Speaker 1: Camp hell Anawaki is a production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: The views and opinions expressing this podcast are solely those
Speaker 1: of the author and participants and do not necessarily represent
Speaker 1: those of I Heart Media or its employees. Due to
Speaker 1: discussion of traumatic, sexual and violent content, listener discussion is advised.
Speaker 1: I think once, maybe twice a year, people from the
Speaker 1: state would come out to do like an inspection or something.
Speaker 1: This is Terry, a former patient at the Annawaki North
Speaker 1: Campus in Rockmart, the all girls facility. She remembers during
Speaker 1: her time how the staff would handle visits from state
Speaker 1: agencies that were meant to check on the treatment center
Speaker 1: and how it operated with an Awake now being a
Speaker 1: licensed medical facility, it had to be recorded that patients
Speaker 1: were getting the proper treatment they were supposed to. And
Speaker 1: I remember the first time when they came out, they
Speaker 1: picked like three of us girls to be the one
Speaker 1: to answer any questions, and so they took the rest
Speaker 1: of the group like way way out into the woods,
Speaker 1: like a mile out into the woods. And I can
Speaker 1: remember when the first inspector lady came, one of the
Speaker 1: group leaders told her the girls are out on a
Speaker 1: work project about a mile out in the woods. I
Speaker 1: guess they just knew that the inspector probably wasn't going
Speaker 1: to hike out a mile. But we were available though.
Speaker 1: They were like three of us, and we were told
Speaker 1: even before the inspector came, if they asked if we
Speaker 1: met with a psychiatrist, to let them know that we did,
Speaker 1: and that we had thirty to forty five minute sessions.
Speaker 1: At this point in time, Annawiki was sold to the
Speaker 1: parents of its patients largely as a medical treatment center
Speaker 1: with daily therapy. In reality, this therapy was greatly exaggerated,
Speaker 1: often amounting to know more than a few minutes at
Speaker 1: most with an actual therapist. I don't think my parents
Speaker 1: realized until I got out that I really didn't get
Speaker 1: the help that I needed. We would see a psychiatrist,
Speaker 1: I want to say once a week. It might have
Speaker 1: been every other week. But we would literally like get
Speaker 1: in a line and go one after the other and
Speaker 1: you'd only get a few minutes, and they would just
Speaker 1: right on a clipboard and they would literally look at
Speaker 1: their clock and say, Okay, time's up next. I mean,
Speaker 1: it was a joke. We like going to the psychiatrist
Speaker 1: because it gave us like a five minute break from
Speaker 1: the heavy labor work. But I mean, we didn't even
Speaker 1: get that much time. It was a joke. And I
Speaker 1: do know um that my parents were charged for like
Speaker 1: a forty five minute visit, I think is what it
Speaker 1: was supposed to be. Thirty or forty five minutes, and
Speaker 1: we used to laugh about it. I guess we knew
Speaker 1: the doctors are making all this money off of us
Speaker 1: and they're only seeing us like for a couple of minutes.
Speaker 1: Terry says that during these visits from state officials, the
Speaker 1: designated patients who were allowed to answer questions were to
Speaker 1: downplay the lack of education as well as how their
Speaker 1: time was really being spent. They told us to explain
Speaker 1: to them that it was an owned privilege and that
Speaker 1: some people did go to school. And then there was
Speaker 1: another thing that we were told not to let them know.
Speaker 1: They like encouraged us not to talk about the manual
Speaker 1: labor that we did all day. And the only reason
Speaker 1: why I would go along with it because I knew
Speaker 1: it wasn't right, like to not tell them the truth
Speaker 1: on certain things. But it was another way where I
Speaker 1: thought I was getting brownie points, you know, because they
Speaker 1: chose me to be the one to talk, so I
Speaker 1: thought it just hit me on their good side that
Speaker 1: looking back, that was pretty messed up because they probably
Speaker 1: could have helped us if I had told the truth.
Speaker 1: That that's just the way it went. Although Terry went
Speaker 1: along within a week he's plan to hide their abuse
Speaker 1: from government officials, she did try to report the wrongdoing
Speaker 1: to her family when she had the chance. I did
Speaker 1: try to tell my parents on one of my home visits,
Speaker 1: especially about the two counselors that I had that were
Speaker 1: sleeping together, that had a relationship, and all the sexual
Speaker 1: things that were going on, and how uncomfortable I was,
Speaker 1: and I really wanted to get out of there. Well,
Speaker 1: it backfired because when they brought me back from my
Speaker 1: home visit, they met with one of the social workers
Speaker 1: and then they called me in and the social worker
Speaker 1: just barrated me. She said, you know, one of your
Speaker 1: biggest problems, and the reason why you're out here and
Speaker 1: you're still out here, is because you're a manipulator and
Speaker 1: what you've done um to your parents trying to make
Speaker 1: up these things, saying that there's this sexual abuse and
Speaker 1: things going on just so you can get out. You're
Speaker 1: not gonna get away with that. You know, they see
Speaker 1: right through We see right through it. And so it
Speaker 1: was like I was a liar, and they didn't they
Speaker 1: believe the social worker. They didn't believe me anymore. And
Speaker 1: that she said that I wasn't the only patient out
Speaker 1: there trying to do that, that there were other kids
Speaker 1: saying the same thing just so they could get out.
Speaker 1: You know, she tried to intimidate me, saying, do you
Speaker 1: know how serious it is to make allegations like that
Speaker 1: about your counselors and about other girls doing these things
Speaker 1: with each other? I just I backed off. I knew
Speaker 1: over the past several weeks we have received number of
Speaker 1: very serious allegations concerning both the facility out there in
Speaker 1: a number of individuals involved with them. It was just
Speaker 1: a form of their therapy. They were told to do it,
Speaker 1: and at the time he was fourteen and a half,
Speaker 1: fifteen years old, they didn't know any better. I asked him,
Speaker 1: why are you letting this happen? Why are you covering
Speaker 1: up for Louis Batterer. He had no answer to that question.
Speaker 1: Having and this sitution paid its little could be such
Speaker 1: shock destrica place and to do absolutely the contrary of
Speaker 1: what they should have done. I'm disturbable the fact of
Speaker 1: something and he's still going on it. An I wake you.
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Stein and this is camp hell an Awake.
Speaker 1: By the mid nineteen eighties, an Awaki had reached its
Speaker 1: highest attendance numbers. Yet not only was it operating on
Speaker 1: three different campuses Douglasville, Rock Martin, and Carabelle, it was
Speaker 1: now taking its patients on trips to other countries. In
Speaker 1: a board meeting from nineteen eighty three, plans for an
Speaker 1: Antawaki University were discussed, a program that would continue on
Speaker 1: through graduate degree status. Disruptions in the organization had started
Speaker 1: to occur. One catalyst began with a legal dispute over
Speaker 1: the recording rights to the songs written by the patients
Speaker 1: you just heard from Terry. During this dispute, it was
Speaker 1: also brought to her parents attention other wrongdoings which occurred
Speaker 1: while her and her brothers attended, in particular that maybe
Speaker 1: they weren't getting the treatment which their parents had been
Speaker 1: paying for. The fact that Terry's brothers had also been
Speaker 1: involved with the annual trip to Mexico made matters even worse.
Speaker 1: Here's journalist Albert Edgin. At the same time, there was
Speaker 1: a parent whose daughter had written a song about Anna
Speaker 1: Wake and there was a complaint. There was some dispute
Speaker 1: over the whether she was going to get paid for
Speaker 1: the song or how the boarding studio was going to
Speaker 1: be paid. But that parent then, in coincidental parallel track
Speaker 1: learned about the trips to the Mexican brothels. This cause
Speaker 1: for alarm regarding payment to Anawaki was not a rare instance.
Speaker 1: With an Awaki now collecting payments from its patient's insurance,
Speaker 1: Oftentimes parents would not realize what they were actually paying
Speaker 1: for the school. One quota number for yearly tuition to
Speaker 1: an Awaki was thirty three thousand dollars a year in
Speaker 1: the early eighties, the equivalent of over one d thousand
Speaker 1: dollars today. Receiving payment from medical insurance policies was just
Speaker 1: one of an Awaki's multiple revenue streams. With the purchase
Speaker 1: of land for its three campuses and properties in Mexico
Speaker 1: and Canada, and Awaki had set up a shell corporation
Speaker 1: called Anawaki Estates. This LLC would own the real estate
Speaker 1: and Awake had acquired and would then lease the property
Speaker 1: to its other corporation and Awaki Incorporated in essence shifting
Speaker 1: funds from the patients back to the owners of aniwaki Estates.
Speaker 1: And who were the owners of the shell corporation none
Speaker 1: other than Lewis Petter's three daughters, Tina, Rita and Marcia.
Speaker 1: They were leasing them just like anybody else would be
Speaker 1: leasing real estate from another company, any other business. So
Speaker 1: the non profit was paying the profit corporation. The nonprofit
Speaker 1: aniwaki E was paying an awaki Estates rent for lack
Speaker 1: of a better way of putting it. And I don't
Speaker 1: recall the amounts and involved there, but the ownership of
Speaker 1: that was the three daughters. This is Frank Win. He
Speaker 1: was the d A for Douglas County in the ninet eighties.
Speaker 1: He says the business behind Anawaki's financial interest was largely
Speaker 1: tied to the pattern family. Pet His daughters would go
Speaker 1: on to marry others involved in the organization. Marcia Petter
Speaker 1: to Bud Pedigo in a week he's main accountant, and
Speaker 1: Rita Petter to James Henry Evans one of in a
Speaker 1: week he's heads of management an awaki Estates. Who would
Speaker 1: have been the name of that corporation. Anawaki Inc. Was
Speaker 1: the not for profit or nonprofit organization that you know.
Speaker 1: I believe most of the board of directors thought when
Speaker 1: they authorized stuff that they were authorizing purchases in the
Speaker 1: name of Anawaki Inc. And actually they were leasing a
Speaker 1: lot of the facilities from Anawaki Estates. So the family
Speaker 1: that was the big picture of the family's involvements. You
Speaker 1: had three of them that owned the for profit corporation.
Speaker 1: Both of his daughters were in charge of different departments,
Speaker 1: two of his son in law's were involved. His wife
Speaker 1: was also involved. All of them in a director type position.
Speaker 1: It is around this same time that some changes were
Speaker 1: happening in the law enforcement agencies of Douglas County. For years,
Speaker 1: the sheriff had been Claude Abercrombie. Sheriff. Abercrumbie two had
Speaker 1: close ties with Anna Waki, even teaching a horse breaking
Speaker 1: class to the boys who would come and work on
Speaker 1: his horse farm. Abercrumbie's term ended in the mid seventies
Speaker 1: after his deputy sheriff, Earl Lee, decided to run against
Speaker 1: him for the position and was elected. Earl Lee became
Speaker 1: a known character of Douglas County Lore. Here's what Frank
Speaker 1: Winn remembers about him. Well, Early was sheriff of Douglas
Speaker 1: Canty when when I came along, he had a reputation
Speaker 1: that clearly was a walking tall type of sheriff. Some
Speaker 1: of it was very much talk. I learned the no
Speaker 1: Earl and and love him because I could see just
Speaker 1: how obsessive he would get investigating a homicide. He couldn't
Speaker 1: stand that someone was killed and that there wasn't justice
Speaker 1: trying to find who did it, and he would work
Speaker 1: very hard. He wouldn't just jump in and arrest somebody.
Speaker 1: He's certainly the kind of person that would not back
Speaker 1: down or somebody that you didn't want to have a
Speaker 1: fight with. So he had developed a reputation with a
Speaker 1: lot of people local from Douglasville. Pat Kirkland remembers how
Speaker 1: Earl Lee was thought of at the time. Early has
Speaker 1: a reputation on his own. Early was an old West lawman.
Speaker 1: He was the law. I mean, everybody knew that Earl
Speaker 1: Lee is the law in Douglas County. Early was just
Speaker 1: a good old boy, old small town you know, sheriff
Speaker 1: and everything. Of course he was you know, he was
Speaker 1: elected by the people and everything, but he just really
Speaker 1: it and put up with too much stuff from anyone.
Speaker 1: Back several years ago, there he was, he had a
Speaker 1: prisoner in the back of his car, and I remembered
Speaker 1: this somehow that prisoner and handcuffs committed suicide in the
Speaker 1: back of Early's car. Now how and they had did
Speaker 1: that happen? Earl Lee had a reputation in the county.
Speaker 1: I think he did a lot of good for the
Speaker 1: county and everything. But Earl Lee was an old West lawman,
Speaker 1: and it's gonna be my way or you ain't gonna
Speaker 1: like the circumstances or the what happens at with it.
Speaker 1: I know that there were some a couple of instants
Speaker 1: where people got shot. People believe that Earl had shot him.
Speaker 1: But I had reviewed the files when I first came along,
Speaker 1: just out of curiosity, and had had talked to some
Speaker 1: people in the Sheriff's department, and the truth was Earle
Speaker 1: had not been the one that shot the people. But
Speaker 1: he never for with back down from letting people believe it.
Speaker 1: He wouldn't correct them because he felt like it helped
Speaker 1: his reputation as far as uh, you know, law enforcement,
Speaker 1: as far as the criminal UH elements were concerned. There
Speaker 1: were a lot of people. I heard tapes of people
Speaker 1: that would we're doing drupe transactions and would say I'm
Speaker 1: not going to Douglas County or I'm not going to
Speaker 1: Earl Leaves County. That was more likely how they would
Speaker 1: say it. It was amazing. Sometimes. I'll never forget one
Speaker 1: case where he told me said, I tried to let
Speaker 1: my people do the job on their own and let
Speaker 1: them branch out and be able to do it. And
Speaker 1: they had actually gone and searched an apartment and came
Speaker 1: back and told him they couldn't. They just didn't find anything.
Speaker 1: And an Earl believed that just didn't make sense in
Speaker 1: relation to this case, that that person had to have
Speaker 1: been somehow involved. And the body that we found in
Speaker 1: Douglas County, Earl, he asked the guy, you still give
Speaker 1: us consent search, and Earl went back and searched with
Speaker 1: the same officers and the first thing he notices is
Speaker 1: just a few little red spots, real minor red spots
Speaker 1: on the wall. And he realizes that nobody has turned
Speaker 1: the bed over, so he makes his officers flip the bed,
Speaker 1: and the first thing they see is some blood, and
Speaker 1: then they find some on the bottom side of a pillow.
Speaker 1: And whether it's true or not, I remember Earl after
Speaker 1: they started, after they clearly had found blood, he said,
Speaker 1: let me show you where the gun is. And he said, so,
Speaker 1: I took him into the guy's closet and started patting
Speaker 1: down the clothes, and the gun had been placed on
Speaker 1: the inside pocket of a coat. This was clearly the
Speaker 1: murder weapon, but his officers had missed it. And Earl,
Speaker 1: once he found the blood, he knew exactly where somebody
Speaker 1: might hide a gun, and and that his officers might
Speaker 1: not have looked at and that still might have been
Speaker 1: a problem. But he he brings the guy into his
Speaker 1: office and very politely interviews him and and goes over
Speaker 1: his rights with him and talks to him for a
Speaker 1: little while, reaches under his desk and pulls up the
Speaker 1: jacket and says, tell me about this jacket, and the
Speaker 1: guy immediately starts explaining why the gun was there. And
Speaker 1: Earl had made had spent thirty minutes never mentioning the gun,
Speaker 1: never told the guy the point of the coat, And
Speaker 1: like Earl told me when we were prosecuting the case,
Speaker 1: it was better than a confession. Frank says that while
Speaker 1: Earl Lee had his suspicions about an AWAKEI, he never
Speaker 1: had enough of a case to make an arrest or
Speaker 1: conduct a formal investigation. This outlook changed after a tragic
Speaker 1: incident occur on the Douglasville campus. From Earl's Lee's standpoint,
Speaker 1: one of the things that had caught his attention had
Speaker 1: been that there was a situation where UH kid had
Speaker 1: killed himself. He had jumped off of I'm going to
Speaker 1: call it an old rock or brick type of chimney
Speaker 1: structure and landed onto a concrete slab. And that was
Speaker 1: something that Earl was very uh touched anytime a kid
Speaker 1: died and he would get involved, uh and he would
Speaker 1: become obsessive, compulsive. Carl Moore remembers his reaction when he
Speaker 1: was informed there had been a suicide at Annawaki. There
Speaker 1: was a a chimney of one of the cabins that
Speaker 1: was left. I can't I think it was just a
Speaker 1: chimney with the slab. I don't remember why it was
Speaker 1: that way, but he climbed to the top of that
Speaker 1: and uh dove off. I had been on a trip somewhere.
Speaker 1: I can't remember what I was doing now, but I
Speaker 1: had someone had picked me up the airport and told
Speaker 1: me that one of the kids who killed themselves. It
Speaker 1: just devastated me to hear that. I think I actually
Speaker 1: arrived back at the campus as the ambulances were still there.
Speaker 1: I got the idea that a lot of the kids
Speaker 1: knew him. It was a big deal. That was something
Speaker 1: he never could figure out why that kid did what
Speaker 1: he did. That just he wasn't provided with enough information
Speaker 1: from Mannawaki that made him comfortable that it explained the
Speaker 1: kid committing suicide. And so that was just something that
Speaker 1: bothered him, and he spoke to me about it, and
Speaker 1: so it was something that we sort in our minds
Speaker 1: had in the back of our thought process when when
Speaker 1: other things developed. By eighty Lewis Petter's friend and confident
Speaker 1: Jim Parham had completed his term as a part of
Speaker 1: Jimmy Carter's presidential cabinet and had returned to serve as
Speaker 1: a member of the board of directors for Anawaki. With
Speaker 1: Anawaki licensed as an official medical hospital, it was now
Speaker 1: subject to receive state funding as a mental institute as
Speaker 1: part of a new mental health program put in a
Speaker 1: place by the DHR, the same organization which Parum was
Speaker 1: once head up. In a document from the Georgia Department
Speaker 1: of Human Resources from January eighteenth night, it is recorded
Speaker 1: that the State of Georgia paid an Awake the sum
Speaker 1: of eight hundred and seventy two thousand dollars of taxpayer money,
Speaker 1: the purpose of which was to build a brand new
Speaker 1: evaluation and observation or E and O building that could
Speaker 1: house up to forty five additional patients. While Annawaki was
Speaker 1: clearly still in good graces with state government agencies, others
Speaker 1: were beginning to become suspicious of the tax exempt organization.
Speaker 1: Following the suicide on campus in Antawaki's resistance to investigate it,
Speaker 1: local authorities were now looking more closely into the financial
Speaker 1: organization behind in Awaki. In nine two, Douglas County decided
Speaker 1: to revoke an Awake's nonprofit tax exemption, followed by an
Speaker 1: attempt to recoup hundreds of thousands of dollars in back taxes.
Speaker 1: The county felt it was owed. Insurance companies, who were
Speaker 1: now being charged hundreds of thousands of dollars also began
Speaker 1: to question the validity of an Awaki's treatment. An early
Speaker 1: correspondence from shows Blue Cross Blue Shield arguing that the treatment,
Speaker 1: costing upwards of one thousand dollars for a patient was
Speaker 1: not covered under their plan. Another correspondence from the United
Speaker 1: States Department of Defense Division of Health Affairs regarding the
Speaker 1: son of a retired Army officer shows a decline to
Speaker 1: cover the treatment provided it Innawaki upon further review and
Speaker 1: called the treatment quote not medically necessary. While state agencies
Speaker 1: and insurance companies alike were beginning to grow skeptical of
Speaker 1: Anawaki's practices, other things were starting to make parents of
Speaker 1: the students and even board members of an Awaki suspicious.
Speaker 1: One of these board members that would greatly affect the
Speaker 1: future of an Awaki was one Sarah Tillis. Here's journalist
Speaker 1: Albert Edgin. Sarah Tillis was the mother of several children
Speaker 1: who had been treated in an Awake and who are
Speaker 1: still being treated at an Awake in the eighties, but
Speaker 1: also an important member of the board, a very influential
Speaker 1: member of the board of directors, and eventually the chairman
Speaker 1: of the Board of Directors. She and her husband were
Speaker 1: very involved in all sorts of activities there and very
Speaker 1: supportive friends with Petter and wealthy in their own right
Speaker 1: and had been seduced by Petter. Petter made sure that
Speaker 1: her children were given special attention. At the end of
Speaker 1: the day, Petter was a good counselor. If he wanted
Speaker 1: to be a good counselor, he could be a good counselor.
Speaker 1: So if he had somebody he needed to curry favor with,
Speaker 1: and the way to do it was to counsel her
Speaker 1: children in a very professional and accomplished way, he did it.
Speaker 1: And that's what he did with Sarah tell Us, he
Speaker 1: lured her in. He seduced her in the same way
Speaker 1: that he seduced those boys through his manipulation of her emotions.
Speaker 1: So Sarah became an Antiwaki advocate on deroids. I mean,
Speaker 1: she was the she was an awake's face. And in return,
Speaker 1: her children were taken care of, and she was introduced
Speaker 1: by Petter to the you know, political hierarchy in two
Speaker 1: different states. You know, she could go to all sorts
Speaker 1: of affairs and events with the governor of Florida or
Speaker 1: the governor Georgia away. It was very you know, very
Speaker 1: high cotton for a suburban housewife in Atlanta. He gave
Speaker 1: her those avenues. During one of an Awake's annual Mexico trips,
Speaker 1: in a group of board members joined along a number
Speaker 1: of incidents occurred which gave alarm to Sarah Tillis and others,
Speaker 1: in particular witnessing what she believed to be an inappropriate
Speaker 1: relationship with Carl Moore and Petter's teenage granddaughter Shari. You
Speaker 1: have to think that was a pretty well developed system
Speaker 1: by four when Sarah stumbled onto just one aspect of it,
Speaker 1: and the aspect of it that she stumbled on was
Speaker 1: is important in the narrative because it changed her opinion
Speaker 1: of Petter, and that was that Petter's granddaughter, who was fourteen,
Speaker 1: was engaging in sexual for play with the driver of
Speaker 1: a van that was taking an Awakey officials around Mexico,
Speaker 1: and Petter knew this was happening. It was his granddaughter.
Speaker 1: A couple of the the board members, Sarah Tillis being
Speaker 1: the main one, noticed that and complained about it. Looking
Speaker 1: back on it, it's amazing and it's sort of as
Speaker 1: a testament to Petter's um sheer control over the over
Speaker 1: people he could control people's opinion of him, and so
Speaker 1: even though this was something that that Sarah disapproved of,
Speaker 1: she was able to put that in some sort of
Speaker 1: a uh place where it was something that troubled her,
Speaker 1: but it didn't completely alter her opinion and initially, Peter
Speaker 1: I asked Carl Moore about his involvement with Petter's then
Speaker 1: teenage granddaughter. He says this was just another sign of
Speaker 1: how bad things had gotten for him. There was a
Speaker 1: larger context to it. Um doesn't justify or really change
Speaker 1: anything about it. I think it was another example, in
Speaker 1: a way of how twisted things were for me at
Speaker 1: the time. And I don't think it's I don't think
Speaker 1: I can say anything else about it. I have to
Speaker 1: think it was smoke screen in some ways. After this
Speaker 1: episode published, I was contacted by both Carl and Sari.
Speaker 1: Carl and Shery both stated that their relationship was strictly
Speaker 1: as friends and never sexual. When asked about her relationship
Speaker 1: with Carl, Charis stated quote, Carl has never been anything
Speaker 1: but good to me. He cared about what happened to
Speaker 1: me without ever wanting something in return. When asked again
Speaker 1: about his relationship with Shari, Karl stated quote, I was
Speaker 1: being her friend without being sexual. I knew there was
Speaker 1: a risk that my affection was being misunderstood by others,
Speaker 1: and I did not care what they thought. It is
Speaker 1: ironic to me that, after all these years, that an
Speaker 1: act of kindness caused the outrage required for the Board
Speaker 1: of Directors at Annawaki to ultimately act. Sarah Tillis would
Speaker 1: later give a written statement outlining this trip to Mexico.
Speaker 1: A group from Anauake's board of trustees flew to Mexico
Speaker 1: City to join the rest of the group from Anawaki.
Speaker 1: A lavish trip is recorded, with the group being housed
Speaker 1: by presidents of different areas in Mexico and other government officials.
Speaker 1: She describes inappropriate behavior involving Karl Moore, then Petter's fourteen
Speaker 1: year old granddaughter Sharie. When Petters confronted by some of
Speaker 1: the board members, he states, quote, it's not any of
Speaker 1: your goddamn business or the trustees as to why I
Speaker 1: brought Cheri to Mexico, even stating that he will call
Speaker 1: a board meeting himself to tell the trustees the same thing.
Speaker 1: No such meeting ever happened. I think the turning point
Speaker 1: was when he was dismissive of the complaints about the
Speaker 1: relationship that was observed between his granddaughter and Karl Moore.
Speaker 1: What he said after that he heard complaints about this
Speaker 1: relationship with Karl Moore was something like, she's going to
Speaker 1: get screwed by somebody, it may as well be Karl Moore.
Speaker 1: So that was shocking to the people that heard that
Speaker 1: and heard that he had said that, and that set
Speaker 1: up a sort of a permanent avenue that he would
Speaker 1: never get out of, a permanent avenue of disapproval that
Speaker 1: he had never had to deal with before. Really, it
Speaker 1: was later in the fall when board members who knew
Speaker 1: about the relationship between Petter's granddaughter and Karl Moore. Now
Speaker 1: we're learning that some of the children, some of the
Speaker 1: kids had gone to brothels at the same time, which
Speaker 1: would then, I mean, that's just an example of how
Speaker 1: it began to get out of that one avenue and expand.
Speaker 1: And it took a long time before uh, it exploded,
Speaker 1: But maybe not that long when you think about it
Speaker 1: in retrospect, because if he was doing it since nine,
Speaker 1: somebody notices in and the disapproval sticks in their mind.
Speaker 1: It only took a year and a half from there
Speaker 1: for it to fall apart. Upon returning from Mexico trip,
Speaker 1: Sarah Tillis began asking questions to the upper management of
Speaker 1: an Awaki. She claimed that she had been told by
Speaker 1: one of the patients who had consistently not been given
Speaker 1: a bet on the trip, that it was due to
Speaker 1: Petter wanting to quote play the sex game, according to
Speaker 1: a statement by Sarah Tillis, When this was brought to
Speaker 1: Petter's wife, Mabel's attention, her response was that those types
Speaker 1: of matters were not reported, possibly influenced by the confrontations
Speaker 1: by board members or issues involving receiving payment from insurance companies.
Speaker 1: Louis Petter attempted a sale of an Awake shortly after
Speaker 1: the Mexico trip. In according to his statement by Jim Parren,
Speaker 1: Petter had received offers for up to thirty million dollars
Speaker 1: for the center. The only problem was that Petter was
Speaker 1: not willing to let an Awak's books be scrutinized. The
Speaker 1: deal shortly fell through. Board members were beginning to become
Speaker 1: suspicious not just a Petter's actions, but also of how
Speaker 1: in a week's finances were being handled. Suspicions had begun
Speaker 1: to build around in Awaki and its multiple revenue streams.
Speaker 1: An incident would bring further scrutiny to the program on
Speaker 1: March of that year, when a youth being evaluated for
Speaker 1: in Aweki treatment escaped from his Florida caseworker and fled
Speaker 1: the property. Fourteen year old Billy Ray White disappeared into
Speaker 1: the center's wooded surroundings. Three days later, while attempting to
Speaker 1: steal a dump truck, White shot and killed local resident
Speaker 1: James D. Hall with a revolver stolen from a truck
Speaker 1: in the neighborhood. The death shocked the community, raising concerns
Speaker 1: to Anawaki was not properly watching over what could sometimes
Speaker 1: be dangerous patients being kept there. The whole community will
Speaker 1: miss him because he's lived here most of his life,
Speaker 1: sure will, Frankie Gibbons says. The killing continues to worry homeowners. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we tried to have meanings upcoming alert systems so that
Speaker 1: they would let us know when one was off. Doesn't
Speaker 1: worry you when some of them get out, Yeah, we've
Speaker 1: reported since we've been out here. We call him running
Speaker 1: through our property, property across road rolfe and call him
Speaker 1: I not mad and we've notifiedment Leaf for the time.
Speaker 1: An Awaki officials had been warned months earlier that White
Speaker 1: was a quote homicidal threat and could possibly kill without
Speaker 1: feeling any remorse. Sheriff Earl Lee responded at the time,
Speaker 1: I would have intensified my search for him if I
Speaker 1: had known what they knew, but they wouldn't tell me
Speaker 1: anything at all. Government agencies and insurance companies were both
Speaker 1: beginning to inquire into Antawak's financial irregularities. Soon, another tragic
Speaker 1: event would take place that would shake the foundation structure.
Speaker 1: Bud Pedigo was Antawak's main accountant and the person who
Speaker 1: would have to answer to anyone looking into its finances.
Speaker 1: He was also married to Petter's daughter Marcia, both largely
Speaker 1: involved with the inner workings of the organization. In May
Speaker 1: of Pedago was killed in an automobile accident just a
Speaker 1: few blocks away from Antawaki. A drunk driver struck Pedigo's
Speaker 1: car with him and his young daughter in the front seat.
Speaker 1: His daughter thankfully lived, but Bud was not so lucky.
Speaker 1: Carl Moore remembers being one of the first people to
Speaker 1: be notified about Pedigo's death. I think Bud was. He
Speaker 1: was a nice guy. He was the financial losser like
Speaker 1: the CFO. I can't even remember how I heard about it,
Speaker 1: but I went there. It was right almost on the campus.
Speaker 1: I went there and the car was pushed off the road.
Speaker 1: There was a van there that had run into him
Speaker 1: almost ahead on wreck that hit the driver's side of
Speaker 1: the car. When I got there, Bud was actually in
Speaker 1: the passenger seat, and Uh, I went down there. I
Speaker 1: didn't know why there was nobody down there. I went
Speaker 1: down there like I was gonna help him out, and
Speaker 1: and he was gone. I didn't know it for a
Speaker 1: little while. His daughter was in the car. This is
Speaker 1: uh youngest daughter. I think she was four or five.
Speaker 1: She had crawled out the back window of the car.
Speaker 1: What I understand. The guy driving the van, he was
Speaker 1: drunk and he was injured. He said, Hey, the guy
Speaker 1: that's driving the van ran off through the woods, which
Speaker 1: was a lie. It was actually him and I think
Speaker 1: he was charged with it. Yeah, it was a hard thing.
Speaker 1: Then Bud Pettigo died. Between the Mexico revelations in the
Speaker 1: middle of the summer of eighty four and his death
Speaker 1: in March, there was a lot of conversation going on,
Speaker 1: a lot of rumors were swirling around and that encouraged
Speaker 1: children who may have been abused to talk about it
Speaker 1: among themselves at least. And if you think about Douglas County, well,
Speaker 1: Douglas County is a small place, so a lot of
Speaker 1: people began hearing about these things. All of those things,
Speaker 1: taken together, contributed to an environment in which, in the spring,
Speaker 1: a couple of board members started saying, we need to
Speaker 1: see an audit, We need to see what's going on
Speaker 1: with the money. Things that they had ignored about the
Speaker 1: money began to become of interest to them. With a
Speaker 1: murder and suicide both connected to an awake. Within a
Speaker 1: few years time, law enforcement began to take a closer
Speaker 1: look at in awake. What they would find out would
Speaker 1: go far beyond what they ever could have imagined. Law
Speaker 1: enforcement became aware in Douglas County of the abuse. Once
Speaker 1: that happened, then the genie was out of the bottle.
Speaker 1: There was no way that it was going to become
Speaker 1: anything other than what it became. Once Sheriff Eli knew
Speaker 1: about it, that was the end. Former d A. Frank
Speaker 1: Winn says that he and his assistant David McDade had
Speaker 1: begun to hear complaints about in Awake for some time,
Speaker 1: and had even begun to keep a file of said complaints.
Speaker 1: One afternoon, he received a visit from Sarah Tillis. It
Speaker 1: seemed to confirm some of the suspicions when and Sheriff
Speaker 1: Earl Lee had had m she believed that Petter had
Speaker 1: been misleading her and the other board members, so it
Speaker 1: wasn't just sexual. She gave me enough details that I
Speaker 1: sat there to ten thirty with the lady that when
Speaker 1: she walked in the office that morning, I would have
Speaker 1: thought she was possibly a crazy lady. I had no
Speaker 1: idea why somebody is just showing up to talk about anawake.
Speaker 1: But she wasn't crazy enough for me to refuse to
Speaker 1: talk to her, And she certainly immediately caught my attention,
Speaker 1: and I didn't feel like she's crazy at all after
Speaker 1: I got talking to her. But I was there till
Speaker 1: late that evening, and and so the investigation that actually
Speaker 1: started was I talked to David McDade a little bit
Speaker 1: about some of the things that had bothered us. David
Speaker 1: and I realized we had information that bothered us from
Speaker 1: multiple sources. Some of the sources would have been teachers,
Speaker 1: some of it administration, uh some of its kids that
Speaker 1: were at an awake and now we had a board member.
Speaker 1: So we made the decision at that point that to
Speaker 1: ask early to start an investigation. And Earle always believed
Speaker 1: that Lewis better was something wasn't right. Earl started working
Speaker 1: so hard it was impossible for anybody to keep up
Speaker 1: with him. An official criminal investigation and now begun to
Speaker 1: look into the inner workings of an Awaki and follow
Speaker 1: up on the numerous complaints against the center. But Pedico's
Speaker 1: death would open the center to a financial audit from
Speaker 1: the board, and fighting amongst the upper management was only
Speaker 1: getting worse and soon they too would be answering to authorities.
Speaker 1: Petter's empire was beginning to fall apart at the seams,
Speaker 1: and he was going to do everything he could to
Speaker 1: save himself along with it. Next time on camp held
Speaker 1: in awaking. After Earle started talking to whoever the ones
Speaker 1: were that he interviewed to start with, it was like
Speaker 1: a snowball going downhill. It became overwhelming. His whole family
Speaker 1: was involved and not awaking. If it was something to
Speaker 1: do with the Petter family, the cooperation was minimal. We
Speaker 1: had no way of knowing anything that was going on.
Speaker 1: We can't talk to our parents. For the most part,
Speaker 1: we were in this bubble. It wasn't long after that
Speaker 1: that I went down to meet Petters at They essentially
Speaker 1: wanted to videotape me denying everything anything sexual or inappropriate,
Speaker 1: or financial or anything. He calls me him, he said,
Speaker 1: doc Raham. I said, yes, sir, he said, we got
Speaker 1: the s LB. Camp hell anna Waki was created and
Speaker 1: hosted by Josh Thane, with producer Miranda Hawkins and executive
Speaker 1: producers Alex Williams and Matt Frederick. The soundtrack was written
Speaker 1: and performed by Josh Thane and Adrian Barry. Archival footage
Speaker 1: provided by ws B and CBS News. Find us on
Speaker 1: Instagram at camp hell pod. That's c A M p
Speaker 1: h E L L p O D Educate yourself about
Speaker 1: the issue of child abuse and things that you should
Speaker 1: look for at the Darkness to Light website, d too
Speaker 1: well dot org. That's D the number two L dot
Speaker 1: O r G. Camp hell Anawaki is a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the i heart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to podcasts,