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Raw Blame History

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 Members pooled finances into what Robert Gardner Terrell called the "Invisible Bank," with some members contributing life savings to the communal fund.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.⁴⁵ His stated life philosophy, offered to journalist Eddie Dean in 1996, was "to know everything and do nothing."⁴

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 dozens of children at the Virginia farm during summer periods, sometimes naked or appearing distressed.⁶

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.⁴¹
1307 Fourth Street NE, Washington D.C.: A 10,000-square-foot warehouse owned of record by Robert Gardner 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.¹²
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.⁴⁶

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.¹

Robert Gardner 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.¹²

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 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 1961.² 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.² Pettie confirmed in a 1993 interview with U.S. News & World Report that his wife "once worked for the Central Intelligence Agency."³

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.³ George Pettie had broken contact with his father by 1985 and was operating a home inspection business in Northern Virginia at the time of the 1987 investigations. In a 1987 interview he described the circa-1971 Glover Park gatherings as "the beginning of a new life" for his father and followers.⁴

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 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

An anonymous three-page investigative memo circulated among researchers in the 1990s alleged a more formal intelligence relationship: that in 1946 Pettie served as chauffeur to General Ira Eaker, then commanding general of Army Air Forces in the Mediterranean, and that publisher Charles Marsh subsequently arranged for Pettie to receive counterintelligence training. 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 These claims are unverified and the memo's authorship is unknown. They are not corroborated by accessible primary sources.

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 Edward Ammerman, age 27, and James Michael Holwell, age 28, both from Washington D.C.¹⁷

The six children ranged in age from approximately two to eleven 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.⁸¹

Florida HRS physician Dr. Moorer found two children with findings consistent with sexual abuse, including one showing signs of sodomy and another of vaginal penetration. A subsequent psychiatric examination by Dr. Nahman Greenberg found "no signs of recent sexual or physical abuse."⁷ Items found in the van included a TRS-80 computer, twenty floppy computer disks, a telephone connection device, and a Chinese-English dictionary.¹

Ammerman and Holwell were charged with misdemeanor child abuse. Bond was initially set at $100,000, reduced to $20,000 on February 19. 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 one additional woman.⁷ On March 11, Judge Victor Cawthon returned three children to their mothers without restrictions and declared three children state dependents pending further supervision. All charges against Ammerman and Holwell were dropped for lack of evidence, and they were released on March 17-18, 1987.⁷

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 in Washington D.C. already had preexisting information from an informant about The Finders' practices. Search warrants were secured for the warehouse and the Glover Park property, and Virginia State Police separately raided the Madison County farm on February 6.¹

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.¹²

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"
Photographs of unidentified individuals including nude images and images of children
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 kidnapping¹²

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.¹² No second investigator present at the raid independently confirmed this specific document in accessible records, and the Skeptical Inquirer's 2023 analysis noted its existence rests on Martinez's reports alone.⁷

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."¹

Evidence gathered from the properties also included what Martinez's report described as intelligence files on private families, apparently compiled through placements of tutor and babysitter advertisements.¹

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.¹

Virginia Farm

Virginia State Police found at the Madison County farm what they described 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. No criminal charges resulted from the farm search.⁶

CIA Involvement and Investigation Suppression

On February 6, 1987, the Federal Bureau of Investigation 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 -- a division that confused investigators at the time and was later documented in FBI Vault records.¹²

An MPD report filed February 19, 1987 by Sgt. John H. Stitcher Jr., titled "Re: Finders involvement with the CIA," described a CIA official acknowledging Isabelle Pettie's employment with the agency and stating that the investigation had been "treading on their toes" and that the CIA had a "vested interest" in the group.¹² Stitcher died in 1993 before he could be interviewed during a subsequent Department of Justice inquiry.

In late March or early April 1987, Martinez met with Stitcher, who told him the investigation "had become a CIA internal matter." Martinez's April 13, 1987 report concluded: "The MPD report has been classified SECRET... FBI had withdrawn from the investigation... FBI Foreign Counter Intelligence Division had directed MPD not to advise the FBI Washington Field Office... No further information will be available. No further action will be taken."¹

The investigation was declared closed by the FBI in early 1987. An FBI spokesman stated investigators had found no evidence of federal violations including kidnapping or use of children for pornographic purposes.⁸

In 1994, the U.S. Customs Service proposed to remove Martinez from his position for what it described as improperly disclosing case information to a close co-worker of an individual under investigation. By letter of December 7, 1994, the penalty was subsequently mitigated to a five-day suspension without pay and reassignment from Special Agent to Physical Security Specialist, GS-080-13.²

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."³

Robert Gardner Terrell, described in sources as a former IRS appeals officer and the warehouse's owner of record, was that member. Terrell was associated with Future Enterprises as a computer trainer. Vice president Joseph Marinich confirmed in contemporaneous reporting that CIA employees had received training at the company during the 1980s.³ The CIA's public position was that employees who received training at Future Enterprises did so in the normal course of procurement and that no one in the agency knew of any connection between Future Enterprises and The Finders at the time.³

The 1993 Congressional and DOJ Investigation

The case was revived in 1993 when Henry T. "Skip" Clements, a private consultant in Stuart, Florida, obtained copies of Martinez's customs reports. Clements provided the documents to U.S. Representatives Tom Lewis (R-FL) and Charlie Rose (D-NC). Lewis made public statements questioning whether the government had protected The Finders at the expense of the children.³

Congressional pressure, combined with the prospect of a CBS 48 Hours segment on the case, prompted the Department of Justice to reopen the matter. An October 26, 1993 memo from Acting Assistant Attorney General John C. Keeney tasked the FBI with a preliminary inquiry into the CIA interference allegations.²

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, 1993.² Rodriguez was described by colleagues as the only journalist to directly quote significant portions of the Martinez customs documents. 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 confirming his wife's CIA employment and his son's Air America service, as well as CIA spokesman Christian's formal statement.³

The DOJ and FBI concluded their inquiry in late 1993 and early 1994. A November 16, 1993 memo from Tallahassee Police Chief Mel Tucker stated that no outside agency, domestic or foreign, had contacted anyone in his department to influence the investigation.⁷ The CIA's formal position, per David Christian, was that any connection to The Finders was "an indirect, tangential association" through the Future Enterprises training relationship alone.³ No criminal charges resulted and the case was again closed.

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.⁸¹

John David Norman (October 13, 1927 - 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 through a network of clients he called "sponsors."⁹ The address-book overlaps documented in FBI records represent the primary documented connection between The Finders and Norman's network; the underlying FBI documents have not been independently reviewed through accessible primary sources.

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 and established a private investigation firm, obtained copies of the Martinez customs reports and made them widely available, 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, citing The Finders as a central example.² He died of cancer on July 31, 2011. His role was that of a private investigator and public advocate rather than an official government investigator, and his broader claims about CIA child trafficking programs have not been corroborated by accessible primary sources.

Media Coverage and the Satanic Panic Context

Initial coverage broke in the Washington Post on February 7, 1987, through a series of articles by Marc Fisher and John Mintz describing cult rituals and the warehouse contents.⁸ D.C. Police Chief Maurice T. Turner announced on February 10, 1987 that police had found no evidence of criminal wrongdoing.⁸

The case emerged during the height of what social scientists later termed the "satanic panic" - a period in the mid-1980s characterized by widespread allegations, often unsubstantiated, of ritual abuse at daycare centers and by organized cults. The FBI's public closure of the investigation without charges, combined with media pivot toward skeptical coverage, followed a pattern seen in other contemporaneous cases. The Washington Post subsequently published an opinion piece dismissing the case as an artifact of this climate.⁸

Washington City Paper journalist Eddie Dean conducted the definitive long-form profile of Pettie in a May 24, 1996 piece titled "Finders' Keeper," based on a direct interview with Pettie, then 76, in Culpeper, Virginia. It remains the most substantial journalistic account of the group based on primary access to its founder.⁴

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. The FBI described The Finders as among the most-requested topics in its Vault system.²

The released documents included the 1993 DOJ inquiry paperwork, the Tallahassee Police Chief's November 1993 memo, and records of the FBI's internal preliminary inquiry. They confirmed that the FBI's Foreign Counterintelligence Division had directed MPD not to brief the FBI's Washington Field Office, and that MPD reports had been classified Secret. The documents did not resolve the central disputed questions: whether the CIA maintained a formal operational relationship with The Finders beyond the Future Enterprises training connection; whether the telex message describing a Hong Kong children purchase order was authentic; or whether child trafficking as described in Martinez's reports occurred.²⁷

A 2023 analysis by Skeptical Inquirer (Autumn Sword, "Were 'The Finders' a CIA-Fronted Satanic Cult?", February 28, 2023) concluded that the released records did not support the CIA-front or child trafficking interpretations, characterizing the affair as substantially shaped by the satanic panic context and by the particular investigative lens of the era.⁷

Dissolution and Aftermath

On March 11, 1987, as the custody proceedings concluded in Florida, Robert Gardner Terrell announced to the press that The Finders were "breaking up" after approximately seventeen years: "You won't hear from the Finders again until the year 2000." He gave a follow-up interview to the Associated Press on March 23, 1987 confirming the group's dissolution.⁴¹

In October 1991, MPD officers observed activity at the previously raided Fourth Street NE warehouse: well-dressed men operating rental cars and luxury vehicles entering the building at late and early morning hours, on at least one occasion with a young male child, after midnight. A van operator told officers he "did research stuff and babysat children for diplomats." Officers found the explanation suspicious, given the neighborhood and hours, but no further action was documented.⁸

Marion Pettie died on October 24, 2003, in Culpeper, Virginia.⁴

In 2018, 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. The interviews were incorporated into Broze's documentary "Who Will Find What The Finders Hide?" released in March 2019.¹⁰ Terrell denied all criminal allegations throughout.

Documented vs. Alleged

The following are confirmed by primary sources:

Isabelle Pettie worked for the CIA (FBI Vault documents)
Isabelle Pettie held passports to North Korea, North Vietnam, and the Soviet Union (FBI Vault documents)
George Pettie worked for Air America (Marion Pettie, U.S. News & World Report, 1993)
CIA sent employees to Future Enterprises for computer training (CIA spokesman David Christian, 1993)
Robert Gardner Terrell was associated with Future Enterprises (multiple sources)
The FBI's Foreign Counterintelligence Division classified MPD reports Secret and barred the FBI's own Washington Field Office from being briefed (Martinez reports; FBI Vault)
A CIA official told MPD investigators the case was a "CIA internal matter" and acknowledged agency interest in the group (MPD Sgt. Stitcher report, February 19, 1987, cited in FBI Vault documents)

The following are alleged in investigative reports or secondary sources but not confirmed by independently accessible primary evidence:

That The Finders functioned as a CIA operational front or training program
That the CIA directed suppression of child abuse investigations
That the Hong Kong children telex represented a genuine trafficking order rather than fantasy material or a misidentified document
The specific claims in the anonymous 1990s investigative memo regarding Colonel Weigner, Major Varga, and Charles Marsh as handlers

Footnotes

Martinez, Ramon J. U.S. Customs Service Reports, February 7, 1987 and April 13, 1987. Reproduced via FBI Vault and Ted Gunderson archive. Internet Archive, https://archive.org/details/ted-gunderson-fbi-the-finders. ↩︎
MintPress News. "Losing Finders: How the US Government Worked to Keep the CIA Connection Secret" and "Losing Finders: The Buried Documents that Linked the Infamous Cult to the CIA." MintPress News, 2019. https://www.mintpressnews.com/losing-finders-buried-documents-link-infamous-cult-to-cia/277756/. Also: FBI Vault, "The Finders," vault.fbi.gov/the-finders (November 2019 release, four parts). ↩︎
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 / January 3, 1994. ↩︎
Dean, Eddie. "Finders' Keeper." Washington City Paper, May 24, 1996. https://washingtoncitypaper.com/article/287890/finders-keeper/. ↩︎
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/. ↩︎
Fisher, Marc and John Mintz. "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/. ↩︎
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/. ↩︎
Dovey, S. (2023). Eye of the Chickenhawk. United States: Thehotstar. ↩︎
Norman, John David. Wikipedia, citing FBI Dallas field office files and multiple conviction records. See also John David Norman. ↩︎
Broze, Derrick, and Jeremy Martin. "Who Will Find What The Finders Hide?" Documentary. The Conscious Resistance Network, March 2019. https://theconsciousresistance.com/thefinders/. ↩︎

28 KiB Raw Blame History