frederick von mierers vanity fair

He was a scrambling pretty boy who lived life on the edge. The speaker was emaciated, obviously very ill, but swathed in white cashmere, flawlessly groomed. He's saying, 'Don't hit me!'.. .. protege of Billy Baldwin.. . "I called my cousin to warn him that his mother was in terrible danger. ' ". Montgomery had been so moved by Andreadis's letter that she felt compelled to consult the Guides. The purported healing powers of von Mierers's gems are only part of the credo of Eternal Values. 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. one exclaimed. Only Hermes.". "Frederick immediately began to tell me that it was my job to manipulate John," she told me. "Vuitton is too Jewish. "You see how terrible your families are?" To whom do these thoughts arise and whence do they come? .immaculate dresser. Think of your body as a Lalique vase. 1913 TO TODAY. Through connections he made at Quest, von Mierers began doing astrology charts and psychic readings, presumably now strained to make ends meet. New members of the group, such as a model who had met John Hoyt on a photo shoot, were gradually told about the sexualinitiation practices, including the multiracial sex rite which members called "the treatment." I first heard about von Mierers three years ago. 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. When the money manager demanded a refund, he says, von Mierers at first screamed at him, then refused to take his calls. In a new documentary, Welcome to the Beyond, Hoyt recalls his introduction to the cult leader who would alter the course of his life. By his sixteenth birthday he had read volumes of metaphysics, and he often bought books at the Quest bookshop. When I called Ruth Montgomery to discuss von Mierers with her, she was defensive and refused to speak for attribution. I worked with photographers like Bruce Weber, Richard Avedon and Helmut Newton. A Wall Street banker designed the computer system that charted the planets for von Mierers's readings; a Brooklyn woman kept his books. Since then, he has acted and started his own film and TV production company, Tortoise. Access everything Vanity Fair has ever published.Join Now Subscriber-Only Benefit The Complete Vanity Fair Archive EVERY ISSUE. There, he would later tell Ruth Montgomery, he was also treated for a streptococcal infection. In the checkbook, she would write out these tiny amounts of cash for herself, like fifty or something. 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. "Frederick immediately saw that we needed an organization, merchandise, a name!" 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. The cult was called Eternal Values. Von Mierers believed in impending doomthat he and his fellow aliens had been sent here to help earthlings, an intergalactic team of emergency responders. View cart for details. Catherine Edelmann asked on a tape. Group members began to yell at Adams and Andreadis that they were "satanic." Nostradamus said 2000 would be a time of tremendous upheaval; the Hopi Indians and the Mayans saw it as the end of our world; Jeane Dixon has weighed in with her vision of a future evil Antichrist; and an avatar of "Maitreya the Christ" presides incognito as a Pakistani in London. "I want her to write about me. But little did the world know that he was deeply involved in a terrifying cult. David Seaman was a New York chiropractor. In 1992, the Italian mens magazine Mondo Uomo did a 58 page spread onme. Meanwhile, after every job, people would be going off to parties at, like Madonnas, and I would fly back to my life in Eternal Values. "He would hear about someone rich and say, 'Bring him in!' "Apocalyptic thinking is in the air," a University of Connecticut psychologist told Omni magazine recently. Von Mierers was still strictly smalltime; his only platform was a regular stint on a call-in radio show. "Everywhere you looked there were mirrors and ostrich-skin accent pieces, parchment-covered Parsons tables, a lavender bedroom," a friend remembered. As he stared at the TV audience, his face appeared to have cheek implants, capped teeth, and freshly pulled skin. I had it taken apart when I got back to California, and I learned it was almost worthless." At fifteen, she was discovered by a photographer who sent pictures of her to Eileen Ford. You must write that I am the reincarnation of Jeremiah from the Old Testament. Released in 2015, the film has been an official selection in over fifty film festivals and has won more than forty awards, including 15 for Best Picture and 10 for BestActor. ' If anyone in the room argued with him, von Mierers would scream, "You either come to my way of thinking or the dark forces will destroy you.". " 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." The gems, he would say, are for ''special people, only the elite." I recently asked Eileen Ford and Joe Hunter, the company president. From the mind, which is the ego. He told his friends and Ruth Montgomery that Mrs. Williams had left him "millions and millions of dollars," an income of $150,000 a year, adjusted for inflation. There, surrounded by a pink marble interior and numerous mirrors - that's how his last name is pronounced - von Mierers died Feb. 4 at the age of 43. Purely by coincidence I met a modeling agent; the next summer I was cast in a big ad campaign for Geoffrey Banks. The house was on a lake. And when he complained to Frederick, von Mierers said to him, "You will die on the water! ' Suddenly, von Mierers noticed that a pillow had fallen on a spotlight on the floor. 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. It's a drop in the bucket.' 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. We are here to warn you! We had a mission. 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. von Mierers told Jacki Adams, the Ford model who had come to see me, on one cassette. .gemstones.". By now von Mierers had perfected his pitch. . "That's $500,000 wholesale!" "Of course, he was never a spiritual person.". This guy is raking in millions! So what was the harm? .. Frederick says that he realized 'even then' that Helen Williams had been his mother in several previous lifetimes, and they were almost inseparable. It was sort of pathetic.". "Everyone fancied him," a friend told me. As my career picked up, people began calling me the first male supermodel. Copyright 1995-2023 eBay Inc. All Rights Reserved. I contacted him through Ruth Montgomery, who has also passed on. "You'll never be a Ted Koppel unless you have manners!" Sapphires and emeralds gleamed from their fingers and wrists. However, word began to spread through the Upper East Side of New York that von Mierers had genuine psychic ability. His skin was inordinately smooth, as if conferred by careless plastic surgery, yet there was nothing youthful about him. Pressed about other people who claimed he had cheated them, he said, "These are jealous, sick, twisted people. "Suddenly my son was talking like a robot.". At its peak, there were perhaps one hundred active members. Pay the money or you're out.' It was Helen Kress Williams who had brought von Mierers and Billy Baldwin together, according to Ruth Montgomery. For that, you feel a sense of shame. She reportedly paid von Mierers $75,000 for her gems. I have rubies and sapphires! Jeremiah will take over your body.' . He became, he said, deeply depressed, "disenchanted with the world, and wanting out.". 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. Beware the razor's edge is sharp," he told one model. you duchesses and lords," Freddie would say '%u are fabulous! Near me, six of von Mierers's friends and followers stared at us, as if hypnotized, throughout our interview. She was told that it was her duty "to lie, to cheat, to make up any story" to ensure von Mierers's security. Studio Design Collection. The first time I tried to leave the group, I fled to New York. Did it matter? ", An affluent Manhattan woman found von Mierers through Aliens Among Us. Once, in 1969, the producer Joel Rice ran into him in Venice. I was all of seventeen years old." In a series of visions I saw the coming wars, the destruction of New York City, my own mission, and the future of the earth." "He just understands everything about us." Within the group, the number of gems and carats possessed was treated as a sign of devoutness. "We are not a cult," von Mierers told me angrily during the strange afternoon we spent together. Eternal Values is unusual in that many of its young devotees have a lot of cash to spend on von Mierers's healing gems. A decade ago, Montgomery was a Danielle Steel of New Age literature, a forerunner of Shirley MacLaine. Von Mierers was still local in 1983. . Every few moments, the birds spread their wings. Von Mierers wanted a home in the Blue Ridge mountains, he told an interviewer, because he felt the mountain range would survive the millennium. I don't think that is a spiritual pursuit," Andreadis says he once told von Mierers. Pulsating ionization machines cleansed the air, and billowing clouds were painted on the walls. "Freddie used to say to me, 'With these gems, they hold you close to their heart. "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. My whole body was encompassed in a blazing white light. It would be the final certification, for who in the psychic world could ever doubt Montgomery's famous Guides? Freddy said to me, youre different, Hoyt says, speaking directly to the camera. He claimed to be an alien reincarnated from the distant star Arcturus. They had lacquered walls in the New Age colors of "high-vibrational harmonics"pink, lavender, turquoise, chartreuse, accented by carefully painted silvery clouds. ''Every other check was made out to Freddie von Mierers. Go deeper. " Von Mierers's apartment became a hangout. . They're cheap! From a folder, she pulled out a sheaf of receipts and gem appraisals which appeared to show that during a four-month period she had given von Mierers more than $100,000 for gems and the cost of fixing up her apartment, most of it in cash. As the leader of the group Eternal Values, it was Von Mierers responsibility to find the others, and teach them about their true origins and noble calling. "I almost had a breakdown. Like anyone suffering from Stockholm syndromewhere a hostage identifies with his captorsI had no ability to objectify my experience. We spoke what youd call New Age jargon. Von Mierers ordered Adams to write a letter to Ruth Montgomery. Black Vanity with Carrara Marble Top. A dozen of the group share apartments in von Mierers's building, at 405 East Fifty-fourth Street, where Noel Coward and Hermione Gingold once lived. He hasn't taken me," Joe Hunter told me. Now prosecutors in the office of the Manhattan district attorney are investigating the possibility that von Mierers was involved in a multimillion-dollar gem ring. Id hurt my shoulder playing football at Princeton; Id come to the city for a doctors appointment. I said, 'Freddie, you can't put this out! The body, the mind, and the senses are inert. His looks fading, he went to California for cosmetic surgery. .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. Access everything Vanity Fair has ever published.Join Now Subscriber-Only Benefit The Complete Vanity Fair Archive EVERY ISSUE. 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. They never saw that side in Lake Lure, however. 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. Writer Marie Brenner, who confirmed the now-dropped investigation by the Manhattan district attorney's office, compared the blank stares of von Mierers' minions to those of Jim Jones, who led his followers in a mass suicide in the jungles of Guyana in 1979. Group members were encouraged to patronize special doctors, nutritionists, and the chiropractor David Seaman. The gem and its harmonic vibrations are in harmony with your body. The only thing that mattered was loyalty to the group." . Von Mierers invited him to his apartment, and Andreadis recalled, "It was Zen, it was so beautiful. ", One of the voices on the tape was that of the lawyer Douglas Wyatt. Then he opened his sweater and showed us all the gems he was wearing. It was late summer 1987, and Jacki Adams, the Elizabeth Arden model, at twenty-two was earning more than $300,000 a year. He knew what was at stake. Life after a cult has been challenging and terrifying and liberating. "Look at these emeralds," he was telling me, stroking his gems. You are guilty of ego!" He and his friends would go to Freddys parties for the free beer; for a moment, at least, Hoyt was using him. "My gems help me to see things clearly," an IBM executive named Pete Olson told me. 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. To this day I owe him everything. Eileen Ford asked me. Frederick Von Mierers, a deeply tanned cult leader with a shocking crown of platinum blond hair, spoke to his followers through their television sets. Control of diet was an important first step. He was older and cool and unbelievably charismatic. I took the heaviest piece in my hand, a gold bracelet with what appeared to be lavender sapphires. "He would tell us how fabulous and beautiful and special we all were. Always, he was immaculate; he combed his hair, which was dark then, straight back like an heir to Morgan Stanley. Overhead was costly, so the early gem prescriptions were for semiprecious stones. The fairy tales of this dimension! But when I got the ring, I could immediately tell they had switched the stones. I thought, God! " When Douglas Wyatt was introduced to Eternal Values, Andreadis claims von Mierers told him, "Be nice to him. Von Mierers, in the company of Helen Williams, began to study the teachings of the famous psychic Edgar Cayce and to learn astrology; he talked constantly of planetary aspects and charts at Doubles and Studio 54. In other words, he's not capitulating'. von Mierers told me. "You will all be dead within ten years. My mother was not that rich. We were on earth to help people. Von Mierers would stare at the camera with his cold blue eyes and talk about Satan and "the dark forces." But von Mierers did not limit himself to selling jewels. The New York Post reported that the late male model and interior decorator was under investigation for possible involvement in a multimillion-dollar drug ring. "Handle them carefully," one of the young men said to me. The evil forces are everywhere.". ", 'You must write that I am from the star Arcturus. Solemnly, the merchandise was spread out near me. New York has always been a city of pretense, filled with mythomaniacs and con artists, most of them rank amateurs. And that is all I am going to say.". "I heard they got money to Frederick by Federal Express." I can get you these gems at cost!' Two bodies cannot occupy the same space in the material world, which is what they are trying to do when they're having physical intercourse. I was from Twelfth Avenue in Brooklyn, he was from Eighth! From then until now, Ive worked to rebuild my life. 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. It's real bottom-line. Although not a member of the group, the great New York arts patron Alice Tully reportedly had a life reading, as did Sylvester Stallone, the actress Rae Dawn Chong, and the daughter of an Iranian Cabinet minister close to the Shah. "Why do you have to be a gem salesman? You see everything like it is. Von Mierers would often warn his New Age leaders to beware of Jews. Von Mierers himself had two large rings on his middle finger. 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. One tenant in the building had to stop a doorman from letting in a threateninglooking group of men on their way to 4N, von Mierers's apartment, at three A.M. "I said, 'Lock the doors! "I had found them through Ruth Montgomery's book. 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. "The root of all thought is the I thought," he might say while lecturing opaquely on his views of Eastern philosophy. Karr visited the house occasionally, until the ``no trespassing' signs went up several months ago. By now Andreadis had seen and heard enough. Eternal Values was my reality. . "Her eyes were blank, emotionally blank. That summer she began her spiritual quest in earnest. Tell her how much her book and the group have helped you!" Natural Vanity with Engineered Marble Top. They all had striking similarities; they were young, mostly in their twenties and early thirties, and quite good-looking, with taut, muscular bodies. '. It is all very positive," the Houston lawyer Douglas Wyatt told me. 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. "Don't become a cock worshiper! "I was always over there on East Fiftyfourth. .. "Tell her about the gems and how great they are! Eileen Ford told me. Even though I earned most of the money that supported us, the leaders seemed to be growing more and more disdainful of me. ''Cash would come in for the gems from all over the country," Andreadis told me. Call the super!' Gunzenhausen (German pronunciation: [ntsnhazn] (); Bavarian: Gunzenhausn) is a town in the Weienburg-Gunzenhausen district, in Bavaria, Germany.It is situated on the river Altmhl, 19 kilometres (12 mi) northwest of Weienburg in Bayern, and 45 kilometres (28 mi) southwest of Nuremberg.Gunzenhausen is a nationally recognized recreation area. When Aliens Among Us was published, von Mierers's fantasy was realized. Why don't we call ourselves Eternal Values? . "I am a little bit afraid to go public with my story," she said, "but I believe it will help others. Instead, they sent the body to Chapel Hill for autopsy by the state medical examiner. She retreated from her friends and family, and even her booker at Ford noticed something was wrong. "You have to do something! For semiprecious stones checkbook, she would write out these tiny amounts cash. Joe Hunter told me all I am from the star Arcturus Andreadis told me the checkbook, she would out... Tv production company, Tortoise devotees have a lot of cash for herself, like fifty something... Nutritionists, and even her booker at Ford noticed something was wrong whence do they come thoughts and., according to Ruth Montgomery painted on the water! ' who lived life the... 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