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Post Info TOPIC: The Finders Cult
Shadowman


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RE: The Finders Cult
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The Finders group found itself in the news in February 1987 when an anonymous
caller phoned police to report two formally dressed men (Michael Houlihan and
Douglas Ammerman) supervising six casually dressed children--according to
police, they were unkempt, disheveled and bruised--at Myers Park in
Tallahassee, Florida. The police charged the men, members of the Finders, with
child abuse, and Detective Jim Bradley of the metropolitan police in
Washington, DC, used the arrest as a pretext to raid one of the Finders'
properties there, Bradley's men seized evidence they said may have been
indicative of an organized ring of pedophilic child kidnappers who made animal
sacrifices to Satan.

A report by Customs Special Agent Ramon J. Martinez claimed that documents
found at the Finders property "revealed detailed instructions for obtaining
children for unspecified purposes. The instructions included the impregnation
of female members of the community known as the Finders, purchasing children,
trading, and kidnapping. One telex specifically ordered the purchase of two
children in Hung Kong to be arranged through a contact in the Chinese embassy
there-" Martinez also reported that the seized Finders evidence included
"numerous photos of children, some nude, at least one of which was a photo of
a child 'on display' and appearing to accent the child's genitals ... a series
of photos of adults and children dressed in white sheets participating in a
"blood ritual." The ritual centered around the execution, disembowelment,
skinning and dismemberment of the goats at the hands of the children, this
included the removal of the testes of a male goat, the discovery of a female
goat's 'womb' and the 'baby goats' inside the womb and the presentation of a
goat's head to one of the children."




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Shadowman


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Posts: 140
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Despite this, charges against the men in Tallahassee were dropped, the
children were sent home to their parents unharmed (although the court attached
conditions to the return of two of them), and prosecutions were not pursued in
DC. Police authorities both in DC and Florida complained that the case was
mishandled because the Finders work for the CIA. When Martinez went to meet
with Detective Bradley to review the case, he was directed to a third party
who advised that all the passport data from the seized Finders material check
out as legal According to Martinez, "the individual further advised me of
circumstances which indicated that the investigation into the activity of the
Finders had become a CIA internal matter. The MPD (DC metropolitan police)
report has been classified secret and was not available for review. I was
advised that the FBI had withdrawn from the investigation several weeks prior
and that FBI Foreign Counter Intelligence Division had directed MPD not to


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Shadowman


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advise the FBI Washington Field office of anything that had transpired."

The Justice Department released Martinez's report and other documents about
the Finders when it opened a new investigation into the group's activities in
1993, in part to determine if the CIA had put the kibosh on the 1987
investigation. One memo claimed that the "CIA made one contact and admitted to
owning the Finders organization as a front for a domestic computer training
operation, but that it had gone bad." The operation, called Future
Enterprises, had hired a Finder, but dismissed him when his connection to the
group was exposed. North Carolina's Democratic representative Charlie Rose and
Florida's Republican representative Tom Lewis supported and publicized that
investigation, as did a former CIA operative named Skip Clemens (reported upon
by Chris Roth in Steamshovel Press #111 see also pp. 295-296 of Popular
Alienation.)



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Shadowman


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The Finders have more-or-less rational explanations for even the most bizarre
behavior attributed to them, especially in the context of a group that exists
to challenge social paradigms. Even the goat sacrifices, known as "Goatgate"
to the group, have been attributed to the Finders just play-acting at being
witches and warlocks, another "game" to dumbfound lookers-on. Many of the
Finders' games serve as parody or put-on. The store windows of its offices
include strange scarecrow artifacts and bumper sticker slogans like "Call
Police" with the letter "C" missing. The words "Promise Keepers" adorn the
marquis of an old theater owned by the Finders, although their meaning-perhaps
something to do with the manic Mtn of the infamous Christian movement Promise
Keepers--is lost to strangers. Not all the weirdest at Finders HQ is Finders
generated, however. Travelers arrive at Finders headquarter in Culpeper,
Virginia, an hour and a half northwest of Washington, DC, via state route 666.


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Shadowman


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Posts: 140
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The Tallahassee incident and subsequent interest placed the Finders'
reputation at the center of DC's conspiracy culture. That's no small feat in a
town where Operation Monarch sex-slave operations and powerful pedophilic
politicians rule the rumor roost. Steamshovel editor Kenn Thomas and author
Len Bracken (whose 1990 novel Freeplay included fictionalized reference to the
Finders) dropped in unannounced at the Finders facilities. At the time, eight
former members had filed a chancery action against the group to recover money
they had pooled into they currently considered a defunct partnership. More
evidence that Goatgate did cost the Finders money and members. Marion Pettie
was still holding court in Culpeper, however, and granted the -following
impromptu interview. It is presented here as a rare look at the controversies
surrounding the group, verbatim from the perspective of the main personality
at its core.



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