Also media. Oh, welcome back to Behind Grand Rapids Michigan, a podcast where I investigate the most infamous in the history of Grand Rapids Michigan. And you can help me by googling Jamie Loftus Comma Hammer murders, Comma Michigan, Comma Cia, Comma Bill Clinton.
No, I'm taking this. I'm taking this all the way to the fucking top. And I'm saying that you're trying to associate me with Grand Rapids so that you can continue to pass yourself off as a Bostonian because I am the big not in your Bostonian hoax.
Yeah, you're the only one who can expose me to the world.
Yeah, And so they're trying to listeners. They're trying to take me out because I have the truth. I'm a little too close to the truth, one could say. And so people are gonna make accusations. And yes, it's going to involve hammers, and yeah, it's all going to sort of sound plausible for some reason based on my general vibe. But I assure you I've never even been to Grand Rapids. I went to Detroit for hot dog purposes only.
Now, thank you, Jamie. Here's my question Here's my question, and this is this is an important one. H Why are you more concerned with being associated with Grand Rapids, Michigan than Bill Clinton, dame sex criminal?
I don't what.
I'm just saying, that's what you expressed. Was your issue, not the Bill Clinton of it all?
It doesn't look I'm always what am I not talking about the Bill Clinton of it all? And maybe that's a good Let's let's change the subject to the Bill Clinton of it all. I'd love to talk about the Bill Clinton of it at all and not the Jamie of it all, because the JMI of it all, you know, long story short, it's giving innocent, it's giving. I didn't it, and I couldn't have done it because I was I was just a kid. Yeah, and so were I to be prosecuted? You know, I you couldn't as an adult?
Right? Wait? Is that a thing?
If I committed a crime when I was a kid and I'm caught as an adult, how what happened?
I think you're I think you're free and clear, which is why everyone listening. If you are under sixteen, go go commit a murder. It's fine, okay, not get in trouble anyway.
Well, I I just be because I don't because this does feel like a trap.
I still admit to nothing.
Hmm, well, I admit to trying to get a bunch of sixteen year olds to not lose out on their one chance to commit a murder free of consequences. My free of consequences. I mean, you might be arrested and put in JUVI for several years, but you're not going to spend the rest of your life in prison if you're under sixteen. So go out there, kids. You know, look, there's a lot of oil executives out there. That's all I'm saying.
You know what, are we talking and we're about to talk about the CIA for another one?
Sure are no. We might pass the sea pretty quick.
Why does he do this? It's a great question.
I'm just trying to make the world a better place, or at least a place with slightly more interesting headlines, which is the same as.
Better a world better place just by being in it.
But okay, oh wow, thank you for that, lie, Sophie.
I know I gotta lie to you at least once a week. Roberts literally venoing Sophie as we speak. That was every time, every time Sophie says something nice thousand dollars for one line.
Wow, Yeah, I'm insecure today. So today back to the fine.
Yep.
So.
In an article written by the Washington City Paper in nineteen ninety six, a journalist interviewed Toby Terrell. Now this is the same guy Robert Tarrell. Toby's his cult name. I never really found a great explanation as to why this is the dude who's the RS agent name.
Yeah, going to do a cult name, do a cult chan tobe.
That sounds like those sodas with the weird geckos drawn on them that we drank in middle school.
That's why neighbor's dog's name.
Yeah, try harder. So. So Toby Terrell is the former IRS agent who worked for the company trading those CIA agents who also later spoilers, is going to sue Petty and the cult and then write a biography of Petty after he dies. So this guy number one kind of susu number two, absolutely involved in every weird sketchy thing around this cult. In nineteen ninety six, he has left. He's suing the cult for reasons that we will get into later. And the journalist talking to him asks him, Hey,
was there any weird sex stuff with your cult? Right? Like, I know, you guys got you know, declared innocent or whatever. They dropped the check, arges, but everyone still suspects that you were doing something with those kids. Was there any weird sex stuff going on? And Arrell's answer, he definitely doesn't claim that they did any weird sex stuff with kids, but he does not deny that they did weird sex stuff. He kind of does the opposite of denying it.
Right, are we talking like weird illegal sex stuff or just no sex stuff?
Okay, I think just weird. So here's what he says. If you want to write a scholarly piece about the group and the historical context of the Shakers and the Oneida communities, fine, But for a newspaper article, I don't want to get into that that sensationalism. So he's basically saying, yeah, we were a weird utopian cult, and like all weird utopian cults, we did some crazy sex shit, but I'm not gonna I don't want it to be in a news article because you're just going to make it into
something it's not. If you're like a scholar and you want to talk about our weird sec shit and the scholarly context, that's fine. But otherwise, no, yes, what an interesting That's an interesting stance to have all. I don't. I actually think that's a fair stance to have. Where he's like, look, yeah, every cult does weird sectionit. We're like a weird utopian community. But I don't not if.
You're not writing a scholarly essay on it, I choose not to comment.
If you want to put us in context. Sure, if you just want to be like they were doing weird section for your news article, I don't want to be part of the sensationalism. I actually kind of respect that. Even though this guy may in fact have been doing some shady spy shit, we really don't.
Know, right, You're like, it's still ultimately bad, but I see, you know, I see where he like unfortunately, you know, bad people make good points.
Yeah, that's a respectable answer to the question, is what I think. So, the idea of the CIA using a cult to spy on or otherwise disrupt left wing activism is not far fetched because we know for a fact that versions of this happened back during our episodes on mk Ultra. I quoted several times from the book Chaos by Tom O'Neil, which provides a detailed look a number of very weird CIA connections around Charles Manson, and there's debate.
You know, it's possible he was, in fact, very likely that he received was dosed with acid as a result of him k Ultra. Very good chance he received some money. There's some like court things where he got in trouble and then it went away. It's all very unclear exactly
what his relationship was. But the CIA was involved in kind of the fringe radical left community around the time of the Manson killings, and there's some suspicion that like basically they were hoping that they something like what happened with Manson would happen and it would discredit the anti war movement, right. That is a again, tracing out exactly what happened is really hard, and I think there's a
good chance the CIA didn't. Was just kind of vaguely hoping that by encouraging some shady figures, you know, something would go down, rather than plotting out every step of it. But like some weird shit went down with them there. And we know for a fact that there were multiple cases in this peero of time of people with intelligence connections intervening before the murders to help out Manson get
him out of legal jams. The CIA was undeniably engaged in something called Operation Chaos, from where Tom O'Neill's book takes its title. This was the CIA's counterpart to co intel pro. Right, So the FBI is co intel pro where we're infiltrating these groups and we're trying to make them not trust each other, trying to convince everyone on the left that everyone else on the left is a federal agent. Right, Like that was co intel pro in
a nutshell. There was more to it than that. The CIA's counter to that was this plan to disrupt the left in the United States by kind of sowing chaos and discord. And I'm going to quote from the New York Times here. The CIA had undercover contacts monitored the meetings of groups such as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Washington Urban League. It maintained files on nearly a thousand organizations by August nineteen seventy three, when CIA
Director Colby virtually halted this project. The paper trail left by Operation Chaos included somewhere in the area of thirteen thousand files on subjects and individuals. The report discloses. Link to this was a computer system containing an index of over three hundred thousand names in organizations, almost all of
them United States citizens and organizations unconnected with espionage. Mister Helms and the high officials of the Johnson and Nixon administrations with whom he dealt were well aware of the fact that they were breaking the law. Thus, in submitting to Henry Kissinger a report on restless Youth, mister Helms wrote in a covering Mian mirandam early in nineteen sixty nine that a section on American students was extremely sensitive
because the whole area was outside of the agency's charter. So, first off, the CIA is a foreign intelligence like their purview is foreign intelligence. They are not allowed to act like to spy on Americans. They are not allowed that's not now. They did a lot of it like that, because they did. They did it, But they're not allowed to.
Paper they are supposed to.
Yeah, they are for overseas. The FBI is for domestic.
Right, It's so funny how easy it is to forget that just based on like shit, their wholest respectively did Yeah, Okay, yeah.
I'm not saying that to say like the CIA wouldn't have done that. No, they absolutely did it. It was just illegal. But the other thing that I think that quote should make clear is that, like there's absolutely a place for find the Finders in Operation Chaos. Right, They're spying on all sorts of weird groups. They're reaching out with weird questions to progressive groups. They know computers, they're maintaining massive
computer databases. Like all of this is shit they could have been involved in, right, Like this is Operation Chaos is like tailor made for these guys. And we know that Operation Chaos extended through to nineteen seventy four, and the Finder started in nineteen seventy one. We know that the CIA was aware of Marion Petty at least in nineteen sixty nine when we started traveling to communist countries.
So there's at least a three year at least a three year period where there's a non zero chance were not only is there a decent chance that the CIA was interested in what the Finders could bring them, but we know the Finders were doing the kind of shit that the CIA was doing, right, keeping these notes and building extensive databases on left wing domestic organizations, right, so,
you know, not impossible. Also, no real evidence other than like what we have sort of asserted, right, like, no clear evidence as to exactly what they would have been doing. But it's it's not at all impossible or unlikely that there was something going on.
Right God, Okay, yeah, yeah, so that's fun.
It's like.
This problem is consistent throughout this organization's entire history, but it just yeah, it continues to get more and more tangled this time goes on.
So what here are we in at this point?
Well, we've kind of jumped around a little bit just because like there was the thing that happened in eighty seven where like the CIA took those training courses with the computer company that was tied to the founders. That happened before they were all arrested, but it didn't break until ninety three. But yeah, we still have not resolved the court case. And I don't know how to not jump around at this point because it's so labyrinthine and like the dates at which different things were found out.
I hope this has not been unclear to people. It's just such an odd story. I wasn't really sure how else to structure it.
I trust you.
Yeah. One of the first men to study the Finders and to comb their story for evidence of spy shit was a guy named Wendell Minnick. Minnick was the author of an encyclopedia of espionage called Spies and Provocateurs. He spent two years digging into Petty I think of the late eighties and his cult, and he wound up abandoning his research after and this really dates his research, after he spent one thousand dollars in phone calls. You can
do that back in the day. Yeah, And he was like, I spent all this money like tracking down lead and trying to figure out shit about them, and I found nothing.
I'm in the dog house.
I've sent too many texts.
Now my family is getting elected.
Yeah, long distance calls used to be a thing people. He later told a reporter, the Finders would love you to think they're a CIA front, but I would say they're really nothing. You're going to hear a lot of bullshit on the Finders because they lie. These are dysfunctional adults, but they're all working their asses off. They're constantly working on some project. If you have a cult. The best way to control people is to keep them busy, to
keep their minds occupied. If you have people standing around doing nothing, then they start thinking. So that's Minic's attitude, is that, like, these people desperately want you to think they're a CIA front. But like, most of why we have all this information that kind of seems like they might be spies is because they desperately want people to believe that, because that makes it a lot cooler than that they're a bunch of weird adults LARPing some guy's game.
Yeah, are you how are you inclined to feel about that?
Because I just, like I understand why that's plausible, but they're so much other close connections to the CIA.
Like I suspect Petty wanted to be a spy. Maybe it was a little jealous of his wife, wanted to be involved, and started when he started doing this, reaching out to them with information. And I think there's a pretty good chance somewhat the agency may have strung him along to see if he had anything useful, And I kind of doubt he gave them much because I don't
think these people were super serious. But that's my suspicion is that there was some level of connection between them, but that it was still mostly petty wanting to feel important, right, rather than like them giving use because there's no Here's the thing, there's absolutely no information or allegations of like this group of left wing activists was arrested because of info that the finders gave. Right, we don't. We've heard nothing.
There have been no allegations, and I kind of think by this point there would be something specific as to like, here is what they did for this CIA, And it's all these kind of like vague insinuations and like loose, weird connections that made me think, yeah, he might he may have been trying to give them info and he may have just not had that much of use. But I don't know, uh we and we probably never will at this point.
Oh but there is There is just like something so profoundly tragic about a LARPer who can't even like become vaguely interesting to the CIA. Yeah, because he's jealous of his Like he's like, I want to do crimes like my ex wife, Yeah.
I wanted to crimes against humanity like she did.
Put it on girls, get everything.
But because obviously the FBI comes out and says like, we don't believe these guys were involved with the CIA in any meaningful capacity, right, that's that's and we don't believe they were sex trafficking kids. And the conspiracy theorists will say, well, of course the FBI would say that they're the FBI. They exist to cover up government crimes. But those people the source that they cite is Ramone Martinez,
who's also a FED. So like, either way on this, you're trusting one federal agent or another, you know, which is never a situation you want to be in if
you're trying to track down the truth about like a conspiracy. Now, it's also worth noting that Ramone Martinez and I found this The QAnon anonymous guys did an episode on the Finders and they found references to Martinez by some like the there's at least one prominent conspiracy theorist, the guy who's kind of the origin of the black helicopter like family of conspiracy theories, who uh is like, Yeah, this guy was like a friend and he was he was a cool dude and we like chatted a bunch basically
like this guy Martinez who came up with all these allegations against the Finders that no one else ever verified was a lifelong conspiracy theorist, and that may have explained.
To shit, Yeah, that's also it's like there is such you know. It's like it's not as if there isn't some rich crossover between federal agencies and conspiracy theorists. No, such a rich gradient were exploring the FBI, we know as part of j Edgar Hoover's like Coentel pro was like, Yeah, we're going to try.
And incite conspiracy theories. The more conspiratorial we can make the left, the less they'll trust each other, and the more they'll fight rather than like engage in organized action
against the government. So it's also I guess the other possibility is that the Finders were never working for the CIA in a meaningful capacity, but the CIA may have wanted them to think that because they wanted something like this to happen, right, for them to become the nexus of a conspiracy theory, also a conspiracy that's totally possible
and within the CIA's wheelhouse. So I don't know. At the end of the day, Jamie, I don't know exactly what was going on with these people, but I do know that all charges against the two Finders members who were arrested in with child abuse were dropped after six weeks, and the children were all ultimately returned to their mothers. And you know what else was returned to its mothers?
No this I hate?
I hate this transition.
Well, Jamie, I love this transition just like just like the mothers of those kids loved their children, all right, more so, more.
So, even more so, but not as much as you love these products and services.
No, no one has ever loved their children as much as I love the products and services that support this podcast. That's just a fact, Jamie.
It's sad, but it's true.
No one.
I hope that that's sad. Is like dick pills.
Yeah yeah, absolutely, way better than a kid anyway, and we're back. Boy, if there is a dick pill ad after that, that's really going to get the whole child molestation conspiracy theory people talking.
I okay, I have a question, Yes, Jamie, have any of these kids sid spoken on this period in their lives?
Not that I have found none of these again, it would be a it would be pretty damning if some of them had come forward and said, yeah, we were absolutely molested but doesn't appear.
To have happened, but nothing interesting.
Yeah, that's part of why I suspect the FBI is probably correct in its conclusion that no kids were molested because like at this point something probably like Petty's dead, the cult's gone something probably now, Yeah, but nothing has and there's just again, there were never the kids never claimed anything. This isn't even like you get some of these satanic panic cases where like these kids become convinced that they were part of some like yeah, there's not
even that, right. The kids are never like the most they have is that like one of the little girls when they ask her if she was molested, gets uncomfortable, which like we have some strange adult cops are asking you if someone touched you. That's pretty awkward, Like, yeah, it's not evidence that she was molested, that she was not comfortable in that situation. That's not a comfortable situation. No, Yeah, so I don't the CI again where where I land
is like the CIA stuff, big fat. Maybe there's like six different possibilities that you cannot rule out as to what may have happened there, the sex trafficking children, satanists thing, no evidence whatsoever, right, and.
Like historically, yeah, those allegations in this era, like it doesn't.
It doesn't.
That's that's where I land on this stuff. Now. I should also again some of the blame for lingering conspiracy theories about the Finders as agents of the CIA or some of that agent.
It doesn't absolve like it is. Ultimately, I would always believe.
That it's probably their fault that this has stuck for so long.
But it is. It absolutely is, because like they he likes, He deliberately has his people go out and incite some of these rumors, like while the case is still going on, just to like add to the media circus. Possibly because he liked seeing his name in the paper. I don't fully know. John Cohen's article on the Finders was published a year or so after the court case ended. Right, So this is the first good piece of media we
get on it, because this whole all blows up. Everybody's talking on the news, Connie Chunk's talking about satanic child
molestation cults, and then nothing happens. The case gets dismissed, and so Cohen does an actual good piece of journalism trying to figure out what happens and he's the first person to interview one of the mothers, Paula Erico, about like what happened, and she tells him like, yeah, we all left the cult, All of the women with kids left the cult after this because we were pissed at Petty for how he handled it. Quote Paula Erico nearly splits up her food, laughing when I tell her people
suggest the finders maybe spooks. Erico and I are sitting at a restaurant in Tallahassee. She resettled here after the juvenile court finally deemed her fit to raise Mary and John. Paul those are her kids. That's their model to pretend they're cia, says Erico, who was in the group for eight years and now works as a bookkeeper. Who would
wouldn't it be an exciting life? And again, this is like one of the moms at the center of it, who's like, presumably would have reason to like be angry at them or go out of her way if like something shady had been happening. He was like, no, they were assholes playing a stupid game with my kids. And by the way, that's plenty to qualify them as bastards. That's a bad thing to do.
Absolutely, and also just like being you never know what past lives your bookkeeper ye has been up to?
Who knows?
They're like, you know, yeah, was I in a LARPing cult? Yes, they started to my kids.
I had to walk.
Yeah, it was possibly a CIA spy cult. But you know, anything can have and in your twenties, it kind of doesn't count.
And I kind of get the feeling that Petty, when the media interest started to fade as the case gets dropped, that's when he got most interested in spreading disinformation. And I'm going to read from Cohen here again, because this is really fucked up. A mimo attributed to M. D. Petty, delivered to the Tallahassee Democrat, that's a newspaper, said that he was resigning as leader of the Finders, a position
he said he didn't know he held. I thought I was just a consultant on wit and humor, the memo said, if I ever was the leader, I hereby resigned to devote myself full time to zen walking. The Finders also started publishing a newsletter, the Daily Finder, in which they announced that they were all moving to Tallahassee. The Finders
are always looking for signs and symbols they wrote. Since February fourth, Florida has been sending signals that they want to keep some Finders members, so now the rest are coming. Another issue of the Daily Finder Come to Tallahassee, invited friends to come join the drama and featured the song Old Tallahassee. Well, I came to Tech in a van so full of glee. They put me in the jailhouse with the chain up on my knee. So they're like writing songs about again the children of their members being
held by the state. Like they're putting out these like fake newspapers. They're trying to get people to like move to Tallahassee, to like fuck with the squares. It's all very irresponsible.
I'm sorry.
I just am like trying to like you were you were singing yeah, why no.
No, you don't get the full effect. Otherwise, Jamie, I liked it.
I felt like singing.
Voice, thank you, thank you.
It was beautiful. I thought it was beautiful.
So as a coda, again, I do want to add something. It's not impossible that children were abused. Again, there's no evidence of like sexual abuse, but like the neglect that was evident here. We might fairly call abuse, and that's not uncommon in cults. I do. I'm not saying no children were hurt, like definitely, like what Petty's doing there, these sending out fake newsletters trying to keep the ship
in the new by like spreading doubt. After the case gets dismissed, you could argue that's abusive to these kids who it harms them, slows down their ability to like rejoin a normal life. That's bad.
Yeah, I mean even yeah, you know, being guilty of neglect, that's absolutely abuse. And and just like putting the children in that situation in the in the first place where they have to you know, defend themselves against all this stuff like it it's.
Just it is abusive.
It's just yeah, but maybe not the kind of abuse that people or often go to prison for one of them.
Yeah. One of the more fucked up things that comes out in this John Cohen article after the case gets dropped is that, you know how like when they initially get pulled over by the cops, the like two male adult cult members are like, we're taking these children to Mexico to put them in a genius school. We're making a Harvard for babies. Well, yeah, they didn't. It turns out they didn't come up with that dipshit excuse on
the fly. They were instructed to say that by Petty if they were approached by the police, which, like me, you have to know, that's going to make the police suspicious. That's not gonna calm down an investigation. Like you have like six kids you're not related to in a van and are like, we're taking them into Mexico. That's going to get you all arrested.
I don't.
I don't understand. Yeah, the do.
I mean, it's also like, do we believe that that is?
It is the most made up sounding like I have to make something up on the fly thing in the world.
I don't under like everyone everyone here is like making except for the mother's baffling decisions because it's nonsense.
I feel like there has to be. But again, it's like I can't even say a sentence about this without sounding conspiratorial.
I'm like, I think there's.
Something we're missing. There may be missing piece of information. I cannot make sense of it.
It's really weird, what I do think. So what it seems like happens is after the case gets dismissed. It comes out through like reporting and interviews with Petty that a lot of this was his fault because he coached his guys to give these evasive, weird answers, and he also coached everybody to respond in a really weird and irresponsible way during the court case. And so all of these women with kids take their children and leave the cult,
and this kind of destroys the cult. Whatever else was going on, the goal of the Finders, according to internal members, focused heavily around these kids. They were trying to like raise better people in this enlightened way, and all of these businesses that they were running and using to accumulate money, the idea was that it would be given to these kids that would be their inheritance for the next generation
of the cult. So when all these moms leave, it kind of fractures not just the cult, but their identity and their understanding about like what the future is going to be this it kind of some will argue this kind of breaks Petty right that like, now there's no future to this cult. It's just him and the last hangers on who couldn't break free from him, playing games with no purpose like that, there's not any sort of attitude that they're building anything, that they're like raising up
a new generation. They have nothing now except for continuing to play weird games, and it gets increasingly kind of sad after this point, which is a bummer. So yeah, Petty, you know, claims in the wake of the case that the Finders have disbanded, but that is not true. They continue.
It's left, like, what are their numbers, like, about.
A dozen somewhere between ten and twenty people, right, usually we hear about a dozen.
I'm not getting out of bed for a cult with less than forty people.
And all the guys left, I think are pretty much all men. Right. Most of the women leave at this point, which just say something again to like this being a lower control type of calver a good sign that well, it's a good sign that the women felt like, yeah, we can bounce and nothing bad's going to happen to us,
like they had agency, right, right. Part of why a lot of shit about the cult crumbles is these women were largely running things for Petty and then they leave and it's him and these guys, and most of the guys are kind of drips like they're they're just like weirdos who want to play spy games, and so it's just kind of them. Now. So after the kids leave and there's no one to hand over inheritance of the businesses and property to, Petty changes the way their finance
system works. Right Previously, according to Terrell, when you joined, you gave all your money to the cult. But it was like put in what they called the invisible bank. And Tarrell was like, if you wanted to take your money out, you could. We people did it all the time. They weren't stealing from you. And in fact, like cult finances were pretty healthy, Like we ran businesses that were successful. It was like you could trust that you would get
your money back. After these women take all their kids with them, Petty changes the finance system to basically a tontine where he's like, no one can draw their money. All of the money in businesses will go to the last one of us alive, which is, oh, a sketchy way to run things, right, that's is it weird?
That's that's my first time hearing that one.
I feel like I've heard it all that. I haven't heard that one before.
Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. And this is this is what finally convinces Toby Arrell to leave, right, Like, this is why he actually leaves the cult, and he winds up suing Petty because he's like, he stole all of our money, right. I was fine with him until he started fucking with
my money. So in nineteen ninety six, after the hubbub around child trafficking in the court case against the Finders had mostly subsided, a journalist named Eddie Dean traveled down to Florida to meet with Arrell and write an article for the Washington City Paper. Despite the fact that he was actively evolved in suing Petty, Terrell was like really positive about his former cult leader, Like he doesn't have
a negative look towards him. He says, quote, I think if you look at the history of utopian movements in America, the Finders have a legitimate place because of the experimentation that went on. It was a good experiment. A lot of people learned from it, and I wouldn't trade it for anything. It lasted for twenty years while I was there, and I wouldn't call it a failure, he says, adding I still think Petty is a man of great insight and the world would do well to listen to his ideas.
Now here's the thing. I've read everything about this colt. I don't know what his ideas are. I don't know what his insights are. They seem like they were LARPing.
What was the goal?
That is like a classic in the genre of like see what you will.
About their methods?
He had some good ideas, and you're like, but did he Yeah that was the idea.
At least with like l Ron Hubbard, right when people are like, look, the cult's bad, but you know, his ideas were really good. At least I don't agree with him. His ideas were dogshit, but he had ideas. Right, there's books full of his theories.
Something to latch on too.
I still am struggling with, like, outside of like, yeah, I want to I like spy movies and I could do that.
Like what are you latching onto?
Yeah, there's suing him, Like what I don't get it. Yeah, it's like I think the thing they're talking about is this idea that like, you know, life should be a game and you should always be learning, but like he picked a weird way to.
Learn, and also like what did we learn?
Yeah, what did you learn? Don't play games with the FBI when your kids are taken into custody on suspicion of being molested as part of a devil conspiracy. I feel like most people know that.
Yeah, that's pretty intuitive. I don't think that's adding very much.
That's like, again, you're just like, what's the missing piece of information here?
Why would someone say that it doesn't?
I don't know.
We feel what I feel, well, Robert, I feel no closer. I feel no closer to understanding any of this.
This this is a little bit of a fucking cipher here. But what is interesting to me is that, like even Paula Erico, who again leaves the cult and takes her kid with her because of how badly Petty handles this whole case, won't speak badly about him afterwards. Quote though she left the Finders more than a year ago, it's still we this and we that she also speaks lovingly, no adoringly, of Petty. The rest of us are just
dead between the years compared to him, she says. Erico also provides some of our best insight into why Petty's cult function the way it's did, with all its weird information gathering missions and spy games. And this is John Cohen writing, but why compile a giant? Who's who? I ask? It's a mystery why things are of interest to Petty. But he's not able to call complete games if he doesn't have complete information. You don't know what game Petty has in mind to call tomorrow. He already has it
in mind. He's got next year's game in mind based on the information you're bringing him right now. And again, what the fuck does that mean?
Like?
Is that all like when you people talk about like how he's such a genius he's got is he just a good DM? Like were you all playing a big game of Dungeons and dragons and he was just really good at it? And that's the way you think he's a genius.
The only thing I can realize, like, the only thing it seems like he has successfully and permanently diluted his followers into thinking, is that he is ultimately a pretty smart guy. Yeah. Everything else they seem like they can kind of take or leave such a cannot store the concept that like, yeah, but but he wasn't you know, I've seen.
No evident he's certainly not dumb, But I don't see any evidence that he's smart. In part because he does some really dumb shit that loses him most of his cult, and it was really basic dumb shit.
And they're not I also don't.
I mean unless again, unless there's a missing piece of information. It doesn't seem like people are saying this because they're scared of him, and it just seems to be an honestly held assessment, which I just don't.
And that's that's part of what you do. Get those police reports where they talk to many different members who were like, they harassed my family, you know, they harassed me, maybe they burned a house down. But then you get Paula who tells a journalist the best thing for me is that I lived and worked with my best friends
for eight years. It's hard to have that and in a situation where everyone is committed to working it out, if you've ever had that one on one relationship with another person, whereas there's that long term level of commitment, I had that with twenty people. And she is again saying that after the cult gets her child taken away from her for six weeks, so like, I don't.
Know, she's like a cast member of Cheers, and it's like, it's so weird.
We had a tough time now and again when Kelsey Grammer would get too drunk. But I wouldn't change it for anything, right, But ultimately we.
Were all good friends that I respect like and I will come back for the reunion.
Very fucking weird.
It is very fucking weird, and yeah, it's it's it's all peculiar. So Petty is a smart guy he tended to avoid. Again, I think smartness is exaggerated, but he does sort of like he's got. He's good at branding because even these branding's not the wrong word. He's good at manipulating information. Because these two good articles on him that come out after the court case, the one by John Cohen and the one by Eddie Dean, they both
give a lot of really interesting context. They talk to a lot of former members, but Petty comes off as totally innocuous in them, right, as like misunderstood and maybe he had some bad judgment here and there, but there was nothing evil or abusive about him, And it's kind of silly to even call him a cult leader. Now. That said, there are some hints in these and other articles that he was more abusive and cruel than he
let onto being right that likes. Hidden beneath the service was evidence of the kind of behavior the police were reporting on when they talked to former members. Here's Eddie Dean talking about what happened when he interviewed Mary and Petty after having talked to Toby Arrell, so he he goes to talk to Terrell, who lives elsewhere in Virginia, and Terrell is like, yeah, I'm suing him because he took my money, but I think he's a nice guy.
And then when he meets up with Petty finally whatever in another part of Virginia, he tells Petty, hey, I met with Terrell and here's what happens. Toby used to be quite a character, Petty says warmly. He used to have a handlebar mustache and sing songs for the group and all kinds of things. Then he added soberly, Toby had a great time with us until this woman told him that he was Toto and that I was the Wizard of Oz and they were going to expose the Wizard.
I tell him I had already interviewed Terrell and was impressed with his admiration for the former game caller. Despite their conflict, there's dead silence both men hunch forward in the chairs you saw. Toby asks Petty, his face twisted with concern, where was he? I promised that, I said that. I promised I wouldn't tell I say that I promised TERRYL. I wouldn't tell anybody where we met, except to say it was somewhere in Virginia. He's up around here, demands Petty,
where is he? It's clear that Petty feels I owe him at least as much. After all, he's told me and the journalist doessn't tell him where Petty is? But like, that's potentially there's some unsettling stuff in there. For one thing, Toby leaves the cult with a woman who had been in the colt, who wanted to leave because of all the ship that Petty did during the arrests, Right, Petty is like blaming this woman for corrupting Toby's mind. Yeah, this woman.
I was like, this woman, Yeah, I've heard this, and I've heard this refrain before. Jamie and I were like, oh, I've.
Got a lot of we've got some members who leave, and it's fine. But like as soon as Petty finds out that Terrell's and he's like, where is he? Where is he where trying to figure out and like maybe for a really bad reason, right, these guys are Yeah, maybe that is potentially some evidence that, yeah, this is a much worse person than a lot of these journalists wind up interpreting him as.
I'm also just like again with the handlebar mustache.
Oh yeah, that seems to have been a thing. I'm sure Petty made them do that.
Yeah, I mean I honestly I would hope so, I would hope.
So, but again that that is.
Yeah, the fucking herq perole look at asses. Yeah, well, what after.
It is that made this guy, you know, even smart passing and possibly diabolical was clearly not picked up on, you know, intentionally or not by at least you know, three federally funded agencies.
So that's fun.
Yeah, it is funny. You know, it's even more fun Jamie no, the products and services that this podcast is supported by. You're damn right, and we're back. We're back to conclude the story of the Finders.
So I just mainlined whatever it was that was advertised, especially if it would kill me.
Yeah, yeah, which most of it will. That's the one promise we make about our sponsors. Go fucking kill you. Yeah, So whatever you can say about the Finders and how evil they were or weren't, or how evil Petty was or wasn't, after you know, the early nineties, they seem to have like been pretty benign. Most of what I can verify they did was fuck with normanis in Culpepper and like a mile way right, they're in Culpepper, Virginia, and they're just kind of like trying to make people
suspicious of them, but not really doing anything. Sketchy. Cult finances were good enough that they purchased an abandoned movie theater in the center of town. And you know, it's got a marquee on the front of it, right where you like put the names of the movies. And every day or so, one of Petty's members would change the marquee to read something cryptic. And they would always do it at like night, when no one was up, so
no one ever saw it get changed. You just wake up and there'd be something weird written on it.
That happened at a bagels store near where I lived in Maine.
Oh yeah, yeah, what what? What kind of cryptic shit here?
Let me let me look it up.
I would take pictures of it every so often.
I will read you.
Yeah, you know you hit me with yours, I'll hear you.
Yeah. Yeah. So one day it read school for Actors and not spelled the way actors is spelled, spelled A K T E R S. No idea what that means. The next day it would read Spycraft a great game, and then the next free money, and then the next ataxia, uh, ataxia, at araxia. Yeah, what is that? I think it's an inability to feel fear.
Oh I thought that they were misspelling the eating disorder.
Yeah. Yeah, it's imperturbability. It means that, yeah, you can't you can't be flustered or frightened. Basically, well, I.
Mean sure, I don't know.
Here's what mister b in Portland.
It's a state of serene calmness. Yeah, okay, imperturbability I've got.
Here's here's one from mister Bagel unconditional love for us and all is heaven here and now, and then underneath it says new red Bull menu, there's another joy as possible. Our constructs keep us from attaining it, and then again below new red Bull menu. So I think at the bagel shop they were probably the employees were probably just like drinking forty red bulls.
They decided, we're.
Justing from too much toy Heaven is here now, yeah, and like none of that makes money, but it's all like shit, that's going to make people in a small town in Virginia in the late nineties suspicious, Like sure, yeah, you know, And I think they're just doing it to have people talk about them. Right, small town people are the most paranoid humans who have ever existed, so it's
it's not surprising that this caused consternation. Eddie Dean would later write quote in appearance, the Finders, mostly middle aged men always in dark suits, wouldn't be out of place managing a local funeral home, but the behavior of the handful of adherents has people wondering whether they arrived by flying saucer. Townspeople say the Finders constantly walk the streets,
following people home and taking extensive notes and pictures. They often appear at local council meetings, never saying a word but simply observing the scene. At other times, they plunder the visitor center of brochures, maps, and local travel guides, and they haunt the courthouse scouring land deeds to find out who owns local real estate. Naturally, though rumors fly. Did you hear what the Finders are doing at the old theater? They're planning a stage production of Paradise Lost
with an all nude cast. Or was it a gay burlesque version of Dante's Divine Comedy where the Finders gathered for some ritual in the back lot, or were they simply taking trash to the dumpster. People have seen glowing lights in the windows of the Finders group house at the edge of home, along with visitors coming and going at odd hours. The lawn is mode in a peculiar
circular pattern. That's the place where they sacrifice pot bellied pigs. So, although this is nonsense, these are just like rumors that are spreading in town because it's Petty's.
Marketing for bad community theater and you should go to jail for doing that.
Yeah, that's all they're doing, is He's like, how weird can we be to create the maximum number of Yeah, mow the lawn. Weird. Put some marquees up on the thing, turn lights on at weird hours of the night, you know, follow people home at a distance, taking notes visibly in a notepad, like they're just fucking with the normies, which I normally I actually in this case, I do respect it. Like it's not cool when you're like endangering children, but this is a fun thing to do the rest of the time.
I don't know.
I mean, it's like it's it's certainly annoying, but it's like improv everywhere annoying at that point where you're like, yeah, should they be executed, Yes for you, but we can't. We have not yet succeeded to you know, be able to execute improvisers.
No. No, When I win the presidency, Jamie, that's the first federal law, Like, as an executive order, I'm going to mandate the death penalty for improv people.
Yeah, it's illegal for anything else but improv and improv it can be on site.
And yeah, everyone, I'm deputizing the entire country to carry out. And this is actually I think, what can heal the left right divide in this country get We can get communists and fascists all on board with taking out the fucking improv people.
Finally a true bipartisan issue.
Yeah, AOC and Ted Cruz holding hands and burning down an improv shop. Finally this country can heal now, Eddie Dean, that journalist comes to town looking for Petty, and it becomes very like he's a journalist. He's not trying to hide what he's doing. He like goes around to places where the finders go and it's like, does anyone know Mary and Petty? I'd like to interview him. So they've become aware that he's looking for him, and they change their theater marquee to like deliver a message to him.
They change it to John eight thirty two, which is a portion of the Bible that reads, and shall know the Truth, and the truth shall set you free. Now that may not seem like it specifically has anything to do with like conspiracies or this journalist, but that particular quote from the Bible is engraved in the lobby of the headquarters of the CIA. Right, it was the favorite motto of former CIA chief William Colby, who had disappeared
a week before in an accident in the Chesapeake Bay. So, like, again, there's conspiracy theories about them and the CIA, and they put up this message when a journalist comes into town, knowing exactly what it would insinuate. Right, that's not an accident. They're not dumb. They understand what they're doing here. This was a deliberate attempt to tell their kind of conspiracy.
But they also know what their two things can be true, Yes.
Two things can be true here. This was like he again, I think he gets addicted to the attention and to people believing that he's part of something nefarious and insidious.
Yeah, this really, I mean, just like the murder.
We talk this through, It's like this could have all been sort of you know, relieved by a theater degree, Like a good state funded theater program could have really nipped this all in the bud if.
World of Warcraft had been out at the same time. I don't think this colt gets off the ground. I think Petty is a pretty successful guild leader, but I don't think this cult gets off the ground.
No.
So Petty eventually does meet with Eddie Dean and you know, he gives an interview. There's not a lot in the interview. It's mostly Mary and Petty being like playing at the kindly wise guru. Right. He's making these kind of like statements that sort of like he's trying to play himself off as like this zin Buddhist figure, right.
Almost, he's this uscause yeah, nothing else, fucking exhausting.
Yeah, He's like, you could call me a cult leader, but I see myself as a student, and all of the members of the group are my teachers, and the
world is my teacher, and I'm just always learning. That's why I started all this, as I I just love learning, right, And most of it shit like that, But there are these points of ugliness that shine through the mask he builds for himself, including this point at which Eddie Dean asks him about the lawsuit with Toby Tarrell and several other former members, where Petty says, the only conflict I've ever had in my life are with these ungrateful wretches
that are suing me now. They were dope fiends and emotionally disturbed people, and they got cured in my mental hospital and they left. Now they come back and want to take the hospital. Which, first off, you had another conflict in your life. A bunch of the kids in your cult got arrested or got taken into custody. You got raided by the Feds. Like, that's not a conflict, No.
No, no, we don't talk about that anymore.
Yeah, it's also like, it's a fucked up thing to be, like, Yeah, these guys who assume me, they're all dope fiends. You know, I cured them, so I should get to keep their money. That's kind of evil, right, That's a pretty fucked up thing to say.
I would say, I would say evil, Yes, yeah.
Yeah, fair enough. Petty continue to remain comfortable, and he spent the bulk of his remaining years in Culpepper fucking with people and living with his last dozen or so followers. An internal cult document in nineteen ninety, written in the form of a CIA dossier, describes him this way. Radiates a very casual but completely confident sense of self, a sort of Kadafi without the ego, makes jokes about switching roles,
yet always carries himself like an active duty officer. Does not fidget when seated in car or domicile, assumes a position and holds it, no fast movements, steady modulated voice not bass, sometimes speaks in a clinched teeth fashion, yet other times, as a hint of a Virginia drawl, maintains that he likes young pussy more than old pussy. Moreover, upon questioning, stated that twice a week since the age of thirteen or so has been the optimum amount for me.
Farts a lot, eccentric and urinary habits, walks ten to twenty miles a day, and has done so for years. Reports that the secret of his health and happiness is having constantly associated only with people he likes and who like him.
So, Mary and Petty, Yeah, kind of like a real uncle uncle like description.
You just gave that.
That's like forty percent of our nation's uncles.
By that description. He's a creepy old man from the seventies. Is he Satanist trafficking children? I don't think so. Is he a creepy old man from the seventies?
For sure, He's definitely a creepy old man.
There's no doubt about it.
Yeah, Oh my.
God, well, I yeah, this is this is this is local theater nonsense, and I don't abide by it.
And I it's just yeah, yeah.
So.
He died in two thousand and three, having lived exactly the life he meant to live, for better and for worse, and his legacy today continues on in the form of countless YouTube videos and podcasts, theorizing that this is all the basis of the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking crimes or Pizzagate or all sorts of stuff. And yeah, or.
It's us being like, who's to say.
Before hout's happening here? Yeah, we're not sure. Yeah, And I still don't have a good answer for you, folks. But at least it was a long one.
At least it took us a long time to not totally be sure.
I truly, Yeah, I was not familiar with the story before this, before this saga, and I feel no closer I did. It does still feel like there's some piece of information missing, uh, and that this like it also just the timing of this too is so unfortunately aligned with the Satanic panic, where it's just like anything that got sucked up into that vortex, there's an element of either not true or will never know the degree of truth because of how just like nonsense brain that period was.
Yeah, yeah, speaking of nonsense, Jamie, Yeah, it's nonsense that you had anything to do with those murders and grand rapids.
Uh. It's the allegations I will say are nonsense. The allegations are nonsense. There's no sense to them. I have an alibi.
On that note, you have a new book coming out called If I Did It The Michigan Story.
Can you believe it's self published? Publish?
Yeah, it is self published. But oddly enough, you do have a jacket quote by Norman Mahler, which is which is impressive. That's a real get Salmon Rushdie too. So you know, some big names coming out swinging for this one.
I got some friends in high places, and the poll quotes do not reflect well on me, but they did send the vints, so we put them on the on the jacket. Yeah, the self published book, so it's kind of the surface of the book is a little sticky.
Yeah, very sticky. And the Salmon Rushdie quote just says, can you believe I'm the one who got stabbed? That's maybe a mean joke for salmon.
That that's out of pocket, that's a pocket.
You're right, you're right. I apologize.
Okay there please, Yeah, check check out check out that book. I feel like that one's going to really make a splash.
Huh.
I think it's it's going to be it's gonna be huge. I also I took the cue for Prince Harry. I also talk about a lot of disgusting things at length.
Oh good, Well you got anything else to plug? Jamie?
Oh is it time?
Okay?
Are you also by my book that isn't sticky at least not before you eat a hot dog while.
You're holding it.
Not know where you were going there?
Yeah, so we might use the five delay there, Sophie.
Look, I can.
Say with confidence that if you come on my book, it will get sticky. There's no way around it. I don't think the technology exists to prevent it. But if you come on, you can't come on a podcast, and that's a great way to have a new podcast coming out.
You're nailing this, Jamie.
About main characters of the Internet. It's a digital thing, so you won't be able to come on it. So maybe you could get the book and listen to the podcast, because well, I can't, you know, think about that and I feel confident about that plug.
Yeah great, Well everybody, until next time, send in suggestions for who we should accuse of.
Murder next Please not me anymore.
Goodbye. Behind the Bastards is a production a cool Zone Media.
For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app.
Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.