Children of the Finders speak!

More true stories from an alleged CIA Mind Control Cult

The Finders were an intentional community that had its heyday in the 1980s. After a brief run-in with the law, a number of conspiracy theories about the group started circulating. These days, it's mostly known as a “mind control cult” and a CIA operation run amok — ideas that the former members scoff at.

By Joseph L. Flatley and Tyler Rabbit

For more background, read From The Finders to QAnon. If you're really curious, Joseph L. Flatley’s zine The Finders: Lost and Found is available from Big Cartel.

Marion D. Pettie

The visionary who started it all, the founding Finder, was a man with many names: The Student, The Stroller, The Gamecaller. He was born Marion David Pettie on December 12, 1920. Pettie enlisted in the Army at the age of 15 and transferred to the Air Force in 1947. He retired in 1955, took his pension, and never worked again.

When Pettie joined the Army, the legal enlistment age was 16 years old. To leave home, he had to convince his parents to lie to the recruiter about his birthday. Pettie did this through not-too-subtle intimidation: After coming across an article in the newspaper about a boy who killed his parents, he clipped it and left it on the kitchen table. “I didn’t say anything about the article,” Pettie said. “I just cut it out of the paper and left it on the dining room table, so my father would find it.”

This tactic must have worked because Pettie’s parents acquiesced and soon he was in Panama, serving as an underaged lifeguard for the U.S. Army. The teenage soldier sat out by the base pool, reading books and working on his tan for three years. This created the template for how he would live his entire life — by learning as much (and working as little) as possible.

By the late sixties, Pettie was living with his wife and two sons in the Washington, D.C. area. It was around this time that he began assembling the intentional community that came to be known as The Finders.

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