Speaker 1: Also media.
Speaker 2: November fourth, two thousand and nine, Wednesday, Grand Rapids, Michigan,
Speaker 2: Oh my God. At a seven to eleven store, four
Speaker 2: bodies are found by police just a little before midnight.
Speaker 2: Where was Jamie Loftus during this horrible crime? That is
Speaker 2: the question we're going to answer today on this episode
Speaker 2: Behind the Bastards. I'm Robert Happens.
Speaker 3: I was in high school. I was in high school.
Speaker 2: We didn't all watch Cereal and learn that high schoolers
Speaker 2: can murder.
Speaker 4: Jay think maybe that we should just clear the air
Speaker 4: at the beginning of the episode. I don't want to,
Speaker 4: you know, I feel like I owe the audience an explanation.
Speaker 4: I've seen the allegations going around, many of them AI generated, saying.
Speaker 2: Things like all of them AYI generated.
Speaker 3: Quote.
Speaker 4: According to an episode of the podcast The Finders, Jamie
Speaker 4: Loftus is involved in murders in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Speaker 3: Unquote.
Speaker 2: God has made it easier to be to be the
Speaker 2: kind of piece of shit that I am, and for
Speaker 2: that reason, I'm excited for the future.
Speaker 4: How bad could it be? Hopefully I lived till part four. Look,
Speaker 4: my alibi is in early two thousand and nine or
Speaker 4: in November on November fourth, two thousand and nine. I
Speaker 4: was coming off of the rousing success of my Sarah
Speaker 4: Palin Halloween costume, so.
Speaker 3: I could not have possibly been in Grand Rapids.
Speaker 4: I was in Brockton, celebrating my hilarious costume. And I
Speaker 4: have like when Obama got elected the first time, I
Speaker 4: had just tried birth control for the first time because
Speaker 4: I like aspirationally thought that I might have sex at
Speaker 4: some point, and I threw up during the inaugeration.
Speaker 3: It seems like a statement. It wasn't. I was just sick.
Speaker 2: Well, we've all gotten a fun lesson, a fun lesson
Speaker 2: about how AI works and how easy it is if
Speaker 2: you have a successful podcast to convince the Internet that
Speaker 2: your friend committed a series of murders.
Speaker 4: The first result on Google is now jamieloftis Grand Rapids.
Speaker 5: It works.
Speaker 3: The episode came out five hours ago.
Speaker 2: It was we are recording this the day it dropped,
Speaker 2: and I'm.
Speaker 3: A full on murderer already.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Okay, well, thank you so much. I have like you
Speaker 3: can consult my alibis.
Speaker 4: And and you know, I always had a feeling that
Speaker 4: podcasting would ruin my life.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and this has given me an idea of
Speaker 2: folks friends at home every week, just send me money,
Speaker 2: and whoever sends me the most money can also send
Speaker 2: in the name of a friend they want framed for murder,
Speaker 2: and I'll do it. You know, there don't appear to
Speaker 2: be consequent is for this, No, not yet.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I do kind of wish mine with grand rapids.
Speaker 1: Mine is just a variety of my name multiple times.
Speaker 1: With age, Sophie ray lichtman age.
Speaker 6: I'm settling age because it's an awful lot of people
Speaker 6: are trying to find out how old you are and
Speaker 6: there's really no good reason they'd be doing that.
Speaker 3: You all, I'm ageless.
Speaker 2: Fuck you.
Speaker 4: I love those uh, I love those ones that are
Speaker 4: like I like the ones where they speculate about whether
Speaker 4: you're married and how much money you have and how
Speaker 4: tall you are, because it's always wrong, like fight her,
Speaker 4: like Jamie has five million dollars, she's four foot ten
Speaker 4: and still a virgin, and you're like, fuck yeah, I
Speaker 4: wish brother, that'd be great.
Speaker 2: Well, Jamie. Speaking of short virgins, I don't think there
Speaker 2: are any short versions in this in this series, because,
Speaker 2: as we discussed in our previous episodes, this guy had
Speaker 2: a lot of sex, or at least wanted interviewers in
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety six to believe that impossible to say which
Speaker 2: the thing.
Speaker 4: We wanted people to believe a lot of things in
Speaker 4: nineteen ninety six.
Speaker 3: This is on the less offensive end of it.
Speaker 2: Unfortunately, I will say, someone on the subreddit claims that
Speaker 2: their grandma said that, yeah, people got laid like crazy
Speaker 2: during World War Two. So you know, there's my AI
Speaker 2: grade level of research into whether or not it was
Speaker 2: true that people were having wild ass sext or in
Speaker 2: the world.
Speaker 4: Sorry, someone on the reddit's grandma said that people fucked.
Speaker 3: During World War Yeah.
Speaker 2: They were commenting on the podcast and were like, well,
Speaker 2: you know, based on what to what Marian said about
Speaker 2: all the crazy World War two sex, my grandma said
Speaker 2: the same thing. So that's you know, two data points.
Speaker 2: We could print that in the New York Times now,
Speaker 2: if I'm understanding journalists them correctly serious.
Speaker 1: Somebody was like, grandma fucked, and then you were like, great.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I mean I guess if they are a grandma,
Speaker 4: like they fucked, right, yeah, you don't become a grandma,
Speaker 4: but you can't become a grandma not fucking.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well I guess you could adopt anyways.
Speaker 2: Yeah, anyway, let's uh for Grandma. I would watch that
Speaker 2: movie story. So yeah, we when we left off our tale,
Speaker 2: the story had blown up in the media. There were
Speaker 2: all sorts of people speculating that not only was the
Speaker 2: cult a bunch of Satanists, but they were trafficking children
Speaker 2: across the country. The police were kind of in love
Speaker 2: with hearing their own voices on Connie Chung and other
Speaker 2: major television shows. Everybody was having a good time except
Speaker 2: for six children, two arrested male cult members, and the
Speaker 2: mothers of those children who were having much less of
Speaker 2: a good time. Right, So the police started carrying out
Speaker 2: raids on finders' properties back up north. Because it involved
Speaker 2: the customs or interstate commerce, the Customs department wound up
Speaker 2: being the guys who actually like did a lot of
Speaker 2: the busts and stuff. They're not really busts because they
Speaker 2: didn't find any evidence of crimes, but they went into
Speaker 2: the properties and ransacked them, took a bunch of shit
Speaker 2: away in bags. Particularly, they found a ton of computers
Speaker 2: and advanced electronic equipment. This was the eighties, so we're
Speaker 2: talking like word processing machines and stuff. But they wrote
Speaker 2: about it like it was the KGB's spying operation. I'm
Speaker 2: covered because this was the first computer anyone had ever seen.
Speaker 4: It's like it reminds me of I mean, this is
Speaker 4: much later, but like when you go back and watch
Speaker 4: the first Fast and the Furious movie and you realize
Speaker 4: that the electronics they're trafficking are just DVD players and
Speaker 4: you're just like, oh, okay, Yeah, people just didn't know
Speaker 4: what a computer was at this time.
Speaker 3: You would go to jail over DVD players.
Speaker 2: They didn't know what wasn't wasn't impressive. Nowadays, you can't
Speaker 2: throw away a def D player. They won't let you.
Speaker 4: These days, the computer will accuse you of murdering someone
Speaker 4: in Michigan.
Speaker 2: For sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah, huge amounts of progress I
Speaker 2: am imagining because this is the eighties, and when I
Speaker 2: think about the wire, they're all still using typewriters, So
Speaker 2: I'm imagining at this point the police are still like
Speaker 2: using the Flintstones bird that chisels onto a rock tablet.
Speaker 2: That's how all crimes get reported in the eighties. So yeah,
Speaker 2: they make a big deal about the fact that they
Speaker 2: find a bunch of advanced electronic equipment. Read word processors
Speaker 2: and fax.
Speaker 3: Machines very suspicious.
Speaker 2: The only real piece of there's two pieces of like
Speaker 2: scary information. One of them there's still no explanation. They
Speaker 2: found cages on the farm and claimed that the cages
Speaker 2: were for putting children in. I never heard that either
Speaker 2: refuted or addressed. I never saw any evidence as to
Speaker 2: why they thought that. So maybe someone locked a kid
Speaker 2: up in a cage. But also it's only referenced once
Speaker 2: in a police report, and as we're going to cover,
Speaker 2: everything in the police report was pretty much wrong. So
Speaker 2: one of the things stated is that a journal and
Speaker 2: this comes from a journalist's article, but it's probably a
Speaker 2: journalist who was talking to a police officer that there
Speaker 2: were photos of naked children in a bag that he
Speaker 2: saw through the plastic in a bag being carried out
Speaker 2: by the police. Now that sounds pretty bad, except for
Speaker 2: these people were never charged with child pornography. Authorities would
Speaker 2: later clarify that none was found. The photos were just
Speaker 2: normal pictures of little kids. I think one of two
Speaker 2: things happened. Either a cop lied to a journalist common story,
Speaker 2: or some parents had pictures of their kids where their
Speaker 2: kids weren't like fully clothed like most parents wind up having,
Speaker 2: you know, it has a shirt off at summer they're
Speaker 2: running around or whatever, and that site was going on.
Speaker 4: Right, there's like those strange cases of people big like
Speaker 4: charged with child pornography for pictures of themselves as a
Speaker 4: child and all that time. Yeah, I mean, I don't
Speaker 4: want to, like, you know, it's so tricky talking about
Speaker 4: any of these cases, and it should be, but it
Speaker 4: is like, you know, if if the police record is
Speaker 4: mostly wrong, it's also very a very scary precedent. If
Speaker 4: there is something to that allegation and they just simply
Speaker 4: stopped following up on it, like that's also really bad.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it's like it's worth investing again. And it
Speaker 2: seems like this is probably a case. My guess is
Speaker 2: that somebody saw some like unclear because again you're looking
Speaker 2: through a trash bag, Like a photo of a kid
Speaker 2: without their shirt on was like, oh my god, is
Speaker 2: that child porn And it's like, no, it was a
Speaker 2: kid running around a sprinkler in the summertime or whatever,
Speaker 2: Like a parent took a picture of their child having
Speaker 2: fun in the summer. Right, That's my guess based on
Speaker 2: the fact that no charges of child pornography were ever
Speaker 2: filed and police I tend to file charges for that
Speaker 2: sort of thing. Yeah, they really do.
Speaker 4: Uh, they really do. And I know and and their
Speaker 4: track record is so bad. Have you ever told you
Speaker 4: about the computer game I had to play in middle
Speaker 4: school where you have to save a child your age
Speaker 4: from being sex trafficked in southern California?
Speaker 2: What it is?
Speaker 3: The way it like pops into my mind.
Speaker 4: It was it was called Missing, and it was like
Speaker 4: I played it in like computer class. I will send
Speaker 4: you the video. It was like this, you know, like uh,
Speaker 4: like Choose your Own Adventure. That's very dark game where
Speaker 4: a kid meets a guy on a message board and
Speaker 4: is like sex trafficked and then it's like complicit in crimes.
Speaker 3: Wait, I'm saying I'm putting it in the chat right now.
Speaker 3: It's really bizarre.
Speaker 4: And the the uh, the acting from the kids. Zach,
Speaker 4: He's like, Hey, I'm Zach. I live in Toronto, my
Speaker 4: parents got divorce recently, and I'm spending a lot of
Speaker 4: time on my computer. And then anyways, he gets he
Speaker 4: gets missing, and then you have to work with the
Speaker 4: cops to find Zach and get him away from his
Speaker 4: on his his online friendship with the villain whose name
Speaker 4: is Phantasma.
Speaker 2: Now, Jamie, yes, that doesn't sound like a thing you
Speaker 2: should be able to do.
Speaker 3: What play that game when you're twelve?
Speaker 2: Make children play that game, Jamie, that doesn't sound okay
Speaker 2: at all?
Speaker 3: So bad? I agree with you. I don't know why,
Speaker 3: but it was like.
Speaker 4: There, it was like a three part computer class where
Speaker 4: it's like you play a math game for twenty minutes,
Speaker 4: you play a reading comprehension game for twenty minutes, and
Speaker 4: then you try to save Zach's life for twenty minutes,
Speaker 4: and then you have to go to the next class.
Speaker 2: Well, at least the game has its priorities or something.
Speaker 2: I know you see. This really shows the difference in
Speaker 2: how dystopian things were when I was a kid and
Speaker 2: when you were a kid. Because when I was that age,
Speaker 2: we simply watched the Voyage of the Mimi, which starred
Speaker 2: very very young child Ben Affleck and a huge jug
Speaker 2: of peanut butter on a boat. That's an accurate description
Speaker 2: of voyage of the meme. A lot of naked men
Speaker 2: cuddling together, but not in a sex way. It was
Speaker 2: a good show.
Speaker 3: I'm thrilled to report I have not seen it.
Speaker 2: Oh great stuff. A lot of people online are psyched
Speaker 2: that I brought up the voyage of the meme. But God,
Speaker 2: speaking of voyages, these children are on a voyage into
Speaker 2: state custody because the police have apparently wrongly made claims
Speaker 2: that they found cages and child pornography. One of the
Speaker 2: journalists who reported on the bust of the farm quoted
Speaker 2: customs officers Scott Hunt in an article he wrote. He
Speaker 2: quoted Hunt as saying, it is our belief that these
Speaker 2: kids were not kidnapped, but that their parents gave them
Speaker 2: away because one of the rights of the Satanic organization
Speaker 2: is that you give up your rights to your children,
Speaker 2: and the leaders of this organization can do what they
Speaker 2: want with your children. Now, this not based on anything, Jamie.
Speaker 2: No one had told Hunt this. He had not found
Speaker 2: evidence of this anywhere. This had not been claimed by anyone.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: This is just stuff that Hunt believed based on like
Speaker 2: Oprah's shows about the Satanic panic that he'd watched. That's
Speaker 2: why I don't know where his info comes from. But
Speaker 2: no one told it to him because none of this
Speaker 2: was real, and the finders never claimed to be a
Speaker 2: Satanic organization.
Speaker 4: It is truly stunning to me how many like just
Speaker 4: misinformation crusades were either like low key begun by or
Speaker 4: really perpetuated by an episode of Oprah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know where else this would have come from.
Speaker 2: It's possible maybe that random anonymous parent who called the
Speaker 2: cops made this claim, but like, no one who had
Speaker 2: any knowledge of the group made this claim. None of
Speaker 2: the kids made this claim, like, this is just something
Speaker 2: this cop set told a reporter that helped ignite a
Speaker 2: moral panic, which is great, it's really good.
Speaker 4: And the reporter, what just didn't fact check it? They're like,
Speaker 4: this sounds no.
Speaker 2: Why would you fast check a cop? You just print
Speaker 2: whatever they say.
Speaker 3: It's true. It is their paper after all.
Speaker 2: Now, there was a small amount of physical evidence, by
Speaker 2: which I mean one rate of a finder's own home
Speaker 2: turned out a drawing of a pentagram, So that's clear
Speaker 2: evidence of And to be honest, I haven't seen this drawing.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't be surprised if somebody drew a star of
Speaker 2: David and one of the cops was like pentagram the devil.
Speaker 2: Really no way to know. Given the quality of the
Speaker 2: police work going on here. There was also a bunch
Speaker 2: of flat stones in a backyard and something that is
Speaker 2: described as a tombstone that may not have been. The
Speaker 2: police called this a ritual space. Former residents of the
Speaker 2: cold House were like, this was our garden. You know,
Speaker 2: we had like stones, like a walking path in the garden. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I don't know, maybe it was a tombstone. I know
Speaker 2: of at least two friends who have tombstones, like, you know,
Speaker 2: fake ones in their garden.
Speaker 3: Like I was about to.
Speaker 4: Talk, I was about to talk shit, and then I realized,
Speaker 4: I'm like, I literally have one within like arms lands exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I have a fake tombstone within arms reach. Yeah, it
Speaker 4: is a normal thing to embarrassing.
Speaker 2: That's a small amount of evidence to find in order
Speaker 2: to say they were trading their children for sex. Like,
Speaker 2: that's not a lot to base that claim from.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 4: It's so fucking infuriating hearing how poorly these investigations are done.
Speaker 2: Like it's yeah, okay, oh no, it is like blistering
Speaker 2: incompetence going on here, and it's about to get incompetent
Speaker 2: or which is.
Speaker 3: Not a word oops, all incompetence.
Speaker 2: Yeah. What makes this especially fucked up is that the
Speaker 2: mothers of these kids tried as soon as they find
Speaker 2: out what's happened, right, because you know, the guys who
Speaker 2: get arrested get a call, they call the cold and
Speaker 2: like Mary and Petty's secretary has to start calling, getting
Speaker 2: off all the moms who were like in different parts
Speaker 2: of the country or city, like playing various games that
Speaker 2: he's ordered them to play, and be like, hey, your
Speaker 2: kids are in custody and we're suspected of trafficking them
Speaker 2: to Mexico. Sorry about that.
Speaker 3: Just checking in, Yeah, just checking in. Fuck.
Speaker 2: So obviously, being moms, they immediately call the police, right
Speaker 2: and to try to be like, hey, yeah, you know
Speaker 2: these guys, our kids were with them with our permission.
Speaker 2: Nothing's going on here. Please give us our children back.
Speaker 2: But you know, Scott Hunt, that customs officer I quoted
Speaker 2: from earlier making those claims about Satanism, was really fucking incompetent.
Speaker 2: Scott Hunt skunt as well. No, okay, so no, let's
Speaker 2: go with that.
Speaker 3: I'm with you with you.
Speaker 2: So, because of the media circus around the case, they're
Speaker 2: not able to get through the phone lines to talk
Speaker 2: to him. And I'm going to quote from John Cohen's
Speaker 2: article describing what happened when the parents try to call
Speaker 2: the police, and this reads like every parent's nightmare. When
Speaker 2: the mothers called Scott Hunt at the Tallahassee Police Department
Speaker 2: on Monday evening, they couldn't get through. Carolyn's on the
Speaker 2: phone saying she's Beebe's mother, and she's met by snorts
Speaker 2: and giggles, recalls Erico. That's one of the other mothers.
Speaker 2: She's the two hundredth caller claiming these beautiful children. They
Speaker 2: finally spoke to Tallahassee police, but Hunt still told the
Speaker 2: media they had yet to hear from the mothers. I'll
Speaker 2: never forgive him from that, says Erico. So, first off,
Speaker 2: the cops laughed when the mothers called in it first
Speaker 2: because so many people were calling in falsely claiming to
Speaker 2: be the parents of those kids. And then when they
Speaker 2: finally did talk to the police, Hunt just didn't report
Speaker 2: that to the media. He just continued saying their parents
Speaker 2: haven't gotten in touch, because I guess that was made
Speaker 2: a better story for him to get on. Connie chung
Speaker 2: with like, I don't know why he would lie about that,
Speaker 2: but he did. So that's cool, m M, good stuff.
Speaker 2: OK Now, it's not just the cops and the press. Here,
Speaker 2: Petty is also to blame for a lot of this.
Speaker 2: He reacted to the whole very serious situation with more
Speaker 2: amusement than concern. Again, everything is kind of a game
Speaker 2: to this guy, and that's how he treats the fact
Speaker 2: that all of these women's children are now in custody.
Speaker 4: Right, Yeah, it is kind of I mean, I guess
Speaker 4: it is very in keeping with a cult like figure
Speaker 4: to take things equally unseeriously, no matter how far are
Speaker 4: they escalate. Yeah, just same exact energy brought when there's
Speaker 4: children in danger.
Speaker 2: And so you know, he gets on the phone with
Speaker 2: all the mothers and he's like, well, this is another game.
Speaker 2: In this game, the FBI is the game caller, and
Speaker 2: you know, we just have to kind of play the
Speaker 2: game they want to play. Now. The moms are like,
Speaker 2: our kids are in custody in Tallahassee. We are all
Speaker 2: flying to Tallahassee. And he is like, no, no, you
Speaker 2: live in d C. You should stay in DC. So
Speaker 2: he orders them not to go get their kids in Florida,
Speaker 2: which pisses a lot of them off. This is actually
Speaker 2: going to start a schism within the cult.
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, shit, okay, so, but they're they're not so
Speaker 4: far gone that they like.
Speaker 2: They don't seem to be gone at all. That's the
Speaker 2: saying okay again. One of the hard things to tell
Speaker 2: about this is like the degree to which people are
Speaker 2: like brainwashed or whatever. We'll talk with Araco some, but
Speaker 2: like the attitude generally seems to be this was like
Speaker 2: a fun game. I was playing, Like this whole cult
Speaker 2: was like a fun thing to do with my friends
Speaker 2: until they fucked with my kids and then it stopped
Speaker 2: being fun. Like but they I'm just going to tell
Speaker 2: the story. It's it's odd the way this pace is out. Okay, yeah, because.
Speaker 3: This sounds like they're having fairly rational responses.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, again, this is not whatever else we can
Speaker 2: say about this cult. It's not kind of exercising the
Speaker 2: same degree of like mental control over at least most
Speaker 2: of its members as a lot of other cults we cover.
Speaker 2: I don't know where you want to like lash that
Speaker 2: out morally, but it is it is interesting. Yeah, speaking
Speaker 2: of interesting, Jamie, Yep, Yeah, listen to this podcast. Ads.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, yeah, and we're back. We're back.
Speaker 4: I hope that they advertised that computer game I've tried
Speaker 4: to buy it online.
Speaker 3: I tried to buy it online. This is horrible.
Speaker 4: I tried to buy it online last year because I
Speaker 4: was just like, I need to remember.
Speaker 3: How fucked up this?
Speaker 4: Because it was so scary, and I remember there were
Speaker 4: kids in class that were like, can we spend more
Speaker 4: time on the Zach game? It just feels more urgent
Speaker 4: than math. And I couldn't find it. I got sent
Speaker 4: a different game, a different mid Auts computer game about
Speaker 4: child abduction, so there was more than one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I you know, if you know me, you
Speaker 2: know I love a good child. I don't know where
Speaker 2: to continue this, Jamie.
Speaker 3: All right, well just get back to the I just,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's get back to the podcast. Not talking about
Speaker 2: Oh my god, Grand Rapids Michigan.
Speaker 3: No, I already told you where I was. Yeah, I've
Speaker 3: been advised to not say more at this time.
Speaker 2: I do, Sophie. Do you think we could make money
Speaker 2: if instead of selling ads, we kind of like blackmail
Speaker 2: advertisers with not associating their brand with famous killing sprees,
Speaker 2: using our audience as sort of like a weapon against them.
Speaker 2: Is that a good idea for making money?
Speaker 1: No, it's a good idea for ending this podcast and
Speaker 1: all of our people losing their health for shirts and home.
Speaker 2: Well, you and I'll hash that out behind the scenes,
Speaker 2: but I feel like we can make some money do it.
Speaker 3: I just vetoed it. I trust Sophie.
Speaker 2: I mean, we didn't get sued over the blue apron thing.
Speaker 2: I think that means we're bulletproof.
Speaker 3: Sophie, we agreed to never discuss that.
Speaker 2: Let's test it. Bulletproof coffee is still a product. I think,
Speaker 2: why don't you see if you can associate them with
Speaker 2: the Green River strangler. You know, let's just try it out, everybody.
Speaker 2: Let's just try it out. What Sophie, I have gone
Speaker 2: mad with power?
Speaker 3: Yeah, coffee is still around.
Speaker 2: It is still around. Well, that's embarrassing.
Speaker 1: People really liked that shit for like so many years,
Speaker 1: and I was like, I had it.
Speaker 2: Once and there's too much butter in that coffee. Yeah
Speaker 2: I don't need that much butter in my coffee.
Speaker 3: I just saw the Folders Incest commercial for the first
Speaker 3: time a couple You seen it.
Speaker 2: Oh, that is the best part of waking.
Speaker 4: Up is your brother coming home from his creepy mission
Speaker 4: trip so you can give him a big old kiss
Speaker 4: on the lob.
Speaker 2: I love that he has just been in like Ethiopia
Speaker 2: or somewhere and he's like, finally real coffee.
Speaker 3: I know, bro, you were so many.
Speaker 2: You were where coffee comes from? What is wrong with you?
Speaker 4: There's so many errors made and there oh oh it
Speaker 4: is what.
Speaker 2: A text that brother inter make immediately after the ad
Speaker 2: cuts off. Anyway, speaking first, speaking of mistakes, Petty makes
Speaker 2: a series of mistakes here because not only does he
Speaker 2: tell these moms don't go get your kids come to DC,
Speaker 2: he orders his followers and particularly his like goofy male followers,
Speaker 2: who are all again playing a game, to respond to
Speaker 2: the court case against them in a way that's like
Speaker 2: it's designed, number one, not to be an efficient response,
Speaker 2: and number two, it's designed to kind of fuck with
Speaker 2: people's heads because he seems to find that funny. Like
Speaker 2: I don't know exactly what his purpose here, but he
Speaker 2: is not taking steps that you would take to try
Speaker 2: and get your kids released as quickly as possible.
Speaker 3: That's another question I have, Like what is he getting
Speaker 3: out of this?
Speaker 2: I think he enjoys muddying the waters. He likes being
Speaker 2: a prankster. He comes out of you know, we did
Speaker 2: our episodes in the Illuminati last year, and we talked
Speaker 2: about the Discordians, right, these guys, one of whom was
Speaker 2: really closely tied to the fucking Kennedy assassination. Who's like
Speaker 2: reaction to being closely tied to a conspiracy was to
Speaker 2: just make more conspiracies to like fuck with people.
Speaker 3: I don't like this, Heath Ledger joker approach.
Speaker 2: This is not I think it's fine. Potentially, if it's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I am being investigated by the government for killing the president,
Speaker 2: maybe I'm going to like fuck around a little bit.
Speaker 2: You're the one on the line. But when you're making
Speaker 2: when you're like potentially endangering the ability of parents to
Speaker 2: get back their children, I think you're doing something bad.
Speaker 3: You know, yeah, yeah, wow. And that's a really hot take.
Speaker 3: But I think you were brave to say it.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Jamie, Thank you.
Speaker 7: So.
Speaker 2: One of the lawyers who's going to be representing the
Speaker 2: Finders later tells John Cohen, the journalists that several members
Speaker 2: of the group were after he was like retained to
Speaker 2: represent them in this case, A bunch of Finders members
Speaker 2: are sent over to like help him make the case
Speaker 2: to defend them, and this is how he describes them.
Speaker 2: They all had handlebar mustaches and dressed alike. I sent
Speaker 2: them to the FSU library to get me books for
Speaker 2: the case to explain their philosophy. They came back with
Speaker 2: books on psychology, India, American Indians, Samoan tribes, Chinese philosophy.
Speaker 3: What are you talking about?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, there, it's nonsense. I'm going to continue that
Speaker 2: quote from Cohen's article. Right before the hearing, Walalborski, that's
Speaker 2: the lawyer learned that the Finders men she had been
Speaker 2: working with had left town and were replaced by Steve Usden,
Speaker 2: who is another member of the cult. She also got
Speaker 2: the news that Petty had put a gag order on
Speaker 2: the other two men who had come there, and that
Speaker 2: she was going to be fired. I said, okay, the
Speaker 2: First Amendment issues haven't even been argued, and they stand
Speaker 2: up and fired me. In court, Steve Ustin delivered a
Speaker 2: proclamation from Petty. Our interests in the state's interests are
Speaker 2: the same, he said, so we don't need counsel. Some
Speaker 2: people practice law twenty or thirty years and never get fired.
Speaker 2: On television, Wilborski jokes, so, wow, that is not taking
Speaker 2: the case. Firing your lawyer the day of then announcing
Speaker 2: you're representing yourself, sending these weird mustache guys in costume
Speaker 2: to do research. None of that is like taking it
Speaker 2: very seriously.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's treating it like you live in a B movie,
Speaker 4: Like that's absurd.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So one of the moms calls Petty, and this
Speaker 2: is how Paula Eriko, who's one of the other mothers,
Speaker 2: describes this mother Livingstone, calling Petty, she begs him to
Speaker 2: tell her what to do. He said, fire your attorney.
Speaker 2: If you called him and begged him and he told
Speaker 2: you to do it, you can't say no. She was
Speaker 2: in agony. She really loves her son and she knew
Speaker 2: what would happened the way I knew what would happen
Speaker 2: if I fired my attorney. It wouldn't be in the
Speaker 2: best interest of her children. So like, these women are
Speaker 2: calling and crying, like begging him to not make them
Speaker 2: fire their attorneys, and he's being like, lay off your attorney.
Speaker 2: And this is what causes a split, because some of
Speaker 2: these women fire their representation and like go with Petty,
Speaker 2: and some of them are like, no, fuck you, I'm
Speaker 2: gonna do whatever. I think we'll get my kid back. Fastest.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it is again just like interesting that they're that
Speaker 4: he doesn't have so title hold that it's it's not
Speaker 4: one of those stories where parents will actively not act
Speaker 4: in the best interests of their child because yeah, he
Speaker 4: says so.
Speaker 2: Okay, yes some of them do, when some of them don't.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: Anyway, that's obviously this chaos. The fact that lawyers are
Speaker 2: getting hired and fired and like there's they're they're putting
Speaker 2: in statements into court based on like Buddhist philosophy and shit.
Speaker 2: That is part of where some of the disinformation comes from,
Speaker 2: a lot of it also comes from, as we noted earlier.
Speaker 2: Once this story blows up, hundreds of random American dip
Speaker 2: shits conspiracy theories, people who again watch the same Oprah
Speaker 2: special as that customs agent guy and grew paranoid about it.
Speaker 2: They start clogging the police phone lines with their own
Speaker 2: theories about satanic pedophiles. One of the Scott Hunt, the
Speaker 2: customs officer says, I had seventy five reporters waiting skunt
Speaker 2: I had seventy five reporters waiting for me in the lobby.
Speaker 2: We logged four hundred and fifty ten phone calls to
Speaker 2: me in two days. They were bringing in overtime people
Speaker 2: to help take messages, and yeah, these are like just
Speaker 2: a lot of this is just pure nonsense. They've got
Speaker 2: all these different organizations, the National Center for Exploited Children,
Speaker 2: Children's Clearing House, the National Child's Safety Council, the National
Speaker 2: Association of Missing Children, all like canvassing on this case,
Speaker 2: trying to find information about these kids and their parents,
Speaker 2: even though the parents have contacted the police, and generating
Speaker 2: this like huge amount of like false info. And also,
Speaker 2: because this is America, somebody calls in a bomb threat
Speaker 2: on the safe house where the police are holding the kids.
Speaker 2: May have been a cult member. We don't really know.
Speaker 2: It's just chaos right now, right. Yeah, So everything beyond
Speaker 2: the initial busybody claims who said that they were Satanists
Speaker 2: because she thought that would get a response, and the
Speaker 2: human services investigator who claimed that there was proof of
Speaker 2: sexual abuse. Everything else that's like claimed in the initial
Speaker 2: days after the case breaks about like abuse and ritual
Speaker 2: altars and cages and stuff. All of that info comes
Speaker 2: from one guy Ramone Martinez, a junior custom service agent.
Speaker 2: So we have one the initial claim of satanism comes
Speaker 2: from a mom who had never met any of these
Speaker 2: guys and was just trying to get someone to do
Speaker 2: something because she was worried about the kids. The neighbor, right,
Speaker 2: this is the neighbor. The claim that humans that children
Speaker 2: were molested comes from a human services investigator who misheard
Speaker 2: or lied about what a doctor said when a doctor
Speaker 2: was like, there's a couple of things we should check
Speaker 2: up on. Might be evidence of abuse, might not be
Speaker 2: everything else. The claim that like kids were locked in cages,
Speaker 2: that there's pictures of naked children, that there's ritual altars,
Speaker 2: and children are being traded. All of that, the source
Speaker 2: comes from a police report by Customs Service Agent Ramone Martinez.
Speaker 2: Now that sounds pretty serious because that's a federal agent
Speaker 2: making some really really horrifying claims. However, other federal agents
Speaker 2: get to weigh in on this too, And here's how
Speaker 2: a later FBI report summarizes Ramon's claims. United States Customs
Speaker 2: Service Agent Blank they're talking about Martinez claims to have
Speaker 2: observed a substantial amount of computer equipment and documents purportedly
Speaker 2: containing instructions for obtaining children for unspecified purposes. The instructions
Speaker 2: allegedly included the impregnation of female members of the community,
Speaker 2: purchasing children, trading children, and kidnapping them. So that is
Speaker 2: like how they summarize his claims. But there's no evidence.
Speaker 2: They're like, we don't write.
Speaker 3: I'm like, where is this coming from. You do have
Speaker 3: to prove.
Speaker 2: Something, Yes, you have to show and that's what the
Speaker 2: FBI says. They're like, well, we asked him what this
Speaker 2: is based on, and he didn't have anything other than
Speaker 2: the police report he wrote, Like, he's claiming that he
Speaker 2: found documents about how to trade in traffic children and
Speaker 2: none of these are ever seen by anyone else. Okay,
Speaker 2: So when it comes to the conspiracy theories about the finders,
Speaker 2: every conspiratory or you'll take you find takes this guy
Speaker 2: very seriously. Now, the FBI comes to the conclusion that, like,
Speaker 2: there's no evidence for any of this. The physical evidence
Speaker 2: that he claims he saw that was recovered from the
Speaker 2: farm and from the house does not match the descriptions
Speaker 2: in his police report.
Speaker 4: I hate when the FBI is the most reasonable party present.
Speaker 3: That's like, that's a sign that you're on a dark path.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And like what they do find, there's some weird
Speaker 2: essays and on stuff on child rearing that they find,
Speaker 2: which is part of like they're these like because again
Speaker 2: this is like an experimental cult, like they're experimenting with
Speaker 2: like all these different ways, like is it better to
Speaker 2: raise children if you raise them communally, you don't send
Speaker 2: them to school, and like that's kind of weird. It's
Speaker 2: not maybe not great to experiment on your kids, we
Speaker 2: could say, but it's not a child trafficking guide, right,
Speaker 2: So he is he sees these weird essays on like
Speaker 2: new age family rearing, and he just kind of says, ah,
Speaker 2: these are these are guides to sex trafficking children, and
Speaker 2: it's you know, there's it's like pamphlets on how petty
Speaker 2: thinks pregnancy should be handled. And again it's very new agy.
Speaker 2: You know what if we take these vitamins and do
Speaker 2: a natural birth instead of a birth this way, it's
Speaker 2: like the kind of life hack shit that you find
Speaker 2: all over the internet now, But it's not instructions for
Speaker 2: ritual sex abuse of children.
Speaker 3: Well, if that's the bar, then terrific.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So the wingnut interpretation of Martinez's claims is well
Speaker 2: represented from an article I found on an incredibly credible
Speaker 2: website Gnostic Warrior Quote. Martinez wrote that he was unable
Speaker 2: to review the evidence after multiple attempts, and said that
Speaker 2: he was eventually told by a confidential, unnamed informant within
Speaker 2: the DC Police the investigation into the finders has become
Speaker 2: an internal CIA matter. No further will be available and
Speaker 2: no further action will be taken, So that's good. US
Speaker 2: Customs Officer, Martinez wrote on April second, nineteen eighty seven,
Speaker 2: I arrived at MPD at approximately nine am. Detective Bradley
Speaker 2: was not available. I spoke to a third party who
Speaker 2: was willing to discuss the case with me on a
Speaker 2: strictly off the record basis. I was advised that all
Speaker 2: the passport data had been turned over to the State
Speaker 2: Department for their investigation. The State Department in turn advised
Speaker 2: the MPD that all travel and use of the passports
Speaker 2: by the holders of the passports was within the law
Speaker 2: and no action would be taken. This included travel to Moscow,
Speaker 2: North Korea, and North Vietnam from the late nineteen fifties
Speaker 2: to the mid nineteen seventies. The individual further advised me
Speaker 2: of circumstances which indicated that the investigation into the activity
Speaker 2: of the finders had become a CIA internal matter. The
Speaker 2: MPD report has been classified secret and was not available
Speaker 2: for review.
Speaker 3: This is such a clusterfuck.
Speaker 2: It is it is, And what he's talking about there,
Speaker 2: this is like passport. That's as far as I can tell,
Speaker 2: that's Petty's passport. So one of the things will we
Speaker 2: get back into, like oh, maybe there is some conspiracy here.
Speaker 2: From the fifties to the seventies, Petty is visiting the
Speaker 2: Soviet Union, North Korea, and North Vietnam, which is like
Speaker 2: a difficult time to visit those countries as an American citizen, right, yes, yes,
Speaker 2: And so the CIA becomes aware of him as a
Speaker 2: result of that, And it's unclear are they aware of
Speaker 2: him because he was traveling to those countries at their behest?
Speaker 2: Did they become aware of him because they saw an
Speaker 2: American traveling to those countries and wanted to know what
Speaker 2: the fuck was going on, like why was he going there?
Speaker 2: And knowing Petty, it's entirely possible he was just curious.
Speaker 2: But this is some of the shit that gives the
Speaker 2: conspiracy legs because you get these like he seems to
Speaker 2: have been traveling to some really weird fucked up places
Speaker 2: that got him on the government radar. And this guy
Speaker 2: Ramon Martinez, this customs agent who is himself a conspiracy theorist,
Speaker 2: finds this out as he's starting to suspect that this
Speaker 2: is a big child molestation conspiracy, and it seems it
Speaker 2: like deepens his suspicions, right right, So yeah, that's cool now.
Speaker 4: It's I mean, it is just like stunning, how many
Speaker 4: like every time a new party is introduced into this
Speaker 4: investigation it gets worse.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and it's you know. He Martinez also claims, quote,
Speaker 2: I was advised that the FBI had withdrawn from the
Speaker 2: investigation several weeks prior, and that the FBI Foreign counter
Speaker 2: Intelligence Division had directed MPD not to advise the FBI
Speaker 2: Washington Field office of anything that transpired. Now that we
Speaker 2: can say, the FBI says is untrue. Right. The FBI
Speaker 2: claims that is not why we did not withdraw from
Speaker 2: the investigation. We did not direct MPD not to advise
Speaker 2: the Washington Field office of anything that happened. None of
Speaker 2: that is true. Their reports state quite bluntly that nothing
Speaker 2: Martinez said was verified, right, that he was just kind
Speaker 2: of full of shit, like definitely full of shit. And
Speaker 2: in the FBI language they say he was full of
Speaker 2: fucking shit. And the FBI basically says, we don't see
Speaker 2: any evidence of a legal activity whatsoever. Maybe some questionable
Speaker 2: parenting tactics, but nothing beyond that. Washington, DC police come
Speaker 2: to the same conclusion. And as a spoiler, no member
Speaker 2: of the Finders is ever convicted of a crime.
Speaker 4: However, Oh, I genuinely, Robert, I let you tell me
Speaker 4: these stories.
Speaker 3: I don't. I don't look it up in the interceding week.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no one, no one, no, because there's no evidence
Speaker 2: that any of them broke any loss. Now, okay, there's
Speaker 2: actually there are some suggestions that like they may have
Speaker 2: done some arson and harassing of former members.
Speaker 3: Thought the arson. We haven't talked about the arson today.
Speaker 2: No one knows anything about it, like the police just
Speaker 2: kind of I don't think it ever got reported. It
Speaker 2: just got told to the police after the fact when
Speaker 2: they started interviewing former members who were like, yeah, and
Speaker 2: somebody's house burned down after they left. Maybe that was related.
Speaker 2: Maybe it was the fact that they made beds out
Speaker 2: of petroleum in the eighties. I don't know. Impossible to
Speaker 2: say was this was this a cult attack or was
Speaker 2: this someone sleeping with a cigarette in their mouth?
Speaker 3: And yeah, and sometimes it is both.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, which is why I recommend always sleep with
Speaker 2: a lit cigarette in your mouth. People. You know it's true.
Speaker 2: It's good. That's the best kind of fire alarm because
Speaker 2: you'll feel it if the fire starts real fast.
Speaker 4: I miss a good old arson insurance scam that happened
Speaker 4: in my neighborhood when I was growing up, and it
Speaker 4: was like a regionally specific one. They're like, oh, she
Speaker 4: had a Yankee candle on her bed.
Speaker 3: Oh why, I know. You know when you have the
Speaker 3: Yankee candle on your bed and then.
Speaker 2: The house burns down for sure.
Speaker 3: And then you have a new, better house across town.
Speaker 3: I hate when that happened.
Speaker 2: My last name comes from an arson scam. Do tell well, Yeah,
Speaker 2: when my family first came here, my great grandpa, like
Speaker 2: the first member of our family to come from Italy
Speaker 2: in like the twenties, either was involved with the mob
Speaker 2: or was running an insurance scam that the mob wasn't
Speaker 2: cut in on, and so they rolled on him to
Speaker 2: the cops. It's unclear which, but he was like burning
Speaker 2: down barber shops first his own and then other people's
Speaker 2: for the insurance money. And he got arrested and his
Speaker 2: wife was so ashamed that she moved the family across
Speaker 2: the country and changed our last name, which is why
Speaker 2: people on the suburb that were like, his last name's Welsh,
Speaker 2: but he claims to be Italian. That's because my real
Speaker 2: last name is not my legal last name. That, yeah,
Speaker 2: is incredible. Good stuff. Isn't that fun? Good family? Yeah,
Speaker 2: we love to see it. You know what else we
Speaker 2: love to see, Jamie?
Speaker 3: What do we love to see?
Speaker 2: We love to see the products and services that support
Speaker 2: this podcast.
Speaker 3: Oh ain't that the truth?
Speaker 6: Ah?
Speaker 2: And we are back. So the good news Jamie is
Speaker 2: that our friend the Gnostic Warrior was right about one thing,
Speaker 2: which is that the CIA were definitely involved with the Finders.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is again where we take it. There's so
Speaker 2: many turns in this, like they are for sure in
Speaker 2: play to some extent. It is just really unclear do
Speaker 2: we know?
Speaker 3: Yeah? It was like do we know to what extent?
Speaker 3: At which point? Like where?
Speaker 2: Yeah, anything I'm going to verify. I'm going to start
Speaker 2: with like what we can verify, right, what we know
Speaker 2: were actual connections to Petty and the Finders with the CIA. Right.
Speaker 2: The biggest and most obvious one of them is that
Speaker 2: his wife works for the CIA. Right. I think I
Speaker 2: called her an agent earlier. She's not like a literal
Speaker 2: field agent as far as I can tell. But I
Speaker 2: also don't know what her job was. I just don't
Speaker 2: think they had female agents during the time when she
Speaker 2: was in the CIA. But she works in the CIA
Speaker 2: for a while. That is definitely the case. And when
Speaker 2: the FBI does their first investigation into the Finders while
Speaker 2: the court case is still active, they see Martinez claiming that,
Speaker 2: like the CIA is involved and like that was trying
Speaker 2: to stop the investigation. So the FBI reaches out to
Speaker 2: the CIA, right, because they're both federal agencies, you know,
Speaker 2: that's the prey normal thing.
Speaker 3: Federal agencies. They're and you know, like fuck with the
Speaker 3: world and kill people and yeah, they're well.
Speaker 2: And they also crucially they hate each other. The FBI
Speaker 2: and the CIA do not get along because they're always
Speaker 2: fighting for money. Right, So the FBI is like, yeah,
Speaker 2: maybe the CIA is involved with this guy his wife
Speaker 2: was in. We should reach out and see if the
Speaker 2: CIA is doing some fucked ub shit. This is not
Speaker 2: all that long after they have a big fight over
Speaker 2: a bunch of MK ultra stuff, because it leads to
Speaker 2: like the CIA fucking with FBI investigations. So the FBI like, hey,
Speaker 2: is this shit you and the CIA does not say no,
Speaker 2: I'm going to read you first. First, I'm gonna start
Speaker 2: with the first reference to the CIA and the FBI's records.
Speaker 2: This is from a section summarizing different law enforcement investigations
Speaker 2: into the cult. So like Maryland police, you know, DC police, FBI,
Speaker 2: they're like summarizing each of the investigations. Central Intelligence Agency investigation.
Speaker 2: Although the CIA claims their only involvement was that and
Speaker 2: then several words are blanked out was a former employee
Speaker 2: of the agency, so it's clearly their only involvement was
Speaker 2: that Marion's wife was a former employee. They stated that
Speaker 2: they were monitoring the investigation from the beginning, and then
Speaker 2: another sentences blanked out, so we don't get much there.
Speaker 2: But the FBI files also disclose a DC Metropolitan Police
Speaker 2: report which reads this way, At approximately fifteen thirty hours,
Speaker 2: Detective Blank spoke with Special Agent Blank, referencing any contact
Speaker 2: the members of the Finders may have had with the agency.
Speaker 2: Special Agent Blank guarded but Frank and his responses. He
Speaker 2: confirmed that Blank Isabelle now deceased, was an employee of
Speaker 2: the agency from nineteen fifty until you know that that's
Speaker 2: Marion's wife. When as far investigation was treading on anybody's
Speaker 2: toes out there, he replied sort of. He acknowledged that
Speaker 2: they have someone working on the case since it first
Speaker 2: broke in the news media. He also stated that the
Speaker 2: agency is aware that during the period of nineteen sixty
Speaker 2: nine to nineteen seventy one, Blank traveled to Moscow, North Korea,
Speaker 2: and North Vietnam. So what what comes out here is
Speaker 2: this detective says, are we treading on your toes by
Speaker 2: investigating this cult? And the CIA says sort of, And
Speaker 2: then they clarify that they have assigned an agent to
Speaker 2: the case when the story broke, And that's backed up
Speaker 2: by the fact that the FBI summarizes a CIA investigation
Speaker 2: into the Finders, Right. So all the CIA is saying
Speaker 2: there is that like, you're kind of treading on our
Speaker 2: toes because we know that we're being accused of being
Speaker 2: involved and we're looking into it. However, you can also
Speaker 2: see how the CIA responding sort of to a detective
Speaker 2: asking is this your guys would lead to a lot
Speaker 2: of conspiracies that doesn't look good.
Speaker 4: And it's also just like, uh, the CIA, I honestly
Speaker 4: kind of appreciate their candor there because they're just like, yeah,
Speaker 4: we've done so many fucked up things in the interceding years.
Speaker 2: We're going to have to check the books.
Speaker 3: We're actually like it's probably, but like we just want
Speaker 3: to be sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It's like it's like when I wake up after
Speaker 2: a blackout and someone's like, did you piss on the
Speaker 2: side of my car? And I'm like, I don't know,
Speaker 2: let me let me consult my notes on last night.
Speaker 7: That's entirely possible based on historical record, it's likely I did,
Speaker 7: but I want to do my confirm yeahah, take a
Speaker 7: piss strip to it, see if it's real.
Speaker 2: And this also it's interesting to me too that this
Speaker 2: detective says that the CIA told him like this guy,
Speaker 2: Mary and Petty traveled out of the country to a
Speaker 2: bunch of communist states from sixty nine to seventy one.
Speaker 2: It's interesting that they would just say that during a
Speaker 2: phone call. So that's weird. You get why all of
Speaker 2: that causes people to be like, something, what the fuck
Speaker 2: was going on here? I'm kind of like, what the
Speaker 2: fuck was going on here?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 2: That's suspicious as hell.
Speaker 3: It's deeply weird.
Speaker 2: Now that said, everyone who knew Petty during this time
Speaker 2: was like, yeah, he would. He loved pretending to be
Speaker 2: a spy and making other people pretend to be a spy.
Speaker 2: He may have been traveling like North Korea just to
Speaker 2: pretend to be a spy. He may have been LARPing. Right,
Speaker 2: anything is possible, Almost anything is possible. Now. The second
Speaker 2: half of that police report makes it clear that the
Speaker 2: detective in the case also did not take the CIA's
Speaker 2: answers at face value, which is very rational when you're
Speaker 2: dealing with the CIA quote. As a practical matter, what
Speaker 2: is not being said is as important as what Special
Speaker 2: Agent Blank has said. Special Agent Blank acknowledge that we
Speaker 2: are treading on their toes and that they have had
Speaker 2: someone working on the case since February fifth, when it broke.
Speaker 2: They apparently have a vested interest in Blank and or
Speaker 2: the group. I think that's Petty right, and or the group.
Speaker 2: They have not contacted any of the investigating agencies where
Speaker 2: they have been working on the case. They are also
Speaker 2: aware that Blank traveled to prohibited countries during a period
Speaker 2: of hostilities that could only have been arranged by them. Finally,
Speaker 2: he stated that, and then there's like two sentences blanked out.
Speaker 2: This could explain a lot about this group's funding, which
Speaker 2: we have been unable to document at this point. So
Speaker 2: does that mean the CIA was sending these guys money,
Speaker 2: because that's what it seems like from the police reports,
Speaker 2: but anything could be in those sentences.
Speaker 4: It really it's a crimes medlive by some of the
Speaker 4: least reliable narrators on the planet.
Speaker 2: Now, and again it's really unclear did the CIA say
Speaker 2: something or did he just interpret this as them saying
Speaker 2: something that could be determined as them funding it, because
Speaker 2: like we know that a bunch of people who had
Speaker 2: money joined the Finders and gave them their money, and
Speaker 2: we know they operated several profitable businesses, so it's you
Speaker 2: don't have to have like what they're doing does not
Speaker 2: require so much money that you have to have like
Speaker 2: government backing to explain it. But this report does kind
Speaker 2: of make it seem like, well, yeah, maybe the fucking
Speaker 2: CIA puts some money in there. And it also like
Speaker 2: he's saying you can only travel this. Detective says Petty
Speaker 2: could only have traveled to these prohibited countries during wartime
Speaker 2: if the CIA had arranged it. That's not entirely true.
Speaker 2: There's other cases of Americans traveling to these countries during
Speaker 2: the Cold War. But maybe the CIA told him that.
Speaker 4: So I don't know, well, And it's like his proximity
Speaker 4: to the CIA really, uh, like the CIA and the
Speaker 4: LARPing are.
Speaker 3: In constant conflict with each other. Yeah, I don't know
Speaker 3: what to think.
Speaker 2: There is zero evidence that this is a satanic conspiracy.
Speaker 4: Now, definitely, That's the one thing I can say for sure.
Speaker 2: There's a decent amount of evidence that something shady with
Speaker 2: the CIA and the Finder's coat was going on, right,
Speaker 2: It's just really unclear the extent that that took and
Speaker 2: what we're we we have more to say on the matter.
Speaker 4: Okay, because I'm also curious because I know that you
Speaker 4: you characterized his relationship with his wife as like it
Speaker 4: grew as strange pretty quickly once the finger stuff started
Speaker 4: taking off.
Speaker 3: But it's like, what do we even know that that's true?
Speaker 2: You know, like it's just there's and here's the thing,
Speaker 2: this is where we.
Speaker 3: Sound like we'd spreading conspiracies.
Speaker 2: Okay, it's entirely possible he was connected to the CIA
Speaker 2: and that it had nothing to do with his wife's
Speaker 2: connection to the CIA. What Yeah, Yeah, that's that's what
Speaker 2: we're getting into because it's it's it's just peculiar. Right.
Speaker 2: So the author Mark Reebling, who wrote a book about
Speaker 2: the conflict between the FBI and the CIA, has described
Speaker 2: in that book basically like these two agencies have a
Speaker 2: series of escalating conflicts. A lot of it starts with
Speaker 2: mk Ultra. So a lot of this stuff actually reaches
Speaker 2: kind of like a new height of conspiracism a few
Speaker 2: years after the case drops. And we're going to have
Speaker 2: to jump ahead here before we go back to nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty eight to talk about how this shakes out, because
Speaker 2: it's about stuff that's happening in the eighties but doesn't
Speaker 2: get found out until later. Just before Christmas nineteen ninety three,
Speaker 2: a report comes out that the CIA had had the
Speaker 2: FBI cover up to some extent, it's connections with the Finders,
Speaker 2: and that connection was that the CIA had hired the
Speaker 2: Finders for computer training. Right, And I'm for a more
Speaker 2: detailed summary of what happened. I'm going to read an
Speaker 2: excerpt from an AP News article here. Okay, the CIA
Speaker 2: sent some employees to a company called Future Enterprises, Inc.
Speaker 2: For computer training in the nineteen eighties, but the spokesman
Speaker 2: said the CIA did not know about any connections between
Speaker 2: the company and the Finders, and added that the company
Speaker 2: was in no sense a CIA front or ever owned
Speaker 2: or operated by anyone for the CIA. Joseph Marinach, vice
Speaker 2: president of Future Enterprises, says the company has trained CIA
Speaker 2: employees and computer use and continues to do so, but
Speaker 2: that it has never been afront for anyone. Marinich said.
Speaker 2: One Finder's member, former IRS employee Robert Garder Terrell, worked
Speaker 2: for the company before he was let go in February
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty seven. So what's going on there is you've
Speaker 2: got this company that trains people in computer use, and
Speaker 2: right before the Finders all get busted and this case starts,
Speaker 2: the CIA hires them to train CIA agents. And the
Speaker 2: member of the Finders that is training those CIA agents
Speaker 2: is former IRS employee Robert Terrell, Who's the guy who
Speaker 2: writes the biography of Mary and Petty. That's the major
Speaker 2: source for the first part of this episode, So that's fun. Yeah,
Speaker 2: huh yeah, lot of stuff like this. Now we know
Speaker 2: the Finders had a lot of coders and computer technicians.
Speaker 2: A lot of smart nerds are in this cult and
Speaker 2: also in this period of time, the CIA probably doesn't
Speaker 2: have a ton of people inside the agency who are
Speaker 2: great with computers. It's not weird that they would be
Speaker 2: hiring out for that because computers are very new. That said,
Speaker 2: it's also totally within the dealings of the CIA to
Speaker 2: like operate companies and shit and use that as a
Speaker 2: way to like send money places without having it be open.
Speaker 2: You know, it's like a thing they do over and
Speaker 2: over again. That said, it would be weird to do
Speaker 2: that and then hire that company to train CIA agents,
Speaker 2: which would seem to like increase the level of suspicion
Speaker 2: towards the CIA. Yeah, yeah, I don't know why you
Speaker 2: do that.
Speaker 4: I also don't know why you'd do that. I'm also
Speaker 4: stuck on computer training.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's like excel basically, like you can't
Speaker 2: do a lot like computers back, like how I taught.
Speaker 4: The old employee at the Comptroller's office how to like surely,
Speaker 4: I just don't I'm stuck this is this is giving
Speaker 4: me conspiracy brand because you're surely there is someone who
Speaker 4: could train you on computers comparably to the finders that
Speaker 4: aren't the finders.
Speaker 2: Like, I don't know. But also what this makes me think,
Speaker 2: So Terrell is a former IRS agent and a big
Speaker 2: thing the CIA might want computer training in is like forensics.
Speaker 2: Right if you're investigating, say this is the Cold War, Right,
Speaker 2: you're investigating a company that you think is a front
Speaker 2: for the Russian government there has received funds from Russian intelligence, Right, Sure,
Speaker 2: well that would be something you might need someone who
Speaker 2: is a forensic analyst of like computer records to look through.
Speaker 2: And Tarrell, as a former IRS agent who knows computers,
Speaker 2: might be able to train them in doing that, right, Like,
Speaker 2: I can see that being just that. I can see
Speaker 2: him just being involved because he has this knowledge based
Speaker 2: on his background, and the CIA is interesting in getting
Speaker 2: their employees trained on it. It's also possible, like a
Speaker 2: number of things are possible here, right, it could be
Speaker 2: a coincidence like that he was working for this company
Speaker 2: and the CIA contracted with them because there just wasn't
Speaker 2: a lot of computer training in the DC area at
Speaker 2: that point in time. It's also possible that one way
Speaker 2: or another, Petty found out that the CIA was using
Speaker 2: this company to train their agents, and that Petty sent
Speaker 2: Arrell to work at future enterprises as part of a
Speaker 2: game because he wanted to know what kind of shit
Speaker 2: the CIA was being trained in. Right. That is also
Speaker 2: in character with the group.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: It's also possible that the CIA was aware of this
Speaker 2: and sent agents to get this training because they knew
Speaker 2: a Finder's member was in the company. Right, Like, all
Speaker 2: three of those things could be the case. It's really
Speaker 2: and all three of those things are in character with
Speaker 2: the players involved in this, right, and all of.
Speaker 4: The characters in this In this sort of saga, you
Speaker 4: historically cannot trust.
Speaker 2: No, everyone is alive and be honest. Beyond being a liar,
Speaker 2: Petty likes spreading disinformation to make people believe untrue things
Speaker 2: about his cult because he's a prankster and also likes
Speaker 2: sewing doubt. And the CIA does the same thing because
Speaker 2: they're the CIA. So we really very hard to know
Speaker 2: what has actually happened here.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the FBI CIA rivalry, I mean, it makes total sense.
Speaker 4: And it's also just like you know, like Red Sox
Speaker 4: Yankees for people that want to fucking destroy the world.
Speaker 3: It's so depressing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is. And obviously the CIA are the Yankees.
Speaker 2: I think we can all agree on that.
Speaker 3: I don't know. I guess I don't. I don't want
Speaker 3: to choose. I don't want to choose. I resent having
Speaker 3: to choose.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, on what grounds is the CIA the Yanks
Speaker 2: East Coaster?
Speaker 3: Okay? On what grounds?
Speaker 2: I feel like the Yankees also over through the government
Speaker 2: of Guatemala.
Speaker 4: Oh okay, well when you put it like that, yeah, okay,
Speaker 4: no further questions.
Speaker 2: So the other possibility as to what's happening here is
Speaker 2: that everything that was going on, because like, the thing
Speaker 2: that didn't make sense to me is all right, if
Speaker 2: the CIA is running this computer training company, why would
Speaker 2: they have it train their CIA agents and establish a
Speaker 2: paper trail between them? That seems dumb. But what if
Speaker 2: the whole training thing is a cover for the agency
Speaker 2: to communicate with or otherwise use the Finders, Right? What
Speaker 2: if this was a way of them by establishing this
Speaker 2: relationship of getting money, funneling money to the Finders for
Speaker 2: whatever they had them doing, right, or to like, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I don't know, it's possible. A theory I find particularly
Speaker 2: compelling is posited to John Cohen by Daniel Brandt. And
Speaker 2: Daniel Brandt is an independent left wing intelligence analyst who
Speaker 2: marketed in this period of time a database of intelligence
Speaker 2: citations called spy Base, starting in the nineteen eighties. So
Speaker 2: this is like, if you're a progressive, like, I'm trying
Speaker 2: to keep track of all of the different like weird
Speaker 2: spy shit going on, so you can be aware of
Speaker 2: the different threats to like your political organization or whatever. Right, gotcha.
Speaker 2: Brandt met members of the Finders starting in nineteen eighty
Speaker 2: four and claimed, quote, they approached me because they saw
Speaker 2: I was doing this database. I had posted a note
Speaker 2: about it in an extremely obscure journal called Reset. So
Speaker 2: two Finders members reach out to Brandt when they see this,
Speaker 2: and they're like, hey, we work with something called the
Speaker 2: Information Bank, and we'll give you some software we've developed
Speaker 2: in exchange for some of your files. And so he
Speaker 2: has a little relationship with these guys. He gives them
Speaker 2: some software, they give them some files. He says they're
Speaker 2: well informed on counterspying, they seem to know a lot
Speaker 2: about intelligence, but he also claims that they're like he
Speaker 2: kind of breaks ties with them because they keep pushing
Speaker 2: him for information, and he talks to some friends at
Speaker 2: the same time that members of the Finders reach out
Speaker 2: to and they have even more unsettling experiences. He eventually
Speaker 2: files a three page memo that he publishes to different
Speaker 2: progressive groups around DC to warn them about the Finders.
Speaker 2: And I'm going to read a summary of this from
Speaker 2: John Cohen's article Quote Data November tenth, nineteen eighty six.
Speaker 2: The memo is is headed a summary of what is
Speaker 2: known about some very strange people who use computers and
Speaker 2: seek out progressives so that they can ask a lot
Speaker 2: of suspicious questions. In addition to information Bank, Brandt wrote,
Speaker 2: members said that they were from Global Press Review, Hong
Speaker 2: Kong Business Today and the Seekers. Members also approached Lou Wolfe,
Speaker 2: co editor of Covert Action Information Bulletin, and he helped
Speaker 2: Brant check them out. There are several characteristics that lend
Speaker 2: themselves to the interpretation that this is an information gathering
Speaker 2: front for a cult of some sort. Brant wrote in
Speaker 2: his summary, noting that members may not be told the
Speaker 2: purpose behind their missions. The guys of computer consulting is
Speaker 2: an ideal method of spying on the left. He concluded,
Speaker 2: it would take about twenty seconds to copy an entire
Speaker 2: mailing list from a hard drive to a floppy And
Speaker 2: that's really possible. And that's really possible because, as we'll say,
Speaker 2: the CIA did exactly that with different groups. Like this
Speaker 2: is not coming out of nowhere. These guys are not
Speaker 2: conspiracy theoristying. We know the CIA was doing this with
Speaker 2: other groups. They may have been doing it with the Finders, right.
Speaker 2: So given this info, I can see two equally plausible possibilities. One,
Speaker 2: this cult which recruited from left wing and New age
Speaker 2: type people. Right, they may have been spying on progressive
Speaker 2: groups and trying to get access to mailing lists for
Speaker 2: progressive groups just to recruit people, right, not because of
Speaker 2: a CIA thing, but because that was the kind of
Speaker 2: person they thought would join their crew. And the cults
Speaker 2: are always recruiting, right, That's one possibility. They also may
Speaker 2: have been contacted or even paid by the CIA to
Speaker 2: spy on progressive groups, right, And it may have been
Speaker 2: a bit of both. Right, we can get members this way,
Speaker 2: and the CIA will pay us. We can get information
Speaker 2: from the CIA if we do this, right. There is
Speaker 2: some suggestion that early in the cult's history because they're
Speaker 2: doing all these spying games, Petty sending them around the
Speaker 2: world to infiltrate companies and get information. There's information that
Speaker 2: suggests Petty would reach out to the when he would
Speaker 2: get info, to try to trade info with them, right,
Speaker 2: to be like, hey, I found this out. If you
Speaker 2: find out anything else, you let me know, right, which
Speaker 2: would both be a connection with the CIA and also
Speaker 2: mean the CIA was like, well, he was just kind
Speaker 2: of hassling us, like we weren't contract. He just kept
Speaker 2: reaching out with shit.
Speaker 4: I mean, that would that would help resolve the issue
Speaker 4: we've been having the whole time, which is like him,
Speaker 4: you know, sort of characterizing this this cult atmosphere as
Speaker 4: like a Mary prankster joker thing. It's like, if there it,
Speaker 4: I understand why this has lent itself to so many conspiracies.
Speaker 3: It's like you're just like.
Speaker 4: Why, like, and that is a thread as to why
Speaker 4: that you know, there's Yeah, because I'm so continually baffled
Speaker 4: by the ostensible lack of clear purpose. But that I mean,
Speaker 4: but if you're telling people they're LARPing and they are
Speaker 4: actually accomplishing something for you, yeah, that's not nothing. I
Speaker 4: also just I just hearing a couple of the sentences
Speaker 4: you were saying, I miss when talking about computers, would
Speaker 4: like there was this horny energy.
Speaker 3: About it, hard drive to a floppy.
Speaker 4: You're not getting you know, you're not getting words like
Speaker 4: that anymore in the computer world.
Speaker 2: It's illegal to use words like that in the computer world, Jamie,
Speaker 2: the woke left will cancel you.
Speaker 3: It's considered a thought crime.
Speaker 4: I think it's really telling that I am. I've allegedly
Speaker 4: done a lot of shit in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Speaker 3: But what I'm going to get taken down for is
Speaker 3: saying hard drive to a floppy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's what That's what you're going to
Speaker 2: get canceled for by the AI, that is spreading the
Speaker 2: lies against you. So the other thing I want to
Speaker 2: add before we end for the day is that like
Speaker 2: the possibility that there's a connection to the CIA, which
Speaker 2: is that Petty kept trying to feed them information and
Speaker 2: maybe they at some point were like, hey, hey, why
Speaker 2: don't you, you know, do this for us or that
Speaker 2: for us, Like, let's see if we can use this guy.
Speaker 2: He come up with something interesting that's really consistent with
Speaker 2: how he liked to behave. And we know this because
Speaker 2: of what he did to John Cohen, that journalist who
Speaker 2: interviewed him in nineteen ninety six. I want to quote
Speaker 2: a bit from that article because where this this is
Speaker 2: one of the better sources we have on Petty and
Speaker 2: his cult, particularly like in the late stage of the cult.
Speaker 2: And what happens is Cohen travels to Culpepper, Virginia, you know,
Speaker 2: well after the case blows up and like goes away
Speaker 2: and he interviews Petty and during their conversation, this is
Speaker 2: this happens, and this is Petty talking anyway that we
Speaker 2: can throw you any leads? He asks, be thinking about
Speaker 2: what leads you could throw us if you come across
Speaker 2: anything we'd be interested in. I can't think of a
Speaker 2: single lead that Petty might be interested in. He and Burns,
Speaker 2: who's his other cult member, both lean forward awaiting my response.
Speaker 2: No one says a word, and the silence is deafening.
Speaker 2: So like this journalist comes to interview them, and they're like, Hey,
Speaker 2: we could really use a journalist. What if we have
Speaker 2: a partnership. You throw us any leads you get, We'll
Speaker 2: throw you leads for stories. We get all sorts of
Speaker 2: leads for stories. We're always looking into stuff, right, And
Speaker 2: I could see Petty's relationship with the CIA starting at
Speaker 2: least with that, with him reaching out to the CIA
Speaker 2: and being like, I got this lead on this company
Speaker 2: in Japan, or I got this lead on this communist
Speaker 2: organ this progressive organization in the US. Here's some info.
Speaker 2: If you get any leads, here's what I'm interested, and
Speaker 2: you throw them my way, right, And I could see
Speaker 2: the CIA being like, well, let's humor this guy and
Speaker 2: give him some bullshit because we're the CIA, and you
Speaker 2: know there's no cost in us trying to see what
Speaker 2: we might get. I could see that being the texture
Speaker 2: of the relationship they have too. Anyway, Wellamie, yes this
Speaker 2: this is but not today.
Speaker 5: I yeah, this does feel like a perfectly infuriating case
Speaker 5: study at just like baffling questions and systemic failure at
Speaker 5: virtually every level to the point where you cannot trust
Speaker 5: what anyone says, and so at that point you might
Speaker 5: as well just make shit up.
Speaker 3: And that's conspiracy culture. Wow. I also realized one more thing,
Speaker 3: Can I tell you one more thing?
Speaker 2: Sure?
Speaker 4: I realized that the Red Sox are the FBI, because
Speaker 4: they also killed MLK.
Speaker 2: Oh wait the Red Sox did Wow, Jamie Loftus. You know,
Speaker 2: google the Red Sox assassination.
Speaker 3: Don't google anything anymore, see what it comes up.
Speaker 2: See what comes up.
Speaker 3: Don't google any looking anymore.
Speaker 2: There's a lot to these episodes. We have more CIA
Speaker 2: talk when we come back, we have the the resolution
Speaker 2: of the cult case, and we have what happens after
Speaker 2: the child trafficking case goes away. So all of that
Speaker 2: and more Jamie in part for the conclusion of the
Speaker 2: epic saga of the Finders. But first off, doing this
Speaker 2: to me, Yeah, let's conclude the epic saga of Jamie
Speaker 2: Loftus on this podcast by giving your pluggables.
Speaker 3: Oh, I'm going to just plug away.
Speaker 4: You should follow me on Twitter and Instagram.
Speaker 3: Still against all lots, I am still there. You can
Speaker 3: what else can you do? You buy my book Raw Dog,
Speaker 3: which is about hot dogs.
Speaker 4: You can listen to a showing producing called Media and Housed,
Speaker 4: which is hosted by and made for the unhoused community.
Speaker 4: And you can listen to my new show called I
Speaker 4: don't know. The title is in transit at this time.
Speaker 4: It's currently called fifteen Minutes and it's going to be
Speaker 4: a new weekly show on cool Zone Media.
Speaker 3: Ever heard of It?
Speaker 4: About every week we look at one of the Internet's
Speaker 4: main characters, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Past, present, and future.
Speaker 4: I'm going to try to estabt see if I could
Speaker 4: establish my own main character, just install someone.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know who else could be a main character?
Speaker 2: Mary and Petty. He kind of was early main character
Speaker 2: on the early Internet.
Speaker 4: It's it's true on the on the floppy, it's.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: The further you go back in Internet history, you're like, wow, it.
Speaker 3: I feel like we characterize it as were we ever
Speaker 3: so young? But it's like, no, we're always pretty bad,
Speaker 3: but we just didn't didn't realize it.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Oh well, so.
Speaker 2: Those are my plug you know, go to help. I
Speaker 2: love you.
Speaker 1: Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
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