The_Info_Web/20 - ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/The Finders.md

title	aliases	created	updated	tags	category	summary	location	start	relations
The Finders	The Finders Finders The Finders group The Finders cult	2026-05-17	2026-10-15	Organization CIA ChildTrafficking FBIVault Tallahassee 1970s 1980s 1990s WashingtonDC	Private Organization	The Finders was a Washington D.C. communal group led by Marion Pettie whose members were arrested in 1987 transporting malnourished children, and whose federal investigation closed after the CIA acknowledged an interest.	Washington, D.C.	1970-01-01	type with reverse start role fn founded Marion Pettie true 1971 founder and Game Caller 4 type with reverse start fn investigated Metropolitan Police Department true 1987-02-05 2 type with reverse start end fn investigated Federal Bureau of Investigation true 1987-02-06 1995-05-09 3 type with reverse start end fn investigated United States Customs Service true 1987-02-04 1987-04-13 2

The Finders was a Washington D.C.-based communal group led by former U.S. Air Force Master Sergeant Marion Pettie that came to public attention on February 4, 1987, when two of its members were arrested in Tallahassee, Florida while transporting six malnourished children in a van. The ensuing investigation uncovered extensive computer networks with satellite communications, international files referencing operations in multiple countries, and documents describing methods for obtaining children. A federal inquiry was opened, then abruptly closed after the Central Intelligence Agency acknowledged an interest in the group. The case was partially reopened in 1993 following congressional pressure, then closed again without criminal charges. In November 2019, the Federal Bureau of Investigation released several hundred pages of investigative records through its online Vault repository under FOIA case number 1372462-0.¹²³

Origins and Structure

The Finders coalesced in the late 1960s around Marion Pettie, who had been hosting open-house gatherings at his Washington D.C. residence since at least the 1940s. The formal communal structure took shape around 1971 at Pettie's home in the Glover Park neighborhood.⁴ Pettie described no formal membership requirements: "Nobody signs anything."⁴ A group of about 40 people lived in the Glover Park house, a Northeast Washington warehouse and a farm in rural Virginia.⁵ Hippies and peace activists had visited Pettie Farm, a 90-acre property in Madison County, Virginia, from about 1968, and four visitors between 1968 and 1973 recalled a leader in his forties, "a charismatic and wealthy man"; about 1982 neighbors saw the hippie followers replaced by men in business suits and women in professional clothes.⁵ Pettie originally based his teachings on the writings of Carlos Castaneda, according to cult experts quoted at the time.⁵ Former followers called him "The Student," "The Stroller," "The Game Caller" or "The Pathfinder," and said he lectured at the Glover Park house on "the New Age way of living" and Eastern mysticism.⁶ Members pooled finances into what Robert Garder Terrell called the "Invisible Bank," with some members contributing life savings to the communal fund.⁴

Terrell told Washington City Paper that under the original arrangement money put into the group could be retrieved, and that Pettie later introduced what he called "The Last Man's Club," under which it could not.⁴ Terrell testified in a later suit over the group's partnership assets that the group "deteriorated during the two decades he was a member" and shifted "from an idealistic utopian community to more of a militarylike organization where following orders became more" central to it.⁴

The group blended Taoist philosophy with New Age and Human Potential Movement concepts. Members were typically well-educated professionals who rejected conventional employment as an obstacle to what Pettie called spontaneity. Pettie functioned as the "Game Caller," a title the children in the group also used for him, directing members on assignments called "projects" that could range from mundane tasks to international travel, and exercising final authority over communal life.⁴⁷ His stated life philosophy, offered to journalist Eddie Dean in 1996, was "to know everything and do nothing."⁴ Terrell gave the same formulation in his 2009 memoir, quoting Pettie: "Know everything and do nothing until your knowledge is called for by the people that you're loyal to."⁷

The Finders' own communal life was described by Pettie to U.S. News & World Report in December 1993 as a communal, holistic-living and learning arrangement of some 20 members, who did freelance journalism, research and "competitor intelligence" for mostly foreign clients and worked, he said, for no foreign governments.⁸ Washington City Paper put the peak membership of the 1980s at nearly three dozen people.⁴

Former members told the Washington Post in February 1987 that a number of the older members had left careers and families to join, that some members used up to 20 aliases, and that in the early 1980s Pettie's second-in-command died at the Glover Park house of untreated appendicitis, after which the group became more secretive and members stopped seeing relatives and friends outside it.⁶ Beginning around 1980, children were raised communally rather than by biological parents. The group believed this practice replicated what members described as original Native American child-rearing. Children were not enrolled in conventional schools and were separated from their parents for months during group-organized trips described as educational adventures. Neighbors reported seeing as many as a dozen children at the Virginia farm in summer, and a Glover Park neighbor recalled that the children often went without clothes in summer.⁵⁹

Properties

The group maintained several interconnected properties:

• 3918-3920 W Street NW, Glover Park, Washington D.C.: Two attached red brick buildings containing approximately eight apartments, renting rooms at five dollars per night. Women and children lived here. A duplex portion contained a satellite communications setup.²⁴
• 1307 Fourth Street NE, Washington D.C.: A 10,000-square-foot warehouse owned of record by Robert Garder Terrell. Men lived here. The space contained a large library, two kitchens, a sauna, a hot tub, a video production room, extensive computer equipment, and satellite dish antennas on the roof.²³
• The Farm, Nethers, Madison County, Virginia: Approximately 90 acres near Shenandoah National Park and Old Rag Mountain. Neighbors reported vans arriving at night with children who were sometimes heard crying.⁴⁹

Residents of Culpeper, Virginia told U.S. News in 1993 that the Finders had operated an office there from time to time, containing computer terminals and clocks showing different time zones around the world.⁸

Membership

The active membership roster circulated during the 1987 investigations listed: Ronald L. Alleman; Mary Grogan; Christian Herbst; Kristin Knauth; Theodore G. Reiss; Allen Schoen; Stuart Miles Silverstone (operating under the alias Steve Learner); Randolph Winn; and Steve Usdin. Former members included Patricia H. Livingston, Carolyn Said, and others who maintained contact with the group.²

Robert Garder Terrell, a former Internal Revenue Service appeals officer and certified public accountant, served as the group's principal spokesman and financial manager. He was associated with Future Enterprises, a computer training company that conducted business with the CIA.²³ Washington City Paper reported that Terrell left the group in 1991 and later testified in a suit seeking to liquidate the group's partnership.⁴

John J. Cox and General Scientific

An unsigned investigative memo of unknown provenance, circulated among researchers in the mid-1990s and described by journalist Wendell Minnick in the publication Unclassified (Winter 1995) as a document of "unknown origin" in which "some of the data has been independently verified," claims that in 1979 Pettie recruited John J. Cox, described as a computer specialist and founder of General Scientific Corporation, a firm specializing in classified defense contracts. The memo alleges Cox trained several Finders members in computer programming and communications, and took two or more of them to Costa Rica and Panama in 1980-81.¹⁰

A separate and partially contradicting account appears in MPD Intelligence documents included in the 2019 FBI Vault release, which describe The Finders as having "attempted to infiltrate General Scientific Corporation, Rockville, Maryland," framing the relationship as an infiltration effort rather than Cox recruiting into the group.³ The December 1993 Secretary of State query generated during the DOJ reinvestigation listed General Scientific Corporation, Rockville, Maryland as one of several entity names associated with the Finders.³ Cox appears in supplemental Finders membership documents listed as a former member, without aliases or biographical detail.¹⁰

Marion Pettie's Background and Intelligence Connections

Marion Pettie was born in 1920 and grew up in Culpeper, Virginia, where his family had lived for ten generations. He dropped out of school after ninth grade. He served as a Master Sergeant in the U.S. Air Force and retired in 1956.⁴ Terrell's memoir gives the birth year as 1920 in Culpeper and records that Pettie left home at thirteen and changed his name as a teenager from Marion Buford Pettie to Marion David Pettie.⁷

Pettie's own account, as Terrell recorded it, described his Air Force service as chauffeur work for the Secretary of the Air Force, and said that General Ira Eaker offered him a chance to attend intelligence school in Germany.⁷ An anonymous three-page investigative memo circulated among researchers in the 1990s alleged that in 1946 Pettie served as chauffeur to General Eaker, then commanding general of Army Air Forces in the Mediterranean, and that publisher Charles Marsh subsequently arranged for Pettie to receive counterintelligence training.¹¹ The memo further alleged that Colonel Leonard N. Weigner of the USAF directed Pettie to retire from active service and surround himself with what Weigner called "kooks," to provide cover for intelligence recruitment and infiltration of counterculture movements. Weigner died in September 1990; his Washington Post obituary confirmed a career in Air Force intelligence and the CIA.⁴ The memo's author is not identified.

His wife, Isabelle Pettie, was a CIA employee; FBI Vault documents confirm her employment, though the precise dates cited across sources vary, with estimates ranging from approximately 1952 to 1961, and the Stitcher MPD report citing 1950 to 1971.³ She was listed as a staff stenographer but was issued passports to North Korea, North Vietnam, and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, travel that would not ordinarily be approved for an employee in that category.³ In his December 1993 interview with U.S. News & World Report, Pettie said that the CIA's interest in the Finders might stem from the fact that his "late wife once worked for the agency."⁸

Pettie's son George Pettie worked for Air America, the CIA proprietary airline that operated in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War and was documented to have transported narcotics from the Golden Triangle.⁸ Pettie told U.S. News that his son had worked for "a CIA proprietary firm, Air America."⁸ George Pettie had not spoken to his father in two years and owned a home inspection business in Northern Virginia at the time of the 1987 investigations. He told the Washington Post that his father, then 66, retired from the Air Force in 1956 as a master sergeant and had done little formal work since, and that around 1971 Pettie gathered his followers at the W Street house: "That was the beginning of a new life for him." He said the group was like an extended family of people who had dropped out of professional careers, that he did not know of members practicing satanism or abusing children, and that he would not want to be a child there, "without a reliable day-in-day-out parent figure."⁵

Marion Pettie consistently denied CIA employment in public interviews, stating: "The reason the CIA wouldn't hire me is that they wouldn't have the control factor over me."⁴ In the 1993 U.S. News interview he said the group had never been connected to the CIA, and that the group had never been involved in child abuse, pornography, Satanism, or animal slaughter.⁸ He acknowledged studying intelligence agencies since the 1930s and described himself as Taoist by inclination. His open houses in Washington from the 1930s onward drew intelligence figures, diplomats, and journalists, though Pettie described these gatherings as self-financed social events rather than operational meetings.⁴

Pettie gave an account of his connection with Timothy Leary in which Leary sent people to his communal property in Virginia during the 1960s, and Leary gave Pettie LSD.⁴

Marion Pettie died on October 24, 2003, in Culpeper, Virginia. Terrell's memoir dates his death to October 2003 and records that Terrell took Pettie the first draft of the book on his deathbed, where Pettie told him that what Terrell had written "sounds more like me than I sound like myself."⁷

The Tallahassee Arrest, February 4, 1987

At Myers Park in Tallahassee, Florida, on February 4, 1987, local police received reports of two well-dressed men with six visibly dirty and malnourished children living out of a van. The men were identified as Douglas Ammerman, age 27, and James Michael Holwell, age 23, both from Washington D.C.²¹²

The arrest followed an anonymous telephone call to Tallahassee police about two well-dressed men supervising six disheveled children in a park. Customs records identify the van as a Dodge bearing Virginia plates, in which the eight persons appeared to be living, and one of the men produced a business card stating that its bearer knew his constitutional rights and intended to remain silent.¹³¹⁴ Holwell gave police the name Michael Houlihan.¹⁵ The six children ranged in age from approximately two to seven years. They were described by police and medical personnel as bug-bitten, dirty, underfed, and on a raw food diet dispensed only as behavioral reward. The children appeared unfamiliar with modern technology including telephones, televisions, and toilets, and demonstrated unfamiliarity with the names of rooms in a house. When questioned about their origins, the children stated they were being taken to a special school in Mexico for brilliant children. They indicated they had been "weaned from their mothers" and were "under the control of the game caller." One child stated that the group would go to people's houses, babysit, and eat whatever was available and "do what those people wanted" but would not elaborate further.¹²

Florida HRS physician Dr. Moorer found physical evidence consistent with possible sexual abuse in two of the six children.¹² Nathan Greenberg, an Illinois psychologist retained by Florida's social service agency, concluded that the evidence was insufficient to say whether the children had been sexually abused and found no evidence of recent physical harm; Tallahassee police then dropped their description of the group as a satanic cult while standing by their statement that two children appeared to have been sexually abused.¹⁶ Items found in the van included a TRS-80 computer, twenty floppy computer disks, a telephone connection device, and a Chinese-English dictionary.²

Douglas Ammerman and James Michael Holwell were charged with misdemeanor child abuse; Holwell faced an additional count of resisting arrest without violence. Bond was initially set at $100,000 each, reduced to $20,000 on February 19, and the Washington Post reported the two as held on a total bond of $10,000 by March.¹²¹⁷ Five women identifying as the children's mothers arrived in Tallahassee from Washington around February 12: Kristin Knauth, Judy Evans, Paula Arico, Carolyn Said, and Patricia H. Livingston.¹² A Tallahassee investigator later told U.S. News of the D.C. police: "They dropped this case," adding that they had done so "like a hot rock."¹⁸

The arrest ran on the front page of the Tallahassee Democrat, whose reporter Jan Pudlow covered the case.¹⁹

Custody Proceedings and Outcomes

Florida state awarded temporary custody of all six children on February 5, 1987. On February 28, Judge Victor Cawthon awarded temporary custody of all six to the mothers pending a final hearing. Terrell said on February 10 that the mothers did not plan to go to Florida and, "as of right now, we're not planning to defend ourselves."¹⁶ In March 1987 Cawthon awarded custody of the three youngest children to their mothers; the Washington Post reported that two others were declared dependent but allowed to remain with their mothers in Tallahassee, and that one child, whose mother was not present, remained in foster care.¹⁷ Skeptical Inquirer described the March 11 ruling differently: three children returned unconditionally and three older children declared state dependents, two of whose mothers, directed by Pettie not to hire lawyers or respond to the proceedings, returned to Washington and forfeited their cases.¹² On June 1, 1987, a Florida judge sent two of the children to foster homes.¹² The final disposition, as documented in press coverage, left four children returned to mothers and two in foster care.¹²

Leon County Circuit Judge George Reynolds dismissed the charges against Ammerman and Holwell on March 17, 1987, on the motion of assistant public defender Michael Minerva that the evidence was insufficient; Ammerman and Holwell were released on March 17-18, 1987. The prosecution did not challenge the summary of the depositions, and Tallahassee police Lt. Roy Dickey said the arrests had been justified on the information then available and that a follow-up investigation indicated "the facts of the case were not as they seemed."¹⁷ Authorities told the Post that the reports of child pornography and satanic rituals were unfounded and attributable in part to confusion over the members' life style.¹⁷

The Washington Raids, February 5-6, 1987

The white van used to transport the children was registered to the 1307 Fourth Street NE warehouse. Metropolitan Police Department Detective James Bradley of the Intelligence Division had opened an investigation of the two addresses in December 1986 on information from an informant who described a cult called the Finders operating businesses from a warehouse at 1307 Fourth Street NE and housing children at 3918 and 3920 W Street NW, with "blood rituals," sexual orgies involving children, and an unsolved murder in which the group might be involved; on December 15 a detective had observed a clearing behind the W Street house with round stones gathered in a circle, which a former resident later said had been laid in 1972 as part of a garden.⁵¹³¹⁴ On February 5 Customs Special Agent Walter Kreitlow in Tallahassee asked Customs headquarters to run the names and van through the Child Pornography and Protection Unit database, and Bradley, who consulted Assistant U.S. Attorney Harry Benner, obtained the warrants that day.¹³ The FBI's Washington Field Office opened a kidnapping case (7-1685) on February 6, and its own 1993 review of the file recorded that no evidence of child sexual exploitation, kidnapping or related crimes was observed or obtained in the searches.²⁰ Search warrants were secured for the warehouse and the Glover Park property, and Virginia State Police separately raided the Madison County farm on February 6.² U.S. Attorney Joseph diGenova said that day that authorities were investigating "the crime of kidnaping" and that the inquiry was "not limited to that as the evidence evolves."¹⁴

U.S. Customs Special Agent Ramon J. Martinez was the principal federal investigator at the Washington D.C. properties. His reports, filed February 7, 1987 and April 13, 1987, constitute the primary documentary record of what investigators found.²³ A Walter Kreitlow dated February 12, 1987 documented the Tallahassee end of the inquiry.²¹

Warehouse Findings

At the warehouse, investigators found:

• Extensive networked computer equipment with satellite dish antennas
• A large library including books on mind control and psychological operations
• A video screening room with production capability
• Sauna and hot tub facilities
• Files referencing international contacts and activities in London, Germany, the Bahamas, Japan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Africa, and Costa Rica
• A file labeled "Pentagon Break-In" (see below)
• Photographs of unidentified individuals including nude images and images of children, among them one of a child "on display" and "appearing to accent the child's genitals" in Martinez's words¹³
• Documents describing "explicit sexual conduct" between members
• Documents with what Martinez described as "detailed instructions for obtaining children for unspecified purposes," including methods described as: impregnation of female members, purchasing, trading, and kidnapping²³
• A file identified as "Palestinian," files by member name and by "project" name that appeared to Martinez to be commercial operations under front names, and a large amount of data on child care organizations¹³
• A video room that appeared to Martinez to be set up as an indoctrination center, training areas for children, an altar in a residential area of the warehouse, and many jars of urine and feces¹³
• A photograph album, presented to Martinez by an MPD officer, of adults and children in white sheets in what Martinez called a "blood ritual" centered on the execution of at least two goats¹³

At the W Street duplex the telexes found with Silverstone, according to Martinez, included one expressing interest in "bank secrecy" situations, and other documents showed interests in high-technology transfers to the United Kingdom, terrorism, explosives and the evasion of law enforcement, together with a set of instructions that appeared to be broadcast over a computer network advising participants to move "the children" and keep them moving through different jurisdictions.¹³ Martinez documented that files contained printouts of messages transmitted through an MCI telex account to networked computer terminals across the United States and in foreign locations. Among the telex messages, Martinez identified what he described as a purchase order for two children in Hong Kong to be arranged through a contact at the Chinese Embassy there.²²² Washington Field Office agents who reviewed the file in 1993 recorded no evidence of kidnapping or child sexual exploitation from the searches.²⁰

Additional documents referenced bank secrecy practices, technology transfers to the United Kingdom, and currency movement across multiple international jurisdictions. Martinez's overall assessment was that the files indicated "international trafficking in children, high tech transfer to the United Kingdom, and international transfer of currency."²³ U.S. News & World Report quoted the same Customs memorandum in 1993.²³

The "Pentagon Break-In" File

Among the documents observed at the warehouse, Martinez noted in his April 13, 1987 report the existence of a file entitled "Pentagon Break-In." His report records only the title, in a list of files that also included "Palestinian," and gives no description of the contents; the April 1987 report records that the investigation had by then passed out of Customs' hands.²³¹³

The Babysitter and Tutor Advertisement Method

Martinez's April 13, 1987 report documented information provided by an MPD officer regarding an intelligence-gathering method used by the group: "the group would respond to local newspaper advertisements for babysitters, tutors, etc. and then a member of the Finders would gather as much information as possible about the habits, identity, occupation, etc., of the family." The officer's account was relayed to Martinez, who recorded that the use to which the information was to be put was unknown; the FBI file summary describes the material as "intelligence files on private families."²³¹³

Glover Park and Stuart Miles Silverstone

At the Glover Park duplex, investigators found Stuart Miles Silverstone inside a room equipped with multiple computers, printers, and satellite communications equipment. Large bags of color slides and photographic contact sheets containing images of children were also seized.²

Virginia Farm

Virginia State Police searched the Finders' Madison County land on February 6 and over the weekend of February 7-8, and found goat skins, a goat's head, computer equipment and documents; spokesman Charles Vaughan did not comment on their significance. The affidavit supporting the search included photographs from a scrapbook titled "The Execution of Henrietta and Igor," showing three white-robed men and several children dismembering two goats, one captioned "Ben finds Henrietta's Womb."¹⁵ On February 10 state police dug up a 30-by-12-foot plot on the farm after tips that bodies were buried there and found nothing; Vaughan said "the investigation is becoming routine."¹⁶ A Washington educator who said he had worked closely with Pettie described the ceremonies as slaughter of goats in white robes, "a very Alice-in-Wonderland kind of fun," and a former member said the goats had been vicious and the group decided to eat them, the robes and staging being meant to impress on the children the seriousness of killing an animal.¹⁵¹⁶ A Culpeper lawyer said Finders members sent him profane letters and slashed his car's tires when he represented a former member in a divorce three years earlier, and that the harassment stopped after he obtained a court order.¹⁵ Virginia State Police described what they found at the farm as evidence of cult or ritual activity. This characterization was subsequently disputed; photographs later described in some sources as showing ritual activity appear to depict livestock butchering.¹⁴ No criminal charges resulted from the farm search.⁹

CIA Involvement and Investigation Suppression

On February 6, 1987, the FBI took over the investigation and took possession of computers and floppy disks seized from Finders properties. The FBI's Foreign Counterintelligence Division directed the Metropolitan Police Department to classify all MPD reports related to The Finders as Secret, and further directed MPD not to advise the FBI's own Washington Field Office of what had occurred.²³

MPD Sgt. John H. Stitcher Jr. filed a report on February 19, 1987, titled "Re: Finders involvement with the CIA," marked Confidential and Do Not Disseminate. The report documented a conversation with a CIA special agent that included several significant admissions. When Stitcher asked whether the investigation was "treading on anyone's toes," the CIA agent responded "Sort of." The CIA agent stated the agency had had someone on the case since it first broke in the news. The report confirmed Isabelle Pettie's CIA employment and documented that travel by at least one Finders member to Moscow, North Korea, and Vietnam during 1969-1971 had been conducted with CIA awareness and facilitation. Large sections of the released version of the report remain redacted.³²⁴

The report's text as quoted in a later FBI teletype also states that the CIA "apparently has a vested interest" in the group, and that the CIA had not contacted any of the investigating agencies while it was working on the case.²⁴

A separate MPD Intelligence Division report dated April 13, 1987, distinct from Stitcher's February report and labeled Secret, concluded that "the Finders organization is and has been utilized by the CIA as a disinformation service spreading nonessential, non-critical information to various organizations throughout the United States and overseas." This is among the most direct official characterizations in any government document of the relationship between the group and the CIA.³²⁴ The same report quotes its author as saying: "I do not think that child abuse was a planned tactic of this group."²⁴

When Martinez went to the MPD on April 2, 1987 to review the seized documents, a source there who spoke to him on an "off the record" basis said that the MPD report had been classified secret, that the FBI had directed MPD not to advise the FBI's Washington Field Office, and that the investigation of the Finders had become a CIA internal matter.²²⁵ The same source told Martinez that all passport data had been turned over to the State Department, which advised MPD that all travel and use of the passports by their holders, including travel to Moscow, North Korea and North Vietnam from the late 1950s to the mid-1970s, was within the law and that no action would be taken; and that the FBI had withdrawn from the investigation several weeks earlier.¹³ Martinez's April 13, 1987 report concluded: "No further information will be available. No further action will be taken."²⁵ A 1993 FBI memorandum records that Stitcher, by then deceased, had been contacted by an unidentified party who "had told him to step away from the Finders case."²⁶

Terrell later wrote that once the news broke, the CIA issued a public denial that the group was connected with it, while the press treated the denial with skepticism.²⁷ Stitcher died on May 28, 1993, from septic shock, at age 48. He was working as a security guard at the Australian Embassy at the time of his death. His death came approximately five months before the DOJ formally initiated its 1993 reinvestigation, rendering him unavailable for interview. The FBI's 1993-1994 inquiry notes specifically record his death and his unavailability as a witness.³

In 1994, the U.S. Customs Service proposed to remove Martinez from his position for what it described as improper disclosure of case information. The penalty was mitigated by letter of December 7, 1994 to a five-day suspension without pay and reassignment from Special Agent to Physical Security Specialist, GS-080-13.³

Future Enterprises and the Computer Training Connection

Future Enterprises was a private company that provided computer training to CIA employees during the 1980s. In a 1993 public statement, CIA spokesman David Christian confirmed: "CIA sent some employees to a company called Future Enterprises, Inc. for computer training in the nineteen eighties." Christian denied any CIA ownership of or organizational relationship with the company, characterizing the Finders connection as involving one member who worked as a "part-time accountant."⁸²⁸ The copy of the U.S. News article enclosed in the FBI file attributes the statement about computer training to a CIA official who asked not to be named.⁸

Robert Garder Terrell, described in sources as a former IRS appeals officer and the warehouse's owner of record, was that member. Joseph Marinich, president of Future Enterprises, confirmed in contemporaneous reporting that the company had once had a contract to train CIA employees in computers. Marinich denied that he or his firm had any involvement with the Finders or acted as a front company for the cult on behalf of the CIA, and said that when the February 1987 reports broke he learned that his tax accountant, Terrell, was a group member.⁸²⁸

An MPD report dated February 19, 1987 cited a CIA agent confirming the agency was sending personnel to "a Finders Corp., Future Enterprises, for training in computer operations," using language that directly identified Future Enterprises as a Finders corporate entity.³²⁸ Current and former members said Terrell's work for Future Enterprises was separate from the group's other activities.⁸

The 1993 Congressional and DOJ Investigation

The case was revived in 1993 when Henry "Skip" Clements, a private consultant in Stuart, Florida, obtained copies of Martinez's customs reports. Clements, who had become involved in investigating child abuse networks following his child's victimization at the Glendale Montessori School in Stuart, provided the documents to U.S. Representatives Tom Lewis (R-FL) and Charlie Rose (D-NC).⁸²⁹ Lewis made public statements questioning whether the government had protected The Finders at the expense of the children: "Could our own government have something to do with this Finders organization and turned their backs on these children?"⁸ U.S. News described Rose as chairman of the House Administration Committee.⁸

Congressional pressure, combined with the prospect of a CBS 48 Hours segment that was in active preparation on the case and which was ultimately never broadcast, prompted the Department of Justice to reopen the matter. No CBS staff member or producer has publicly explained why the segment was killed. An October 26, 1993 memo from Acting Assistant Attorney General John C. Keeney to FBI Assistant Director Larry A. Potts requested a preliminary inquiry into allegations of child sexual abuse by a group known as the "Finders" and into what role, if any, the United States intelligence community had played.³³⁰

The Washington Times published what became the key investigative piece in the reopening: reporter Paul M. Rodriguez, a four-time Pulitzer Prize nominee, published "CIA tied to cult accused of abuse; Justice probes links to Finders" on December 17, 1993.¹¹³¹ The article reported that a Justice Department special task force was investigating whether the CIA had used the group as a front organization to provide computer training to intelligence agents in the 1980s.³¹ U.S. News & World Report followed on December 27, 1993 with "Through a glass, very darkly: Cops, spies and a very odd investigation" by Gordon Witkin, Peter Cary, and Angel Martinez, which contained the interview with Marion Pettie about his wife and son, as well as CIA officials' description of allegations about links between the agency and the Finders as "hogwash."⁸

The FBI's Washington Metropolitan Field Office opened the matter as a preliminary inquiry (file 31C-WF-189911) captioned "Finders Group; White Slave Traffic Act - Sexual Exploitation of Children; Obstruction of Justice." Tallahassee Police Chief Melvin Tucker told FBI agents from the Jacksonville Division on November 16, 1993 that no outside agency, inside or outside the intelligence community, had contacted anyone in his department to influence the investigation, that the evidence had been returned to its owners or destroyed, and that he had been asked for all reports on the group by Representative Charlie Rose and by CBS News 48 Hours.²⁰ A December 22, 1993 Potts memorandum lists Future Enterprises among the entities checked in the inquiry.³⁰ In May 1994 the Criminal Division's Deputy Assistant Attorney General asked the FBI to locate the confidential source whose information Detective Bradley used in his February 5, 1987 warrant affidavits, to find out what a CIA Office of Security file on a CIA staff employee who had been the agency's point of contact for authorities during the 1987 investigation actually contained, and to obtain the CIA's report of that employee's February 1987 conversation with an MPD detective; the field office contacted the CIA Office of General Counsel on May 13, 17 and 23, 1994, and was told the request would be acted on. A further lead sent to the Miami Division concerned a claim, passed on from Stuart, Florida, that unnamed individuals had entered the two Finders properties and "cleared out evidence" before the February 1987 searches.³² On September 23, 1994, FBI supervisors met Deputy Assistant Attorney General Kevin DeGregory and Criminal Division attorneys at the Main Justice Building; DeGregory said it did not appear that any additional investigation remained for the FBI, and noted that a Congressman, whose name is withheld in the released copy, had asked to meet him and that he would not do so until he had further reviewed the matter. On December 13, 1994 a Justice Department attorney told the FBI that DeGregory had completed his review and wanted further investigation, and the field office reopened the matter on January 27, 1995.³² All requested investigation but one reinterview had been completed by June 1994; that interview was done on January 30, 1995, and on May 9, 1995 the field office closed its file, recording that the matter remained open at FBI headquarters pending a Justice Department decision and that there were no outstanding leads.³² No criminal charges resulted.

Lewis's "Dear Colleague" letter of January 25, 1993, a copy of which is in the FBI file, asked members to cosponsor "the Lewis bill to reestablish child pornography unit," in the text a Concurrent Resolution calling on Customs to reestablish its Child Pornography and Protection Unit, which Customs had integrated into its Smuggling Investigations Division in February 1992. He wrote that Customs' own figures, for 1988 through 1992, showed "a dramatic and inexcusable decline": since the unit's peak year of 1990, arrests and convictions had been "nearly halved" (110 arrests in 1990 and 57 in 1992) and employee-hours had fallen to barely one-fourth of earlier levels (100,524 in 1990, 27,435 in 1992).³³

Connection to John David Norman's Odyssey Network

The two men arrested in Tallahassee were found carrying an address book. According to FBI file notes cited in secondary sources, individuals named in that address book included one person appearing in an FBI Buffalo field office file concerning NAMBLA members suspected of murder connections, and two persons appearing in FBI Dallas field office file 145-0 relating to John David Norman's Odyssey Foundation child prostitution investigation.¹²

John David Norman (October 13, 1927 to May 22, 2011) was convicted multiple times between 1960 and 1998 on child molestation and child pornography charges. He founded the Odyssey Foundation in Dallas in the mid-1960s as a front for procuring teenage boys for prostitution and distributing child pornography nationally. The address-book overlaps represent the primary documented connection between The Finders and Norman's network.³⁴

Intelligence Program Context

The group's formation between 1969 and 1971 falls within the operational period of Operation CHAOS (codename MHCHAOS), the CIA domestic counterintelligence program run from August 1967 to March 1974 under the Counterintelligence Staff headed by James Angleton. CHAOS used civilian infiltrators through Project MERRIMAC to penetrate antiwar and counterculture organizations, and a separate mechanism to compile dossiers on tens of thousands of Americans connected to dissident groups. Most CHAOS records were destroyed under DCI Helms's orders in 1973. No surviving primary source directly names The Finders in CHAOS operational files.³³⁵

The April 13, 1987 MPD Intelligence Division report's characterization of the group as a CIA "disinformation service" describes a function consistent with CHAOS-era methodology: a civilian group embedded within the counterculture milieu, gathering intelligence on private families through placement of tutor and babysitter advertisements, and maintaining a layer of separation from official CIA operations. The group's ideological profile placed it squarely within the demographic CHAOS targeted. Its formation timing coincides with CHAOS at its 1971 peak staffing of 52 personnel.³³⁵

One element complicates a straightforward CHAOS attribution: the entity that classified the 1987 MPD investigation as Secret and directed MPD not to brief the FBI's Washington Field Office was the FBI's Foreign Counterintelligence Division, not a domestic surveillance unit. This suggests the CIA framed whatever relationship it had with the group as a foreign rather than domestic counterintelligence matter, which would place it in a different institutional compartment from CHAOS proper.³

The group also operated through the same years as Project MKUltra and its successor programs. The warehouse library's mind control literature, the communal behavioral conditioning structure the group called "projects," and the documented separation of children from their parents for months at a time have been noted by researchers examining the case in relation to documented CIA behavioral modification research. MKUltra Subproject 136, funded in August 1961, was a project titled "Experimental Analysis of Extrasensory Perception" whose proposal stated that an attempt would be made to induce dissociative states, from abaissement de niveau mental to multiple personality in so-called mediums, using hypnosis; the writer S. Dovey wrote that it sought to induce dissociative states in children through drugs and hypnosis.³⁶ No primary source links The Finders to any specific MKUltra subproject.³⁶

Ted Gunderson's Investigation

Ted Gunderson, a former FBI Special Agent in Charge of the Los Angeles, Memphis, and Dallas field offices who retired from the bureau in 1979, obtained copies of the Martinez customs reports and made them widely available before any official release, hosting them on his website and distributing them to journalists and researchers. Gunderson authored a pamphlet titled "U.S. Customs Service Report on the Finders" and made public assertions regarding CIA orchestration of child trafficking networks.²³⁷ He died on July 31, 2011.

Connections Drawn in Secondary Literature

Nebraska attorney and former state senator John DeCamp, who published "The Franklin Cover-Up" (1992) about the Franklin Credit Union Scandal, a separate and contemporaneous case involving allegations of a child prostitution network connected to Omaha credit union operator Lawrence King Jr., drew explicit connections between the Franklin case and The Finders in the second edition of his book (1996), characterizing both as CIA-connected child exploitation networks. Nick Bryant's "The Franklin Scandal" (Trine Day, 2009) similarly opens with a prologue titled "The Finders of Lost Children" and incorporates U.S. Customs documentation from the Finders investigation as supporting evidence.³⁸

No publicly available government record establishes a documented operational or investigative link between the Franklin Credit Union investigation and the Finders investigation. The two were run as separate FBI matters. The "CIA internal matter" termination documented in the 1987 U.S. Customs Service report regarding The Finders has no documented equivalent in the Franklin investigation's public record. DeCamp's and Bryant's connections between the two cases are secondary-source assertions, not corroborated in the documentary evidence available from either case.³⁸

Media Coverage and the Satanic Panic Context

Initial coverage broke in the Washington Post on February 7, 1987, in an article by Saundra Saperstein and Victoria Churchville quoting court documents that described the Finders as a "cult" that allegedly conducted "brainwashing" and used children "in rituals," and in a companion profile by Marc Fisher and John Mintz; Mintz and Fisher followed on Sunday, February 8, with "Ex-Finders Tell of Games, Complex Beliefs."⁵⁶¹⁴ D.C. Police Chief Maurice T. Turner told a news conference on Monday, February 9, 1987 that the Metropolitan Police Department had "not uncovered any evidence of criminal wrongdoing by members of the group," while adding that seized documents were still under review.¹¹⁵ The Sunday Washington Post ran two Page One stories on the Finders in February 1987, one headlined "Cult Member Defends 2 Men in Child Abuse Case," in which Terrell told the paper: "We are all in a state right now where we are afraid. We've been made almost dysfunctional by the reports."³⁹

The case emerged during the height of what social scientists later termed the "satanic panic," a period characterized by widespread allegations of ritual abuse at daycare centers and by organized cults. The FBI's own supervisory special agent Kenneth Lanning, who had written the bureau's primary analytical report on child sexual exploitation, published a January 1992 monograph in which he wrote that allegations of murder and abuse as part of organized satanic cults had "little or no corroborative evidence."⁴⁰ This institutional position, circulated widely within law enforcement before the 1993 reopening of the Finders case, shaped how federal investigators framed the evidence.⁴⁰ Washington City Paper journalist Eddie Dean conducted a long-form profile of Pettie in a May 24, 1996 piece titled "Finders' Keeper," based on direct interview with Pettie in Culpeper, Virginia. It remains the most substantial journalistic account based on primary access to the group's founder. Minnick, the author of the Unclassified piece, told Dean: "The Finders would love you to think they're a CIA front, but I would say they're really nothing."⁴⁴¹

The 2019 FBI Document Release

In November 2019, the FBI released several hundred pages of documents about The Finders through its FBI Vault online repository (vault.fbi.gov/the-finders), organized in four parts, under FOIA case number 1372462-0. The FBI described The Finders as among the most-requested topics in its Vault system.³ The CIA's own FOIA case log for April 2019 lists under F-2019-01304 a request for "Records on 'The Finders,' cult based out of Culpeper, VA, led by Marion David Pettie," dated April 8, 2019.⁴² A separate June 10, 2013 request to the CIA for "all records regarding The Finders cult" was declined in a final response of August 6, 2013 (F-2013-01931), which stated that the Agency's mission is foreign intelligence, that Section 103(d)(1) of the National Security Act gives it "no police, subpoena, law-enforcement powers, or internal security functions," and that Executive Order 12333 places domestic intelligence collection generally with the FBI.⁴³

U.S. News also reported in December 1993 that law enforcement sources said some of the Finders were listed in the FBI's classified counterintelligence files.⁴⁴ The released documents confirmed the classification of MPD reports as Secret, the direction not to brief the FBI's own Washington Field Office, the Stitcher CIA report, and the April 13, 1987 MPD Intelligence Division conclusion that the group had been "utilized by the CIA as a disinformation service." They did not resolve whether the CIA maintained a formal operational relationship beyond the Future Enterprises training connection, whether the Hong Kong telex represented a genuine trafficking order, or whether child trafficking as described in Martinez's reports occurred.³¹²

When the FBI assembled its released file, the documents included diagrams by Ted Gunderson relating to the McMartin preschool tunnel allegations, placed near the beginning of the first document batch alongside more substantive investigative materials including the Martinez customs reports and the Stitcher MPD report. The placement prompted commentary among researchers about whether the sequencing was incidental or designed to contextualize the Finders material within the broader satanic panic framework.³

Dissolution and Continued Activity

On March 11, 1987, Robert Garder Terrell announced that The Finders were "breaking up" after approximately seventeen years. He gave a follow-up statement to the Associated Press on March 23, 1987 confirming dissolution: "You won't hear from the Finders again until the year 2000."²⁴

On October 22, 1991, MPD Intelligence officers observed activity at the former Fourth Street NE warehouse, which the group did not sell until 1994. Officers documented "numerous well-dressed males, who operate rental cars and expensive luxury type models" entering the building at late-night and early-morning hours. Officers also observed adult males with a young male child entering the building. A van operator stopped by officers claimed to have "baby sat children for diplomats" and acknowledged the neighborhood was "not fit for babysitting activity." The MPD report, included in the FBI Vault release (pages 147-148 of the released materials), noted "possible child pornography."³

In 2018, Robert Garder Terrell gave his first public interview in over twenty-five years to journalist Derrick Broze of The Conscious Resistance Network, followed by another in 2021. Both were incorporated into Broze's documentary "Who Will Find What The Finders Hide?" released in March 2019.⁴⁵ Terrell denied all criminal allegations throughout.

Footnotes

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1. Dovey, S. (2023). Eye of the Chickenhawk. United States: Thehotstar. ↩︎

2. Martinez, Ramon J. U.S. Customs Service Reports, February 7, 1987 and April 13, 1987, as reproduced in Ted Gunderson's compilation. Internet Archive, https://archive.org/details/ted-gunderson-fbi-the-finders. ↩︎

3. FBI Vault, "The Finders," FOIA case number 1372462-0, vault.fbi.gov/the-finders (released November 2019, four parts). Parts 1 to 4 at https://archive.org/details/the-finders-part-01-of-04. Also cited: MintPress News, "Losing Finders" series, 2019-2021. https://www.mintpressnews.com/losing-finders-buried-documents-link-infamous-cult-to-cia/277756/. ↩︎

4. Dean, Eddie. "Finders' Keeper." Washington City Paper, May 24, 1996. https://washingtoncitypaper.com/article/287890/finders-keeper/. ↩︎

5. Fisher, Marc, and John Mintz. "Finders Group Has Its Roots in Popular '60s Hippie Refuge." Washington Post, February 7, 1987. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1987/02/07/finders-group-has-its-roots-in-popular-60s-hippie-refuge/2d6b5d9d-904f-4acd-a371-f560fca68b39/. ↩︎

6. Mintz, John, and Marc Fisher. "Ex-Finders Tell of Games, Complex Beliefs." Washington Post, February 8, 1987. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1987/02/08/ex-finders-tell-of-games-complex-beliefs/dcb48101-8d06-4777-a8e3-fcf46fd7ed0f/. ↩︎

7. Terrell, Tobe. The Gamecaller. Old Rag Publishing, Gainesville, Florida, 2009. Memoir by a former member, covering Pettie's background (birth in Culpeper in 1920, name change, Air Force chauffeur service, Eaker intelligence school), the Leary and Sandstone connections, and Pettie's death in October 2003. ↩︎

8. Witkin, Gordon, Peter Cary, and Angel Martinez. "Through a glass, very darkly: Cops, spies and a very odd investigation." U.S. News & World Report, December 27, 1993. Text as enclosed in FBI WMFO teletype dated December 23, 1993, FBI Vault "The Finders," FOIA 1372462-0, Part 1 of 4. ↩︎

9. Saperstein, Saundra, and Victoria Churchville. "Officials Describe 'Cult Rituals' in Child Abuse Case." Washington Post, February 7, 1987. Fisher, Marc, and John Mintz. "Finders Group Has Its Roots in Popular '60s Hippie Refuge." Washington Post, February 7, 1987. ↩︎

10. Minnick, Wendell L. "The Finders: The CIA and the Cult of Marion David Pettie." Unclassified, No. 35, Winter 1995. Unsigned "Investigative Leads" memo, no author or date, circulated mid-1990s. ↩︎

11. Rodriguez, Paul M. "CIA tied to cult accused of abuse; Justice probes links to Finders." Washington Times, December 17, 1993. ↩︎

12. Sword, Autumn. "Were 'The Finders' a CIA-Fronted Satanic Cult?" Skeptical Inquirer, February 28, 2023. https://skepticalinquirer.org/exclusive/were-the-finders-a-cia-fronted-satanic-cult/. Also: Washington Post, "Fla. Judge Sends 2 Finders Children to Foster Homes," June 1, 1987. ↩︎

13. Martinez, Ramon J. U.S. Customs Service, Report of Investigation, "Finders," Memo to File dated February 7, 1987, and Report of Investigation (Continuation) on the April 2, 1987 contact at the Metropolitan Police Department. https://archive.org/details/report_of_investigation_finders. ↩︎

14. Saperstein, Saundra, and Victoria Churchville. "Officials Describe 'Cult Rituals' in Child Abuse Case." Washington Post, February 7, 1987. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1987/02/07/officials-describe-cult-rituals-in-child-abuse-case/11f05df1-48e0-41f7-b46d-249c0bd2bc39/. ↩︎

15. Churchville, Victoria, and Marc Fisher. "D.C. Police: Finders Odd, Not Criminal." Washington Post, February 10, 1987. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1987/02/10/dc-police-finders-odd-not-criminal/7571c820-de20-4800-9781-711a8351f52f/. ↩︎

16. Fisher, Marc. "Finding Truth About Finders Proves to Be No Simple Matter." Washington Post, February 11, 1987. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1987/02/11/finding-truth-about-finders-proves-to-be-no-simple-matter/01c16d17-c301-4894-951f-b87052c9fd4f/. ↩︎

17. Stevenson, Douglas. "Two Finders Released." Washington Post, March 18, 1987. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1987/03/18/two-finders-released/35b2bc13-e56d-4c72-a587-97fe83f9b7da/. ↩︎

18. Witkin, Gordon, Peter Cary, and Angel Martinez. "Through a glass, very darkly," U.S. News & World Report, December 27, 1993 (Tallahassee investigator quoted; text as in FBI Vault "The Finders," FOIA 1372462-0, Part 1 of 4). ↩︎

19. Tallahassee Democrat, February 1987 coverage of the Myers Park arrest, reproduced in FBI Vault "The Finders," FOIA 1372462-0, Part 1 of 4 (clipping citing the Tallahassee Democrat's Page One and reporter Jan Pudlow). ↩︎

20. FBI Washington Metropolitan Field Office teletype on the 1987 file review and 1993 interviews (including the November 16, 1993 interview of Tallahassee Police Chief Melvin Tucker), FBI Vault "The Finders," FOIA 1372462-0, Part 1 of 4 and Part 3. https://archive.org/details/the-finders-part-01-of-04. ↩︎

21. FBI Vault "The Finders," FOIA 1372462-0, Part 1 of 4 (U.S. Customs Service report of Walter Kreitlow, Tallahassee, dated February 12, 1987 per the Kreitlow page). ↩︎

22. Martinez, Ramon J. Customs telex summary as reproduced in Gunderson compilation, archive.org/details/ted-gunderson-fbi-the-finders (passage on the Hong Kong purchase order and the Chinese Embassy contact). ↩︎

23. Witkin, Gordon, Peter Cary, and Angel Martinez. "Through a glass, very darkly: Cops, spies and a very odd investigation." U.S. News & World Report, December 27, 1993. Text as enclosed in FBI WMFO teletype dated December 23, 1993, FBI Vault "The Finders," FOIA 1372462-0, Part 1 of 4. ↩︎

24. FBI WMFO teletype to FBIHQ and Miami, November 24, 1993, FBI Vault "The Finders," FOIA 1372462-0, Part 1 of 4, quoting Sergeant J.H. Stitcher's MPD report of February 19, 1987 and the MPD Intelligence Division overview report of April 13, 1987. ↩︎

25. U.S. Customs Service Report of Investigation, Continuation, dated April 13, 1987 (signed by Ramon J. Martinez), FBI Vault "The Finders," FOIA 1372462-0, Part 2 of 4, passages on the MPD report and the CIA internal matter. ↩︎

26. FBI memorandum, WMFO, 1993 (undated in the released copy), FBI Vault "The Finders," FOIA 1372462-0, copy at https://archive.org/details/the.finders.fbi.foia. ↩︎

27. Terrell, Tobe. The Gamecaller. Old Rag Publishing, Gainesville, Florida, 2009 (passage on the CIA public denial and the rumor mill after the 1987 news broke). The writer's characterization of press skepticism is Terrell's own. ↩︎

28. FBI Vault "Future Enterprises, Inc.," FBI file reproduced at https://archive.org/details/future-enterprises-inc, and MPD report of February 19, 1987 as quoted in the FBI Vault release. ↩︎

29. FBI WFO communication, FBI Vault "The Finders," FOIA 1372462-0, Section 1 (WFO file), reporting an October 1993 meeting with Congressman Rose on the Finders matter. ↩︎

30. Potts, Larry A., memorandum dated December 22, 1993, FBI Vault "The Finders," FOIA 1372462-0, Part 1 of 4 (listing of entities examined, including Future Enterprises). Keeney memorandum dated October 26, 1993 appears in the FBI WMFO communication of November 1993 in the same release. ↩︎

31. Rodriguez, Paul M., Washington Times, December 17, 1993, as reproduced in FBI Vault "The Finders," FOIA 1372462-0, Part 1 of 4. ↩︎

32. FBI Vault "The Finders," FOIA 1372462-0, Part 3: FBIHQ and WMFO teletypes of May 10 to May 24, 1994 (file 31C-WF-189911); FBI airtel of September 1994 recording the September 23, 1994 meeting with Deputy Assistant Attorney General Kevin DeGregory; airtel of December 1994; FD-302 of January 31, 1995; WMFO closing memorandum of May 9, 1995. https://archive.org/details/the-finders-part-01-of-04. ↩︎

33. Lewis, Tom. "Help End Child Pornography and Exploitation: Cosponsor the Lewis Bill to Reestablish Child Pornography Unit," "Dear Colleague" letter, House of Representatives, January 25, 1993, reproduced in FBI Vault "The Finders," FOIA 1372462-0, Part 1 of 4. ↩︎

34. Norman, John David. See also John David Norman. Court records of convictions 1960-1998 as summarized on that page. ↩︎

35. Church Committee. Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans, Book II. S. Rept. 94-755, 94th Congress, 2d Session, April 26, 1976. ↩︎

36. Dovey, S. (2023). Eye of the Chickenhawk. United States: Thehotstar. Also: Project MKULTRA, the CIA's Program of Research in Behavioral Modification, Joint Senate Hearing, August 3, 1977; proposal "Experimental Analysis of Extrasensory Perception," CIA Subproject 136 file, 1961. ↩︎

37. Gunderson, Ted, compilation of Martinez customs reports, Internet Archive, https://archive.org/details/ted-gunderson-fbi-the-finders. Gunderson's pamphlet text includes the author's own commentary; the Martinez passages are cited as reproduced. ↩︎

38. DeCamp, John W. The Franklin Cover-Up. AWT Inc., 1992. Second edition 1996. Bryant, Nick. The Franklin Scandal. Trine Day, 2009. FBI Vault, "The Finders," FOIA case number 1372462-0, vault.fbi.gov/the-finders (released November 2019). ↩︎

39. Fisher, Marc and John Mintz, "Cult Member Defends 2 Men in Child Abuse Case," Washington Post, Sunday, February 1987, Page One, as clipped in FBI Vault "The Finders," FOIA 1372462-0, Part 1 of 4. ↩︎

40. Lanning, Kenneth V. "Investigator's Guide to Allegations of 'Ritual' Child Abuse." National Center for Missing and Exploited Children / NCAVC, FBI Academy, January 1992. ojp.gov/pdffiles1/Digitization/136592NCJRS.pdf. ↩︎

41. Dean, Eddie. "Finders' Keeper." Washington City Paper, May 24, 1996. https://washingtoncitypaper.com/article/287890/finders-keeper/ (quotation of Wendell Minnick). ↩︎

42. CIA Reading Room, document 06835030, FOIA case log April-June 2019, entry F-2019-01304, "Records on 'The Finders,' cult based out of Culpeper, VA, led by Marion David Pettie," dated April 8, 2019. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-06835030. ↩︎

43. Central Intelligence Agency, Information and Privacy Coordinator, final response to FOIA request F-2013-01931, August 6, 2013. CIA Reading Room document 06089249. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-06089249. ↩︎

44. Witkin, Gordon, Peter Cary, and Angel Martinez. "Through a glass, very darkly," U.S. News & World Report, December 27, 1993 (law enforcement sources quoted; text as in FBI Vault "The Finders," FOIA 1372462-0, Part 1 of 4). ↩︎

45. Broze, Derrick, and Jeremy Martin. "Who Will Find What The Finders Hide?" Documentary. The Conscious Resistance Network, March 2019. https://theconsciousresistance.com/thefinders/. ↩︎