From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn the stuff they don't want you to know. M Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is normal. They call me Ben. We are joined with our super producer, Paul Mission Controlled Decond. Most importantly, you are you. You are here that makes this stuff they don't want you to know. For some of our long time listeners, this may be a familiar topic. You see, way way back in the olden days, when Stuff they Don't Want You to Know was purely a video show on YouTube, Amazon and iTunes which is Apple Music now right, but mostly the YouTube's Yeah. Way back in the day, this show was entirely a video series and we covered all sorts of bizarre and strange events. The videos were much shorter um. They were more like introduction episodes or primers for things that we would invite people to examine in depth on their own, and they looked a lot better than the podcast. Yeah and mad Genius Matt Frederick was creating some stunning visuals. I was just saying, mostly because your face was on it for most of the time been. Yeah, I don't anyone who hasn't beheld the majesty that is the face of ben Bowland. It is a thing to be hoped. Like speaking to you through the internet. All all four of us are lookers. And uh, I think that the three of us all appear at some point in that video series. Paul mission control decond did not to my mod it did one? Which one is here? There's a video? Oh gosh, is from It's the neuromarketing video. I want to say, no, wait, is it not. It's not neuromarketing. It's one where you're trying to find me and I'm in a sleeping bag. Oh. And we walked past Paul's desk and Paul is sitting there with Annie next to him. Another producer here, and god, she's not a producer anymore. I'm so sorry. She's the host of Saber and the host of Sminty. You see. That's how long we've been here doing this stuff. Back in the day, Annie and Paul and me, we were just producers, man, That's what we did. This was a buckhead first off. I object to saying just producers. This was back in our buckhead days when we're in different office, right, I remember that video? Yeah, but see now what I'm what I mean by that? Is it now? Paul has been on movie Crush recently talking about movies. Paul is Paul is going to be starting his own podcast really soon. It's called The decand it's only one second long. It's also guys, just on the marketing end of that, we would prefer in messaging that you refer to it as a podcast. Yeah, it's a podcast. So so, okay, mystery solved. At least one mystery solved for today's episode. We have all four appeared on the videos. If you watched the Videos series, then you would have probably run into something that was very mysterious to us, a walnut that we could not quite crack. And video format. We looked at an organization called the Finders. The Finders were um involved in an incident that shocked the United States in the late eighties and then largely disappeared from the news. So the best way and think to delve into this very very strange organization is to start with that event that made national news. Here are the facts. On February eight, the New York Times ran an odd article. It was a report on six children who were found in a Tallahassee playground earlier that week, on February five, And you know that's okay. There's six children found on a playground. That's a little weird to begin with, but it gets much stranger, right it does. According to an anonymous phone call to the local police department, these kids aged two to seven years old. We're not alone. They were accompanied by two well dressed men in their mid to late twenties, a guy named Douglas Edward Zimmerman and a guy named Michael jula Han, which I think that's just a fun last name to say or have hold. So so you've got these two again, according to this color, well dressed gentlemen, well dressed men standing there with these kids. The kids, however, they look unkempt. They look to be just dirty and in some way, again to this caller, somehow injured or abused. And the first reports noted that at least two of the kids exhibited some signs of sexual abuse. Now that's a tough thing in my mind to quantify just by a visual um but who knows the circumstances there. You'd ideally want a medical professional to examine the children, the doctor because that's a heavy accusation, yeah, or therapists. It doesn't seem like something you could easily profile. So we have a lot of details about the men. They were either in a nineteen seventy nine or nine eight blue Dodge van with Virginia plates. Uh. The license number, which we could tell you now because this was back in the eighties. It's x h W five five seven. And who knows where that license plate is now if it's been reused. Could I hope it's not yours? Yeah? Or I definitely hope it's not someone's idea of a nifty vanity plate. So inside this van things become more distressing. The van smells terrible. It's filled with maps, books, letters, there's a mattress in the rear of the van, and the police, based on the appearance of this vehicle, got the feeling that all eight people, the six kids and the two adults, were living in it and had been for some time. So these guys, who, to be clear, are not the parents of any of these children. They get arrested, they get booked into the Leon County jail. They get charged with multiple counts of child abuse and once they're in custody, the men um were somewhat evasive in their responses to the police in terms of the children and their relationship with them, and said only that they were the children's teachers and that they were all en route to Mexico to create a school for gifted children. Brilliant even, And at that point the police say, okay, well that's an interesting story. We don't know if it all adds up. We're gonna go ahead and remove these kids from your care. And then they tried, or they started the process of at least of trying to identify these children, like if this these guys are supposedly teachers, where are their parents? Right? Right? So we're going to play around with their chronology just a little bit and let you know spoiler alert that in March seventeen of that same year, the charges against the men were entirely dismissed and they were released from custody. This is only the beginning of the story. As it turns out, these two gentlemen were not acting alone. They were members of a group, a commune of sorts, an organization that some would call a cult, and this would come to be known as the finders. The mothers of those six children were also affiliated with this organization, and they came forward to the public through a spokesperson, Diane Sherwood, confirming that they had approved this trip and that the two men were taking the kids camping and everybody would be meeting up with the mothers at a later date. Furthermore, the spokesperson confirmed that the mothers would now be traveling to Tallahassee to pick up their children. So thus far we've got we're teachers taking them to Mexico to start a new school for brilliant children, and now we've got the mothers coming forward through a spokesperson saying no, no, no no, no, no, that's not what happened. They were going on a camping trip. Those guys were just you know, I guess the chaperones maybe not mutually exclusive. But it is weird that the story is already don't seem to jibe in a waterproof way. So initial reports in various papers of note from the Chicago Tribune to The New York Times, the Washington Post and more, implied that this was a case of everything from a mundane kidnapping to possibly human trafficking to ellipses dot dot dot a cult. Now this this is not a particularly uncommon story in the nineteen eighties because this occurs at the height of what is called the Satanic Panic in American culture, and during this time, largely in the eighties, but a little bit out in the nineties and seventies as well. There are numerous serious allegations of cults conducting satanic rituals, abusing, sacrificing or kidnapping children, um and murdering people left and right. These proliferate throughout the national zeitgeist. Some of us listening may be old enough to remember this, but if you were born after this time, it's a Google search away. These are the days when various rock bands would be accute used of encoding satanic messages onto their records in some kind of Rube Goldbergs complicated plan to convert people to them to the infernal powers of darkness. Yeah, even the Zodiac case. Haraldo Rivera and one of his shows he was making at the time, turned that into a Satanic panic thing, like it was all about Satan and all of the symbols and everything, and it's crazy to think, like, especially Haraldo and some of these talk shows that's where I generally have memories of seeing that kind of interview with somebody like, oh, you were abused by a Satanic cult. You sacrificed your own children, like what? And the other guy with the white hair was Donna Hue. Yeah, I remember, I barely remember that show, but he was. He was active in this stuff as well. And while the idea of Satanism, or the misconception of what Satanism is what would be called deistic Satanism, which we don't have to get into today, but it's it's different on While that gets top billing in in the marquee of this cultural phenomenon, the big concern was any kind of cult, a pagan by which they non Christian religious organization, and a lot of these things were used as smear tactics against people that were unusual or groups that were unorthodox. But here's the thing. In the case of the Finders, these accusations may have been more accurate than not. So that sounds intense. What when are we going to find out about that? After a quick word from our sponsor, here's where it gets crazy. The investigation continues and it gets more and more complicated, and straight change and eventually goes sour. So let's go back to February of so in the course of verifying the identities and the stories of the men who were arrested in Florida, police traced this cult to Virginia and Washingt d C. Where they also obtained a warrant to search several buildings that were believed to be occupied by this group. Originally the Post The Washington Post reported that police found thousands of photos and documents and computer programs at these various locations. They hoped that analyzing these would give them what they needed, what they hoped to learn to help them decide what exactly the finders organization was. And we have a quote from that Washington Post article. It says they quote removed large plastic bags filled with color slides, photographs, and photographic contact sheets. Some photos visible through the bag carried from the warehouse at thirteen oh seven fourth Eat. We're wallet sized pictures of children, similar to school photos, and some were of naked children. Here's a continuing quote here. DC police sources said that some of the items seized yesterday showed pictures of children engaged in what appeared to be cult rituals. Officials of the U. S Customs Service, called into aid in the investigation, said that the material season includes photos showing children involved in blood letting, ceremonies of animals, and one photograph of a child in chains. Customs officials said they were looking into whether a child pornography operation was being conducted. Very very heavy stuff in Yeah, and again, this is the Washington Post. This is not, uh, some tabloid where you would see the Satanic panic accusations a lot of the time. Right. This is not Weekly World News or the National Enquirer. According to the records from the U. S District Court in Washington, a confidential police source had previously told authorities back in eighty six that the Finders were quote a cult and they were conducting brainwashing operations at this warehouse and then at a duplex in the Glover Park neighborhood. The source told the police that they had been recruited by the Finders with promises of financial reward and sexual gratification, and that they were invited by at least one member to explore Satanism with them, and then, according to the affidavit, the same source told authorities that children were used in rituals by the members, and the source did say they had never witnessed abuse of the children, but that the children's grandparents feared for their safety. No. Wow, So it seems as though the parents had gotten involved in the cult itself and the children were just kind of, um, you know, they were victims of association many as will come to find. We're born into the organization. But while we're on the subject of those six kids, we learn a little bit more about them. So in the original reports, um, the kids were described as being hungry, dirty, and under duress of some kind, irritated a little bit, behaving erratically somewhat. But a local doctor who examined them said that none of the children were actually ill. Uh. None seemed to recognize objects though, like typewriters or staplers. Um. Though most of the kids would wouldn't really talk to the police, the oldest child was able to do that a little bit more effectively. Um. She confirmed that she and the other children had lived in Washington, d C. In a house, a group house, that the men were their teachers, and that while living in this house in d C, they received instructions from a man called the game caller or game Leaders has got some true detective Season three Government name of this guy is Merry and Petty. Yeah, so the kids said, Mr. Petty quote tells everyone what to do. He's in charge. We kids slept outside and the mommy's slept inside Mr Petty. And I find this to be an odd thing for a kid to say, but it sounds like they almost had their own way of talking from this isolation they experienced. Mr Petty weans the kids from the moms m HM. And this man police would come to find was named Mary and Petty. He was known by various monikers in the group. He was called the stroller, or the game caller, or the game leader. And the neighbors of these DC locations were conflicted in their descriptions of the finders. Some describe the group as an out and out cult. They said that only women and children live on these premises. Male members of the cult visit them frequently, and the adults are left over hippies, and they don't really seem to care what the kids do or what happens. I mean, these kids were so dirty that they were prevented on from playing on playgrounds in the area with other children because they had sores, they were covered in filth. But another individual who had been associated with them in years past, not as a member. He described the group as close knit feminist and they said they're not a cult. They're all helping people, helping folks in the community. And we see this contradictory information make it to the press too. By February eleven, eighty seven, the media had alternately described the group as a satanic cult, a group of Mary Prankster's kind of electric kool Aid acid test style gone too far off the rails, or a group of accomplished academics that were simply immersed in a twenty year old social experiment. Talked about a longitudinal study. Yeah, oh man, see I like that one that was like that one makes everything okay to me as long as uh, they're actually not hurting the kids. But it sounds like they were, I guess neglecting them. Wouldn't you say? Social experiment? It's such a broad thing, but at least you'd get something out of it. I guess stuff. They don't want you to know. A social experiment, you know what, You're right, it is a social experiment, no matter what, with guaranteed no abuse. Luckily right. So there's another aspect to the closure of this investigation. This is a seed we want to plant. Rumors circulated that after US Customs got involved in the case, which will explore in a moment, UH, the CIA or another intelligence agency stopped the investigation and claimed did it become an internal matter for the agency and this this rumor was later confirmed to be true from US Customs reports themselves primary sources. Let's hold that in our minds for a moment, and let's explore the mysterious man known as Marry and Petty, alternately known as M. D. Petty, the game Caller, as you said, no, the Stroller, the game Leader, the pathfinder, and the student. He was the leader of the Finders group from the nineteen sixties to his death around two thousand and three, and it appears that he would send members of the Finders on various projects and referred to these projects as games. There's a book by a former member of the organization called The Game Caller, which you can find online, and according to this book, Petty had an extremely tight grip on the dynamics of the organization. Former members felt that this man could truly see into their souls sort of a metaphysical X ray vision with his knowledge of Eastern mysticism and his concepts of a new age of living. So in a way they did have um, I guess some some feminist architecture to their thought process. I believe that women never men should initially relationships because Petty told them so, and that children should be raised quote like Indians on the planes, strong and tough. They wanted independent thinkers, right, not somebody just parenting multiplication tables or capitals of states. But in reality, what this turned out, what this ultimately resulted in was a situation wherein children would be raised communally, but taking care of the kids was considered the grunt work. So a lot of people would say, you know, you would feel like everybody's having a party, but you're the ones stuck washing the dishes, Which is not the way you should think about child care. It is just from experience, it's the way it feels. Sometimes sometimes it feels that way, but uh, you're absolutely right, that is not how it should be viewed. I need you to watch the kid because I'm going out to the discotheque. Oh you're going to the discotheque again. There's a panic at the disco. Okay, fine, there's no panic at the disco. Everyone chill at the disco. There's a panic at the disco. Someone watched the Kid for me. Well, you guys go have your exciting chill panic and I'm just gonna play Silly Beast for hours on end. I like chill panic. That that sounds. That feels like a very British emotion. Yes, exactly, Uh so it's It's true though this this group experimented with the concept of communal parenting. For lack of a better phrase, and interviews with former members and associates of the group, um LAD law enforcement to believe that at its peak, though, around forty or so followers actual long time followers. Because this this group did practice an open house kind of thing where you could walk in from any backgrounds right, any socio economic status, demographic, former job, whatever, you could go in there and hang out with them. A lot of people we find were turned off by this because the finders emphasized doing work, playing their games as the game caller directed them, and staying away from drugs. So someone's living on the fringe, living on the grift, they go in to get some free food, and then they're like, wait, I can't even do mushrooms here, like no, and you have to participate in our conversations about social constructs. I know that sounds like yeah, give me, I'll take man's in any day. That's it's apparently that's that's not an infrequent occurrence. Well yeah, and the other thing is the complexity of their I guess overall belief system seemed to also turn off some people, right, yeah, yeah, it's a it's weird because there wasn't really an introductory course. You're just immedia arrests. You're in the middle of the story. Know, there's just no dionetics. It's straight to cleaning out the theeton's can we say that? Yeah? Of course. Where is David ms Kevidge's wife, Ah, man, I swear I saw her. I don't know. We should ask David that, we should ask the finders that's right there finding stuff. Probably not. She's likely in a ditch somewhere like a quarry. Well, according to l A p D. Shelley ms Kovidge was contacted years ago and said that she was fine. Yeah, she did that. That's according to the Los Angeles Police Department. And it's true that the Finders did have, as you said, Matt, this very complex belief system that was pretty intimidating to new members or would be initiates. And at this time, Uh, the game leader is about sixty six years old and reportedly has a tunefull Southern accent, which I thought you would appreciate, Matt. That's great. It's very much a yawler. Wait do you think he was the Zodiac? I don't know. No, that's Ted Cruise. Oh he's in Tennessee. All right, we're good. He must be too. He was probably pretty busy, but maybe he sends other people out. I mean, what is a game? Have you guys got to the part of Monster where it's Ted Cruise yet? Yes? Sorry spoilers, we're going to talk about that. That's the finale. That's like the end of Usual Suspects. Yeah. We shouldn't mention that. We really shouldn't. I mean, gosh, the guy I was born in nine. You gotta listen to the show, folks. It's free wherever you find your favorite podcast. Yeah, there we go, smooth plug, smooth plug. So, speaking of these strange arcane things, right, these communities on the fringe, Uh, these bizarre theories, right, the tech crews thing is, you know, at this point a theory sure, despite the overwhelming mass of evidence, yes, but despite the inability via time. Okay, all right, man, I'll play reindeer games. But off air, okay, only could he be the Zoa killer if he was killing people before he was even conceived, or if there were more than one killer. So you mean he came along, was born, and then within his first year killed someone, know, someone taught him what to do. Look sort of like the monkey and that I ground post story. Yeah, there we go, only a baby. Yeah, okay, so he went through time, was taught how to murder prior to be, you know, getting into this plane of existence. So we're saying that I know that it must be irritating to you to hear to hear us tell you tell you, of all people about the Zodiac murders. But as we talked about off air, as the three of us talked about off air, Ted Cruz's birthday is allegedly after the first two murders. Okay, So again, let's say he was born five years before the murders. Why did I do? What did I do? What's the five year old killing a cab driver named Paul stun Like I said, murders of the room Morgue style. He was taught as a baby. You could teach a baby to kill the smart man. Why are you being anti baby? Do you think children are dumb? Have been feeling that Brian Hartnell or somebody would have been like, yeah, that that kid wearing the big Zodiac mask executions the biggest kid I've ever seen. Well, also, going back to the idea of there being more than one killer, how do you know it was not three or four babies stacked Yeah, okay, you know I didn't. I didn't take that into account, like wearing a trench coat. Yeah, but now now I'm now, if I'm being completely objective in treating this with the seriousness that deserves, you go to the question of the arms, because truly, someone would have reported the baby arms. He would have been called the baby arm killer. And it well, you know it, it does. It does account for the handwriting, It does account for the hand It's like a child. I know, this is a little bit of attention. This is possibly the biggest tangent we've ever gone on. Oh no, no, I don't know. We've had sebepic ones. But I do want to say in all sincerity, it's a great show and do check it out if you have a chance. Uh. It is not filled with our terrible jokes about baby about Texas U S. Senator Ted Cruz, who should be respected. Man deserves your respect, he deserves your vote, is an elected official. My favorite conspiracy theory about Ted Cruz is that he is Eddie Munster as an adult. So, getting getting back to getting back to the Finders, where did this thing come from? Because some of us may have noticed that I slipped in one very important detail, which is that this organization dates back to the nineteen sixties, and the commune evolved with things like the Human Potential movement of the nineteen seventies had this huge emphasis on shedding inhibitions and delusions. And most of the people who talked about the Finder's Cult at the time were former members, and they wanted to be anonymous because they were either apparently they were either embarrassed about being associated with the group or they were frightened of the possible reactions from people who are still in the Finders organization and um It was described as a twenty four hour sixty five day a year training group for games. And this is according to a guy who knew people in the organization for years but was not ever himself actually in it. He said it was like people who go to an institute for a weekend, but this was for a year or a lifetime, and these games were always changing. I want to know more about the games, Yes we will. Oh man, you will be sick of the games in a few minutes. It sounds like a D and D boot camp or yeah, never ending larp. Yeah, exactly. So. Because of these games or these projects, it was often tough for people outside of the group to know when the members were being sincere or when they were playing out some strange Discordian uh for fans of the Illuminatus trilogy, Discordian social experiment or their fantasy you know. And there's another complication because, according to the game caller himself, the stroll or the students, the group doesn't exist. Yes, you see, there's no such thing as a Finders It's just a group. It's a term for people who like to hang around me. Oh oh, I have a question, sure, and all seriousness, um, if you recruit someone to join the Finder's cult, you get a finder's fee. I feel like you're joking. Yes, I mean it's a good question. Now it's it's a dumb question. But no, that's crazy. Is that? Where is this quote from? It's from Mary and Petty. He said the final group doesn't exist. There's there's just a group of people who think I'm cool. That's hang out with literally what it is though you just described, that's what the is. He's at the center of a group that like people that like to hang out with them. That's what a cult leader is. So that leads us to our next question, is this in fact a cult? We'll find out right after a word from our sponsor. We're back. Okay. So it's been a little bit tedious, I think at times, for at least on my part, to keep saying the organization or the group. But that's because information about this group it was originally contradictory and it remains so today. It is true the police did find photos of group members and their children wearing white robes while slaughtering goats at the group's farm in Virginia, But however, supporters and critics of the group alike now agree that these strange rights were an example of Petty's love for playing games rather than an expression of pay again beliefs. And I want to see what you guys think of this explanation. So a former member of the Finders, who again asked to be anonymous, explained the famous thing that they refer to internally as the goat Gate as occurring because of this reason, those goats were vicious, the group decided to eat them rather than keep them as pets. To then create a dramatic scene with robes and so on, was to impress upon the kids the seriousness of killing an animal. Huh, that's just like that's sort of one of those going around your behole to get to your seahole kind of situations. You know. It's interesting though, to me, I find something in that to be almost genuine. Really like, yeah, killing a goat, You don't think that's sort of like the dude from Arrested Development who like is like the missing arm and they use him to teach a lesson. You don't think that's just comical and it's like extremity to teach such a simple lesson. Well, I could see that it is, but I see that for sure. But I also see, uh, the you know, the ancient practice of killing animals for our food that humans have been doing since we've been able to carry a weapon or even you know, attack something with our bare hands. Um, knowing that at least knowing that this thing has life and it is giving us further life. That's that old, old, old belief. I can imagine trying to honor that in some way, if you truly are going to kill one of these goats that you've had on your property, on your farm, or wherever it is that you're existing, Um, trying to impart that knowledge, that ancient knowledge onto these children by having a ceremony. I could see that, thinking, yeah, yeah, it's I think the way they explain it sounds contradictory, like what was that? You know? It sounds like they're going from their b hole to get to their seahole, but also sounds like they're being a bit a hole about it, you know, because they're they're easier ways to explain that. As Patch Adams, the American physician, points out, he knew Mary and Petty pretty well, there's another phrase for this, and it's not It's not a Satanic ritual. It's farming. You know what. I mean it's ranching Patch Adams. It was this guy's buddy, as portrayed by Robin Williams in the delightful children's Filmses Hunter Doherty, Patch Adams. I can't. I feel like you buried the lead on this. This is crazy. He just has some input on it. Yeah, Uh, primarily because he thought the press was getting carried away with their reporting of this due to that aforementioned satanic panics. So he came to his aid in some respects, I would asked about it and helped the kids hopefully. Well that's right that I don't know. I know, I don't. I don't want to gamble on speculation there. I don't know. It would be nice Patch Adams cheese, It would be nice, Dr Adams. Um. But here's the thing. You'll notice that we're we're adding stuff in defense of this group, and then we're saying but also we're just alternating back and forth. So here's our new But also it turns out the Finders had a history of run ins with the law and multiple times. Yeah, there's a former Finders Finders member who said that members of the group used uh calls like I guess a cold call of some sorts and letters in a campaign you could call harassment against Arlington County Juvenile Court Judge Andrew Ferrari awesome name in three when Ferrari ruled that a child of the former member should be separated from the family and placed in a group home. So the whole thing came about when I guess a child was going to be taken away from the group right, and this guy Ferrari was like, yeah, that's that's what we should do. Ferrari said that he received calls in his office and his home from several members of the group we're talking about the finders here, and uh, these members would argue that the child was being in some way deprived of his freedom. And you know, in a way, I guess kind of that kind of is happening. But it's the um it's the job a lot of times of these courts to make sure that the child's best interest is thought of right and not of the family. And this whole concept of depriving the child of his freedom. But anyway, the the judge said, they didn't threaten me. The attitude was, how could you be so unconstitutional, which again like almost has a point. Again, that's not illegal, either you know, to express your dislike or your disagreement with a particular policy or a case decision. However, it is harassment level, it could be harassment. It was on the level that occurred here. And the explanation from the Finders is not particularly satisfactory because in some cases they tried to say that they were using humor as a as an approach. They have an emphasis on stuff that they consider humorous, which I don't think a lot of people would agree with. But but beat as it may, they did. They did have a harassment campaign with that one guy, Judge ferrari Uh. They also had another case in Colepepper, Virginia, lawyer obtained a court order preventing the Finders from harassing them about a divorce case because he when he represented a former member during that case. The lawyer's name was John Davies, said the Finders had really freaked him out using letters and phone calls. Then there was a third case where another remember the group, said his tires were slashed after he broke up with the their whole shenanigan. He quit the game. Cults don't take kindly to being broken up with, sort of like leaving the mob or something. You know, yeah, always a member, we're getting or not ever. I mean you can the doors always open one way right there, like Hotel California, like yeah. But one member described this as less of a cult and more of an organization that started for dropout professionals who just didn't know what to do with their lives. Said, I've got my job, got my my spouse, by two point five kids, and I see the rest of my life playing out in a very predictable way. I'm not happy. Let me go do something else. But according to this member, as utopian as this original ideal was eventually soured and the organization took a bad turn in the early nineteen eighties. There was a person who was a second in command of the group named Barbara Sylvester, and when she was in her forties in nineteen eighties, she died at the Finder's house after she did not receive any medical assistance for pendicitis, and this apparently made the student the game caller um very gloomy, and there was a shift, a fundamental shift in the tone of the group. So the Finders became increasingly secretive and hostile and arrogant toward outsiders, non members, and that's according to some former associates, members engaged in long self criticism sessions, exposing painful emotional inadequacies to the group. Members even cut themselves off from seeing relatives and friends, which is typical called like behavior. Um and former associates found themselves shunned or treated brusquely if they left the group. Like we said, it's very hard to extricate yourself from these kind of situations. You get treated brusquely. Now, brusquely, that's not nice. That's your vocabulary word for the day. It is. I mean, it basically means they were a little short with you, that's right, you know, communicating in monosyllabic texts like with an angry girlfriend, or they were terse another vision. Yeah, it's true. And that's something that's unfortunately common in a lot of a lot of groups that people would describe as cults, and in some groups would be considered more mainstream religions. You know, if you're if you're out, you are no longer part of the society, and you are treated as an outsider. You're but a squirrel. Oh nice, I see your reference. We are doing pretty well with these callbacks and references here. I you know, if you if you were catching some of those things were throwing, we appreciate it. So so let's look at the problem of child abuse. Was this a series of genuine events or was this a another victim of the moral panic that was paralyzed in the US at the time. There are abuse allegations, and the core of these abuse allegations can be traced back to that some of those US Customs documents, one filed by Ramon J. Martinez. He says, and there's a long passage here that we can paraphrase. He says that he was able to execute a warrant at one of their houses, and upon execution that warrant, he had the run of the entire building. He found several people on the premises, but only one was definitely connected with the finders. The other people were just sort of layabouts. And he found a room equipped with several computers, printers, and tons of documents and paperwork. Uh. And here's what he said he found in the paperwork. Quote. Cursory examination of the documents revealed detailed instructions for attaining children for unspecified purposes. The instructions included the impregnation of female members of the community known as the finders, purchasing children, trading and kidnapping children. Uh, that's not all they found. They also found telex messages using m c I account numbers between a computer terminal that was believed to be located in the same room and others across the country and in foreign nations. One of these telexes again this, according to Martinez, specifically ordered the purchase of two children in Hong Kong to be arranged through a contact with the Chinese embassy. M c I, by the way, was an old telecom company. Does anybody remember m CIS. Don't they make a T M S. I don't know they used to. Oh yeah, they went away, and I think no, I'm thinking of m c R. That's not the same as m c I. N c R is still around and they make they make automatic teller machines. It's with a T. M stands for him. Yeah, they were, Yeah, they were involved in the regulatory changes that led to the breakup of A T and T. That's right, right, that's right. And Uh, forever, no matter how long n c R is an actual company, it will always stand for New California Republic for in my mind because of the Fallout series anyway, that's right, right, Yeah, I love the Fallout callbacks. It's a great game. So I know several of us listening are saying, hey, this is not the Mandela effect. You did mention that the CIA apparently closed down the investigation. Are the Finders? Um? Are the Finders an organization that is associated with intelligence and espionage and spycraft and psy ops and purchasing children and human trafficking. Yeah, this is a fairly common allegation. We run into with a lot of splinter religious or spiritual movements like Jim Jones and the People's Temple. Right is, there's some very strange governmental connections there. In the case of the Finders, we initially would say, why would the CIA become involved with some fringe commune group. The answer to that is pretty apparent, especially if it's a product of the nineties, sixties and seventies. They were concerned about possible disruptions to the status quo and this, look, this sounds like crazy Big Brothers stuff that happened with cointelpro. It sounds distant, like it's a footnote in the recent past. But people are being try by the government for being vegan. Now. It's like William Faulkner said, the past isn't over. It's not even past. We are living through the same things. It's just a matter of time before a lot of that stuff gets declassified. So it's not crazy that the CIA would show interest in some fringe commune group. According to Petty, government investigators tailed him for at least four years back in the nineteen sixties. At first they thought maybe he was a big time drug dealer, not because he was around a lot of drugs, but because he never actually used any drugs, and so they thought, you know, Heisenberg style, the legit people don't mess with their own product, right, and they're doing some weird things that these people seem so odd, and how are they subsisting? Must be drug Yeah, And then they decided, if it's not drugs, he must be an active front operation for the CIA. So the CIA got contacted. They ran his name through a database and they said, nope, he's not one of ours. And this irritated the heck out of the investigators. According to Petty, one of the investigators said, you know, I've been working on you for four years, and I can't figure out what you're doing. What the hell are you doing? I'm playing some games. They're detective, just playing some games. Mr spy Man and a cat and mouse kind of situation, you know it. I'm just you know, throwing the dice and see if I can get a critical D and D reference. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Also known as Cretty now ye rolling, he is named after He has taken that appellation due to his love of dn D. That's most of his songs are metaphors for various D and D situations, and all of his albums are based on previous campaign that he has conducted with his dn D group. I'm just gonna believe you. Hey, you know what, you could google it? No, yeah, seriously, all right, I'm gonna do what I'm gonna do that right after this from our Oh note it's not another sponsory. Okay, let's keep going. Like his twenty two track double album Forever as a mighty long time think about it, Matt oh, it's a king. Yeah. No, I get he's talking about being like exiled, and you know, when you're out of play, when you're exiled, you're you're basically off the game board and then you can only be un exiled. You know. It's not like you can come back from the graveyard. I get what he's saying. The pieces come together, so so speaking in pieces coming together, Petty was actually asked about this possible CIA connection in one of his rare interviews, and we have his response, I'm gonna do my Petty voice. Yeah, I'm gonna do him kind of more like Tom Petty. Oh dude, I'm scared how you can do that. Tom Petty is a man of many voices. I love his voice on King of the Hill. Alright, p Tom Patty, by the way, it seemed like a lovely man. Um. I just kept open house to a lot of the counter intelligence and intelligence people. Over the years. I've been reported to their security officers probably plenty of times for trying to figure out what's going on in the world. I've tried all my life to get behind the scenes in the CIA. I sent my wife in as a spy to spy on the CIA for me. She was very happy about it, happy to tell me everything she found out. She was in a key place, you know, with the records, and she could find out all these things for me and my son. Worked for Air America, which was proprietary of the CIA. There was some connections, but not to me personally. I thought Jeanine Garofalo started Air America. I didn't know she had any CIA ties. Uh yeah, Are America actually was front that he got that right, Yeah, that's true. They were responsible for substand full amounts of illegal drugs entering the country. Yeah kidding, Yeah, not a radio program or anything. It's a it was a air a flight company, an airplane trip, having a company, an airline. It was an aline I've never heard at. Yeah, it was operated from nineteen fifty to nineteen seventy six. Is a CIA front, and they would ferry over drugs and then you know black bag, black budget cash. Well, I feel like a fool. Thank you guys for it for a pointing out. Well, it's just it's odd that he has that connection if it's true. And also, lest I make Air America sounds completely like a drug smuggling operation, which it was arguably is. They also conducted military operations imposed his civilian air carriers. But yes, Air America, it is true they were a CIA front. He was aware of it in his interview and just out and out saying that his son worked for Air America makes me think that it's not true. Yeah, just to be honest, if someone worked, I mean, those are federal crimes. Yeah, and he says it as an aside at the end, like oh yeah, and that happened and a lot of And I'm not saying he's a cult leader, to be fair, but quite a few cult leaders engage in that sort of tactic, that rhetorical tactic of name dropping things casually. You know. It's like, well, it's it's like my friend Deepak Chopra always says, you should give me money, you know what I mean. That's a terrible example. And I'm sure that Deepak Choper doesn't talk that way. But that's how cult leaders manipulate people. Yeah, he it's a big upping of sorts. Um, me and my group were important, we're doing big things. But we found out we found another quote from another writer that showed that, uh maybe this, uh this really is just a bunch of non sense. Yes, according to Wendel Minick, the author of Spies and Provocateurs and Encyclopedia of Espionage and Covert Action, the Finders would love you to think they're a CIA front, but I would say they're really nothing. You're going to hear a lot of bullshit on the finders because they lie. These are dysfunctional adults, but they're all working their asses off. They're constantly working on some project. If you have a cult, the best way to control people is to keep them busy, which is true, to keep their minds occupy. If you have people standing around doing nothing and they start thinking. Well, it's also true that um Petty says that he is intensely studied the CIA. He says that it's it's not that the CIA is working with him or investigating him, so he's fascinated by them, which also sounds a little bit self aggrandizing. Right, So there, there we have it. This is weird. This is a weird, weird bag of badgers, and it looks like it's gonna disappear from the news because the CIA did shut down the investigation for one reason or another, at least that is until nineteen nine three when the Justice Department says, uh, like six years later, yeah, and it was because they they found unresolved matters when in relation to the group. Right, And this guy Tom Lewis, who was a representative from Florida elaborated, UM, could our own government have something to do with this Finders organization and turn their backs on these children? That's what all the evidence points to. He went on to say that, and there's a lot of evidence. I can tell you this. We've got a lot of people scrambling and that wouldn't be happening if there was nothing here. And then also if you look to the U. S News, this is a this is a source, right, the U. S News, Um, they said that some of the Finders, at least according to US source that was in an article in the OST News. Uh. They said that some of the Finders were listed in the FBI's classified counter intelligence files. And then later all investigations into the Finders were ordered stopped by the Justice Department. That's the big player, um, as the case was determined to pretty much be a national security matter. We've heard that before, right, and uh it was referred back to the CIA again, So that's weird. Right. Also, Also we have to point out the hazard of anonymous sources. We talked about this in past episodes. Oftentimes an anonymous source is not what it implies itself to be. Like for instance, when there's military news from anonymous sources. It's often leaked by the people who are supposed to be keeping that secret because they want to signal something, usually not to the domestic audience, usually to a foreign audience. So somebody might be saying, well, I can't report this on the record because you know, the army doesn't want you to know that we have these active weapons in this part of the theater. Right, But that person, that anonymous source is like employed by the general, and the general said, you know, make sure this gets out. Yeah, let it. Let those guys know, let them know they're not the only ones that can cause headaches in Vertigo with sonic based weapons. We just we need to we need to uh wave a flag real quick, right, yeah, totally. So it could be the source is just making things up, absolute bologney. It could even be a member of the Finders playing an elaborate game, a social project. Maybe it's another prank. Whoa, I never even thought of that. Maybe Petty himself, through a proxy, spread this idea of the return of the CIA. But we do know, according to the customs documents, the CIA did it did go in there once. And this leads us to um the weird inclusion or wrap up. So in later years, the Finders moved to a town called Culpepper, Virginia. They became known for their eccentric activities. They walked around they you know, they spent a lot of time there. Uh. They owned an old theater and they were best known for uh writing bizarre messages on the old theater Marquis. Remember we mentioned the Marquis at the beginning of the episode. Well, boom boom boom. Now it paid off. These were not your typical messages. There were there were things that were kind of funny, like free money. There were things that didn't make much sense, like spycraft, a great game where your money is there is your life and love m hm. And they they go on uh for years doing this kind of stuff. And Petty lives there. He's pretty comfortable. He strolls around town just seeing what's up, sending people to games. And then after his death in either two thousand three or two thousand four, the group, which may have continued in some way, largely disappeared from the news from the media, and most reputable sources currently agree that the Finders were more an experimental community made for their own amusement. Instead of being nefarious or sinister, they were eccentric and weird and having fun. And if that is the case, and they're not hurting anybody, we cannot and should not um detigrade people for living life as they wish to live it, as long as they're not abusing children. Right. And however, despite all that, despite all that, which is very fair on our part, it is still true that the CIA did intervene at least once in the investigation back in why we still don't know? That appears to be the stuff they don't want you to know all Why if you are a member of the Finders or if you've been a seated with them, we would love to hear your take on this. Yes, please, do you have a theater somewhere we could visit? We'd love to Are you from Culpepper, Virginia? Let us know have you been through that part of the world. We would we would like to hear your stories. Um, do you have a story of a cult or maybe an experimental social club that you've been a part of that you'd like to tell us a story about. We'll keep it anonymous if you want us to. Yeah, absolutely, you can reach us several ways. You can find us on Facebook, you can find us on Twitter, you can find us on Instagram. Our Facebook group is a great way to bring your own perspective and feedback from the episode to your fellow listeners. It's called Here's Where It Gets Crazy. Our Instagram is Conspiracy Stuff Show. You can see my own adventures and misadventures personally at Ben Bulling. You can check me out at Embryonic insider Um, where I post pictures of nerdy stuff like my cat and um occasionally my kid. And you can find me at Kylie Jenner. That's just where I like to post a lot of my makeup. You are blowing up right now, my friend. I mean you kind of got more hits than you. I really don't care. The egg is, you know, so yesterday whatever to Anyway, if you don't want to do any of that stuff, you can give us a call. You can leave a message and you might get on the show. Our number is one eight three three S T D t K. That's just an acronym for stuff they don't want you to know. You can figure that out to their actual numbers involved if you wish to call, and if you don't want to do any of that stuff, you can just send us a good old fashioned email. We are conspiracy at how stuff works dot com.