The night Hoyt Richards escaped the Eternal Values cult, after nearly 15 years spent in what he now calls a “mental prison,” he crept past the German shepherds guarding the group’s North Carolina compound. Once he was out of earshot, he bolted.
Richards had been one of the highest-paid male models in the world. He grew up in a loving family, played football and studied economics at Princeton and traveled the world working with celebrated photographers like Richard Avedon and Bruce Weber. How does someone like that wind up living in a garage and devoting his life, and his fortune, to a charlatan claiming to be an alien from a distant star called Arcturus?
That’s the central question in “Bring Me the Beauties: A Model Cult,” a new three-part docuseries directed by the Emmy-winning filmmaker Chris Smith (“100 Foot Wave,” “American Movie”). It premieres Monday on HBO and HBO Max.
Most cult stories have similarities — charismatic leader, seemingly altruistic intensions, mind games. What makes them endlessly fascinating are their peculiarities.
Frederick Von Mierers, the Eternal Values leader, resembled a horror-movie version of a tan, blonde, white-toothed Ken doll. Born Fred Meyers in Brooklyn, he created a phony blue-blood persona as a young man in the 1960s. In 1978, he claimed to have had a near-death experience, which started Von Mierers on the path of claiming to be an alien prophet.
A few years later, he began recruiting young, beautiful people to become, as he says via archival footage in the series, “part of God’s higher cocktail party on earth.” The group frequented Studio 54, dancing alongside celebrities and socialites. Members were promised a spiritual life during the height of Manhattan yuppie materialism.
As in all cult stories, though, things eventually took a dark turn. As Jacki Adams, a former model and Eternal Values member, says in the series, things went “from happy to scary in a heartbeat.”
Smith was never drawn to cult stories until he met Richards and heard his saga. “Hoyt had an idyllic Norman Rockwell sort of upbringing, and you couldn’t imagine the path that his life took,” Smith said in a video interview. “Part of the journey of making the series was trying to understand how this happened.
“What I found interesting is that you had a group of people that felt relatable,” he continued. “Not only could this happen to you, but you may already have cultic relationships in your life that you may not be aware of.”
The Eternal Values story is often sensational — gemstone scams, spaceships, suspicious deaths — but the members were mostly everyday people in search of meaning. In a clip from the series, Von Mierers promised they “could be dancing at the Palladium until dawn and still maintain a spiritual life,” but he also told his followers what to eat, punished them with manual labor and forced them to sleep on the floor of his lavender and mauve apartment.
In late May, a few days before the documentary’s world premiere in New York, Richards talked about his journey through the looking glass of Eternal Values. These are edited excerpts from the interview.
When you met Von Mierers on the beach in Nantucket as a teenager, what made you vulnerable to his charms? Why you and not your friends?
At that time, I didn’t really have a passion. I did well at school, I had friends, I did well at sports. But when football ended for me, I had no game plan. So, when I meet this guy on the beach who is so excited about his game plan, I’m like, well, it sounds a lot better than my no-plan.
You’ve already spoken and written about your experience and hosted a podcast where you talk to other cult survivors. Why make this series now?
I’ve always wanted to tell my story, and I tried to do it almost 10 years ago with another filmmaker. Then I went through this period of thinking my story is getting too old and it’s not relevant. Now I hold a different perspective: My story is more relevant today than it probably was when I went through it.
Why?
If I’d had more information when I was younger, I would have been less vulnerable. I feel an obligation to get that information out to more people. It doesn’t guarantee you’ll be protected, but you’ll have a much better chance.
People will take your desire to help your fellow man and use that against you. If you don’t know that person is out there, you’ll experience what I experienced, which is: Oh, this person gets me. You’ll think it’s the greatest day in your life, but it could be something very dangerous. We weren’t to the point where we were taking Kool-Aid, but we were moving in that direction.
Before things got dangerous, you felt like these people were family. Eventually Von Mierers was having members perform menial tasks and depriving them of sleep. How did things change over time?
When I met Freddy on that beach in Nantucket, the cult didn’t really exist. It was like getting in on the ground floor of a start-up and watching it become a cult. I’ll tell you where it changed: A book Ruth Montgomery wrote, “Aliens Among Us,” became the catalyst and validated this false persona that he created. [Montgomery was a self-proclaimed psychic and best-selling author of over a dozen books on New Age topics and the paranormal.]
One of the most chilling parts of the series is when you, Von Mierers and another member go on a talk show thinking you’re spreading the good word, but you’re attacked by the host and the audience, who call you a manipulative cult. Do you remember how you felt in that moment?
I was terrified, because I wasn’t supposed to be on that stage. The sidekick guy had just left the group, and he always did all of that. I wasn’t public about this — I was being covert about it all. When the show started going sideways, I didn’t know how to fight back. It was a nightmare. I never went public after that again.
What were your conversations like when you left that taping?
Massive denial. Rationalizing. It was always, “They’re evil, they set us up.” There was never accountability — narcissists can’t do that. That’s where everyone is stuck, because no one is dealing with reality. There are cracks in the veneer and you’re just trying to hold it together, and no one wants to be honest. Everyone was too scared to talk about it.
Over the two decades you were in the cult, you became one of the world’s most successful male models. You were traveling around the world, getting invitations to parties at Madonna’s house. You were also giving millions of dollars to Von Mierers — did thoughts ever creep in that something was off about this?
They did. The Germans paid in cash, so I’d stuff my socks with Deutschmarks because you could only bring back $10,000 or something. There were times I’d think, “I could just put this in a Swiss bank account.” But then I’d tell myself no, those are the dark, evil thoughts.
That’s part of the healing process, to go back and acknowledge that you did have those thoughts that you suppressed. Even though I was being brainwashed, even though I was greatly under the influence, I was still making choices. And I’m responsible for them.
Did people in the modeling world ever confront you about Eternal Values or question it?
When people had the balls to confront me or say, “That sounds a little cultish to me,” I would tell them [expletive]. The mere fact that I was in the group, to me, was the greatest criteria for why it could not be a cult. You become your own worst enemy. I was that person who said that would never happen to me; it only happens to other people.
After you escaped the compound, it took you several years to fully come back to yourself. What was the healing process like?
I’m still in it. I did therapy and counseling. I found meeting other cult survivors helpful. My family said they felt like it was four years before I was healed — my brother said once I started calling him after the Eagles games, he knew I was back. It just took time. None of us knew what we were up against.
