Finding Satan
A Paranoid's History of the United States episode 4
In this week’s episode, Joseph L. Flatley investigates the infamous Finders case—a 1987 incident where two men watching six children in a Tallahassee park sparked nationwide panic about satanic cults and child trafficking. What began as a routine police call transformed into one of the internet's most persistent conspiracy theories, fueled by leaked government documents claiming evidence of “satanic ceremonies” and an international child trafficking operation.
Through exclusive interviews with those directly involved, including two of the children (now adults) who were at the center of the controversy, this episode reveals the shocking truth: the Finders were neither CIA operatives nor satanic cultists, but an unconventional community with an alternative approach to child-rearing that clashed with mainstream values during the height of the Satanic Panic.
GUESTS INCLUDE Mary and Max, two of the Finders children, who reflect on their experience growing up in this controversial community.
INTERVIEWS conducted by Tyler Rabbit.
LINKS
Michael Howell interview: https://archive.org/details/unreleased-interview-with-finders-member
SOCIAL MEDIA
HOSTED BY JOSEPH L. FLATLEY. For bonus content and to stay up-to-date, sign up for my newsletter:
Transcript
Lenny Flatley: I’m Joseph L. Flatley. And from Amphibian Media, this is A PARANOID’S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. Each week, I explore America’s obsession with conspiracy theories, bringing untold stories to light and challenging what we think we know about our nation’s history.
ARCHIVAL: Finders news footage
Announcer: “What is known tonight is this. Authorities have the children and the two men accused of abusing those children and evidence that they may be only part of a larger dreadful story.
Announcer: “Law enforcement authorities suspect they may have stumbled on an international child abuse ring. When an anonymous call led police in Tallahassee Florida to this park two well-dressed men were discovered with six filthy, ragged, insect-bitten children aged two to six and a half.”
Announcer: “These six children are at the heart of a tale of alleged abuse and possible devil-worship.”
Lenny Flatley: On February 4, 1987, police in Tallahassee, Florida responded to what seemed like a routine call about suspicious activity in a local park. What they found would spark one of the most enduring conspiracy theories on the internet.
Two men in business suits were watching over six disheveled children between the ages of two and seven. The men were silent, refusing to answer questions. The children were unbathed and covered in insect bites.
They were members of an intentional community called the Finders.
This case would eventually involve multiple law enforcement agencies, claims of CIA connections, allegations of ritual sacrifice, and rumors of an international child trafficking ring. But the truth about the Finders — and why their story continues to captivate conspiracy theorists — would turn out to be far more complex than anyone imagined.
When the Finders were taken into custody, law enforcement agencies in Florida and Washington, D.C. investigated. The group was eventually cleared of wrongdoing, and that’s where the case would have remained were it not for a United States Customs Service document that subsequently leaked online.
In the report, Special Agent Ramon Martinez claimed to have found evidence of instructions on quote-unquote “obtaining” children through various means, including impregnation, purchase, and even kidnapping. He described telex messages discussing the purchase of children in Hong Kong and information about terrorism, explosives, and evading law enforcement.
Perhaps most alarmingly, Martinez described finding photographs of children, some nude, and a photo album depicting a “blood ritual” involving the slaughter of goats.
Before we can understand how the Finders became one of the internet’s most persistent conspiracy theories, we need to understand the fear that surrounded them. The late 1980s marked the height of the “Satanic Panic” — when Americans became convinced that devil-worshipping cults had infiltrated their most trusted institutions. And some of the loudest voices spreading these fears came from people who should have known better — therapists, politicians, and law enforcement officials. They devoted years of their lives hunting for evidence of a vast satanic conspiracy. And what they found — or thought they found — would transform the Finders from an eccentric commune into something far more sinister in the public imagination.
Stay tuned.
PART 1
ARCHIVAL: Geraldo
ANNOUNCER: “The investigative news group presents the Geraldo Rivera special DEVIL WORSHIP: EXPOSING SATAN’S UNDERGROUND.”
GERALDO: “Whether a Satan exists is a matter of belief. But we are certain that Satanism exists. To some it’s a religion, to others it’s the practice of evil in the devil’s name. It exists and it’s flourishing.
Lenny Flatley: The late 1980s were a moment when America’s worst fears seemed to be coming true all at once. The manufacturing economy was collapsing, taking entire communities with it. The AIDS epidemic was spreading, invisible and terrifying. Traditional values were being challenged on every front. Even the ideal of the nuclear family was crumbling as divorce rates climbed and more mothers entered the workforce.
In this atmosphere of uncertainty, people were primed to see threats everywhere, especially threats to children. And nothing captured these fears quite like the McMartin Preschool case in Manhattan Beach, California.
It started in 1983 with a single accusation of abuse. But once investigators got involved, particularly specialists from the Children’s Institute International led by a therapist named Kee MacFarlane, things quickly spiraled out of control.
The team used what they called “innovative” interview techniques — anatomically correct dolls, leading questions, rewards for “remembering” abuse. If a child denied anything happened, they’d keep pushing, convinced they were just too traumatized to tell the truth.
And the stories just kept getting weirder. The kids spoke of underground tunnels beneath the preschool where ritual abuse took place. They described being flown to other locations for ceremonies. There were tales of animal sacrifice, of drinking blood, of teachers who could fly.
None of this was backed up by physical evidence, of course, but the lack of evidence was seen as proof of how powerful the perpetrators were.
INVESTIGATION
Lenny Flatley: Within days of the arrest of the Finders, investigators in Florida and Washington, D.C. were searching properties, seizing documents, and trying to unravel what looked like a disturbing mystery. One agent on the scene described finding instructions for obtaining children and photos of what appeared to be ritual animal sacrifice.
But as investigators dug deeper, a very different picture emerged. The Finders were revealed to be an alternative living experiment that began in the seventies, centered around this eccentric former Army sergeant named Marion Pettie. Everyone called him “the Game Caller,” which sounds sinister until you understand what it meant.
ARCHIVAL: Mike Holwell
HOLWELL: “The ‘Game Caller,’ that was his title, and the game caller would, at any time, could, like, change the game and then reshuffle people and reconfigure them. So there was about 20 adults there at the time, but who lived where was always fluid.”
Lenny Flatley: Michael Holwell was one of the Finders arrested in Tallahassee.
ARCHIVAL: Mike Holwell
HOLWELL (clip): “It was all based on one day at a time. So if you didn’t want to play the game, you just left. But if you hung around, you’re expected to follow orders. If you didn’t want it, you just went away.”
Lenny Flatley: Marion Pettie would constantly shake up his followers’ routines. He’d have members relocate in the middle of the night or rearrange their living situations. The goal was breaking down conventional thinking, creating what he saw as a more fluid, adaptable community.
And the worst rumors — that the kids didn’t know what telephones or toilets were, that they were purchased on some sort of international satanic black market — were not true either.
ARCHIVAL: Mike Holwell
HOLWELL: “The men always, almost always, wore suits kind of like the suit that an elevator guy would wear. Like a blue blazer and the gray slack tie, you know?”
HOLWELL: “The idea is to be fairly well dressed, not crazy, but be reasonably well dressed, have a nice appearance. The problem is that that well dressed mode didn’t fit that setting, especially with the kids being so dirty, it’s looking really strange.”
Lenny Flatley: After 42 days in jail, the two Finders were released. Investigators found no evidence of child trafficking, no ritual abuse, no CIA involvement — nothing criminal at all. The children were reunited with their mothers, most of whom took their kids and left the community, scattering across the country from Tallahassee to Berkeley.
TED’s BACK!
ARCHIVAL: “MK ULTRA Mind Control”
TED GUNDERSON: “This is the beginning of documentation that our government is involved in kidnapping children […] In February 1987, February 5th as a matter of fact, two well-dressed men with children varying in age from 2 to 7 — six of them, as I recall — were arrested in Tallahassee Florida. From the arrest the police traced the van up to Washington DC to an organization known as the Finders. To make a long story short, Customs learned that the Metropolitan Police Department obtained search warrants, went in and found evidence of satanic ceremonies, found documentation that children were being kidnapped off the streets and exported and flown around the world — London, Germany, to the Far East in the Middle East.”
Lenny Flatley: If you’ve been listening to this show from the beginning, you already know Ted Gunderson. We covered him extensively during our look at the Jeffrey MacDonald case, and trust me, he’s going to keep popping up throughout this series. The man had a knack for inserting himself into any case that had even a whiff of conspiracy about it.
Gunderson was a former high-ranking FBI official who, after retirement, became convinced he was uncovering evidence of a vast satanic conspiracy in America. When he heard about the Finders case, it fit perfectly into this narrative.
ARCHIVAL: “MK ULTRA Mind Control”
TED GUNDERSON: “You remember they used to put the kids pictures on the milk cartons? They took them off. I contend — I don’t know, I can’t tell you why, but I contend — too many kids were being located through those milk cartons. Your federal government doesn’t want you to find these kids, because your federal government — particularly The Finders, a CIA organization out of Washington DC — is the biggest motivating factor behind the missing children in this country today. Why? Well there’s several reasons — kids are used for body parts, sex slaves, um they’re used for the satanic ceremonies. And a 10-12 year old blue eye blond-haired kid will sell on The Auction Block outside Las Vegas, outside Toronto Canada, and in a barn in Lincoln, Nebraska — these are the three locations I’m aware of — for $50,000.”
Lenny Flatley: To Michael Holwell, this kind of talk is absurd.
ARCHIVAL: Mike Holwell
HOLWELL: ”I look back at my Finders years as kind of a college education where I didn’t have to pay any tuition. Yeah, I was there about nine years, and it was a good education. I learned some skills, and I still have an idealism about community.”
Lenny Flatley: When we come back, we’ll hear from the children at the center of the Finders case — now adults. What was daily life actually like in a group that let kids get dirty, sleep outdoors, and learn from nature? And how did a simple goat butchering become twisted into tales of satanic sacrifice? All that and more, coming up on A PARANOID’S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES.
PART 2
ARCHIVAL: Finders news footage
POLICE SPOKESMAN: “The organization is probably some type of satanic cult. According to the Washington DC officials, a prerequisite of joining this group is to give up the rights to your children.”
NEWS ANCHOR: “Evidence led to two locations in Washington operated by a commune — possibly a cult — called the Finders. D.C. police seized computer and video equipment, as well as photographs from a warehouse, according to a police source. The pictures show rituals involving children, animals and bloodletting. A neighbor of this Finders’ home recognized several of the six children and said the girl who calls herself Mary talked about the Finders’ lifestyle.”
FINDERS NEIGHBOR: “She used to say that, uh, she slept out back on the porch and the little kids slept in a tent.”
Lenny Flatley: While Ted Gunderson was building his case for a vast satanic conspiracy, the children at the center of the Finders case were experiencing something very different. Their world wasn’t one of ritual abuse and trafficking, but rather an unusual educational experiment that emphasized personal autonomy and natural learning.
What Ted failed to do — indeed, what everybody telling this story fails to do — is speak to the children themselves.
That is, everybody except my friend Tyler Rabbit. He is a magician who performs at the Magic Castle in Los Angeles. He’s also conducted interviews with nearly everybody involved in the story. Law enforcement, journalists, and the Finders themselves. With his permission, I’m going to play you some excerpts from his interviews.
INTERVIEW: Mary
MARY: “I was the oldest child. I grew up there from about age six months to age seven, seven and a half. So, seven years of my — beginning of my life. So it’s definitely sort of shaped who I am in a lot of ways. And when we left, I kind of had to figure out a whole new social skill structure kind of thing, because I was used to being treated as a person rather than a kid. You know, like an adult, even, I guess you can say that. I don’t know if I was exactly treated as an adult, but more just like, my thoughts and actions mattered just as much as anybody else’s.”
Lenny Flatley: Mary was the oldest of the Finders kids.
Within the community, children were treated as people, first and foremost. Their thoughts and opinions were given the same weight as adults’.
The Finders’ nomadic lifestyle meant constant movement, which would later fuel suspicions of trafficking. In reality, this was central to the group’s educational philosophy. The goal was to create adaptable, self-directed learners who could thrive in any environment.
This radical approach to childhood development would prove difficult to explain to authorities who saw any deviation from conventional child-rearing as inherently suspicious.
INTERVIEW: Mary
MARY: “Every day was so different.”
MARY: “But you know, there was — there’s always someone around that like you know would make sure we had something to eat. And then we would just kind of go from there, depending on where we were. It kind of depended on what we were doing. But if we were in the country, we would just go play in the woods and you know, catch frogs and jump in the creek, or — depending on the time of year. And then, you know, we would just wander back when we were hungry. Eat some more, and then play more. And then we would go to sleep. And sometimes when we woke up in the morning we woke up in a different place than when we went to sleep.”
MARY: “Kids are heavy sleepers, you can pick them up and move them. So sometimes we would go to sleep and then they would pick us up and put us in a van and drive somewhere, and then we’d wake up in another place.” [laughs]
Lenny Flatley: More lurid than the image of two men in suits — driving around the country with six filthy children — were photographs discovered at the Finders’ home in Washington, D.C. According to one Customs official, the pictures depicted animal sacrifice involving children in robes.
Max, who was five at the time, is the second eldest of the Finders children. Here, he describes what happened when the kids were taken by authorities in Florida.
INTERVIEW: Max pt. 1
MAX: “There was a couple of days of spending the night in orphanage.And then after that, my mom came and I got to talk with her and after that, I think that I just got put into the foster care system because they were trying to see whether this was a fit place for a child to live. You know, as this was going on, they discovered evidence of more weird things that seemed illegal. Like we had some goats, and then we slaughtered the goats. This was out in the country — not in the city, obviously. But yeah, we’ve got all this property and we had these goats and a little goat pen but it got really cold. I mean, not so cold. It was in Virginia, it just snowed. And so then if you’re going to raise kids, they have to be inside more. That’s a little less fun for the kids. Sometimes during the winters, we would go down to Florida or whatever. And this was sort of like one of those times. So it’s a lot of goats and because they were city boys, they’re like, ‘oh my god, we’re gonna have a goat slaughtering. It’s amazing. Let’s take pictures of the whole process.’ We ended up butchering them and skinning them and you know, trying to use all the parts and, you know, whatever sort of city boy’s ideology of farm life would be. None of them I think grew up on a farm or anything like that, but we asked some neighbors, you know, what’s the best way to do it. So yeah, they slaughtered the goats. Henrietta and Igor. And there’s all these photographs of these kids hanging around.”
Lenny Flatley: The Finders had a name for the controversy whipped up by the photos: “Goatgate.”
The goats were raised by the community as both pets and food animals. The butchering was viewed as an educational opportunity, teaching children where food comes from. But in the climate of the Satanic Panic, these ordinary agricultural activities took on sinister implications.
The impact of the media frenzy was immediate and devastating. The six children in Tallahassee were separated from their caregivers for six weeks while investigators searched for evidence of abuse that didn’t exist.
Then they were returned to their mothers and everybody forgot about the events in Tallahassee.
For the time being.
INTERVIEW: Max 2
MAX: “I really value the lessons that I have learned in my life. And I don’t suspect I would have had the opportunity to learn those lessons in quite the same profound way had it not been for this community. So I’m really thankful that, you know, that I had this.”
TYLER: “So I have to ask you, are you a Manchurian Candidate super spy created by satanic blood ritual?”
MAX: “It’s just impossible to know until I’m activated.”
CONCLUSION
ARCHIVAL: Save The Children March
Marchers chanting “our kids are not for sale.” Fade into:
ARCHIVAL: References to QAnon
CLIP: “The cause sounds good: ‘save the children.’ But nationally, some rallies have been tied to bizarre conspiracy theories involving pedophilia and the Democratic party.”
Lenny Flatley: The Finders case might seem like ancient history. But its core elements — allegations of ritual abuse, shadowy government connections, and endangered children — continue to resonate in modern American culture.
ARCHIVAL: Group marches through Downtown Bakersfield
CLIP: “”Everybody needs to be aware. They need to know this is going on. A child is taken every 26 seconds. That’s a lot.”
Lenny Flatley: When QAnon emerged in 2017 — thirty years after the events of Goatgate — it followed a remarkably similar template to the Finders conspiracy. But why do these stories about pedophile rings and child trafficking hold such enduring appeal?
What we’re seeing is the intersection of several powerful psychological forces — our instinct to protect children at all costs, our suspicion of authority figures, and our need to make sense of a confusing world.
The emotional intensity surrounding child safety makes people willing to believe the worst, even without evidence. During the Satanic Panic, this led to innocent daycare workers being accused of impossible crimes. With QAnon, it led to politicians and celebrities being accused of running underground trafficking rings.
Of course, it does muddy the waters a bit, the fact that sometimes politicians and celebrities do run underground trafficking rings. But it’s happening a lot less often that you think. And a child is not being kidnapped every 26 seconds.
The Finders weren’t CIA operatives or satanic cultists. They were something both simpler and more threatening to the status quo — people who dared to question conventional wisdom about how to live and raise children. What their story teaches us isn’t about secret cabals or government conspiracies. It’s about how quickly fear can transform the unfamiliar into the unthinkable, and how these transformations can echo across decades, finding new life in each generation’s anxieties.
Despite the drama and the conspiracy theories, Mary looks back on her childhood fondly.
INTERVIEW: MARY
MARY: ”I felt free. I didn’t feel like I had an unhappy childhood or anything like that. [...] I mean, there’s certain times it was probably not the safest environment for kids but it was definitely a very free environment for exploration and learning and figuring, you know, feeling confident. That kind of competence that comes with not having adults tell you that you can’t do something.”
Lenny Flatley: The patterns that turned the Finders into an urban legend haven’t gone away. They’ve just found new targets, new villains, new conspiracies to expose. And in an age of social media and instant communication, these fears can spread faster than ever.
The real story here isn’t about Satan worshippers or deep state cabals. It’s about how easily we can be convinced to fear each other, and how those fears can be weaponized to divide us.