00:00Susan Bearden, Erica Wilson, John Hoyt, they're all top professional models represented by the prestigious Ford Modeling Agency.
00:07They're also members of a cult called Eternal Values.
00:12How do you do, ladies and gentlemen? I'm Frederick Von Mirrors.
00:14Frederick is the self-anointed guru of Eternal Values.
00:18He says he and his followers are from the star Arcturus.
00:21I did come from Arcturus. I entered into this physical body on January 23rd, 1978, at 7 o'clock.
00:27In 1988, Frederick appeared on this talk show to warn the world of the coming apocalypse.
00:32Starting in May of next year, the terrible earthquakes, the storms that will beset humanity, the financial disasters.
00:40We must warn you, we're here to warn you of these things. We are sincere.
00:43On the surface, his followers appeared to be among the best and the brightest.
00:47We are very disciplined. All the people here went to Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, graduated with honors.
00:53But their parents soon began to notice problems.
00:55Catherine went in right after graduation from Princeton, and I really never saw her, with one robotic exception.
01:02I never saw her after graduation in 85.
01:05What do you mean by robotic?
01:08There was no Catherine available. Catherine wasn't home.
01:11It was like you knocked, and somebody opened some kind of louvers, and you looked in,
01:15and there was just a hollow, a metallic, not a shadow, a metallic hollow.
01:19And my sister said something about the heart. What was missing was the heart.
01:24Carol and Edelman had two daughters, and she says she lost them both to eternal values.
01:29He takes the people out of their family situation. He takes them out of their normal friendships.
01:34He takes them away from their hobbies, their passions, their creativity.
01:39And all that's left is a shell that will do whatever Frederick von Muir has once done.
01:44It was a sham. It was just a great big phony sham.
01:47I really feel he raped them of their soul and their minds.
01:52Bob and Terry Hoyt brought up their six children in Berwyn, Pennsylvania, just outside of Philadelphia.
01:57Their son John is a Princeton graduate and a professional model.
02:01They say they've lost him to Frederick von Muir's, perhaps for good.
02:05But what hurts them just as much is how John is being used.
02:09John, with his charisma, was able to go out and seek out the women and get them interested in this
02:15spiritual, in quotes, organization, and bring them back to Frederick.
02:20Jackie Adams was one of those women recruited by John.
02:24She's another top Ford fashion model.
02:26She's been featured in the most glamorous magazines.
02:29When she met Frederick von Muir's, she liked what she heard.
02:33They're talking about love.
02:34They're talking about helping one another.
02:36This is like the perfect world.
02:39You know, and they were so sincere when they were talking.
02:44And I was completely taken in.
02:46Jackie Adams was convinced to move into this building.
02:49It's on the east side of New York City.
02:51It's about five blocks away from the Ford Model Agency.
02:54It's where Frederick von Muir's and his inner circle lived,
02:56where he was the master and they were the slaves.
03:00All I know is what he was doing was wrong.
03:02It was morally wrong.
03:04It was criminally wrong, in my view.
03:06What was he doing that was morally wrong?
03:09I've heard it described.
03:12And I shudder to think about what these men and women are going to deal with for the rest of
03:20their lives.
03:21You know, I mean, with their husbands and their wives, hopefully, that they'll have later.
03:26But how do you look at something so normal after someone has twisted it so horribly?
03:32Marie Brenner is the special correspondent for Vanity Fair magazine that first broke the story on eternal values.
03:37According to her article, Frederick von Muir's and some of his followers engaged in bizarre sexual activities.
03:44How could he convince his followers to do something like that?
03:47I don't know.
03:50Absolutely extraordinary.
03:51And when you consider that these young people, many of whom had gone to the finest schools, had come from
03:56incredibly good families,
03:58they were not the dummies that were in Jonestown.
04:02Carol Giambalvo is one of the leaders of the Cult Awareness Network, an organization that helps ex-cult members.
04:08If you can really gain control of a person's sexuality, you've gained control of the most intimate part of themselves.
04:16Both that and the feeling of a relationship with God are the two most intimate aspects of a person.
04:24And if you can control that, then you've really got control of them.
04:28Jackie says she escaped the group sex by marrying one of the cult leaders, but she didn't escape the fear
04:33of AIDS.
04:34I ended up being involved with a man who had had homosexual relationships, who had never told me about them.
04:41I had no idea of the risk I was taking.
04:43He didn't even think about the risk that he had been taking.
04:47I mean, right there we're talking about a possible death sentence that I'm not even prepared for.
04:52To support his cult, to pay the rent in New York City, to buy property like this lakeside retreat in
04:58North Carolina,
04:59Frederick von Muir sold what he said were precious stones.
05:02Frederick was in the middle of a multi-million dollar gem ring.
05:07He probably sold, we estimated, two million dollars worth of stones.
05:11And his way of doing it was to tell the people in his cult that their lives were going to
05:18be essentially useless,
05:19that they would not survive the millennium unless they wore his healing gems.
05:24How much did this all cost you?
05:26The whole kit and caboodle, everything that I, all the money that Frederick got for me, about a hundred thousand
05:35dollars in cash.
05:38Jackie Adams finally escaped the clutches of Frederick von Muir's about two years ago.
05:42Then she went to her bosses at the Ford Modeling Agency and tried to warn them.
05:47I had a long meeting with Jerry Ford and Joe Hunter, told them about it, told them who was involved
05:54and how,
05:55and everyone wanted to walk away from it. It was too embarrassing.
06:00Nobody came to me and said, hey, four of your models belong to this outfit.
06:04But a taped conversation between Jerry Ford and Jackie Adams proves otherwise.
06:08There is Hoyt Richards, there's Erica Wilson, and Susan Beard and myself all involved.
06:13They're all Ford Models. That's why I wanted to tell you guys about this.
06:16But nothing was ever done, and now the members of Eternal Values have another problem to worry about.
06:22Mr. von Muir's did have AIDS and died as a result of AIDS.
06:25These kids could all contract AIDS, and then they would be no more.
06:30My biggest fear right now is that my girls would have AIDS because they lived in a situation where a
06:35man
06:36who had AIDS dominated their lives.
06:39Even though Frederick's dead, there's always going to be another man or person
06:44that's going to think of another scam to take advantage of innocent, gullible, hopeful, believing people.
06:55If someone you know seems to be falling into a cult, you can get help by calling the Cult Awareness
07:00Network.
