Each apartment had immense displays of pink azaleas and tiger lilies, arranged as if for a garden show. In the light, it was obvious that the furniture was shabby, that the fabrics were second-rate. "I am a little bit afraid to go public with my story," she said, "but I believe it will help others. What's the big deal? I have been in journalism a lot longer than you, young lady! Early on, he felt the strong need to camouflage the fact that he had grown up in Brooklyn. They never saw that side in Lake Lure, however. His hair was the color of canned pineapple; his eyes were hard, cold blue, the eyes of a man who finds little surprising anymore. ''Germans have created everything, '' he told me. I had another question: Was it, in the end, the need to make his mark in louche New York that caused Frederick von Mierers to believe so totally the myths he had created about himself? To whom do these thoughts arise and whence do they come? "He teaches us how to aspire to be the best we can. More, she had been taught to dress by a fine stylist who had taken her to Chanel and Scaasi to rid her of the jeans and sneakers of her modest Florida childhood. "It is not working! And a voice said to me, 'Be calm, be calm, the transition will be easy. ", I was staring into the face of Frederick von Mierers. What a dummy I was. ", "Things happen. Eileen Ford said "As far as I'm concerned, he's a crumbum.". Von Mierers seems to have been aided in his gem operation by several New York jewelry appraisers, who were gifted fantasists when it came to evaluating the Eternal Values stones. "It was Frederick's idea to strip us of our egos through sexual humiliation," a model told a prosecutor in the office of the Manhattan district attorney. "It is possible to raise the vibration of your consciousness through the. "He showed me a pamphlet called something like 'The I Is Life' that he was going to sell. He is making tapes for him that are anti-Semitic and anti-women! "When I owned a modeling agency, Freddie was always around. "Frederick has helped so many people. The first time I tried to leave the group, I fled to New York. ", Von Mierers survived the difficult Manhattan waters, however, and by the early 1970s he could easily roll out the phone numbers of a Vanderbilt or a Rockefeller; he treasured his membership in a club called Doubles, a dim boite in the basement of the Sherry Netherland Hotel which attracted the lesser trust-fund crowd. .Frederick was hitting him in the faceabout fifty times!smashing his head against the floor and everything. What came out of John was just a hatred of Frederick instead of a complete submission, which indicates humility on the part of the soul. Close to sixty people attended. Oh. ``You can't miss it,' he advises lake visitors curious about the house. In four months, she claims, she paid more than $100,000 to von Mierers and Eternal Values. Who knows? Shortly after Jacki Adams and John Andreadis fled from von Mierers, group members put out three cassettes. "Frederick encouraged us to lie, to cheat, to say anything to our families. He no longer needed to suffer the dreadful slights that often beset ambitious and aging pretty boys. "Frederick got me an apartment in the building. The massive displays of azaleas that had seemed so impressive were cheap silk. "Jews have been evil since the beginning of time. In 1977, Helen Williams was in a car crash and had a stroke, which left her unable to speak. Call the super!' "Her eyes were blank, emotionally blank. Ruth Montgomery detailed von Mierers's relationship with Mrs. Williams in Aliens Among Us: "In company with his dowager godmother, Frederick traveled the high roads of Europe, meeting socially with the Queen of England and European aristocracy. ' This last year, in the early fall, I received another call, this time from a close friend. Pressed about other people who claimed he had cheated them, he said, "These are jealous, sick, twisted people. He told me, 'Give me $9,000 cash to paint it. I have so many fabulous, fabulous things.". John comes back down here and Frederick starts smashing him across the face, and just saying, 'You fucking liar!' Kathleen Turner and her. Send it to The Daily Beasthere. The fairy tales of this dimension! I'm going to smash the shit out of you!' It is all very positive," the Houston lawyer Douglas Wyatt told me. and 'You are a fucking, sick, evil, satanic piece of shit! We always used to kid about the old neighborhood. .. Who neededmoney? They are, in the main, blessed with ample salaries from good jobs. She retreated from her friends and family, and even her booker at Ford noticed something was wrong. Splintered family relationships of the type familiar to anyone who has had experience with cults. 1913 TO TODAY. View cart for details. ", Mind control inevitably follows a specific pattern. The group now has about fifty young professionals in "leadership training" roles. Richards most recent film is Intersection, a romantic thriller he produced and stars in. Helen Kress Williams's will, filed in Manhattan in 1981, did not mention Frederick von Mierers. Frederick's been working like lightning. "Her ideas are good," von Mierers said. As I came and went to work, I was often accused of being resistant to our rules and way of life. .immaculate dresser. Flanked by Catherine Edelmann and John Hoyt, von Mierers pointed his finger and spoke sharply to his host, Richard Bey. I said, 'You can't take $11,000 out of the bank without filling out a form.' . Like every other American woman who grew up reading Seventeen, I have always thought of Eileen Ford as a benevolent godmother, a woman who protects her own. "I have a very large income, and I spend it helping children." EVERY PAGE. Solemnly, the merchandise was spread out near me. Ask yourself, who am I? There were, additionally, an aspiring actor and several women who run von Mierers's business, a spiritual life-style and astrological organization called the Eternal Value's. She was impressed by the "hypnotic atmosphere" and the attractive young people; Andreadis did an astrological reading for her which, she said, "blew me away." ``I think this place has been very quiet, and all the action was up in New York,' said Alex Karr, the mansion's only year-round neighbor and a member of the Lake Lure Town Council.But when von Mierers, devastated by AIDS, neared death, he left behind the frenetic pace of New York City and headed south to his group's $400,000, Xanadu-like home beside peaceful Lake Lure. . Life after a cult has been challenging and terrifying and liberating. "You need to have your pussy slammed," he reportedly told one model before sending her a well-known man from the group. John Andreadis, a former longtime von Mierers' aide who became one of his biggest detractors, didn't return telephone messages, although his answering machine repeatedly said he was only unavailable for about an hour. It became evil. I was all of seventeen years old." Overhead was costly, so the early gem prescriptions were for semiprecious stones. No unity can be achieved here in the physical world. I could give these kids almost a Harvard course in metaphysics." ``They pretty much stayed to themselves.'. CURRENT ACTIVITY: Being admired in Mondo Uomo, the Italian men's magazine, which has devoted 58 pages to him in its November/December issue. It was right at that time when models were becoming celebrities. Catherine Edelmann, the Princeton honors graduate, said of von Mierers on a widely distributed tape, "One of the things Frederick said was 'Do not want a position! My relative attended only a few meetings of the group led by von Mierers, but he was intrigued by what he called von Mierers's "gem prescriptions." Evan 37 in. Access everything Vanity Fair has ever published.Join Now Subscriber-Only Benefit The Complete Vanity Fair Archive EVERY ISSUE. Freddy said to me, youre different, Hoyt says, speaking directly to the camera. The inner circle of Eternal Values calls itself "the group." When I look around, I see that, to a greater or lesser extent, we all have cultic relationships with peoplerelationships where the person we love, the person from whom were seeking approval, is also the one who is dishing out the abuse. Don't hit me!' His business began to grow. At fifteen, she was discovered by a photographer who sent pictures of her to Eileen Ford. Any job they could think of that was a pain in the ass, theyd assign it to me. "I think he must have read that book a hundred times," Andreadis said. About this time a Ford model named Susanne Gregard attended von Mierers's regular Wednesday-night "family dinner" for the inner circle of the group. Although on the surface Eternal Values appears smalltime, former associates of von Mierers's speculate that so far he has sold close to $2 million worth of stones. As the years passed, we re-located to North Carolina. One of the women, Erika Wilson, a model with the Ford agency who has appeared in Glamour and Self, had a bland, sweet expression and an allAmerican beauty. . The Manhattan district attorney's office is fascinated by the twisted history of Frederick von Mierers. I knew at that hour they couldn't be up to any good," the tenant told me. In 1984 von Mierers took him to see his old friend Joe Hunter, the president of the Ford modeling agency. "We must spread our message to help humanity." Few wind up, as von Mierers did, a canny gem salesman who was easily able to win over a popular author named Ruth Montgomery, whose books on psychic phenomena have sold millions of copies. Many of her fifteen books are still in print, filling the psychic-phenomena sections of the paperback racks. He screamed at me, attacked my character, and told me I was being irresponsible and that the ring would fix all that.". A decade ago, Montgomery was a Danielle Steel of New Age literature, a forerunner of Shirley MacLaine. He could no longer walk; a Lucite cane rested by his side. " Sexually involved by then with Andreadis, Adams bought an emerald, a ruby, a topaz, and a cat's-eye; she took out a loan of $15,000 to start with, and paid an additional $24,000 to fix up her apartment. He was older and cool and unbelievably charismatic. In fear, Andreadis and Adams went to Jamaica. It was Helen Kress Williams who had brought von Mierers and Billy Baldwin together, according to Ruth Montgomery. Montgomery speaks with the same bald hyperbole that she uses in her prose. "Oh, you duchesses and lords!" "Frederick is very spiritual," Wyatt later told me. one's own. We all know its not. He became, he said, deeply depressed, "disenchanted with the world, and wanting out.". He said he had come to Earth to warn people of an impending apocalypse, and to train his students to become leaders in the aftermath. I couldnt seem to live up to the community standards. They are essential for every sincere seeker of the Truth. ") I took the heaviest piece in my hand, a gold bracelet with what appeared to be lavender sapphires. Eileen Ford then told me about another group operating in her agency, a cluster of bornagain Christians called Models for God. Andreadis dismisses this as pure invention. I got suspicious when he demanded cash, but the group members said, 'This is what we've done.' "Frederick imparts information that normally you wouldn't have access to," a Princeton graduate and Ford model who is a member of Eternal Values told me. One apartment, 6E, was used as the office, and had desks with computer screens, shelves of merchandise, and files containing thousands of letters and orders for von Mierers's services. Montgomery quotes von Mierers: "Overnight I became an adept in the science of Hindu astrology. After Aliens Among Us came out, everyone wanted to come to dinner with us," a follower of von Mierers's named Monty Karp told me. . The various uses of gems and crystals and how they work are explained. There's no Lake Lure phone listing for Eternal Values or other names the group is known by - Unified Cosmogony or Ultimate Custom Interiors. Eileen Ford asked me. In fact, he was represented by Wagner, a third-class agency that no longer exists. Von Mierers was still strictly smalltime; his only platform was a regular stint on a call-in radio show. Suddenly, von Mierers noticed that a pillow had fallen on a spotlight on the floor. "Everyone would sit around, and they were all wearing these gems on their fingers. "How could an obvious phony like this convince so many smart, attractive young people in New York that he was for real?" "It made me cry," she said. I knew that I had come from Arcturus. Andreadis would put a life reading on the tape machine, and Frederick's voice, like the Wizard of Oz, with harmonic music in the background, would engulf a client with tales of past lives. I thought, God! Beware the razor's edge is sharp," he told one model. Subscribers have complete access to the archive. Part of many life readings was a "gem prescription." Perhaps von Mierers's ability to mesmerize so many young peopie comes from the very persona he labored to develop as he made his way up the social ladder of New York. "Look at these emeralds," he was telling me, stroking his gems. She was told that it was her duty "to lie, to cheat, to make up any story" to ensure von Mierers's security. A pharaoh! It was common knowledge in the inner group that von Mierers had a collection of Polaroids he had taken of black men endowed with huge organs. One afternoon, I dont even remember what I was reading, but it just hit me like a thunderbolt. As she became more involved with John Andreadis, von Mierers pushed her to take the gems. A few days later I called him and said, 'I don't want the ring!' one exclaimed. In the checkbook, she would write out these tiny amounts of cash for herself, like fifty or something. I thought, How can he have such sway over these attractive people? John Hoyt, another member, said, "John was a very stubborn boy. He demanded $20,000 in cash or money orders immediately." He would tell prospective buyers that he was able to get stones at a tremendous discount, which the inflated appraisal papers would confirm. Harper's Bazaar named him one of its "Playboys of the Eastern Coast." Hunter soon signed Hoyt under the name Hoyt Richards. I was appalled by Frederick. After that things were pretty crazy. Got a tip? She once wrote a syndicated column called "Capital Letter," until, as she says, "Arthur Ford told me that I could do automatic writing." So what was the harm? ''Every other check was made out to Freddie von Mierers. Find out who is the source at the source of the I thought, who is the author of the / thought? Is a "Dangerous" Distortion, Says Rachel Williams. But don't mention that I have them here," von Mierers told me during the afternoon we spent together. These cults attract mostly the Less than Zero generation, born in the 1960s, reared on fashionable doomsday prophecies about the millennium. 1913 TO TODAY. Much of her childhood was spent in rural poverty. I can help you to transcend.' We talked a lot about becoming highly evolved personalities. We did a lot of ego renunciation. Freddy talked a lot about the coming apocalypse, which made the need for personal wealth and relationships unnecessary. . In 1992, the Italian mens magazine Mondo Uomo did a 58 page spread onme. . Thats how twisted around you canbecome. "I recognized him as a phony," Jocelyn Kress told me. The former V.F. At times, his anti-Semitic remarks were almost comical. "There was something endearing and maybe a little sinister about that." It was in January of 1978 that von Mierers appeared to make the bizarre mental journey that would cause him to affect so many young lives. 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Karr visited the house occasionally, until the ``no trespassing' signs went up several months ago. She wrote in Aliens Among Us that the Guides responded, "John is from Arcturus. "What is that?" On a black January night just six days after American jets began bombing Iraq, Oscar S. Wyatt, Jr., the 66-year-old bad boy of the Texas oil and gas industry, faced more than 1,100 well-heeled . His followers gave him tens of thousands of dollars for rings to prove their faith. "I have every gem under the sun! "As far as I'm concerned, he's a crumbum.". "What could I do?" The idea was ultimately to destroy the ego and then rebuild it in a more malleable form. By his sixteenth birthday he had read volumes of metaphysics, and he often bought books at the Quest bookshop. "The gems are God's thoughts condensed.. .the gateways into this dimension for the ether waves.. .. Conversations on Vivekananda, the Bhagavad Gita, and the Hindu Vedas would stretch on till dawn. "The fact that this gorgeous blond Ford model was talking about how brilliant Frederick was convinced me to go to see him," one model told me. When I later examined the emerald ring the model had bought, I noticed it was engraved FVM. .. protege of Billy Baldwin.. . Adams was at first taken in by von Mierers's techniques. Von Mierers waited impatiently for the publication of Aliens Among Us. . "I have been familiar with your work only since last summer, when I became aware that the message in your books is identical to the Hindu cycles of creation." I thought, This is a holy place." . He had mastered enough Eastern philosophy to sound authentic. Even William Scranton III, the former lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania and son of the former governor William Scranton, once bought gems. Editor's Letter: Tales of the unexpected. If this was the road it took to get me here, so beit. At that time I was high priest! "Iam doing this for you," von Mierers is said to have replied. . 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