
get screwed by somebody, it may as well be Karl Moore.
So that was shocking to the people that heard that

(27:58):
and heard that he had said that, and that set
up a sort of a permanent avenue that he would
never get out of, a permanent avenue of disapproval that
he had never had to deal with before. Really, it
was later in the fall when board members who knew
about the relationship between Petter's granddaughter and Karl Moore. Now

(28:22):
we're learning that some of the children, some of the
kids had gone to brothels at the same time, which
would then, I mean, that's just an example of how
it began to get out of that one avenue and expand.
And it took a long time before uh, it exploded,
But maybe not that long when you think about it

(28:42):
in retrospect, because if he was doing it since nine,
somebody notices in and the disapproval sticks in their mind.
It only took a year and a half from there
for it to fall apart. Upon returning from Mexico trip,
Sarah Tillis began asking questions to the upper management of

(29:05):
an Awaki. She claimed that she had been told by
one of the patients who had consistently not been given
a bet on the trip, that it was due to
Petter wanting to quote play the sex game, according to
a statement by Sarah Tillis, When this was brought to
Petter's wife, Mabel's attention, her response was that those types

(29:25):
of matters were not reported, possibly influenced by the confrontations
by board members or issues involving receiving payment from insurance companies.
Louis Petter attempted a sale of an Awake shortly after
the Mexico trip. In according to his statement by Jim Parren,
Petter had received offers for up to thirty million dollars

(29:49):
for the center. The only problem was that Petter was
not willing to let an Awak's books be scrutinized. The
deal shortly fell through. Board members were beginning to become
suspicious not just a Petter's actions, but also of how
in a week's finances were being handled. Suspicions had begun

(30:27):
to build around in Awaki and its multiple revenue streams.
An incident would bring further scrutiny to the program on
March of that year, when a youth being evaluated for
in Aweki treatment escaped from his Florida caseworker and fled
the property. Fourteen year old Billy Ray White disappeared into

(30:49):
the center's wooded surroundings. Three days later, while attempting to
steal a dump truck, White shot and killed local resident
James D. Hall with a revolver stolen from a truck
in the neighborhood. The death shocked the community, raising concerns
to Anawaki was not properly watching over what could sometimes

(31:10):
be dangerous patients being kept there. The whole community will
miss him because he's lived here most of his life,
sure will, Frankie Gibbons says. The killing continues to worry homeowners. Yeah,
we tried to have meanings upcoming alert systems so that

(31:31):
they would let us know when one was off. Doesn't
worry you when some of them get out, Yeah, we've
reported since we've been out here. We call him running
through our property, property across road rolfe and call him
I not mad and we've notifiedment Leaf for the time.
An Awaki officials had been warned months earlier that White

(31:53):
was a quote homicidal threat and could possibly kill without
feeling any remorse. Sheriff Earl Lee responded at the time,
I would have intensified my search for him if I
had known what they knew, but they wouldn't tell me
anything at all. Government agencies and insurance companies were both

(32:14):
beginning to inquire into Antawak's financial irregularities. Soon, another tragic
event would take place that would shake the foundation structure.
Bud Pedigo was Antawak's main accountant and the person who
would have to answer to anyone looking into its finances.
He was also married to Petter's daughter Marcia, both largely

(32:37):
involved with the inner workings of the organization. In May
of Pedago was killed in an automobile accident just a
few blocks away from Antawaki. A drunk driver struck Pedigo's
car with him and his young daughter in the front seat.
His daughter thankfully lived, but Bud was not so lucky.

(33:01):
Carl Moore remembers being one of the first people to
be notified about Pedigo's death. I think Bud was. He
was a nice guy. He was the financial losser like
the CFO. I can't even remember how I heard about it,
but I went there. It was right almost on the campus.
I went there and the car was pushed off the road.

(33:24):
There was a van there that had run into him
almost ahead on wreck that hit the driver's side of
the car. When I got there, Bud was actually in
the passenger seat, and Uh, I went down there. I
didn't know why there was nobody down there. I went
down there like I was gonna help him out, and

(33:47):
and he was gone. I didn't know it for a
little while. His daughter was in the car. This is
uh youngest daughter. I think she was four or five.
She had crawled out the back window of the car.
What I understand. The guy driving the van, he was
drunk and he was injured. He said, Hey, the guy

(34:10):
that's driving the van ran off through the woods, which
was a lie. It was actually him and I think
he was charged with it. Yeah, it was a hard thing.
Then Bud Pettigo died. Between the Mexico revelations in the
middle of the summer of eighty four and his death

(34:31):
in March, there was a lot of conversation going on,
a lot of rumors were swirling around and that encouraged
children who may have been abused to talk about it
among themselves at least. And if you think about Douglas County, well,
Douglas County is a small place, so a lot of

(34:53):
people began hearing about these things. All of those things,
taken together, contributed to an environment in which, in the spring,
a couple of board members started saying, we need to
see an audit, We need to see what's going on
with the money. Things that they had ignored about the
money began to become of interest to them. With a

(35:16):
murder and suicide both connected to an awake. Within a
few years time, law enforcement began to take a closer
look at in awake. What they would find out would
go far beyond what they ever could have imagined. Law
enforcement became aware in Douglas County of the abuse. Once

(35:38):
that happened, then the genie was out of the bottle.
There was no way that it was going to become
anything other than what it became. Once Sheriff Eli knew
about it, that was the end. Former d A. Frank
Winn says that he and his assistant David McDade had
begun to hear complaints about in Awake for some time,

(35:59):
and had even begun to keep a file of said complaints.
One afternoon, he received a visit from Sarah Tillis. It
seemed to confirm some of the suspicions when and Sheriff
Earl Lee had had m she believed that Petter had
been misleading her and the other board members, so it

(36:21):
wasn't just sexual. She gave me enough details that I
sat there to ten thirty with the lady that when
she walked in the office that morning, I would have
thought she was possibly a crazy lady. I had no
idea why somebody is just showing up to talk about anawake.
But she wasn't crazy enough for me to refuse to
talk to her, And she certainly immediately caught my attention,

(36:45):
and I didn't feel like she's crazy at all after
I got talking to her. But I was there till
late that evening, and and so the investigation that actually
started was I talked to David McDade a little bit
about some of the things that had bothered us. David
and I realized we had information that bothered us from

(37:06):
multiple sources. Some of the sources would have been teachers,
some of it administration, uh some of its kids that
were at an awake and now we had a board member.
So we made the decision at that point that to
ask early to start an investigation. And Earle always believed

(37:31):
that Lewis better was something wasn't right. Earl started working
so hard it was impossible for anybody to keep up
with him. An official criminal investigation and now begun to
look into the inner workings of an Awaki and follow
up on the numerous complaints against the center. But Pedico's

(37:55):
death would open the center to a financial audit from
the board, and fighting amongst the upper management was only
getting worse and soon they too would be answering to authorities.
Petter's empire was beginning to fall apart at the seams,
and he was going to do everything he could to
save himself along with it. Next time on camp held

(38:25):
in awaking. After Earle started talking to whoever the ones
were that he interviewed to start with, it was like
a snowball going downhill. It became overwhelming. His whole family
was involved and not awaking. If it was something to
do with the Petter family, the cooperation was minimal. We

(38:49):
had no way of knowing anything that was going on.
We can't talk to our parents. For the most part,
we were in this bubble. It wasn't long after that
that I went down to meet Petters at They essentially
wanted to videotape me denying everything anything sexual or inappropriate,
or financial or anything. He calls me him, he said,

(39:10):
doc Raham. I said, yes, sir, he said, we got
the s LB. Camp hell anna Waki was created and
hosted by Josh Thane, with producer Miranda Hawkins and executive
producers Alex Williams and Matt Frederick. The soundtrack was written

(39:33):
and performed by Josh Thane and Adrian Barry. Archival footage
provided by ws B and CBS News. Find us on
Instagram at camp hell pod. That's c A M p
h E L L p O D Educate yourself about
the issue of child abuse and things that you should
look for at the Darkness to Light website, d too

(39:55):
well dot org. That's D the number two L dot
O r G. Camp hell Anawaki is a production of
I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio,
visit the i heart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever
you listen to podcasts,