Bring Me the Beauties: A Model Cult (2026) s01e03 Episode Script
Mind Games
1
[TV static drones]
[bright tone]
- 21 minutes after the hour
of 8:00.
This is the Sunday night
Hall of Fame Special Edition
tonight,
as we play some of the
greatest hits of Christmas.
- Dreaming
of a white Christmas ♪
- I've got a whole thing
here with our Christmas cards.
My mother took great pride
in our Christmas cards.
At Christmas, you got
to have heart, you know?
Every year there'd be a photo,
and then there
would also be a newsletter.
This is 1974.
My mother writes,
"John, age 12, 7th grade.
"This fall he has thrown
several boy-girl parties
"in our game room, which
have been quite successful.
He's very careful how he
combs his hair and dresses."
[laughs]
Yep, that was me.
But this was Christmas 1987.
And that's the last time
I went home for Christmas.
My mother writes,
"John lives in Manhattan
"but seems to spend most
of his time in Europe.
"We see him in pictures,
but we're saddened
to report he has broken off
all family contacts."
The next year--
"Still no word from John,
"except what we see
in the magazines,
but we keep loving
and praying for him."
And this one--it was a card
that I had never seen,
because at that point,
I had broken off contact
with my family.
You know, they got returned.
And this one--it says,
"Because I'm your mother."
"You're going
to be 28 years old.
"We have hardly seen you
for years.
"We may not have been
the perfect parents,
"but at least you know
we loved you.
And we don't want to die
without ever seeing you again."
[sniffles]
[groans]
[sighs, sniffles]
[somber music]
♪
- In 1990,
when the "Vanity Fair" article
came out,
we found
this exit counselor to
help set up an intervention.
- My older brother,
Rory, had contacted me
and said, hey, let's have
a boys' weekend
up in Newport, Rhode Island.
It was definitely
not something
I would have normally done,
but, you know, Rory--he had
always kind of been
in my corner,
so I trusted him.
[dramatic music]
- The exit counselors
had explained
that people attempt
the intervention,
and it drives the person away.
You got one shot
to make it work.
- Spent the first day
sailing--
all these sort of things
we would do on Nantucket.
But the next day,
we're at breakfast,
we're having a good old time,
and all of a sudden,
these three guys
come in.
I just remember feeling like,
okay, what the fuck's
going on?
- We said to John,
hey, we're concerned about you,
and these counselors
are here to help you.
- All of a sudden,
my peripheral vision left,
and everything
just got very, very small.
I just felt
like a trapped animal.
But we went back
to the hotel room and talked,
I think, for, like, 12 hours.
- And we thought we
made pretty good progress.
So everyone went to bed,
and we were gonna continue
the discussion
the next morning.
Then we got woken up
at, like, 4:00.
John's gone.
We took off to the airport,
and sure enough,
over in the corner,
hidden, John was there,
waiting for this flight.
So now we go into it,
you know, with a full press.
This is your life.
This is your family.
You need to leave
that other group alone.
And then they call
for the plane.
You know, again, we tell him,
hey, don't go, don't go.
- But the sense of betrayal
was so intense,
I just turned and left.
♪
And they looked at each other,
and they said, you know
I don't think we're
ever gonna see him again.
That's not the way you hope
an intervention goes.
♪
- WBAB
with Frederick Von Mierers,
and let us break now briefly,
give Frederick's voice a rest.
- It's a little bit low
because I've had
too much work to do.
- Ah, don't say a word.
You've got to rest your voice.
- I've been talking to you.
- I know.
- No one ever knew
the full story,
but Frederick had gotten weak,
and he started to lose weight.
- We were thinking, he's just
got this inner-ear infection,
this weakness
that was in there returning.
He had the night sweats.
He's not doing well,
losing weight.
I'm thinking
something's wrong.
I knew Frederick had
many partners.
That was his prerogative.
But I said, I think
we should get HIV tests.
♪
I tested negative
but he wouldn't acknowledge
that he tested positive.
I was absolutely terrified.
But do I really need
to tell the world?
No. No, I wouldn't.
I didn't.
We kept
the whole thing secret.
But Frederick
was still wanting to have
casual sexual encounters.
- Wait, did you believe
he was having sex with people
while he was HIV-positive?
- I think so, but I wasn't
really seeing it directly.
And at the same time,
I'm thinking, this is insane.
I was afraid,
but I decided
it was absolutely necessary
to confront him.
So I said to him, Frederick,
I'll stay with you
all the way through this.
But, you know,
you got to let me know,
are you really
thinking clearly?
But that
really pissed him off.
And then he cracked me
over the head with a plate.
[plate shatters]
He's hitting me in the face,
and I'm getting a bloody nose.
And he's like,
you stupid fucking cunt,
get the fuck out of here.
I'm thinking, perhaps
he's tricking me.
I promised I'd stay
with him to the end.
- Paul Hinton.
- I'm the one person who knows
Frederick's really not well.
Shouldn't I help him?
But there was a certain look
in his eyes.
It wasn't human,
and it wasn't Frederick.
♪
- I'm surprised
Paul didn't break his skull.
Paul went
to the local precinct,
but he didn't want
to push the matter any more
because he was afraid
that it would go poorly
for him.
- My fear
was that Frederick
would then turn my decision
to leave against me.
What if Frederick could blame
all of us for things?
Hmm, after all,
I've done X, Y, and Z--
running errands and cash
and doing the gemstones
off the books,
3/4 of a million in sales.
You know, well,
let's spit it out--
half a pound of psilocybin
mushrooms in the freezer
and different things.
So, if anybody does snitch
or you get into trouble,
you're screwed.
But when I left,
I thought to myself,
I'll be quiet and silent.
It was very difficult
for me to leave,
because I second-guessed
myself for the rest of my life.
♪
Well, I ended up
joining the military.
I joined the U.S. Army.
25 years old, and I had to,
you know, regroup.
♪
- Around that time,
Frederick's body started
deteriorating pretty quickly.
His immune system couldn't
handle whatever was going on.
- As Frederick started
to get sicker and sicker,
I thought, oh, he just needs
to get down to North Carolina.
He'll bounce back,
and everything will be fine.
- I personally drove Frederick
from our apartment
in New York City to Lake Lure.
He was in bed 24-7,
to the point
where we had to roll him over
'cause he started
getting bed sores.
- We didn't know
he was dying of AIDS.
We thought it was
this staph infection.
He didn't tell any of us.
And, ultimately,
as Frederick's health
continued to wane,
the primary caretaker was a guy
who was in Eternal Values--
this guy, David Seaman.
- With us today,
we have Dr. David Seaman.
- The idea behind chiropractic
is to balance
the body's structural system.
- When David got involved
with the group,
he was a chiropractor.
- Frederick was starting to
have certain physical issues,
and David would use
his chiropractic
and, you know, treat him.
And then he kind of became
the in-house chiropractor,
where we'd all get adjustments
here and there from him.
- But I never had a really
good feeling about him.
Frederick would say,
in a past life,
David Seaman chopped
Frederick's head off
and that the reason
why David was here
was to work out the karma.
- Did you come here
from another planet as well
or another solar system?
- I did.
- You did.
- But the point is,
that's not important.
- As Frederick got sicker,
there's now a power struggle.
David was the one
trying to grab power,
and there's another
guy named Fritz.
Fritz was a senior executive
for German television
in their New York office.
He and Freddy
were the same age.
And he was second in command.
He'd hold court,
and he would act
as the de facto vice president,
so to speak.
And
yeah.
♪
- Time-out?
- Yeah, I need time.
- Okay.
- Yeah, fuck.
- I was in Reno, Nevada,
doing a job for "GQ"
when I got the phone call.
Frederick was
on his last legs,
and I needed to come back
and basically see him
and say my goodbye.
I was in complete denial
about the fact
that he was on death's door.
♪
- Fritz and David
started taking over
and exerting their control.
I mean, Frederick was a living
skeleton at that point.
♪
- It was not easy
to even look at Frederick.
I was given
this little vial of--
They said it was water--
you know,
with a little dropper.
And they said, you know,
he's struggling.
You know, just give him drops
when you think it's necessary.
Keep him hydrated.
But later, David Seaman
divulged to us
that what
we were all giving him
was actually some form of
morphine or some sort of thing
to try to accelerate
his death.
But none of us were told that
at the time.
- It was, like, poison
in those bottles
and that we were
actually giving him poison
while we were supposedly
just wetting his lips.
- And then we were sitting
in the kitchen.
Fritz walks in
with a very, very somber face
and just says, you know
Frederick's passed.
I really just went numb.
I didn't know what to think.
I couldn't believe it.
In his own ephemeris,
Frederick marked the dates
between January 28th
and February 9th of 1990
and wrote "end of life."
And he died on February 4th,
so it was right
in that window.
I mean, make of it
what you will.
♪
- Realize that this Earth
is only a way station.
As you die, you slowly shift
into the next octave
of vibration.
The places to which you go--
and this is very important--
are determined by your life.
This is why many people,
before they die,
see their entire life
flash before their eyes.
♪
- Do you remember
the last interaction you had
with Frederick
when he was lucid?
- [voice breaking]
I told him I loved him.
That's the last
thing I remember.
[somber music]
♪
- Do you remember
his reaction?
- He smiled.
He wasn't talking
at that point.
♪
- We found out later that
when Frederick passed away,
David Seaman and
Fritz Diekmann
were in the room,
and David said Fritz put the
pillow over Frederick's head
just to end his life.
♪
And when we confronted Fritz,
he admitted that.
But there was discussion
amongst us
that it was
kind of a mercy killing.
Fritz--you could see,
it was not something
that he wanted to do.
It wasn't something
that was easy for him to do.
And I actually felt
some compassion for him.
- Well, ladies and gentlemen,
that's a great deal to think
about--ascended masters,
space people,
and resurrected beings.
Good night with another
platform of the Eternal Values.
- Within hours
of Frederick passing,
Fritz would come over
to people
who were huddled up
in twos or threes,
and we were trying to laugh
and remember our good times
with Frederick.
He would say, don't do that.
Frederick died.
We've got to move on.
And he was just very abrupt
and cold about it all.
Like, Frederick's out of here,
and now that whole life
is over.
[dramatic music]
♪
Initially, David tried
to get Frederick cremated,
but before that could happen,
we had to get an autopsy done.
And that's when, supposedly,
it was diagnosed
that he had the AIDS virus.
- Once it went public that he
had AIDS,
the mercy killing
certainly wasn't something
that we were gonna talk about.
So it kind of became one of
these secrets within the group
that we all knew but certainly
you wouldn't go public with.
♪
After that, we had to
completely reconfigure
Eternal Values.
And that was the point
when Fritz took over.
But he didn't have any
of the savvy or personality
that Freddy had.
And within six months,
the rest of our group--
we kind of started
to push back on him,
and we had
this kind of a mutiny.
♪
- We went
back to New York City,
and they locked him
in his apartment,
and they wouldn't let
him leave.
This was, like,
for two or three days.
They told him
that he had to leave,
and they got him to sign over
his ownership
of the Eternal Values assets.
And he left.
- And through that fracture,
the group kind of split.
Some people aligned
with Fritz,
and some people aligned
with our side.
I temporarily was
in a leadership position
for about a month or two,
where we were like,
okay, what do we do next?
But to really maintain
a leadership position
at Eternal Values,
you had to be willing to put
other people down,
confront them.
And that is not, fortunately,
the way I'm wired.
And so I was quickly demoted.
- At this point,
what are you thinking about
in terms of the group?
- [scoffs] I'm thinking,
things are pretty fucked up.
- Was it recognizable
from what it was before?
- Not to me.
♪
There were
a couple individuals
that I felt
that had no interest
in any spiritual growth at all
but were there only
for their self-gratification.
Something inside of me,
you know, said, this is wrong.
You have to get out.
But when I told them
that I was leaving the group,
they tied me to a chair
and started grilling me
for a day and a half.
Frederick wouldn't want you
to do this.
You're not following
your path.
- Were you awake
the whole time?
- [voice breaking] I don't
remember ever going to sleep.
But they thought
I might be leaving
with Frederick's gems
and things like that.
So, before I walked
out the door,
they stripped me
down to my underwear
and let me walk out
the door in my underwear
with a bag of clothes.
So that's how I left the group.
♪
- At that time,
the district attorney's office
was investigating
and pursuing this,
to bring it to court.
- Frederick was in the middle
of a multimillion-dollar
gem ring.
- But I was told that although
there was a money trail,
because Frederick
had passed away,
the case that they thought
they could bring to court
was no longer sufficient,
and they dropped the case.
♪
But once Frederick died,
I really thought
that the group
would lose its momentum.
That would be the end of it.
So it was very surprising to me
that it continued
so much longer.
♪
[indistinct chatter]
- After Frederick died,
most of the crew
moved down to North Carolina.
You know, Freddy's gone.
Fritz is gone.
No one's got the space people
on speed dial,
so we've got to figure out how
to survive
the coming apocalypse,
and how are we gonna do that?
This is written
on this stationery,
where I was in London.
"Frederick told us repeatedly
that we have an opportunity
"to do something
in our lifetime
"that hasn't been done before.
"Exactly what that is,
none of us is sure,
"but we know that it is meant
to be achieved by us
"by staying together,
working together,
"and caring for each other.
"The only real means
of survival in the future
"will be through
communal living,
"and we all know how critical
Freddy said that this would be.
"Therefore,
we are free individuals
joined together in a common
cause--self-realization."
The North Carolina
lifestyle was,
everyone lived
at the lake house.
There were, like,
six bedrooms.
But each room
had two twin beds.
You had zero privacy,
but we'd been doing such
communal lifestyle for so long,
it wasn't something
that felt weird anymore.
That was just the way we lived.
- In North Carolina,
it was much more grounded
in the day-to-day life.
But when Frederick was alive,
for all the insanity,
there was always
an undercurrent
of a spiritual purpose.
- Love everything
unconditionally,
and you become part of God's
higher cocktail party on Earth.
- Frederick always had
that kind of ethereal,
tonal music playing.
You were transported
out of New York City
[exhales sharply]
Into this oasis.
But I remember
one morning in North Carolina,
David got a boombox
and a copy of the song
"Mandolin Rain."
- The song came
and went ♪
- And he played that
fucking song, I swear to you,
for a week on repeat.
And it was like, can you please
turn that fucking song off?
And then it would start--
Listen to the mandolin rain ♪
- Listen to the music
on the lake ♪
Oh, listen
to my heartbreak ♪
Every time ♪
- It was
a different vibe.
The core group had gotten down
to ten people.
There were no women around.
And so we're aware
that we're different,
that we hold
some very strange beliefs.
- Dr. David Seaman.
The life of a chiropractor--
- We decided to not promote
ourselves as Eternal Values,
'cause that name
had been quite soiled.
And that kind of started
a whole new era for us.
- And they were gonna start
some kind
of construction company
to give a look of normalcy.
- At that time,
I knew they had this office
called the Lotus Group.
They were very professional,
very polite.
And I'm like, well, people
are saying y'all are aliens.
You know, I mean, come on.
There was certainly
nothing scary or dangerous
to me.
- The locals
called us bead-wearing,
homosexual stargazers.
So it was decided
that it would be a good idea
for some of the guys
to have girlfriends.
And one of the guys
was with Meg.
- It was just
this instant chemistry.
I mean, it was just boom.
I was so madly in love.
You could have told me
anything about them,
and I wouldn't have believed
it, you know.
I just wouldn't
have believed it.
♪
- I was in North Carolina.
It was almost
through happenstance
that I ended up here,
ended up getting a job here.
And after about a year or so,
I started to see
these familiar faces.
But I was consciously healing
myself from this experience
and was quite content not
knowing anything about them.
And then I found out a woman
in the arts community
got involved
with the Lotus Group.
- Elissa came
in my office one day,
and she said, I know these guys
from New York.
I've had dealings with them.
Do you have any idea
who these people are?
They're not
who they appear to be.
You don't want anything
to do with them.
Just steer clear.
- I looked at her,
and I said, just be careful.
And she cut me off.
She didn't want to hear that.
She wanted to hear
how wonderful it was.
- At the time, I just--
I guess, I just attributed it
to small-town gossip
and that sort of thing.
I mean, to me,
we're all friends.
We're working together
on these projects.
We were just like a family.
- I still was modeling
full-time and traveling a lot.
So, when the E! Channel
was doing a special
on male models,
I suggested they come down
to North Carolina
and see this life I had.
Hey, come on in.
This is the Lotus Group.
Our office is down here
in North Carolina.
- We thought,
he's getting press,
and he's getting
a whole segment.
This could be good PR
for everyone in the group.
- You're watching E!,
the entertainment authority.
I've always wanted to do--
[laughing]
- Basically,
the general note was,
don't be a weirdo.
But the whole thing
was staged and fake.
- One of the great things about
working here at Lotus Group is,
you're greeted every day
by our lovely Blair.
- I mean, they'd hired a woman
to be the receptionist.
She was not a part
of the group.
I don't think Hoyt spent
seconds in his life
before that shot
talking to Blair.
- She takes care
of all the phones down here.
She's a lovely lady.
- And we had
this awkward dinner,
where, for some reason,
I've got a fucking suit
and tie on.
I remember looking over
at Hoyt, like, seriously?
When's the last fucking time
we sat down
and ate dinner at the table?
[indistinct chatter]
- He's reportedly
the highest-paid male model
in the world, but after nearly
a decade in the business,
success has not gone
to Hoyt Richard's head.
- The E! TV show--we
didn't see the finished edit
until it went live on the air.
- When Hoyt's not working,
he's here,
among the calm and quiet
of the North Carolina
mountains.
- E! Made it all about Hoyt.
- Hoyt also manages
a construction company.
- Hoyt's got these businesses,
and he's employing
his friends.
That created tension
amongst all of us
in the group
- Well, we won't bother you
too much longer.
But Dave's the authority
on all this stuff.
- Because you
had to remain humble.
You know, he's getting
a big head.
- In that group context,
I was always on eggshells,
like a lot of us were.
We became like
a more dysfunctional family
that was kind of holding out
for the apocalypse.
This is our production office.
You know, in many ways,
when Frederick was alive,
he definitely
kind of spoiled me
to some degree,
and that built up
a lot of resentment
in some of the other members.
♪
- The irony of it is,
he's still funding shit.
He would be gone on the road.
Caribbean island one week,
next week he's in Sweden.
The next week
he's in Los Angeles.
- When I was on the road,
there were friends and
relationships I was developing
outside the group.
And I met a woman
named Donna in L.A.
She was a beautiful brunette,
and I was very intrigued
by her.
And so we just started
to see each other,
and it was
very kind of sporadic.
I was traveling so much,
and I could only see her
maybe once--
even sometimes once
every two months.
But I had developed
these real feelings for her,
and I realized
that these things
that had been so demonized
over the years,
this idea of romantic love--
I'm like,
it doesn't feel so bad.
I'm like, I really feel
like she's in my corner,
and she cares about me.
And that relationship
with Donna was something
that started to unlock my heart
in a way that I never expected.
But I did it covertly.
No one in the group
knew about that.
[spacey music]
- In the year 1999,
the magnetic poles will shift,
and humanity
will be decimated.
- In 1999, the group
was getting smaller.
And for
the remaining members--
everyone was very reliant
on each other to survive.
Here it is.
These were some
of the notes I wrote.
"Operation: Safe Place."
- There was a lot of talk
after Frederick died
about the pole shift.
- 1/10 of 1% of the population
will be saved.
- That's how the plan
started to get rolling.
- We needed to start
stockpiling food
and be able to live
off the grid.
- They believed
that there was gonna be
some major earth-changing,
catastrophic world event
and that Lake Lure
was one of the safe places.
They owned some property
way up on the mountain
that had caves.
And that's where
everyone was gonna go.
- How was it gonna happen?
Was the timeline right?
And then the conversation
began to turn
towards guns.
[gunshot]
- We learned
how to shoot guns.
- I had a shotgun,
and I had a .45.
- It was just--
accumulate and provide
the best defense
for the future.
- And it just devolved
into this quickly.
[dramatic music]
- Oh, yeah, they had
quite an arsenal.
They had stockpiled
storage units
just chock-full
of all the survival stuff,
to be safe until the world
settled back down,
and then they would come in
and help everyone
and save everyone.
♪
So I was the only girl
that was left.
And my boyfriend sat me down
one night and asked me,
we're all gonna be together
to survive.
It would only be fair
if you were willing to have sex
with the other guys,
and who would you be willing
to have sex with?
And I remember just being so
absolutely shocked
and appalled.
And I'm like,
you've got to be kidding me.
And I wouldn't give him
any names.
And he was getting
angry with me.
And I was like, no,
I would never consider it.
- There at the end,
we thought we needed women
to help repopulate the planet
and raise enlightened beings.
It's like a bad sci-fi script.
♪
- As the millennium
was approaching,
there were gonna be
all these Earth changes,
like tidal waves
and hurricanes.
We were starting
to buy gold and silver
'cause that was gonna be
the only tangible
money source.
Meanwhile, I'm, like, flying
to London for a gig,
and I'm like, economies
aren't collapsing
[chuckles]
No tidal waves, no earthquakes.
It all sounds ludicrous,
but part
of my critical thinking
started to come back.
And that's when I started
to approach the group
with the idea--
you know, you guys are here
in North Carolina.
You're kind of in a bubble.
I'm telling you, nothing's
happening out there.
And so I got attacked
for that.
And in that same conversation--
I thought it couldn't get
any worse--
I'm like, oh, and by the way,
I've been seeing someone.
All hell broke loose.
What do you mean
you're seeing someone?
♪
At that point, they just said,
you got to break up with her.
You're being selfish,
and you're being unfair to her.
You know, what are you doing?
And they painted it like,
you're just being
a motherfucker to this girl.
She has no idea
what you're involved with.
And, you know,
I told Donna,
I thought I wanted to be
in this relationship,
but I've decided I don't.
And it was incredibly harsh
and severe.
And treating her that way
really did not
[somber music]
[voice breaking]
Did not sit well with me.
And that started this whole
period where they're like,
okay, we got to save Hoyt
from himself.
He's clearly losing his mind.
He can't survive out there.
We've got to bring him back
here to North Carolina.
We have to watch him
under lock and key.
- They were having him do
every menial job possible
to teach him humility.
- You know, I had to be
the first one up,
the last one to bed.
I was doing all
the kind of shit work
that no one else wanted to do.
- I got a call saying,
you know,
come over to the lake house.
John was in serious trouble.
And I walked into the kitchen,
and John was sitting there,
very submissive,
sitting at the kitchen table,
and his whole head was shaved.
I mean, he was bald.
And I was like,
oh, my gosh, you know,
what happened to your head?
And they were like, yeah,
tell Meg about what happened.
- The guys had instructed me
that I was gonna have to move
to North Carolina
and give up my career.
I knew, like, in my heart,
I'm not ready to do this.
But they said,
just so you have no temptation
to even think
about leaving here,
we're gonna shave your head so
that you can't model anymore.
[dramatic music]
I remember, you know,
looking in the mirror,
and I kept thinking to myself,
If I had hair, I could
actually probably, like, be
in Milan right now
or Paris, you know,
with, like, Claudia Schiffer
or Cindy Crawford,
making 25 G's a day.
I guess I'm not spiritual,
'cause I'd rather be there.
I became, as they called it,
the bald hausfrau.
I interpreted it as, like,
it's my own fault.
If I would just pull my head
out of my ass
and be more like them,
I wouldn't have to go
through this.
But because I'm somehow flawed
and because there's
something wrong with me,
I just feel like
they're never gonna give up.
I was like, I don't think
I'm ever gonna measure up
to what they're asking me
to be.
I just got to the point
where I'm like,
I just can't take this.
And so I mapped out a plan
to just escape,
and I went
to the airport and left.
I got to New York.
I was putting
my things together.
I was gonna be there one night
before I left.
And sure enough, man,
they appeared at that door
in New York City.
♪
I remember one of the guys
sat in the doorway
to make sure that
in the middle of the night,
I couldn't leave.
And so I was sleeping
by the window
[voice breaking]
And I thought about jumping.
[swallows hard]
But I didn't.
And they brought me
back to North Carolina.
And I lasted, I think,
three, four more weeks.
And I was like, this time
I'm not getting caught.
No fucking way, man.
♪
It was actually
the weekend of July 4th.
And when I left,
I constructed a letter to leave
for the guys in North Carolina
to alert them,
to kind of say, I've gone.
"It's official, I quit.
"Everything you've ever said
about me is true.
"I'm hopeless
and totally selfish.
"I'm the laziest person
in the room.
"I've wasted my life.
"I deserve to spend the rest
of my life with the trash,
"just like myself.
"David, you've always said,
at this time,
"when everything
is falling apart,
"people's true colors
will be shown.
"I cringe to think
of the penalty that I will pay.
"It was not bad enough
to betray Frederick
"and all he stood for,
but now all of you.
"As I've said many times,
"you're the only real friends
I've ever had.
You will never see me again."
Signed, Dipshit."
♪
So I had organized
a call to a cab--
meet me at 2:30
in the morning,
hoping that at that point,
everyone would be asleep.
We had two German shepherds,
so I had to creep
and stay quiet,
keep the dogs calm.
And we had a gravel driveway
about a mile and a half
down the hill
through forest.
But when I felt
like I was out of earshot,
I just fucking bolted.
♪
And I was gone.
Yeah, and that time,
I never came back.
♪
- I remember asking
one of the guys, where's John?
I haven't seen him around.
Or has he gone
back to New York?
And he said,
yeah, he's left, he's gone.
And I was not
to talk about John.
I was not to ask about him.
- I left.
I went to California.
I put as much land
between me and them.
I had about $3,000,
but I didn't know where to go.
- I remember Hoyt--
he called me,
and he told me, you know,
he was really in bad shape.
He was really beat up.
I mean, his brain went blank.
He was, like, a straight line,
morally, spiritually--
just like a zombie.
And I said, listen, you know,
you can stay here
until, you know, you figure out
what you want to do
in your life.
You can stay in my place
so you don't have to worry
about bills.
- Fabio is incredibly loyal.
It's like, you're his friend,
you're his friend for life.
I don't know if he
just knew instinctively
or whether he had so much
going on in his own career.
But at the time, he played it
off like, you know, nothing.
Come stay.
You know, let's go to the gym.
No questions asked.
Didn't even ask me
why my head was shaved.
I made up some story about
some extreme modeling job.
- Hoyt was being
an extremely successful model
and, all of a sudden, was left
with no money, nothing.
These people--
they were like piranhas.
I mean, they left him
with nothing.
♪
- Being at Fabio's
just gave me
a place to incubate
and start to process
some of my feelings.
I was still contemplating,
maybe I should return.
- Hoyt was very honest
and very open about it.
And I knew
that they will come.
Eventually life will slap you
in the face,
and you realize,
oh, my God, you know,
it's like, I've been taken
for a ride.
I told him, I said, listen,
what people do
most of the time in life?
They always blame
somebody else.
It takes two to tangle in life.
He got sucked in
but he was smart enough
to get out
and realize,
I made a big mistake.
You know what?
What I gonna do now?
♪
- After about a year,
I went to meet a friend
at a lunch place
in Beverly Hills
and the maître d' there
recognized me.
And he said,
are you Hoyt Richards?
And I said, yeah, yeah.
And he's like,
I'm friends with Dar.
And I didn't really know
how to respond.
So I said, please tell Dar
I'm living in L.A.
and I'm alone.
And I'm like, God, I hope
he gets the message, man,
and I hope he knows
what I'm saying.
And three weeks go by,
and I get this phone call
I don't recognize.
Hey, Hoyter, it's Dar.
I'm like, hey, Dar.
He's like, yeah, I'm calling
from my therapist's office.
[laughing] My therapist
said I should call you.
- When we
finally ended up meeting,
I told him, no more
North Carolina for me.
I began to explain--
in North Carolina,
just before I left,
I was in a bar
and having a good time.
But when I got into the car
[imitates siren wailing]
We had a loaded assault rifle
in the car,
and we didn't pull over.
We drove down the driveway
into the lake house and parked.
I jump out of the car.
This guy had called
for backup.
And I got tackled from behind.
- I mean,
it was Highway Patrol,
sheriffs, police,
siren, lights everywhere.
And the guys were screaming
and yelling,
don't tell them your name.
Don't tell them your name.
They don't have to have
any information.
- After we got out on bail,
we filed this paperwork, which
I wasn't even really clear on,
but it was the same type
of paperwork
that these militiamen
and the guy at Ruby Ridge
had filled out,
telling the government, you
don't have any power over us.
We're sovereign people.
But we really pissed off
the entire state.
And they let the lawyers
and they let the private
investigators know
that we were considered
anti-government terrorists.
♪
After that happened,
I woke up,
and I thought to myself,
fuck this.
And I called up my folks,
and that was my out
from the group.
And I was scared
to death when I did it.
[plane engine roaring]
- Dar and I ended up
becoming roommates,
and we spent
the first six months
just trying to deconstruct the
whole Eternal Values experience
as best as we could.
Like, hey, man, do you remember
when this happened?
What do you think
was going on there?
Like, that was weird, right?
Like, what was that?
- We really started
to reverse engineer
what had happened.
We start to revisit things
that had been said
by Frederick.
- As we've said before
and we wish to emphasize again,
these platforms
are to bring knowledge
to the general public
to prevent
the spread of cults
through information,
instead of fear and guilt
and superstition.
You cannot stop cults
through fear and guilt
and superstition,
only through radiant, glowing,
shining universal knowledge.
Anyone who has you bow
or worship them
as a physical form
is an instrument
of the most dark and diabolical
forces on the Earth.
- You know, people
have been saying for years
this thing's a cult.
You think maybe there's some
chance it could have been?
- My head just
[imitates explosion]
And I couldn't even hear what
Hoyt said for a good minute.
- I'm against cults.
Don't anybody try to tell me
that I am a cult.
- I said, do you know much
about cults?
And he's like, well, no, no.
I'm like, well, neither do I.
I don't think it was a cult.
Let me just try to do
a little bit of research.
And the best-selling book
was this book called
"Combating Cult Mind Control."
- Mind control exists.
Intelligent, bright people
can be deceived
- Steve Hassan,
who's a former Moonie
- Indoctrinated
into committing
horrendous acts.
- I thought to myself,
that's definitely a cult.
- But I got the book.
The first 60, maybe 70 pages
was how he had been
indoctrinated.
Boy, you could have
just changed the names,
and it was my story,
and I'm like
- That was a seminal moment
in my life.
And I needed that
like I needed oxygen.
And even if it hurt
and it was painful,
I needed that.
- I made a few phone calls
down to North Carolina.
Like, you're all
in a fucking cult.
You're brainwashed.
And I knew it was all falling
on deaf ears,
but, man, it felt good.
- John reached out to me,
and he said, Meg, it's a cult.
It's always been a cult.
And I remember my boyfriend
kept saying, it's not a cult,
you fucking blah, blah, blah.
And he's calling me
every name in the book,
and he's screaming at me.
And, of course,
I mean, I was hysterical.
I am shaking, and I'm thinking,
can I get out of here now?
Well, I had my dad's pistol,
and I shot the gun off
in the ceiling.
And the second I did that,
I was like, holy crap.
You know, it's just shock.
♪
- When things
went south with Meg
is when my wife
and I became involved,
and then you could see
the dark side of
of Eternal Value members.
And they were certainly
threatening to Meg.
♪
- I just--I couldn't.
I was done.
I was terrified.
So I packed up,
and I moved home.
♪
- At that time,
I was virtually broke,
but I always had
in the back of my mind,
I have a cushion
'cause I've got these gems
that I've probably paid
close to $200,000 for.
I got them all evaluated,
and out of the six
or seven gems,
I think they were worth
$11,000 total.
And that's when I realized
that I had been taken.
All the guys in North Carolina
were still living in a house
I helped pay for.
They had businesses
that I had financed.
I got really angry,
and I ended up suing
the remaining members.
You know, I'm gonna be
litigating
against the individuals
that are left,
because not only--it's not
really even the money.
It's the issue of what they're
doing and what they stand for.
I mean, I--
I didn't know how it was
gonna end up,
but, you know, my lawyer's
like, you know,
this might be a real battle.
- He was hell-bent
on getting his money back,
'cause the guys
in North Carolina
were trying to sell
the lake house.
They're just trying
to sell off everything.
- We had 36 corporations,
which is one
of the most damning things.
It just shows that, you know,
something funky's going on.
We just went after them,
and it led to a mediation.
- John Hoyt
reached out to me,
and he said,
I'm suing everybody,
and I'm trying
to get this money.
Can you help me?
And I think he wanted me around
because he knew that I was
the accountant back then.
For me doing that, he said,
I'll give you $10,000,
you know,
once everything is settled.
So John and I drove
to the lake house.
This is the first time
I'd seen the lake house
in 13 years or so.
- At that point, I think
there were about five of them.
And we were having
this whole talk,
and they're just lying
out of their mouth.
But I think what was
most disturbing for me
was knowing that just two,
three years ago,
I would have been
on that side of the table
and lying the same
way they were.
Everything was shady
because we didn't pertain
to the world's standards.
We were
on a different standard.
And I finally got to the point
where, like, listen, I can't--
I can't be a part
of this anymore.
And I left, thinking
that I was a failure.
♪
- That's where it stood,
on that property,
the lake house.
The guys thought they
were gonna be walking away
with a million dollars for this
property and this house,
but they were stopped
in their tracks.
♪
- In 2002, my lawyer had been
contacted by their lawyer,
and so we knew
there was an opportunity
to kind of resolve this.
And so we settled the case
and basically liquidated
every asset
that was attached
to Eternal Values,
and, effectively,
Eternal Values was dead.
And that, I could live with.
♪
After that, I didn't know what
would happen to those guys,
and I really, at that point,
didn't particularly care.
But I just wanted
to move forward with my life.
♪
I think for me,
the hardest part
is knowing
that I hurt a lot of people
when I went down this path.
You can't heal
other people's wounds,
but I tried to make
a sincere effort
to reconnect with my family.
And by the time I came back,
my mother--
she was fighting cancer.
[indistinct chatter]
That's my mother, you know,
towards the end of her life.
And
[voice breaking]
At this point
she was wearing a wig
[sniffles]
because she'd been doing
chemotherapy, and
[sighs]
You know, she was so brave.
- We couldn't reach you.
And I was the one that realized
you were in a cult.
- When John came out,
he came and joined everybody
for Christmas that year.
That would have really been
the first time
that he would have had
an opportunity
to meet my wife and my son
and my daughter.
Well, this is Helen.
This is Matthew.
It took a while for John
to get back to his old self.
It's difficult for anybody.
I don't think anyone
snaps out of it quickly.
- Okay, hi,
I am John Hoyt.
I'm now 41 years old.
[crying] And I was so terrified
of coming home.
My mother--as her illness
started to really take hold,
I chose to become
her primary caretaker.
In some crazy way,
I had been prepared for that,
going through it
with, you know, Freddy
when he was dying.
All she said was
[voice breaking]
That she loved me
[inhales sharply]
And that she understood.
- I'm very grateful to God,
and I thank God.
And I think that prayer
really made the difference
in bringing you home.
- I didn't see her
for 12 years.
She goes, and I kept--
[sighs]
I kept feeling like
like you were in this prison.
You know, I was able
to tell her that
that I think
her prayers were heard
and that it really did help.
And I felt so bad.
You know, I had missed so many
weddings and graduations.
I was always invited.
But I let them all down.
It's just time
you just can't get back.
[sniffles] But
my mother's illness gave me
an opportunity
to prove to my family
[sniffles]
That I was back.
[somber music]
♪
It's extraordinary for me now
to look back on things
from the point of view
that at age 16,
going to the beach
to meet your buddies
could take your life down
the road of being in a cult.
I live in Nantucket
in the summer,
and I have many people
who come and stay with me.
I mean, they're from
Today my recovery path
was very much
about trying to not
only forgive myself
but also educate myself
on how it happened
and how to possibly give others
some of the red flags
to look out for
that I didn't know existed.
[applause]
- Hoyt, tell us how this
is like other cult behavior.
- You don't join a cult.
You know, no one ever tells you
it's a cult.
It's a bait-and-switch
maneuver.
The more I talked about
the Eternal Values
and Freddy, in particular,
people start playing a version
of that story
from their lives,
going, wait a second, this
sounds like the relationship
I had with my dad or my mom
or my boss or my coach.
I mean, I was only 16.
I was coming up with a lot
of things in my life.
The person you're seeking love
and approval from is,
in some way, abusing
and controlling you.
In the thousands
of conversations I've had,
I actually haven't met someone
who hasn't had
some sort of relationship
like that.
I mean, unconsciously,
I was a recruiter.
That's what I did.
You know, there
are a lot of people
that I am responsible
for having introduced
to, you know,
Freddy and Eternal Values.
And that's just something
I have to live with.
[dramatic music]
♪
- It's only recently
that I took Hoyt's call,
and I got to tell you
[chuckles]
I poured myself
a glass of Irish whiskey,
and I drank it down,
and then I took that call.
And it was a good talk.
And he did express remorse.
And I told him, the things
I've been victimized on
or someone hurt me--
those don't define me.
Getting involved in a cult
and being one
of Freddy's victims
is definitely not my story.
♪
I had this thing happen,
but I have learned
to make better mistakes
and keep risking and not
stopping challenging myself.
♪
And I realized
from talking to Hoyt
how very sensitive he is.
And I can appreciate what
he's doing--educating people.
- Unfortunately, mind control
works on everybody
once you're receptive.
You just won't even see
it coming.
- The idea of the cult
is not a new one.
Political systems
use these tools.
Our religious systems
use these tools.
Our most primal fears
are being used.
[indistinct chatter]
- When I was
in Eternal Values,
we'd look at other groups
and say, well,
that's definitely a cult.
- They're lying.
They're lying.
But we never looked
at ourselves at all that way.
- I have with me
four eternal cohorts of mine,
all whom I've known
since they were 16 years old--
John Hoyt, who just graduated
from Princeton University.
- It's not easy to go back
to the first time
when you met either Freddy
or someone from the group
and just really kind of say,
yeah, I got taken,
and start to reframe
your life.
I mean, this was a guy
from Brooklyn
who lied about who he was,
lied about what he did.
He said he was an orphan,
but his mother was alive
until recently--I think 2023.
[dial tone drones]
- When people meet John,
the first thing that
he says is, I was in a cult.
I know what I felt
and what I learned
from the Eternal Values.
And it wasn't
my stopping point.
It was just my starting point
for my spiritual journey.
So I want to defend
who I thought Frederick was
and is
and what I've learned
from Frederick.
- When I think
about the Eternal Values,
if I'm being honest,
I don't even know
that I really call this
a cult myself yet.
- You have to remember,
Frederick was my friend.
When I was separated from him
and was left to my own devices,
I actually did
about 100 times worse.
But maybe if I had taken
the teaching
to its conclusion,
I would have accomplished
a great deal.
- Who is it
that is experiencing
this television program
this moment?
- Frederick would be thrilled
about this right now,
thrilled, because he
wouldn't see anything
particularly wrong with it.
He would love the fact
that he kept his place in line,
that people who
are still talking about him
this many years later.
[chuckles]
This is the supreme message
the Eternal Values
has for all of you.
If you can't love each
other unconditionally,
you're all frauds.
In the Eternal Values,
we are Jewish, Muslim,
Christian, Buddhist, and Hindu.
We all love each other
and work together.
We're trying to tell you
that you, too, can do it.
- And that's what we believed.
Freddy, I think,
was very damaged.
And I don't think
he understood love.
And because of that,
there was a lot of carnage
that occurred around him.
But I can't go back and say,
oh, well, you know,
they brainwashed me,
and, therefore,
there's no fault on my end.
I'm still accountable
for everything I said,
everything I did,
the abuses I either partook in
or stood by and did nothing
as they happened.
You know, you carry
a lot of shame,
and you carry a lot
of embarrassment.
And I've learned
that the antidote to shame
is
vulnerability.
And the way you, you know,
express that vulnerability
is to tell your story,
you know,
and just own it and
Warts and all,
just tell the story.
[John Lennon's "Mind Games"]
♪
- [singing along] We're
playing those mind games ♪
Together ♪
Pushing the barrier ♪
Planting seeds ♪
Playing the mind games ♪
Forever ♪
Some kind of druid dude ♪
Lifting the veil ♪
- Doing the mind ♪
Guerilla ♪
Some call it magic ♪
The search for the grail ♪
Love is ♪
The answer ♪
And you know that ♪
For sure ♪
♪
Love is ♪
[bright tone]
[TV static drones]
[bright tone]
- 21 minutes after the hour
of 8:00.
This is the Sunday night
Hall of Fame Special Edition
tonight,
as we play some of the
greatest hits of Christmas.
- Dreaming
of a white Christmas ♪
- I've got a whole thing
here with our Christmas cards.
My mother took great pride
in our Christmas cards.
At Christmas, you got
to have heart, you know?
Every year there'd be a photo,
and then there
would also be a newsletter.
This is 1974.
My mother writes,
"John, age 12, 7th grade.
"This fall he has thrown
several boy-girl parties
"in our game room, which
have been quite successful.
He's very careful how he
combs his hair and dresses."
[laughs]
Yep, that was me.
But this was Christmas 1987.
And that's the last time
I went home for Christmas.
My mother writes,
"John lives in Manhattan
"but seems to spend most
of his time in Europe.
"We see him in pictures,
but we're saddened
to report he has broken off
all family contacts."
The next year--
"Still no word from John,
"except what we see
in the magazines,
but we keep loving
and praying for him."
And this one--it was a card
that I had never seen,
because at that point,
I had broken off contact
with my family.
You know, they got returned.
And this one--it says,
"Because I'm your mother."
"You're going
to be 28 years old.
"We have hardly seen you
for years.
"We may not have been
the perfect parents,
"but at least you know
we loved you.
And we don't want to die
without ever seeing you again."
[sniffles]
[groans]
[sighs, sniffles]
[somber music]
♪
- In 1990,
when the "Vanity Fair" article
came out,
we found
this exit counselor to
help set up an intervention.
- My older brother,
Rory, had contacted me
and said, hey, let's have
a boys' weekend
up in Newport, Rhode Island.
It was definitely
not something
I would have normally done,
but, you know, Rory--he had
always kind of been
in my corner,
so I trusted him.
[dramatic music]
- The exit counselors
had explained
that people attempt
the intervention,
and it drives the person away.
You got one shot
to make it work.
- Spent the first day
sailing--
all these sort of things
we would do on Nantucket.
But the next day,
we're at breakfast,
we're having a good old time,
and all of a sudden,
these three guys
come in.
I just remember feeling like,
okay, what the fuck's
going on?
- We said to John,
hey, we're concerned about you,
and these counselors
are here to help you.
- All of a sudden,
my peripheral vision left,
and everything
just got very, very small.
I just felt
like a trapped animal.
But we went back
to the hotel room and talked,
I think, for, like, 12 hours.
- And we thought we
made pretty good progress.
So everyone went to bed,
and we were gonna continue
the discussion
the next morning.
Then we got woken up
at, like, 4:00.
John's gone.
We took off to the airport,
and sure enough,
over in the corner,
hidden, John was there,
waiting for this flight.
So now we go into it,
you know, with a full press.
This is your life.
This is your family.
You need to leave
that other group alone.
And then they call
for the plane.
You know, again, we tell him,
hey, don't go, don't go.
- But the sense of betrayal
was so intense,
I just turned and left.
♪
And they looked at each other,
and they said, you know
I don't think we're
ever gonna see him again.
That's not the way you hope
an intervention goes.
♪
- WBAB
with Frederick Von Mierers,
and let us break now briefly,
give Frederick's voice a rest.
- It's a little bit low
because I've had
too much work to do.
- Ah, don't say a word.
You've got to rest your voice.
- I've been talking to you.
- I know.
- No one ever knew
the full story,
but Frederick had gotten weak,
and he started to lose weight.
- We were thinking, he's just
got this inner-ear infection,
this weakness
that was in there returning.
He had the night sweats.
He's not doing well,
losing weight.
I'm thinking
something's wrong.
I knew Frederick had
many partners.
That was his prerogative.
But I said, I think
we should get HIV tests.
♪
I tested negative
but he wouldn't acknowledge
that he tested positive.
I was absolutely terrified.
But do I really need
to tell the world?
No. No, I wouldn't.
I didn't.
We kept
the whole thing secret.
But Frederick
was still wanting to have
casual sexual encounters.
- Wait, did you believe
he was having sex with people
while he was HIV-positive?
- I think so, but I wasn't
really seeing it directly.
And at the same time,
I'm thinking, this is insane.
I was afraid,
but I decided
it was absolutely necessary
to confront him.
So I said to him, Frederick,
I'll stay with you
all the way through this.
But, you know,
you got to let me know,
are you really
thinking clearly?
But that
really pissed him off.
And then he cracked me
over the head with a plate.
[plate shatters]
He's hitting me in the face,
and I'm getting a bloody nose.
And he's like,
you stupid fucking cunt,
get the fuck out of here.
I'm thinking, perhaps
he's tricking me.
I promised I'd stay
with him to the end.
- Paul Hinton.
- I'm the one person who knows
Frederick's really not well.
Shouldn't I help him?
But there was a certain look
in his eyes.
It wasn't human,
and it wasn't Frederick.
♪
- I'm surprised
Paul didn't break his skull.
Paul went
to the local precinct,
but he didn't want
to push the matter any more
because he was afraid
that it would go poorly
for him.
- My fear
was that Frederick
would then turn my decision
to leave against me.
What if Frederick could blame
all of us for things?
Hmm, after all,
I've done X, Y, and Z--
running errands and cash
and doing the gemstones
off the books,
3/4 of a million in sales.
You know, well,
let's spit it out--
half a pound of psilocybin
mushrooms in the freezer
and different things.
So, if anybody does snitch
or you get into trouble,
you're screwed.
But when I left,
I thought to myself,
I'll be quiet and silent.
It was very difficult
for me to leave,
because I second-guessed
myself for the rest of my life.
♪
Well, I ended up
joining the military.
I joined the U.S. Army.
25 years old, and I had to,
you know, regroup.
♪
- Around that time,
Frederick's body started
deteriorating pretty quickly.
His immune system couldn't
handle whatever was going on.
- As Frederick started
to get sicker and sicker,
I thought, oh, he just needs
to get down to North Carolina.
He'll bounce back,
and everything will be fine.
- I personally drove Frederick
from our apartment
in New York City to Lake Lure.
He was in bed 24-7,
to the point
where we had to roll him over
'cause he started
getting bed sores.
- We didn't know
he was dying of AIDS.
We thought it was
this staph infection.
He didn't tell any of us.
And, ultimately,
as Frederick's health
continued to wane,
the primary caretaker was a guy
who was in Eternal Values--
this guy, David Seaman.
- With us today,
we have Dr. David Seaman.
- The idea behind chiropractic
is to balance
the body's structural system.
- When David got involved
with the group,
he was a chiropractor.
- Frederick was starting to
have certain physical issues,
and David would use
his chiropractic
and, you know, treat him.
And then he kind of became
the in-house chiropractor,
where we'd all get adjustments
here and there from him.
- But I never had a really
good feeling about him.
Frederick would say,
in a past life,
David Seaman chopped
Frederick's head off
and that the reason
why David was here
was to work out the karma.
- Did you come here
from another planet as well
or another solar system?
- I did.
- You did.
- But the point is,
that's not important.
- As Frederick got sicker,
there's now a power struggle.
David was the one
trying to grab power,
and there's another
guy named Fritz.
Fritz was a senior executive
for German television
in their New York office.
He and Freddy
were the same age.
And he was second in command.
He'd hold court,
and he would act
as the de facto vice president,
so to speak.
And
yeah.
♪
- Time-out?
- Yeah, I need time.
- Okay.
- Yeah, fuck.
- I was in Reno, Nevada,
doing a job for "GQ"
when I got the phone call.
Frederick was
on his last legs,
and I needed to come back
and basically see him
and say my goodbye.
I was in complete denial
about the fact
that he was on death's door.
♪
- Fritz and David
started taking over
and exerting their control.
I mean, Frederick was a living
skeleton at that point.
♪
- It was not easy
to even look at Frederick.
I was given
this little vial of--
They said it was water--
you know,
with a little dropper.
And they said, you know,
he's struggling.
You know, just give him drops
when you think it's necessary.
Keep him hydrated.
But later, David Seaman
divulged to us
that what
we were all giving him
was actually some form of
morphine or some sort of thing
to try to accelerate
his death.
But none of us were told that
at the time.
- It was, like, poison
in those bottles
and that we were
actually giving him poison
while we were supposedly
just wetting his lips.
- And then we were sitting
in the kitchen.
Fritz walks in
with a very, very somber face
and just says, you know
Frederick's passed.
I really just went numb.
I didn't know what to think.
I couldn't believe it.
In his own ephemeris,
Frederick marked the dates
between January 28th
and February 9th of 1990
and wrote "end of life."
And he died on February 4th,
so it was right
in that window.
I mean, make of it
what you will.
♪
- Realize that this Earth
is only a way station.
As you die, you slowly shift
into the next octave
of vibration.
The places to which you go--
and this is very important--
are determined by your life.
This is why many people,
before they die,
see their entire life
flash before their eyes.
♪
- Do you remember
the last interaction you had
with Frederick
when he was lucid?
- [voice breaking]
I told him I loved him.
That's the last
thing I remember.
[somber music]
♪
- Do you remember
his reaction?
- He smiled.
He wasn't talking
at that point.
♪
- We found out later that
when Frederick passed away,
David Seaman and
Fritz Diekmann
were in the room,
and David said Fritz put the
pillow over Frederick's head
just to end his life.
♪
And when we confronted Fritz,
he admitted that.
But there was discussion
amongst us
that it was
kind of a mercy killing.
Fritz--you could see,
it was not something
that he wanted to do.
It wasn't something
that was easy for him to do.
And I actually felt
some compassion for him.
- Well, ladies and gentlemen,
that's a great deal to think
about--ascended masters,
space people,
and resurrected beings.
Good night with another
platform of the Eternal Values.
- Within hours
of Frederick passing,
Fritz would come over
to people
who were huddled up
in twos or threes,
and we were trying to laugh
and remember our good times
with Frederick.
He would say, don't do that.
Frederick died.
We've got to move on.
And he was just very abrupt
and cold about it all.
Like, Frederick's out of here,
and now that whole life
is over.
[dramatic music]
♪
Initially, David tried
to get Frederick cremated,
but before that could happen,
we had to get an autopsy done.
And that's when, supposedly,
it was diagnosed
that he had the AIDS virus.
- Once it went public that he
had AIDS,
the mercy killing
certainly wasn't something
that we were gonna talk about.
So it kind of became one of
these secrets within the group
that we all knew but certainly
you wouldn't go public with.
♪
After that, we had to
completely reconfigure
Eternal Values.
And that was the point
when Fritz took over.
But he didn't have any
of the savvy or personality
that Freddy had.
And within six months,
the rest of our group--
we kind of started
to push back on him,
and we had
this kind of a mutiny.
♪
- We went
back to New York City,
and they locked him
in his apartment,
and they wouldn't let
him leave.
This was, like,
for two or three days.
They told him
that he had to leave,
and they got him to sign over
his ownership
of the Eternal Values assets.
And he left.
- And through that fracture,
the group kind of split.
Some people aligned
with Fritz,
and some people aligned
with our side.
I temporarily was
in a leadership position
for about a month or two,
where we were like,
okay, what do we do next?
But to really maintain
a leadership position
at Eternal Values,
you had to be willing to put
other people down,
confront them.
And that is not, fortunately,
the way I'm wired.
And so I was quickly demoted.
- At this point,
what are you thinking about
in terms of the group?
- [scoffs] I'm thinking,
things are pretty fucked up.
- Was it recognizable
from what it was before?
- Not to me.
♪
There were
a couple individuals
that I felt
that had no interest
in any spiritual growth at all
but were there only
for their self-gratification.
Something inside of me,
you know, said, this is wrong.
You have to get out.
But when I told them
that I was leaving the group,
they tied me to a chair
and started grilling me
for a day and a half.
Frederick wouldn't want you
to do this.
You're not following
your path.
- Were you awake
the whole time?
- [voice breaking] I don't
remember ever going to sleep.
But they thought
I might be leaving
with Frederick's gems
and things like that.
So, before I walked
out the door,
they stripped me
down to my underwear
and let me walk out
the door in my underwear
with a bag of clothes.
So that's how I left the group.
♪
- At that time,
the district attorney's office
was investigating
and pursuing this,
to bring it to court.
- Frederick was in the middle
of a multimillion-dollar
gem ring.
- But I was told that although
there was a money trail,
because Frederick
had passed away,
the case that they thought
they could bring to court
was no longer sufficient,
and they dropped the case.
♪
But once Frederick died,
I really thought
that the group
would lose its momentum.
That would be the end of it.
So it was very surprising to me
that it continued
so much longer.
♪
[indistinct chatter]
- After Frederick died,
most of the crew
moved down to North Carolina.
You know, Freddy's gone.
Fritz is gone.
No one's got the space people
on speed dial,
so we've got to figure out how
to survive
the coming apocalypse,
and how are we gonna do that?
This is written
on this stationery,
where I was in London.
"Frederick told us repeatedly
that we have an opportunity
"to do something
in our lifetime
"that hasn't been done before.
"Exactly what that is,
none of us is sure,
"but we know that it is meant
to be achieved by us
"by staying together,
working together,
"and caring for each other.
"The only real means
of survival in the future
"will be through
communal living,
"and we all know how critical
Freddy said that this would be.
"Therefore,
we are free individuals
joined together in a common
cause--self-realization."
The North Carolina
lifestyle was,
everyone lived
at the lake house.
There were, like,
six bedrooms.
But each room
had two twin beds.
You had zero privacy,
but we'd been doing such
communal lifestyle for so long,
it wasn't something
that felt weird anymore.
That was just the way we lived.
- In North Carolina,
it was much more grounded
in the day-to-day life.
But when Frederick was alive,
for all the insanity,
there was always
an undercurrent
of a spiritual purpose.
- Love everything
unconditionally,
and you become part of God's
higher cocktail party on Earth.
- Frederick always had
that kind of ethereal,
tonal music playing.
You were transported
out of New York City
[exhales sharply]
Into this oasis.
But I remember
one morning in North Carolina,
David got a boombox
and a copy of the song
"Mandolin Rain."
- The song came
and went ♪
- And he played that
fucking song, I swear to you,
for a week on repeat.
And it was like, can you please
turn that fucking song off?
And then it would start--
Listen to the mandolin rain ♪
- Listen to the music
on the lake ♪
Oh, listen
to my heartbreak ♪
Every time ♪
- It was
a different vibe.
The core group had gotten down
to ten people.
There were no women around.
And so we're aware
that we're different,
that we hold
some very strange beliefs.
- Dr. David Seaman.
The life of a chiropractor--
- We decided to not promote
ourselves as Eternal Values,
'cause that name
had been quite soiled.
And that kind of started
a whole new era for us.
- And they were gonna start
some kind
of construction company
to give a look of normalcy.
- At that time,
I knew they had this office
called the Lotus Group.
They were very professional,
very polite.
And I'm like, well, people
are saying y'all are aliens.
You know, I mean, come on.
There was certainly
nothing scary or dangerous
to me.
- The locals
called us bead-wearing,
homosexual stargazers.
So it was decided
that it would be a good idea
for some of the guys
to have girlfriends.
And one of the guys
was with Meg.
- It was just
this instant chemistry.
I mean, it was just boom.
I was so madly in love.
You could have told me
anything about them,
and I wouldn't have believed
it, you know.
I just wouldn't
have believed it.
♪
- I was in North Carolina.
It was almost
through happenstance
that I ended up here,
ended up getting a job here.
And after about a year or so,
I started to see
these familiar faces.
But I was consciously healing
myself from this experience
and was quite content not
knowing anything about them.
And then I found out a woman
in the arts community
got involved
with the Lotus Group.
- Elissa came
in my office one day,
and she said, I know these guys
from New York.
I've had dealings with them.
Do you have any idea
who these people are?
They're not
who they appear to be.
You don't want anything
to do with them.
Just steer clear.
- I looked at her,
and I said, just be careful.
And she cut me off.
She didn't want to hear that.
She wanted to hear
how wonderful it was.
- At the time, I just--
I guess, I just attributed it
to small-town gossip
and that sort of thing.
I mean, to me,
we're all friends.
We're working together
on these projects.
We were just like a family.
- I still was modeling
full-time and traveling a lot.
So, when the E! Channel
was doing a special
on male models,
I suggested they come down
to North Carolina
and see this life I had.
Hey, come on in.
This is the Lotus Group.
Our office is down here
in North Carolina.
- We thought,
he's getting press,
and he's getting
a whole segment.
This could be good PR
for everyone in the group.
- You're watching E!,
the entertainment authority.
I've always wanted to do--
[laughing]
- Basically,
the general note was,
don't be a weirdo.
But the whole thing
was staged and fake.
- One of the great things about
working here at Lotus Group is,
you're greeted every day
by our lovely Blair.
- I mean, they'd hired a woman
to be the receptionist.
She was not a part
of the group.
I don't think Hoyt spent
seconds in his life
before that shot
talking to Blair.
- She takes care
of all the phones down here.
She's a lovely lady.
- And we had
this awkward dinner,
where, for some reason,
I've got a fucking suit
and tie on.
I remember looking over
at Hoyt, like, seriously?
When's the last fucking time
we sat down
and ate dinner at the table?
[indistinct chatter]
- He's reportedly
the highest-paid male model
in the world, but after nearly
a decade in the business,
success has not gone
to Hoyt Richard's head.
- The E! TV show--we
didn't see the finished edit
until it went live on the air.
- When Hoyt's not working,
he's here,
among the calm and quiet
of the North Carolina
mountains.
- E! Made it all about Hoyt.
- Hoyt also manages
a construction company.
- Hoyt's got these businesses,
and he's employing
his friends.
That created tension
amongst all of us
in the group
- Well, we won't bother you
too much longer.
But Dave's the authority
on all this stuff.
- Because you
had to remain humble.
You know, he's getting
a big head.
- In that group context,
I was always on eggshells,
like a lot of us were.
We became like
a more dysfunctional family
that was kind of holding out
for the apocalypse.
This is our production office.
You know, in many ways,
when Frederick was alive,
he definitely
kind of spoiled me
to some degree,
and that built up
a lot of resentment
in some of the other members.
♪
- The irony of it is,
he's still funding shit.
He would be gone on the road.
Caribbean island one week,
next week he's in Sweden.
The next week
he's in Los Angeles.
- When I was on the road,
there were friends and
relationships I was developing
outside the group.
And I met a woman
named Donna in L.A.
She was a beautiful brunette,
and I was very intrigued
by her.
And so we just started
to see each other,
and it was
very kind of sporadic.
I was traveling so much,
and I could only see her
maybe once--
even sometimes once
every two months.
But I had developed
these real feelings for her,
and I realized
that these things
that had been so demonized
over the years,
this idea of romantic love--
I'm like,
it doesn't feel so bad.
I'm like, I really feel
like she's in my corner,
and she cares about me.
And that relationship
with Donna was something
that started to unlock my heart
in a way that I never expected.
But I did it covertly.
No one in the group
knew about that.
[spacey music]
- In the year 1999,
the magnetic poles will shift,
and humanity
will be decimated.
- In 1999, the group
was getting smaller.
And for
the remaining members--
everyone was very reliant
on each other to survive.
Here it is.
These were some
of the notes I wrote.
"Operation: Safe Place."
- There was a lot of talk
after Frederick died
about the pole shift.
- 1/10 of 1% of the population
will be saved.
- That's how the plan
started to get rolling.
- We needed to start
stockpiling food
and be able to live
off the grid.
- They believed
that there was gonna be
some major earth-changing,
catastrophic world event
and that Lake Lure
was one of the safe places.
They owned some property
way up on the mountain
that had caves.
And that's where
everyone was gonna go.
- How was it gonna happen?
Was the timeline right?
And then the conversation
began to turn
towards guns.
[gunshot]
- We learned
how to shoot guns.
- I had a shotgun,
and I had a .45.
- It was just--
accumulate and provide
the best defense
for the future.
- And it just devolved
into this quickly.
[dramatic music]
- Oh, yeah, they had
quite an arsenal.
They had stockpiled
storage units
just chock-full
of all the survival stuff,
to be safe until the world
settled back down,
and then they would come in
and help everyone
and save everyone.
♪
So I was the only girl
that was left.
And my boyfriend sat me down
one night and asked me,
we're all gonna be together
to survive.
It would only be fair
if you were willing to have sex
with the other guys,
and who would you be willing
to have sex with?
And I remember just being so
absolutely shocked
and appalled.
And I'm like,
you've got to be kidding me.
And I wouldn't give him
any names.
And he was getting
angry with me.
And I was like, no,
I would never consider it.
- There at the end,
we thought we needed women
to help repopulate the planet
and raise enlightened beings.
It's like a bad sci-fi script.
♪
- As the millennium
was approaching,
there were gonna be
all these Earth changes,
like tidal waves
and hurricanes.
We were starting
to buy gold and silver
'cause that was gonna be
the only tangible
money source.
Meanwhile, I'm, like, flying
to London for a gig,
and I'm like, economies
aren't collapsing
[chuckles]
No tidal waves, no earthquakes.
It all sounds ludicrous,
but part
of my critical thinking
started to come back.
And that's when I started
to approach the group
with the idea--
you know, you guys are here
in North Carolina.
You're kind of in a bubble.
I'm telling you, nothing's
happening out there.
And so I got attacked
for that.
And in that same conversation--
I thought it couldn't get
any worse--
I'm like, oh, and by the way,
I've been seeing someone.
All hell broke loose.
What do you mean
you're seeing someone?
♪
At that point, they just said,
you got to break up with her.
You're being selfish,
and you're being unfair to her.
You know, what are you doing?
And they painted it like,
you're just being
a motherfucker to this girl.
She has no idea
what you're involved with.
And, you know,
I told Donna,
I thought I wanted to be
in this relationship,
but I've decided I don't.
And it was incredibly harsh
and severe.
And treating her that way
really did not
[somber music]
[voice breaking]
Did not sit well with me.
And that started this whole
period where they're like,
okay, we got to save Hoyt
from himself.
He's clearly losing his mind.
He can't survive out there.
We've got to bring him back
here to North Carolina.
We have to watch him
under lock and key.
- They were having him do
every menial job possible
to teach him humility.
- You know, I had to be
the first one up,
the last one to bed.
I was doing all
the kind of shit work
that no one else wanted to do.
- I got a call saying,
you know,
come over to the lake house.
John was in serious trouble.
And I walked into the kitchen,
and John was sitting there,
very submissive,
sitting at the kitchen table,
and his whole head was shaved.
I mean, he was bald.
And I was like,
oh, my gosh, you know,
what happened to your head?
And they were like, yeah,
tell Meg about what happened.
- The guys had instructed me
that I was gonna have to move
to North Carolina
and give up my career.
I knew, like, in my heart,
I'm not ready to do this.
But they said,
just so you have no temptation
to even think
about leaving here,
we're gonna shave your head so
that you can't model anymore.
[dramatic music]
I remember, you know,
looking in the mirror,
and I kept thinking to myself,
If I had hair, I could
actually probably, like, be
in Milan right now
or Paris, you know,
with, like, Claudia Schiffer
or Cindy Crawford,
making 25 G's a day.
I guess I'm not spiritual,
'cause I'd rather be there.
I became, as they called it,
the bald hausfrau.
I interpreted it as, like,
it's my own fault.
If I would just pull my head
out of my ass
and be more like them,
I wouldn't have to go
through this.
But because I'm somehow flawed
and because there's
something wrong with me,
I just feel like
they're never gonna give up.
I was like, I don't think
I'm ever gonna measure up
to what they're asking me
to be.
I just got to the point
where I'm like,
I just can't take this.
And so I mapped out a plan
to just escape,
and I went
to the airport and left.
I got to New York.
I was putting
my things together.
I was gonna be there one night
before I left.
And sure enough, man,
they appeared at that door
in New York City.
♪
I remember one of the guys
sat in the doorway
to make sure that
in the middle of the night,
I couldn't leave.
And so I was sleeping
by the window
[voice breaking]
And I thought about jumping.
[swallows hard]
But I didn't.
And they brought me
back to North Carolina.
And I lasted, I think,
three, four more weeks.
And I was like, this time
I'm not getting caught.
No fucking way, man.
♪
It was actually
the weekend of July 4th.
And when I left,
I constructed a letter to leave
for the guys in North Carolina
to alert them,
to kind of say, I've gone.
"It's official, I quit.
"Everything you've ever said
about me is true.
"I'm hopeless
and totally selfish.
"I'm the laziest person
in the room.
"I've wasted my life.
"I deserve to spend the rest
of my life with the trash,
"just like myself.
"David, you've always said,
at this time,
"when everything
is falling apart,
"people's true colors
will be shown.
"I cringe to think
of the penalty that I will pay.
"It was not bad enough
to betray Frederick
"and all he stood for,
but now all of you.
"As I've said many times,
"you're the only real friends
I've ever had.
You will never see me again."
Signed, Dipshit."
♪
So I had organized
a call to a cab--
meet me at 2:30
in the morning,
hoping that at that point,
everyone would be asleep.
We had two German shepherds,
so I had to creep
and stay quiet,
keep the dogs calm.
And we had a gravel driveway
about a mile and a half
down the hill
through forest.
But when I felt
like I was out of earshot,
I just fucking bolted.
♪
And I was gone.
Yeah, and that time,
I never came back.
♪
- I remember asking
one of the guys, where's John?
I haven't seen him around.
Or has he gone
back to New York?
And he said,
yeah, he's left, he's gone.
And I was not
to talk about John.
I was not to ask about him.
- I left.
I went to California.
I put as much land
between me and them.
I had about $3,000,
but I didn't know where to go.
- I remember Hoyt--
he called me,
and he told me, you know,
he was really in bad shape.
He was really beat up.
I mean, his brain went blank.
He was, like, a straight line,
morally, spiritually--
just like a zombie.
And I said, listen, you know,
you can stay here
until, you know, you figure out
what you want to do
in your life.
You can stay in my place
so you don't have to worry
about bills.
- Fabio is incredibly loyal.
It's like, you're his friend,
you're his friend for life.
I don't know if he
just knew instinctively
or whether he had so much
going on in his own career.
But at the time, he played it
off like, you know, nothing.
Come stay.
You know, let's go to the gym.
No questions asked.
Didn't even ask me
why my head was shaved.
I made up some story about
some extreme modeling job.
- Hoyt was being
an extremely successful model
and, all of a sudden, was left
with no money, nothing.
These people--
they were like piranhas.
I mean, they left him
with nothing.
♪
- Being at Fabio's
just gave me
a place to incubate
and start to process
some of my feelings.
I was still contemplating,
maybe I should return.
- Hoyt was very honest
and very open about it.
And I knew
that they will come.
Eventually life will slap you
in the face,
and you realize,
oh, my God, you know,
it's like, I've been taken
for a ride.
I told him, I said, listen,
what people do
most of the time in life?
They always blame
somebody else.
It takes two to tangle in life.
He got sucked in
but he was smart enough
to get out
and realize,
I made a big mistake.
You know what?
What I gonna do now?
♪
- After about a year,
I went to meet a friend
at a lunch place
in Beverly Hills
and the maître d' there
recognized me.
And he said,
are you Hoyt Richards?
And I said, yeah, yeah.
And he's like,
I'm friends with Dar.
And I didn't really know
how to respond.
So I said, please tell Dar
I'm living in L.A.
and I'm alone.
And I'm like, God, I hope
he gets the message, man,
and I hope he knows
what I'm saying.
And three weeks go by,
and I get this phone call
I don't recognize.
Hey, Hoyter, it's Dar.
I'm like, hey, Dar.
He's like, yeah, I'm calling
from my therapist's office.
[laughing] My therapist
said I should call you.
- When we
finally ended up meeting,
I told him, no more
North Carolina for me.
I began to explain--
in North Carolina,
just before I left,
I was in a bar
and having a good time.
But when I got into the car
[imitates siren wailing]
We had a loaded assault rifle
in the car,
and we didn't pull over.
We drove down the driveway
into the lake house and parked.
I jump out of the car.
This guy had called
for backup.
And I got tackled from behind.
- I mean,
it was Highway Patrol,
sheriffs, police,
siren, lights everywhere.
And the guys were screaming
and yelling,
don't tell them your name.
Don't tell them your name.
They don't have to have
any information.
- After we got out on bail,
we filed this paperwork, which
I wasn't even really clear on,
but it was the same type
of paperwork
that these militiamen
and the guy at Ruby Ridge
had filled out,
telling the government, you
don't have any power over us.
We're sovereign people.
But we really pissed off
the entire state.
And they let the lawyers
and they let the private
investigators know
that we were considered
anti-government terrorists.
♪
After that happened,
I woke up,
and I thought to myself,
fuck this.
And I called up my folks,
and that was my out
from the group.
And I was scared
to death when I did it.
[plane engine roaring]
- Dar and I ended up
becoming roommates,
and we spent
the first six months
just trying to deconstruct the
whole Eternal Values experience
as best as we could.
Like, hey, man, do you remember
when this happened?
What do you think
was going on there?
Like, that was weird, right?
Like, what was that?
- We really started
to reverse engineer
what had happened.
We start to revisit things
that had been said
by Frederick.
- As we've said before
and we wish to emphasize again,
these platforms
are to bring knowledge
to the general public
to prevent
the spread of cults
through information,
instead of fear and guilt
and superstition.
You cannot stop cults
through fear and guilt
and superstition,
only through radiant, glowing,
shining universal knowledge.
Anyone who has you bow
or worship them
as a physical form
is an instrument
of the most dark and diabolical
forces on the Earth.
- You know, people
have been saying for years
this thing's a cult.
You think maybe there's some
chance it could have been?
- My head just
[imitates explosion]
And I couldn't even hear what
Hoyt said for a good minute.
- I'm against cults.
Don't anybody try to tell me
that I am a cult.
- I said, do you know much
about cults?
And he's like, well, no, no.
I'm like, well, neither do I.
I don't think it was a cult.
Let me just try to do
a little bit of research.
And the best-selling book
was this book called
"Combating Cult Mind Control."
- Mind control exists.
Intelligent, bright people
can be deceived
- Steve Hassan,
who's a former Moonie
- Indoctrinated
into committing
horrendous acts.
- I thought to myself,
that's definitely a cult.
- But I got the book.
The first 60, maybe 70 pages
was how he had been
indoctrinated.
Boy, you could have
just changed the names,
and it was my story,
and I'm like
- That was a seminal moment
in my life.
And I needed that
like I needed oxygen.
And even if it hurt
and it was painful,
I needed that.
- I made a few phone calls
down to North Carolina.
Like, you're all
in a fucking cult.
You're brainwashed.
And I knew it was all falling
on deaf ears,
but, man, it felt good.
- John reached out to me,
and he said, Meg, it's a cult.
It's always been a cult.
And I remember my boyfriend
kept saying, it's not a cult,
you fucking blah, blah, blah.
And he's calling me
every name in the book,
and he's screaming at me.
And, of course,
I mean, I was hysterical.
I am shaking, and I'm thinking,
can I get out of here now?
Well, I had my dad's pistol,
and I shot the gun off
in the ceiling.
And the second I did that,
I was like, holy crap.
You know, it's just shock.
♪
- When things
went south with Meg
is when my wife
and I became involved,
and then you could see
the dark side of
of Eternal Value members.
And they were certainly
threatening to Meg.
♪
- I just--I couldn't.
I was done.
I was terrified.
So I packed up,
and I moved home.
♪
- At that time,
I was virtually broke,
but I always had
in the back of my mind,
I have a cushion
'cause I've got these gems
that I've probably paid
close to $200,000 for.
I got them all evaluated,
and out of the six
or seven gems,
I think they were worth
$11,000 total.
And that's when I realized
that I had been taken.
All the guys in North Carolina
were still living in a house
I helped pay for.
They had businesses
that I had financed.
I got really angry,
and I ended up suing
the remaining members.
You know, I'm gonna be
litigating
against the individuals
that are left,
because not only--it's not
really even the money.
It's the issue of what they're
doing and what they stand for.
I mean, I--
I didn't know how it was
gonna end up,
but, you know, my lawyer's
like, you know,
this might be a real battle.
- He was hell-bent
on getting his money back,
'cause the guys
in North Carolina
were trying to sell
the lake house.
They're just trying
to sell off everything.
- We had 36 corporations,
which is one
of the most damning things.
It just shows that, you know,
something funky's going on.
We just went after them,
and it led to a mediation.
- John Hoyt
reached out to me,
and he said,
I'm suing everybody,
and I'm trying
to get this money.
Can you help me?
And I think he wanted me around
because he knew that I was
the accountant back then.
For me doing that, he said,
I'll give you $10,000,
you know,
once everything is settled.
So John and I drove
to the lake house.
This is the first time
I'd seen the lake house
in 13 years or so.
- At that point, I think
there were about five of them.
And we were having
this whole talk,
and they're just lying
out of their mouth.
But I think what was
most disturbing for me
was knowing that just two,
three years ago,
I would have been
on that side of the table
and lying the same
way they were.
Everything was shady
because we didn't pertain
to the world's standards.
We were
on a different standard.
And I finally got to the point
where, like, listen, I can't--
I can't be a part
of this anymore.
And I left, thinking
that I was a failure.
♪
- That's where it stood,
on that property,
the lake house.
The guys thought they
were gonna be walking away
with a million dollars for this
property and this house,
but they were stopped
in their tracks.
♪
- In 2002, my lawyer had been
contacted by their lawyer,
and so we knew
there was an opportunity
to kind of resolve this.
And so we settled the case
and basically liquidated
every asset
that was attached
to Eternal Values,
and, effectively,
Eternal Values was dead.
And that, I could live with.
♪
After that, I didn't know what
would happen to those guys,
and I really, at that point,
didn't particularly care.
But I just wanted
to move forward with my life.
♪
I think for me,
the hardest part
is knowing
that I hurt a lot of people
when I went down this path.
You can't heal
other people's wounds,
but I tried to make
a sincere effort
to reconnect with my family.
And by the time I came back,
my mother--
she was fighting cancer.
[indistinct chatter]
That's my mother, you know,
towards the end of her life.
And
[voice breaking]
At this point
she was wearing a wig
[sniffles]
because she'd been doing
chemotherapy, and
[sighs]
You know, she was so brave.
- We couldn't reach you.
And I was the one that realized
you were in a cult.
- When John came out,
he came and joined everybody
for Christmas that year.
That would have really been
the first time
that he would have had
an opportunity
to meet my wife and my son
and my daughter.
Well, this is Helen.
This is Matthew.
It took a while for John
to get back to his old self.
It's difficult for anybody.
I don't think anyone
snaps out of it quickly.
- Okay, hi,
I am John Hoyt.
I'm now 41 years old.
[crying] And I was so terrified
of coming home.
My mother--as her illness
started to really take hold,
I chose to become
her primary caretaker.
In some crazy way,
I had been prepared for that,
going through it
with, you know, Freddy
when he was dying.
All she said was
[voice breaking]
That she loved me
[inhales sharply]
And that she understood.
- I'm very grateful to God,
and I thank God.
And I think that prayer
really made the difference
in bringing you home.
- I didn't see her
for 12 years.
She goes, and I kept--
[sighs]
I kept feeling like
like you were in this prison.
You know, I was able
to tell her that
that I think
her prayers were heard
and that it really did help.
And I felt so bad.
You know, I had missed so many
weddings and graduations.
I was always invited.
But I let them all down.
It's just time
you just can't get back.
[sniffles] But
my mother's illness gave me
an opportunity
to prove to my family
[sniffles]
That I was back.
[somber music]
♪
It's extraordinary for me now
to look back on things
from the point of view
that at age 16,
going to the beach
to meet your buddies
could take your life down
the road of being in a cult.
I live in Nantucket
in the summer,
and I have many people
who come and stay with me.
I mean, they're from
Today my recovery path
was very much
about trying to not
only forgive myself
but also educate myself
on how it happened
and how to possibly give others
some of the red flags
to look out for
that I didn't know existed.
[applause]
- Hoyt, tell us how this
is like other cult behavior.
- You don't join a cult.
You know, no one ever tells you
it's a cult.
It's a bait-and-switch
maneuver.
The more I talked about
the Eternal Values
and Freddy, in particular,
people start playing a version
of that story
from their lives,
going, wait a second, this
sounds like the relationship
I had with my dad or my mom
or my boss or my coach.
I mean, I was only 16.
I was coming up with a lot
of things in my life.
The person you're seeking love
and approval from is,
in some way, abusing
and controlling you.
In the thousands
of conversations I've had,
I actually haven't met someone
who hasn't had
some sort of relationship
like that.
I mean, unconsciously,
I was a recruiter.
That's what I did.
You know, there
are a lot of people
that I am responsible
for having introduced
to, you know,
Freddy and Eternal Values.
And that's just something
I have to live with.
[dramatic music]
♪
- It's only recently
that I took Hoyt's call,
and I got to tell you
[chuckles]
I poured myself
a glass of Irish whiskey,
and I drank it down,
and then I took that call.
And it was a good talk.
And he did express remorse.
And I told him, the things
I've been victimized on
or someone hurt me--
those don't define me.
Getting involved in a cult
and being one
of Freddy's victims
is definitely not my story.
♪
I had this thing happen,
but I have learned
to make better mistakes
and keep risking and not
stopping challenging myself.
♪
And I realized
from talking to Hoyt
how very sensitive he is.
And I can appreciate what
he's doing--educating people.
- Unfortunately, mind control
works on everybody
once you're receptive.
You just won't even see
it coming.
- The idea of the cult
is not a new one.
Political systems
use these tools.
Our religious systems
use these tools.
Our most primal fears
are being used.
[indistinct chatter]
- When I was
in Eternal Values,
we'd look at other groups
and say, well,
that's definitely a cult.
- They're lying.
They're lying.
But we never looked
at ourselves at all that way.
- I have with me
four eternal cohorts of mine,
all whom I've known
since they were 16 years old--
John Hoyt, who just graduated
from Princeton University.
- It's not easy to go back
to the first time
when you met either Freddy
or someone from the group
and just really kind of say,
yeah, I got taken,
and start to reframe
your life.
I mean, this was a guy
from Brooklyn
who lied about who he was,
lied about what he did.
He said he was an orphan,
but his mother was alive
until recently--I think 2023.
[dial tone drones]
- When people meet John,
the first thing that
he says is, I was in a cult.
I know what I felt
and what I learned
from the Eternal Values.
And it wasn't
my stopping point.
It was just my starting point
for my spiritual journey.
So I want to defend
who I thought Frederick was
and is
and what I've learned
from Frederick.
- When I think
about the Eternal Values,
if I'm being honest,
I don't even know
that I really call this
a cult myself yet.
- You have to remember,
Frederick was my friend.
When I was separated from him
and was left to my own devices,
I actually did
about 100 times worse.
But maybe if I had taken
the teaching
to its conclusion,
I would have accomplished
a great deal.
- Who is it
that is experiencing
this television program
this moment?
- Frederick would be thrilled
about this right now,
thrilled, because he
wouldn't see anything
particularly wrong with it.
He would love the fact
that he kept his place in line,
that people who
are still talking about him
this many years later.
[chuckles]
This is the supreme message
the Eternal Values
has for all of you.
If you can't love each
other unconditionally,
you're all frauds.
In the Eternal Values,
we are Jewish, Muslim,
Christian, Buddhist, and Hindu.
We all love each other
and work together.
We're trying to tell you
that you, too, can do it.
- And that's what we believed.
Freddy, I think,
was very damaged.
And I don't think
he understood love.
And because of that,
there was a lot of carnage
that occurred around him.
But I can't go back and say,
oh, well, you know,
they brainwashed me,
and, therefore,
there's no fault on my end.
I'm still accountable
for everything I said,
everything I did,
the abuses I either partook in
or stood by and did nothing
as they happened.
You know, you carry
a lot of shame,
and you carry a lot
of embarrassment.
And I've learned
that the antidote to shame
is
vulnerability.
And the way you, you know,
express that vulnerability
is to tell your story,
you know,
and just own it and
Warts and all,
just tell the story.
[John Lennon's "Mind Games"]
♪
- [singing along] We're
playing those mind games ♪
Together ♪
Pushing the barrier ♪
Planting seeds ♪
Playing the mind games ♪
Forever ♪
Some kind of druid dude ♪
Lifting the veil ♪
- Doing the mind ♪
Guerilla ♪
Some call it magic ♪
The search for the grail ♪
Love is ♪
The answer ♪
And you know that ♪
For sure ♪
♪
Love is ♪
[bright tone]