Amy Carlson (religious leader)

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Amy Carlson, who called herself Mother God, was found in late April 2021 inside her group's compound in Crestone, Colorado. Her body was mummified and lay in a sleeping bag wrapped in Christmas lights. Carlson had co-founded a new religious movement called Love Has Won. She and her followers believed she was God, a being 19 billion years old, and a reincarnation of Jesus Christ. They also believed she could heal people with cancer "with the power of love". Former members and many media outlets describe the group as a cult and Carlson as its leader. How did a movement that grew mostly online come to revolve around her? What did its members believe about the world, and about her? And what actually killed the woman they worshipped? The answers start years earlier, in an ordinary life that gave little warning of what was coming.

  222033126

• 2. Before Mother God

  ›

  Amy Carlson was born on the 30th of November 1975 in McPherson, Kansas. Her parents divorced when she was a child. After both remarried, she was raised between their homes in Kansas and Oklahoma City. Claims of abuse by her stepmother led Carlson and her sister Tara to move in with their mother and stepfather. The family later lived in Dallas, Texas, and then in Houston.

  Carlson had three children by three different fathers. She also worked as a manager at McDonald's.

  In the mid-2000s, Carlson grew interested in New Age religion and became a regular poster on the forums of the website lightworkers.org. There she met Amerith WhiteEagle, who convinced her that she was divine. Carlson began to report paranormal experiences. One was a voice telling her that she would one day become President of the United States.

  In late 2007, Carlson left her third husband, her children and her job. She cut off contact with most of her family and joined WhiteEagle in Colorado. Their group was first known as the "Galactic Federation of Light". Carlson and WhiteEagle led it as Mother and Father God. In 2009 the group posted its first videos to YouTube.

  265252118

• 3. Love Has Won

  ›

  Miguel Lamboy became Carlson's first follower, and she left WhiteEagle around 2014 after he arrived. Lamboy took charge of the group's logistics and finances. From 2014 onwards the movement grew, mainly through the internet. Before 2018 the group travelled between Colorado, Oregon, California and Florida. It then moved to Moffat, Colorado. Alongside Carlson, the role of Father God passed through a succession of men. Jason Castillo became the last of them in 2018.

  In August 2020, the group briefly relocated to the Hawaiian island of Kauai. Carlson publicly proclaimed that she was Pele, the Hawaiian volcano goddess, and local people reacted with hostility. A multi-day protest followed around the rented property. Protesters lit driftwood fires and chanted Hawaiian prayers.

  Lauryn Suarez, a member of the group, gave The Denver Post video from the standoff. It showed eggs and rocks being thrown at the house, along with broken windows and the group's SUV in the driveway. Kauai's mayor, Derek Kawakami, stepped in to negotiate the group's departure. They flew to Kahului Airport on Maui. In September 2020 they were persuaded to return to Colorado.

  Pele was far from the only identity Carlson claimed.

  512111314

• 4. The Teachings

  ›

  Carlson told her followers that she was the 534th incarnation of Mother God. This deity was destined to lead exactly 144,000 believers out of the superficial "3-D world" and into a fifth-dimensional plane of higher existence. Carlson said she had also been Mother Earth, Gaia, White Buffalo Calf Woman, Cleopatra, Jesus Christ, Joan of Arc, Pocahontas, Harriet Tubman, Helena Blavatsky and Marilyn Monroe. She claimed full memory of her past lives, including the crucifixion of Jesus. She said she could "produce miracles, kind of like Jesus". She also said she was the mother of Elvis Presley.

  To reach her goals, she said she had to commune regularly with "The Galactics". This "etheric team" of spiritual ambassadors was largely made up of dead celebrities. Her list included Robin Williams, Patrick Swayze, Whitney Houston, Prince, Steve Irwin, Carrie Fisher, Rodney Dangerfield, Tupac Shakur, Chris Farley, David Bowie, Gene Wilder and Michael Jackson. John Lennon was identified with Ashtar. The living Donald Trump and Carol Burnett were on the team too. She also claimed help from the Count of St. Germain.

  Carlson's cosmic history placed her in Lemuria, with Trump as her father. According to her account, a special and obscure technology was stolen, and the theft caused an explosion that sank Atlantis. Mother God saved the technology. She could not fully ascend to the fifth dimension, because humanity was not ready, so she kept returning to Earth in human form.

  The group's former website described Carlson as a spiritual surgeon who worked "multidimensionally" to operate on people's bodies. It credited her with curing cancer, Lyme disease, addiction and suicidal thoughts. It said she had removed brain tumors and helped cases of autism. Cancer headed that list, and it would surface again in Carlson's own story.

  318262124

• 5. The Last Journey

  ›

  By September 2020, Carlson was in poor health and paralyzed from the waist down. She herself stated that she had cancer. In the weeks before her death, police were called several times to carry out wellness checks. On each visit, members of Love Has Won said she was not home.

  In early April 2021, the group was staying at an RV park in Mount Shasta, in northern California. They were asked to leave because of overcrowding. Someone outside the group last saw Carlson alive on the 10th of April 2021.

  An HBO documentary recorded the group's own account of what came next. Members said they travelled to Ashland, Oregon, at Carlson's request and stayed at Callahan's Mountain Lodge. There Carlson lost all motor control and had to be carried. Two members later said in a YouTube video that she had asked to go to a hospital and they had refused. She died in her room at the lodge, on an unknown date very soon after the move.

  A few days later, the group moved her body to the Mount Hood National Forest, because hotel staff had become suspicious. They waited there for "Galactic" beings to collect it. Castillo claimed he then heard a calling to move the body again. It was driven back to the group's mission home in Saguache County.

  181728229

• 6. What the Coroner Found

  ›

  On the 28th of April 2021, Lamboy walked into the Saguache County police department with a complaint. He said the group had come to his home with Carlson's corpse and were staying there without permission. He also said he had not been in touch with Carlson for several months. Police arrived and found a body whose state of decay suggested she had been dead for several weeks. Her eyes were missing and her face was covered in glitter. Authorities called the scene a makeshift shrine.

  Seven members of the group were charged with abuse of a corpse. They also faced child abuse charges, because two children were at the property.

  A photo taken a few weeks before her estimated death shows Carlson emaciated. She had thinning hair and skin with a purplish hue. She weighed 75 pounds when she died.

  Saguache County Coroner Tom Perrin said Carlson had been ingesting large amounts of colloidal silver. The group had promoted it as a COVID-19 cure and had received a warning from the FDA for doing so. Long-term use can cause blue-grey skin discoloration, seizures and organ failure.

  An autopsy report released in December 2021 gave the cause of death as "global decline in the setting of alcohol abuse, anorexia, and chronic colloidal silver ingestion". The autopsy found no evidence that Carlson had cancer. That report came months after prosecutors had already begun reshaping their case.

  323313534

• 7. After Mother God

  ›

  On the 5th of May, Deputy District Attorney Alex Raines announced plans to upgrade the abuse of a corpse charges. The more serious charge would be tampering with a deceased human body. Reports said group members faced a mix of charges, including child abuse, abuse of a corpse, tampering with human remains and false imprisonment. The charges were later dropped.

  The house and the group's bank accounts were in Lamboy's name, yet he was not charged in connection with the corpse. He reportedly emptied the group's bank account, which held $330,000. Members said they had not heard from him since the day he went to the police, and several news outlets failed to locate him. Just before Carlson's death, Lamboy had paid the Colorado Secretary of State's office $50 to register a new nonprofit, Gaia's Crystal Schools Inc. He listed the address where authorities later recovered her body.

  The followers who remained offered their own account of the death. They claimed Carlson had not died at all. She had "ascended" to the fifth dimension after taking on all of mankind's pain. The website lovehaswon.org was taken offline. The group renamed its Facebook page and YouTube channel "5D Full Disclosure" and launched a new site, 5dfulldisclosure.org.

  The movement splintered. Castillo formed a separate group, Joy Rains, with a small number of followers. Several core members still believe that Carlson is God, and they reject what they call the "3D world".

  1637361439

• 8. On Camera

  ›

  Dr. Phil gave Carlson a national television platform in 2020. She spread her claims of being God on the show and confronted her family.

  Dateline NBC aired a two-hour documentary about the group on the 15th of October 2021. In March 2022, the journalist Leah Sottile published a book about Carlson, Love Has Won and New Age leaders. Its title is Blazing Eye Sees All: Love Has Won, False Prophets and the Fever Dream of the American New Age.

  The HBO documentary series Love Has Won: The Cult of Mother God, directed by Hannah Olson, premiered on the 13th of November 2023. That was more than two years after police opened the door on the shrine in Crestone.

  3940414243