Magic Kingdom Dispatch: The Strange Case of the Finders 18

The Finders Case

In 1987, The New York Times published, “Inquiry Spreads on 6 Children and Cult,” introducing America to The Finders. On February 7 of that year, The Times wrote that “The children, two girls and four boys 2 to 7 years old, were discovered in a Tallahassee playground on Thursday.” Two men were charged with child abuse and arrested.

US News and World Report cited a Customs Service memorandum written by Special Agent Ramon J. Martinez that named the two men as Mr. Michael Houlihan and Mr. Douglas Ammerman.

US News & World Report, December 1993 / January 1994.

In due course, police obtained warrants and searched a home in Northwest Washington, DC and a warehouse, seizing boxes of records, documents and computer programs.

Mystifyingly, The Times cited “detectives,” who doubted that child pornography was involved.

“However….evidence indicated that children were involved in rituals,” not otherwise characterized, and these same “detectives” “declined to comment on reports that the Finders were worshipers of the devil.”

In Madison County, Virginia, “authorities” searched five farms and homes alleged to belong to the Finders. The FBI was called in, as evidence indicated that the Finders transported children across state lines.

The article concludes, “The children, who had not been bathed in several days when they were found, had insect bites and had not been fed in more than a day. Investigators said the children appeared to be ignorant of such daily conveniences as hot water and electricity.”

The Chicago Tribune, however, wrote that “At least two of six disheveled children found in a Tallahassee, FL park and believed to be the offspring of a Washington-based cult had been sexually abused.”

A spokesman for the Tallahassee Police Department said that a doctor determined that “more than one showed evidence of sexual abuse.”

Mr. Scott Hunt, the Tallahassee PD spokesman, said that the two adult male minders of The Finders children “originally told police they were taking the children to a school for brilliant children in Mexico.” Then they “invoked their constitutional right to remain silent.”

Forever after consolidating themselves in conspiracy lore, an account credited to former FBI agent Ted Gunderson stated that “Cursory examination of documents revealed detailed instructions for obtaining children for unspecified purposes. The instructions included the impregnation of female members of the community, purchasing children, trading and kidnapping.”

“There were pictures of nude children and adult Finders, as well as evidence of high-tech money transfers. There was a file called “Pentagon Break-in,” and references to activities in Moscow, Hong Kong, China, Malaysia, North Vietnam, North Korea, Africa, London, Germany, “Europe,” and the Bahamas. There was also a file labeled “Palestinian.”

“One such telex specifically ordered the purchase of two children in Hong Kong to be arranged through a contact in the Chinese Embassy there.”

Later, the article states:

“All investigation of the “Finders” cult by the FBI, US Customs and local law enforcement was ordered stopped by the US Justice Department on the grounds of “national security” and the matter of the “Finders” was turned over to the Central Intelligence Agency as an “internal security matter,” since the “Finders” is and has been a domestic and international covert operation of the Central Intelligence Agency.”

Then:

“The story of the Finders cult is the story of the development of child / assets to be used to entrap politicians, diplomats; corporate and law enforcement officials; to sell child / victims to wealthy perverts to raise money for covert operations, to train some of the child / victims to be professional operatives and assassins of a totally cold, multiple personality, mind control nature.”

Mothers in Washington were quoted in the article, saying that they remembered the children as “poorly dressed, poorly supervised and never playing with other children.”

The article continued, “They never had any toys… They played with leaves and sticks. I never saw them when they weren’t filthy.”

Another article in the Washington City Paper said that police “found a photo album entitled “The Execution of Henrietta and Igor,” a series of snapshots depicting berobed adults and children slaughtering goats in a wintry woodscape.

One photo depicted giggling toddlers pulling dead kids from a womb (“Baby goats! ran the caption); another showed a grinning adult presenting a goat’s head to a startled child.”

The same article noted that “The Finders are still listed in the business section of the DC phone book, but the line just rings endlessly.”

Later the article states, “The child abuse charges were dropped, but all many people remember…was something about animal sacrifice: “We were just slaughtering the goats for food.” A former member of the Finders concludes, “People take pictures of their kids doing all sorts of things.”

This article seems to dismiss The Finders as a sort of cult, ultimately harmless.

That appears to be the judgement of history, as well.

And yet …