The gem operation was confined to New York, although von Mierers also used jewelers in Washington, D.C., and Iowa to obtain stones. Tickle Me Kaczynski: How the Inventor of the Ultimate Elmo Toy Became a Unabomber Suspect, Real Italians Put Hot Dogs and French Fries on Their Pizza, The Other Drug War: Inside the World of Counterfeit Viagra, The $65 Million Art Heist That Put Oceans Eleven to Shame. How could I have been duped like that for solong? The gem business has always been predicated on the notion of caveat emptor; a stone is worth what the customer is willing to pay. They came after me and talked me into coming back. No matter what I did, I couldnt seem to measure up. It's a drop in the bucket.' Man died Wednesday. 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. For that offense they shaved my head. He's saying, 'Don't hit me!'.. He will buy everything for you." 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. 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. "He just understands everything about us." 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. .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. "We were like one entire family. Any job they could think of that was a pain in the ass, theyd assign it to me. View cart for details. 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. They are, in the main, blessed with ample salaries from good jobs. I looked over at the owner, Cipriani, and got the distinct impression he would have thrown him out if I hadn't been there. The ring had twelve of my own diamonds in it, and I was shocked when I learned that the whole ring was worth at most $15,000, because Frederick had told me that the stone was worth $23,000. Editor's Letter: Tales of the unexpected. Copyright 1995-2023 eBay Inc. All Rights Reserved. With marketing, with the news, with politics, with the military and different religions and forms of government, I see forms of mind control all the time, everywhere. Von Mierers would often warn his New Age leaders to beware of Jews. She has a huge audience. "Jews have been evil since the beginning of time. vanity fair: [noun] a scene or place characterized by frivolity and ostentation. A few people in the room were buzzing about her: Who is that beautiful woman? Amelia is kind and innocent and comes from a family with money. If challenged about the Holocaust, von Mierers would repeat the most banal anti-Semitic propaganda: "The Holocaust has been exaggerated"; "Hitler was a misunderstood genius"; "Jews have to understand that their natures encourage pogroms. ' " 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. They never saw that side in Lake Lure, however. "Iam doing this for you," von Mierers is said to have replied. Every movement was a tremendous effort. Studio Design Collection. Her relationship with Andreadis shielded her from the burgeoning sexual atmosphere of Eternal Values. From somewhere, I heard music which sounded like an organ on a Moog synthesizer. I hated myself beyond loathing. "Don't ever carry a Vuitton bag!" "Everyone fancied him," a friend told me. His Manhattan number is unpublished, and there's no listing for him in Lake Lure. From the time he was twelve or thirteen years old, he had been interested in Hindu philosophy. I was like, Oh my God. You must now break through the wretched values that you learned in the next reincarnations in France and England!" "No one is recruiting here! 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? Frederick von Mierers is one of the most complex characters I ever met. This guy is raking in millions! Sutherland 48 in. He had us change the locks on the door. She retreated from her friends and family, and even her booker at Ford noticed something was wrong. It was Helen Kress Williams who had brought von Mierers and Billy Baldwin together, according to Ruth Montgomery. 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. 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." He screamed at me, attacked my character, and told me I was being irresponsible and that the ring would fix all that.". Always, he was immaculate; he combed his hair, which was dark then, straight back like an heir to Morgan Stanley. My mother was not that rich. "Don't become a cock worshiper! The literature and cassettes of Eternal Values appear harmless; they are similar to those of hundreds of other organizations that synthesize Eastern philosophy to cash in on the New Age boom. "He would tell us how fabulous and beautiful and special we all were. It is materialized, objectified thoughts. von Mierers was recently asked. Studio Design Collection. His Nantucket house guests recall being sent out to scour the beach for good-looking recruits, handing out invitations to the finest physical specimens they could find. Frederick had sophisticated his operation. . The hardest part, really, has been forgiving myself. Sitting in the apartment near Sutton Place, I thought of the German word Maskenfreiheit: the freedom conferred by masks. As the Manhattan D.A. 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. EVERY PAGE. Ive also tried to deal with some of the deep-seated family issues that may have made me a bit more susceptible to joining a cult than someone else. Andreadis said. His house in Nantucket, his medical insurance, his club dues. The weird thing was, in this crazy screwed up way, I believed they were right to punish me. And a voice said to me, 'Be calm, be calm, the transition will be easy. and 'You are a fucking, sick, evil, satanic piece of shit! .. . "No one is recruiting here!" Freddy said to me, youre different, Hoyt says, speaking directly to the camera. We are sincere! The stones were badly scratched; their color was cloudy. I have rubies and sapphires! "How does Frederick know so much?" I also got a lawyer and brought a civil suit against Eternal Values. . The various uses of gems and crystals and how they work are explained. Few wind up, as von Mierers did, able to get a listing in the Social Register. Conversations on Vivekananda, the Bhagavad Gita, and the Hindu Vedas would stretch on till dawn. Andreadis's mother, Barbara, who owns a New York talent agency, began to worry. von Mierers scolded. He had sold thousands of cassettes with titles such as Space People, Karma and Destiny, and Gems and Crystals. Certain female members of the group were reportedly encouraged to seduce rich men. "I have never heard such hatred in a civilized setting. 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. Close to sixty people attended. As she became more involved with John Andreadis, von Mierers pushed her to take the gems. Pay the money or you're out.' He lived in this awesome apartment and had all these young, intelligent and wealthy followers. It was late summer 1987, and Jacki Adams, the Elizabeth Arden model, at twenty-two was earning more than $300,000 a year. Many of her fifteen books are still in print, filling the psychic-phenomena sections of the paperback racks. Mostly it was menial jobsdoing dishes and laundry, scrubbing toilets, doing vacuum packing. The novel opens at Miss Pinkerton's Academy for young women, where readers are introduced to Amelia and Becky, the novel's female protagonists. I have so many fabulous, fabulous things.". 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. In the checkbook, she would write out these tiny amounts of cash for herself, like fifty or something. 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. "Then it became something else. ``I have no complaints about them at all,' Karr told The Asheville Citizen. For the narcissistic young, all the talk about their diet, spiritual mission, and ego was just another way they could spend time thinking about themselves. "I told her, 'A young lady should have the best of everything.' Adams turned over the cash. Overhead was costly, so the early gem prescriptions were for semiprecious stones. "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. His accent, already familiar to me from the many videotapes he had merchandised, was obviously inauthentic; I could hear traces of the grandees of the Hudson Valley, the sibilation of Blanche DuBois, and the clipped o's of Mayfair. Like so many cult leaders, he appealed to his followers vanity, telling them that they were special enough to literally save the world. The message was simple: Adams and Andreadis were evil; their egos would have to be ' 'destroyed. ' "I think of him as a junior type. Since then, he has acted and started his own film and TV production company, Tortoise. ''Every other check was made out to Freddie von Mierers. We always used to kid about the old neighborhood. Next, in the guise of psychic and oracle, von Mierers would tell his new friends how unhappy their lives really werea fairly safe assumption to make about young people seeking a psychic. CURRENT ACTIVITY: Being admired in Mondo Uomo, the Italian men's magazine, which has devoted 58 pages to him in its November/December issue. "I felt as if I were in a world apart," one said. We just have to get down and scrub the floors!' 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. John comes back down here and Frederick starts smashing him across the face, and just saying, 'You fucking liar!' Just a few things that come to mind, working from memory of course. We had four years of stored food and a whole lot of weapons by thispoint. 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. 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." "Think about the white light and the violet light!" Years ago, if he said he worked ten days on a modeling job, I knew that meant he worked two days! Much of her childhood was spent in rural poverty. From the mind, which is the ego. In the summers, von Mierers would return to Nantucket. In August 1987, Jacki Adams began to attend meetings of the group. Then the nationally syndicated TV show ``Inside Edition' and numerous tabloids featured stories on the enigmatic leader. The minute I saw that group, I knew I was in a cult. . Her office was filled with poinsettias; she wore layers of red wool and plaid Christmas stockings. His followers gave him tens of thousands of dollars for rings to prove their faith. (renews at {{format_dollars}}{{start_price}}{{format_cents}}/month + tax). Solemnly, the merchandise was spread out near me. . But when I got the ring, I could immediately tell they had switched the stones. I saw him again the next summer; two years later, when I went to Princeton, I started visiting him in Manhattan. No money changed hands; Unified Cosmogony was just a new name for Eternal Values, according to the deed. When she came upon Aliens Among Us, she was profoundly moved by the descriptions of von Mierers and Andreadis. It would be the final certification, for who in the psychic world could ever doubt Montgomery's famous Guides? Early on, he felt the strong need to camouflage the fact that he had grown up in Brooklyn. These cults attract mostly the Less than Zero generation, born in the 1960s, reared on fashionable doomsday prophecies about the millennium. The real reason I left was because I felt like a failure. "I was always over there on East Fiftyfourth. Williams, who was later the executor of his mother's will and had her power of attorney, changed the locks on his mother's apartment and told the doorman never to let von Mierers up again. Dr. Thomas Clark, who appeared on the ``Inside Edition' report last week, confirmed von Mierers died of AIDS. "I recognized him as a phony," Jocelyn Kress told me. That's what I've found about this planet. "There are really two kinds of Jews," a friend remembers him saying. To me, I was in a special group on an important mission; I believed I was one of the Chosen who would lead the Earth into a new era of peace and prosperity. It became evil. He would tell us, 'We are living a high spiritual life.' Frederick would bring out the coral and the lapis and he would light up like a Christmas tree. "I come from a very rich family," he once told a TV interviewer. You can cancel at any time. Often he would take his new clients to Doubles. Do you see the ego there? Access everything Vanity Fair has ever published.Join Now Subscriber-Only Benefit The Complete Vanity Fair Archive EVERY ISSUE. In other words, he's not capitulating'. "He saves them from their egos. When I stayed with him and his (friend) John, we would visit studio 54, dance-atria, and strawberries underground quite often and never paid for anything. Of special interest to the tabloids were the models and ``life readings' or other advice von Mierers had given celebrities such as Sylvester Stallone and Rae Dawn Chong. "Frederick encouraged us to lie, to cheat, to say anything to our families. He was strewn with stones! Still, they control ourmind. I called him in the middle of the night and he paid for a plane ticket to L.A. It is said that the chosen will be able to survive the apocalypse by being on something called the White Light Star Ship, or by owning property in certain mountain areas, or, in the case of Eternal Values, by wearing special jewels. Pressed about other people who claimed he had cheated them, he said, "These are jealous, sick, twisted people. "You have to do something! "Ruth Montgomery really created Frederick," one Ford model told me. 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! Von Mierers would stare at the camera with his cold blue eyes and talk about Satan and "the dark forces." By the time Jacki Adams introduced herself to Andreadis, von Mierers's successor was becoming disenchanted with Eternal Values. Deputies in Davidson County rushed to help a 69-year-old man they'd found unresponsive in his house following a welfare check. Is a "Dangerous" Distortion, Says Rachel Williams. "We were so very close." Go deeper. Behind him were a golden Buddha and a massive display of pink azaleas and lilies that seemed to take up an entire wall. . 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. As private-school teenagers found their way to East Fiftyfourth Street, von Mierers would talk to them about his "godmother" from the "famous Kress family" and his friends the Vanderbilts. In the light, it was obvious that the furniture was shabby, that the fabrics were second-rate. We never would have signed him." He told us about the personal tapes he would make for us that would cost $350, and he said he had eight thousand requests. Kathleen Turner and her. 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.". "He teaches us how to aspire to be the best we can. He would say, 'This sapphire is $50,000, this emerald is $70,000.' Eileen Ford asked me. one exclaimed. . The body, the mind, and the senses are inert. "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." ``You can't miss it,' he advises lake visitors curious about the house. One night, in a fit of insomnia, von Mierers thumbed through the book of Revelations. 69-year-old suffers stroke in his home; Realtor showing house leaves him there. I got suspicious when he demanded cash, but the group members said, 'This is what we've done.' Hoyt is a big, big money-maker.". The gems, he would say, are for ''special people, only the elite." He later told Ruth Montgomery that he had undergone what she called a "bewildering substitution of egos." 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