Chapter 1 of The Finders

Marion David Pettie’s Early Life Before The Finders Network

Marion David Pettie’s story is larger than life, almost as if it was taken from the script of a cult classic movie. Was Pettie an intelligence asset, a spook, or was he just a kook as some have characterized him? Pettie was born and raised in Culpeper, Virginia, on December 12, 1920. Culpeper is seventy miles southwest of Washington, D.C. Pettie’s mother was Virginia Burke Pettie (1898-1986), and his father was David Clinton Pettie (1896-1972). Pettie had at least one sibling, a younger brother, Russel Clinton Pettie (1923-1954). Pettie had many family members that lived in the Nethers/Culpeper, Virginia, area. Pettie’s grandmother on his maternal side was Jean Catherine Jenkins (1874-1920), and she married Puller C. Burke (1874-1955) in 1894. Puller Burke was supposedly a local gravedigger within the Culpeper area. Jeannie’s grandfather Aylett Jenkins was an early settler in the Nethers area. Pettie’s great-grandfather was supposedly a wheelwright named Bob Pettie, who owned a shop and a cabin on the High Field and may have owned a lead mine. Finally, Pettie’s ancestors supposedly have lived around the Culpeper, Virginia region since the 1600s, and many were German carpenters.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]

When Marion Pettie was a child, he supposedly frequently went grave robbing with his friends. Pettie and his childhood friends had a club that would meet in a loft of an abandoned barn. When they went grave robbing in an abandoned Arlington cemetery for the first time, they dug up an old grave looking for a skull for their club. When their club would have meetings, they would place the skull they found on their first outing in the center of their sitting circle. Quite macabre that as a child, Pettie had a secret society where he and his friends dug up a skull and held occult meetings around it. Pettie’s club was foreshadowing The Finders Network occult-like activities. As The Finders Network leader, Pettie sometimes held meetings within a circle surrounding a skull. “Was it some kind of a ritual?” some Finders Network members would later ask Pettie. “No,” Pettie supposedly says. “It was just to remind us of our mortality. Everybody would be better off if they did that every day. Ya’ll ought to get a skull and put it in the middle of the circle when you have a meeting, so you won’t forget how you’re going to end up.”[8]