Did it matter? One night, in a fit of insomnia, von Mierers thumbed through the book of Revelations. "When I first met Frederick, I was only sixteen years old, and I was so naive I still believed that anyone who said he was spiritual was holy," a young man named John Andreadis told me. Devastated by illness, he twisted on his tiny lavender slipper-chair perch and clapped his hands for one of his followers to open his bedroom vault. Montgomery's belief in von Mierers so overwhelmed him that he would read her chapters out loud again and again to his followers, as if to convince himself that they were true. He would always say, 'You know how you are.' After Freddy died of AIDS in 1990, there was a power struggle within the group. ", "My grandmother-godmother was an extraordinary archduchess of New York," von Mierers told me. " Adams, at her most psychologically fragile, agreed to do her time on "mail duties." I was sobbing. .From where do these thoughts arise? " Von Mierers's apartment became a hangout. I have so many fabulous, fabulous things.". "Hasn't it always been part of the reputation of the Ford modeling agency that you protect your young kids from being taken advantage of?" . Von Mierers describes on them past lives of clients; this one was a "healer'' in Egypt, that one a "courtesan" in ancient Rome. No unity can be achieved here in the physical world. Cults have always attracted those with deficiency needsmissing pieces of psychological makeup that family, religion, or education did not supply. "If all my models were like John Hoyt, I would have a fabulous agency. In a new documentary, Welcome to the Beyond, Hoyt recalls his introduction to the cult leader who would alter the course of his life. You have to do all the therapy and the research. "All they ever talked about was money," Andreadis told me. The stones were all set in similar simple heavy gold settings. The Manhattan district attorney's office is fascinated by the twisted history of Frederick von Mierers. Your parents have been horrible for you. He screamed at me, attacked my character, and told me I was being irresponsible and that the ring would fix all that.". When I called Ruth Montgomery to discuss von Mierers with her, she was defensive and refused to speak for attribution. What is a famous model doing here? Through the help of a friendly building representative, he had arranged leases for some of his new friends in his apartment house. The novel opens at Miss Pinkerton's Academy for young women, where readers are introduced to Amelia and Becky, the novel's female protagonists. Why don't we call ourselves Eternal Values? You are here to listen to me.' "My gems help me to see things clearly," an IBM executive named Pete Olson told me. Many of her fifteen books are still in print, filling the psychic-phenomena sections of the paperback racks. "I was never paid," he said, "but I believed what Frederick said. Von Mierers had espoused the ways of his mysterious group ``Eternal Values' through mail-order cassettes, at a Park Avenue church and on talk shows, including a cable television show for which he was host. The gem operation was confined to New York, although von Mierers also used jewelers in Washington, D.C., and Iowa to obtain stones. "I think we all thought, This can't be a cult. Only Hermes.". von Mierers told Jacki Adams, the Ford model who had come to see me, on one cassette. {{start_at_rate}} {{format_dollars}} {{start_price}} {{format_cents}} {{term}}, {{promotional_format_dollars}}{{promotional_price}}{{promotional_format_cents}} {{term}}, Nebraska cheerleader competes by herself at state competition, but crowd doesn't let her feel alone. I spread them out under a lamp. By the time Jacki Adams introduced herself to Andreadis, von Mierers's successor was becoming disenchanted with Eternal Values. "They eat such unhealthy food." "I heard they got money to Frederick by Federal Express." Early on, he felt the strong need to camouflage the fact that he had grown up in Brooklyn. "I recognized him as a phony," Jocelyn Kress told me. "I wanted to get married and I wanted out!" Artist: Frederick Von Mierers, John Andreadis, & IasosTitle: The Eternal Values: Karma & DestinyLabel: The Eternal Values Corporation & Inter-Dimensional Mus. The girlfriend of a handsome young relative of mine called me in a state of panic. He swept into the room and said, 'I come from Arcturus. To whom do these thoughts arise and whence do they come? By 1987 von Mierers was wasting no time selling the healing stones. You have to cut the ties to your family! You see everything like it is. Later, when I got out and sold them, I found out they were worth less than$8,000. 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. He claimed to be an alien reincarnated from the distant star Arcturus. We would party, go to Studio 54 and crash at his apartment. Often he had $30,000 or $40,000 in cash in his apartment. I could give these kids almost a Harvard course in metaphysics." "It made me cry," she said. They could help you. A male supermodel on surviving an apocalyptic, vegetarian cult. "You are so pretty-pretty-pretty-pretty, my wonderful birds," he said, kissing their beaks. Use of and/or registration on any portion of this site constitutes acceptance of our. . He had mastered enough Eastern philosophy to sound authentic. Helen Kress Williams's will, filed in Manhattan in 1981, did not mention Frederick von Mierers. " Still, at the group dinners, Adams would hear von Mierers tell the women models, "You need to sit on a six-foot dildo in the middle of Park Avenue." "I had read everything. As I came and went to work, I was often accused of being resistant to our rules and way of life. "He just understands everything about us." Hitler was divinely inspired," he has said. He invented an elaborate background for himself, telling friends that his parents had been killed when he was four years old and that he was raised by his godmother, Mrs. Earle Kress Williams, an arts patron married to a nephew of Samuel Kress, of the dime-store fortune. . I could write three books about him. "Are you aware that right here in the most cynical city in the world there is some weird cult for young, glamorous professionals?" . We all know its not. Go deeper. His looks fading, he went to California for cosmetic surgery. There were many mirrors, plump lavender sofas, and reproduction Egyptian furniture. Montgomery's deadly-earnest oeuvre details the advice of her spirit guides and includes titles such as A Search for the Truth, A World Beyond, and Aliens Among Us ("Dazzling true testimony that extraterrestrials are on earthabout to usher in the New Age"). ", Eileen Ford and Joe Hunter both told me that they have never issued any kind of statement about von Mierers, and they did not call the police after Jacki Adams had told them her story. I am the chosen one. "I have just heard the wildest story from a makeup artist who works on many Ford models," she said. Eileen Ford asked me. ' One cassette was sent all over the country. The inner circle called itself the group. At its peak, there were about 100 active members, some at the Manhattan apartment, some in a big loft building in Brooklyn. . The former V.F. There was a big Vanity Fair expos at one point in the early 90s; I was involved with them for more than 20 years, from 1978 through1999. That's $3 million. "Let me tell you something! I was the living symbol of their hypocrisy. Hoyt is a big, big money-maker.". We all want the gems,'' I had heard a Princeton honors graduate and devotee of Eternal Values say on a cassette about the stones. You must now break through the wretched values that you learned in the next reincarnations in France and England!" She knew that she had no rational basis for feeling unhappy with her life; she was at the very pinnaclea Ford model, a classy beauty booked by Vogue, photographed by Irving Penn. $699.99 / piece Size: 31in. One of the aspects that troubled Andreadis was Frederick's increasing desire to find members who were rich. There wasn't much around the Lake Lure home of Frederick von Mierers to indicate a fast-paced lifestyle and the idea that he was a prophet from the star Arcturus. So says Frederick von Mierers, a self-styled leader of the New Age elite who can be found in an elaborate Manhattan apartment near Sutton Place. I called him in the middle of the night and he paid for a plane ticket to L.A. We had a mission. Many people were convinced that the world was going to end in A.D. 999, 1013, 1844, and 1914, and the year 2000 has always kept the prophets in an uproar. The cult was called Eternal Values. "About this time he had the idea of going into business," a friend told me. Also unavailable was Manhattan chiropractor David Seaman, one of von Mierers' closest friends. He said, 'These gems will help you! Then he opened his sweater and showed us all the gems he was wearing. Like Frederick von Mierers, an extraordinary number of people are suddenly claiming to be in contact with their space brothers. ", An affluent Manhattan woman found von Mierers through Aliens Among Us. " When Douglas Wyatt was introduced to Eternal Values, Andreadis claims von Mierers told him, "Be nice to him. When youve been in a cult and you meet new people at a dinner party, youre never quite sure when to bring it up. Von Mierers's conversation often dwells on the master race and Jews. The group members watched me suspiciously, and, as in the faces of the Jonestown survivors in news photos, behind their blank stares was fear. His friends even thought it was charmingly eccentric that Helen Williams, as rich as she was, always took the subway to meet him for their dates. They bought his pitchand the gems he said would make them New Age lords and duchesses. It bears the signature of Unified Cosmogony's then-president, New York City TV producer Fritz Diekmann, who is featured in the 14-page Vanity Fair spread. "I have every gem under the sun! "It is not working! "We are not a cult," von Mierers told me angrily during the strange afternoon we spent together. She wrote a letter, she called this man Frederick, and the group members said to her, 'We don't know who you are.' We met on a beach in Nantucket when I was 16he was drawing this cool yin and yang diagram in the sand, talking all this Eastern philosophy. " One night in January, Andreadis conducted a seminar in the Park Avenue church. I can get you these gems at cost!' "Frederick never trusted me," Adams told me. Parrots sat on his shoulders. He would tell us, 'We are living a high spiritual life.' He was a "sprite," as one acquaintance phrased it, "cute, cute, cute," the toast of the beaches at Cherry Grove on Fire Island in the 1960s. . And when he complained to Frederick, von Mierers said to him, "You will die on the water! ' Near me, six of von Mierers's friends and followers stared at us, as if hypnotized, throughout our interview. In Aliens Among Us, Montgomery, a former journalist, devotes sixty pages to von Mierers and his persona as a citizen of Arcturus, as well as his astonishing psychic abilities. Im here. Maybe you remember seeing it on late-night public-access cable TV. "It is possible to raise the vibration of your consciousness through the. .gemstones.". Editor's Letter: Tales of the unexpected. It was an era in New York of crazy religions, cults, and odd self-help groupsest, Scientology, Synanon, and Arica. To this day I owe him everything. Id hurt my shoulder playing football at Princeton; Id come to the city for a doctors appointment. Andreadis said. No mother, no father, no brother, no sister. The purported healing powers of von Mierers's gems are only part of the credo of Eternal Values. Im making it. It would be the final certification, for who in the psychic world could ever doubt Montgomery's famous Guides? "Of course, he was never a spiritual person.". In my mind I was working him, kind of taking advantage of this guy and all his cool connections. Insight is given as to the inner workings of the Universal Magnetic Field, as well as how the stones can help you tune in to higher intelligence.") Pulsating ionization machines cleansed the air, and billowing clouds were painted on the walls. Like so many cult leaders, he appealed to his followers vanity, telling them that they were special enough to literally save the world. Part of many life readings was a "gem prescription." Sapphires and emeralds gleamed from their fingers and wrists. Montgomery soon invited Andreadis and von Mierers to meet with her at her home in Washington, D.C. "She asked me to write about alien life for her next book," Andreadis said. Mr. Richards, shown above, organized and produced the . At one time we were both with the Ford Modeling agency. Olson, the head of quality control for IBM's Latin-American division, owns gems von Mierers sold him for more than $100,000. Von Mierers was still strictly smalltime; his only platform was a regular stint on a call-in radio show. .. protege of Billy Baldwin.. . It is embarrassing to admit, but looking back, I didnt finally leave the group because I was being abused or because I was mad about giving them my money. "These kids are legal age." "This is a holy place.". von Mierers was recently asked. We are not a cult.". staffer, who was conned out of $62,000 by Anna Sorokin, questions Netflix's decision to pay the proven criminal more than . Years ago, if he said he worked ten days on a modeling job, I knew that meant he worked two days! Von Mierers, like the leaders of the People's Temple, talked constantly of Satan's influence in the world, the dark forces, and viciously belittled the notion of family ties. "Ruth Montgomery really created Frederick," one Ford model told me. " 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. 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. The whole time I was involved with Eternal Values, I was working pretty successfully as a model. He could no longer walk; a Lucite cane rested by his side. She has a huge audience. A decade ago, Montgomery was a Danielle Steel of New Age literature, a forerunner of Shirley MacLaine. "When I owned a modeling agency, Freddie was always around. EVERY PAGE. "Frederick is very spiritual," Wyatt later told me. The minute I saw that group, I knew I was in a cult. Like anyone suffering from Stockholm syndromewhere a hostage identifies with his captorsI had no ability to objectify my experience. Rich kids with troubled psyches took themselves off to Tibet to see the Dalai Lama or invited plump Indian swamis to move in. Studio Design Collection. When she came upon Aliens Among Us, she was profoundly moved by the descriptions of von Mierers and Andreadis. I worked with photographers like Bruce Weber, Richard Avedon and Helmut Newton. 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 whole body was encompassed in a blazing white light. There is no punctuation in it.' To some who were Jewish, von Mierers would say, "Jews have a heavy Karma to deal with." Even William Scranton III, the former lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania and son of the former governor William Scranton, once bought gems. You realize its kind of happening to everyone in a way. They allowed you to have it and to enjoy your life here, but they did not promise you another piece of ass. In 1979, Andreadis was a private-school boy from a rich New York family; his father invented Man-Tan. New York has always been a city of pretense, filled with mythomaniacs and con artists, most of them rank amateurs. I asked. "He's harmless," Hunter told me. And that is all I am going to say.". At that time I was high priest! What's the harm?" There were a lot of drugs and greed in the air, but we considered ourselves people who were seeking a greater understanding of the universe. Von Mierers believed in impending doomthat he and his fellow aliens had been sent here to help earthlings, an intergalactic team of emergency responders. .like Lalique. Adams turned over the cash. He was older and cool and unbelievably charismatic. 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 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. ``You can't miss it,' he advises lake visitors curious about the house. "Interior decorator 28 years old . They all came with bogus appraisals. Certain female members of the group were reportedly encouraged to seduce rich men. I knew that I had come from Arcturus. Von Mierers wanted a home in the Blue Ridge mountains, he told an interviewer, because he felt the mountain range would survive the millennium. he would say. John was saying, 'Don't hit me, Frederick. When asked recently about his relationship to Mrs. Williams, he said, "She was my great-aunt. The gems are Gods thoughts condensed, he always told us. They never saw that side in Lake Lure, however. Any job they could think of that was a pain in the ass, theyd assign it to me. . "Freddie used to tell us all in those days that he had spent $20,000 to decorate it, which was a tremendous amount then!". The leader was a man named Frederick Von Mierers. They are, in the main, blessed with ample salaries from good jobs. Frederick insisted on cash. Call the super!' In fear, Andreadis and Adams went to Jamaica. 69-year-old suffers stroke in his home; Realtor showing house leaves him there. "I was always over there on East Fiftyfourth. One client tried to force me to hire him. I work for a gemologist, and I told her to bring in the stones. "My first impression was that he was a crazy. The dark and evil forces are perpetuating the idea of soul mates. I am only interested in archduchesses and lords! You come in with nothing and you go out with nothing. By now von Mierers had various residences, none of them legally in his name: a Bronx loft leased to a painter who did all the redecorating in von Mierers's other properties; a pink marble palace near Asheville, North Carolina, which von Mierers was enlarging because he believed that only the Blue Ridge Mountains would survive the millennium; a house on Nantucket named Vanity Fair; and a retreat in the Berkshires, where Andreadis spent months filling the hundreds of orders for life readings Eternal Values had received since Aliens Among Us was published. "I have never heard such hatred in a civilized setting. I hung out with Cindy Crawford, Linda Evangelista, Christy Turlington and Naomi Campbell. "Do you understand? Von Mierers, who believed in a master race, courted attractive young people. 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. And we are they!" He says he gave von Mierers $17,000 for a sapphire, a topaz, and a cat's-eye which von Mierers assured him he was getting for an astonishing bargain price, "way below wholesale." "There are really two kinds of Jews," a friend remembers him saying. Catherine Edelmann asked on a tape. ``They've been very good neighbors they're quiet, and their landscaping is fantastic.'. $769.99 / piece Size: 49in. "I am a little bit afraid to go public with my story," she said, "but I believe it will help others. Without Freddy to focus on, there were an increasing number of strict rules and codes of punishment. "Suddenly my son was talking like a robot.". At fifteen, she was discovered by a photographer who sent pictures of her to Eileen Ford. 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They are as candles in the dark to prevent you from falling into delusions," he said on one cassette. In 1984 von Mierers took him to see his old friend Joe Hunter, the president of the Ford modeling agency. There, lessons of , "The Wall Street Journal just so happened to have a supportive op-ed ready to publish within hours of the meeting. But when I got the ring, I could immediately tell they had switched the stones. "I can't begin to tell you how handsome he was." Bey told him, "You know what I really think? Von Mierers had decorated the other apartments exactly like his own. During the spiritual seminars in the Park Avenue church, ugly shouting would break out. ``I have no complaints about them at all,' Karr told The Asheville Citizen. Some are more abusive. "Tell her about the gems and how great they are! Lets just say I come from a family of six, from the main line of Philadelphia, and that I had a mother who was hard toplease. One afternoon, I dont even remember what I was reading, but it just hit me like a thunderbolt. "Frederick has helped so many people. A popular series called The Dark Forces sold as a complete set for twenty-five dollars. I was like, Oh my God. Von Mierers seemed to be disintegrating, and according to several former acolytes, increasing quantities of hallucinogens were being consumed by certain members of the group. Frederick said to me, 'Susanne, what is $50,000 to you? Members have included well-known models from the Ford agency, such as Jacki Adams, John Hoyt, and Susan Bearden; an honors graduate of Princeton named Catherine Edelmann; a West Coast money manager; Harvard alumni; Fritz Diekmann, a TV executive; Tracey Miller, a Florida model; an officer of Marine Midland Bank; and Douglas Wyatt, a Houston lawyer whose mother, Lynn, is the famous blonde socialite married to Oscar Wyatt, the head of an oil-and-gas empire. I would come to New York, and soon Frederick showed me the stones. 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. Writer Marie Brenner, who confirmed the now-dropped investigation by the . I had it taken apart when I got back to California, and I learned it was almost worthless." Through a series of visions, the "new" Frederick suddenly recollected his life as "a mathematician and astrologer involved in building the Egyptian pyramid at Giza, and another incarnation at the time of Buddha in India." Frederick's been working like lightning. We were free to come and go. I bought an emerald. As unbelievable as it sounds, never once during my two decades with the group did I ever consider I might be a member of a cult. 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. He is trying to alienate him from all of us!" Find out who is the source at the source of the I thought, who is the author of the / thought? I had a Life Reading done by Frederick von Miers in the late 1980's. Although I did not get to meet him, I believe he was honest in the concept he passed on to some of us and that he was a Walk-In. .late '20's hairdo life of the party and a people organizer.. .seen a lot at Le Cirque, Cecil's, Isle of Capri fabulous dancer.. .a gentleman," the item read. Who Am I? "Jews have been evil since the beginning of time. I can help you to transcend.' "I almost had a nervous breakdown," she told me. "Don't ever carry a Vuitton bag!" That summer she began her spiritual quest in earnest. Vanity Fair Summary. "I think of him as a junior type. Soon after that, von Mierers discovered another useful volume, a book on Hindu philosophy which related birth dates to specific stones. I don't think that is a spiritual pursuit," Andreadis says he once told von Mierers. They had lacquered walls in the New Age colors of "high-vibrational harmonics"pink, lavender, turquoise, chartreuse, accented by carefully painted silvery clouds. When I saw him in Venice, he just sat right down with me at Harry's Bar. ", 'You must write that I am from the star Arcturus. Arietta 31 in. When Aliens Among Us was published, his fantasy was realized. East Side Alien: Frederick von Mierers, who claims he's from the star Arcturus. We spoke what youd call New Age jargon. He chose to come back because of an urgent need to reach the young people who will be founding the new society after the shift of the earth on its axis.". Eileen Ford then told me about another group operating in her agency, a cluster of bornagain Christians called Models for God. A terrible man has been selling him gems! People don't even know themselves, do they? At two in the morning, Von Mierers would be beamed out into the universe courtesy of cable television. At night he held court and gave his friends cleaning chores to help them to work on their inflated egos. "Everywhere you looked there were mirrors and ostrich-skin accent pieces, parchment-covered Parsons tables, a lavender bedroom," a friend remembered. . He told us to call him Freddy. He seemed to enjoy titillating the group with talk of "chocolate lords." von Mierers would say. The massive displays of azaleas that had seemed so impressive were cheap silk. .. Who knows? Andreadis sat in a lotus position and, according to Glenna Hartwell, said calmly, "I have been asked to leave the group. These looked pretty good. Vanity Fair magazine came out a week later with an in-depth story on von Mierers that went to press before his death. Frederick von Mierers almost ruined my life." "Freddie was always bringing me kids to sign," Hunter told me. "He cared so much about being with the rich and the prominent," a friend who knew him well fifteen years ago told me. RAP-B-238U 1'' Ball Composite Ram Mount Diamond Base Plate 2.43"x131" AMPS Hole, Legion 5 Pro 16" Gaming Laptop QHD 165Hz R9-6900HX 16GB RAM 1TB SSD RTX 3070 Ti, Samsung Galaxy Active 2 R825U Smartwatch 44mm Bluetooth GPS & LTE - Very Good, Lenovo IdeaPad 3 14" FHD Laptop Intel Core i7-1165G7 8GB RAM 512GB SSD, Citizen Eco-Drive Women's Rose-Gold Accent Mesh Bracelet 34mm Watch FE6081-51A, Intel Core i9-13900KF Unlocked Desktop Processor - 24 Cores (8P+16E) & 32 Thread, DEWALT DCCS620B 20V MAX Cordless Li-Ion 12 in. The gems, he would say, are for ''special people, only the elite." "Frederick was only trying to help him." "You have to do something! he raged at the young man, who scurried to obey him. They're cheap! And here I was, a male model, a symbol of all we were supposed to hate. It is through such negative thoughts that the dark forces work. When you wear your gems, you can't be fooled by people and things that are evil. Von Mierers told the impressionable boy that he had "a mission" to enlighten others, and he offered to teach him astrology. Group members were encouraged to patronize special doctors, nutritionists, and the chiropractor David Seaman. After that things were pretty crazy. (''Only a clear understanding of how the Evil Forces work will enable people to make it through the precarious times that lie ahead. How could I have been so gullible? I said, 'You can't take $11,000 out of the bank without filling out a form.' His skin was inordinately smooth, as if conferred by careless plastic surgery, yet there was nothing youthful about him.