Supermodel by day, cult member by night.
It sounds too strange to be true, but that was life for Hoyt Richards, the subject of the new three-episode HBO documentary, “Bring Me The Beauties: A Model Cult.”
“If I hadn’t lived it, I wouldn’t have believed [my life story] myself,” Richards exclusively told Page Six.
Richards, now 64, was one of the first male supermodels – rubbing elbows with the likes of Cindy Crawford, Naomi Campbell, and Fabio in the ‘80s and ‘90s.
By day, Richards was jet-setting off to Europe for fashion shows and magazine spreads. Little did the public know – when he returned home to New York City, he wasn’t living in a lavish penthouse. Instead, he was sleeping on the floor of a Midtown apartment with a handful of other Yuppies. He was also giving all his money away to Eternal Values, the cult he was a member of.
“I wasn’t great at accounting back in those days, but I would put it between 4 and 5 million,” he told Page Six, referring to how much money he gave to cult leader Frederick von Mierers, who told everyone that he was an alien.
During his glamorous life in the modeling world, Richards said, “I obviously could not [my peers] what I was involved with.”
The cult also discouraged friendships with outsiders.
“So I just felt like I was not being transparent and lying to everyone at all times…I just kept telling myself, ‘oh, eventually you’re going to figure it out.’”
Richards grew up in an ordinary Pennsylvania family. He met von Mierers in 1978, on a vacation to Nantucket when he was sixteen.
Born Fred Meyers in Brooklyn, Frederick von Mierers reinvented himself as an upper crust Manhattan socialite, who reeled in insecure young people with his connections — he partied at Studio 54 — and his “wisdom” about New Age topics.
When Richards attended Princeton University, he stayed in touch with von Mierers. After graduating in 1985, as his modeling career took off, he became a member of von Mierers’ cult, called Eternal Values.
“I would take enough money to pay my bills, and everything else I would hand over to Freddy,” Richards told Page Six, referring to von Mierers.
He didn’t think it was odd at the time, since it was the “policy within the group, you gave whatever you could give.”
Richards was in Eternal Values for fifteen years, and he didn’t admit to himself that it was a cult until years after he left. He has since relocated to LA.
As his modeling career took off, he said, he believed at the time, “it’s because of this spiritual life I’ve chosen…that’s what I thought was my secret sauce.”
Richards said that kind of “magical thinking” is common “in the cult survivor space.”
Von Mierers died of AIDS in 1990 at 43. In the ‘80s and ‘90s, he recruited models and attractive Yuppies to Eternal Values, and told them he was helping them prepare for a doomsday event to eventually lead a new society.
At first, he preached celibacy, but later he changed his tune, and “there was a lot of sexual abuse” in the cult, Richards recalled.
When von Mierers talked about his kookier beliefs – like aliens – Richards told Page Six, “even when I was heavy in the group,” his critical thinking was “diminished” but “still operating” enough to clue him in.
“I just knew what was happening was wrong… potentially dangerous and bad.”
But, he added, he was “determined” to hold onto the “narrative” that Eternal Values was spiritual.
“I would self-censor that information out,” he explained. “As much as I was influenced and brainwashed…. I still knew at certain times. And, I chose to avoid those thoughts.”
He added that part of his “healing” process has been to take “ownership.”
“Bring Me The Beauties: A Model Cult” is streaming on HBO Max and airs Mondays at 9 p.m. on HBO.
The post Where is Hoyt Richards now? How the model lost millions in an ‘80s New York cult appeared first on Page Six.
