HBO Series Explores Bizarre Tale of 'Mother God,' Cult Leader Found Wrapped in Christmas Lights After Death

Amy Carlson claimed to have been reincarnated as Marilyn Monroe and Joan of Arc, and also said that Robin Williams advised her from the Great Beyond.

The Colorado-based guru also said she was 19 billion years old, had given birth to the Universe as “Mother God,” and could cure any disease, including cancer.

These lofty promises, coupled with unending charisma, won her a healthy online following and up to 20 live-in acolytes who became members of the group, Love Has Won.

Carlson’s stated mission was to help the world ascend to a higher dimension, free its inhabitants from the purported “cabal” imprisoning them,  and “reconnect with PRIME SOURCE CREATOR, ME!” she wrote in her now-defunct website, lovehaswon.org.

While Carlson maintained that she was saving the world through Love Has Won, others have labeled it a pernicious cult — including cult expert Rick Alan Ross, who spoke about the group on an appearance on Dr. Phil in 2021.

Carlson died in 2021 at age 45, of alcohol abuse, anorexia and chronic colloidal silver ingestion. Her mummified body was found covered with a sleeping bag and wrapped in Christmas lights, with glitter covering the eye sockets.

Some say Love Has Won died with her. Others say the group continues on.

The new HBO docuseries, Love Has Won: The Cult of Mother God, premiered earlier this month and is streaming now on Max and has sparked renewed interest in Carlson and the web of chaos, dysfunction and manipulation she created.

Speaking about what she hopes viewers take away from the docuseries, Director Hannah Olson tells PEOPLE, "Human beings are programmed to look for myth and meaning. We're programmed to worship. And be careful what you worship."

Here’s what to know:

McDonald's Manager Discovers New Age Spirituality

Born in Kansas on Nov. 30, 1975, Carlson “didn't show any signs of acting different” as a small child, one of her sisters said in a 2021 episode of Dr. Phil. 

Carlson said her parents’ 1984 divorce was particularly upsetting to her, and that she had a turbulent relationship with her stepmother.

By the time she was in her early twenties, Carlson had been married three times and had three children with three different fathers, her family said in the episode.

Her fascination with all things New Age began in the early 2000s, said her family, who saw bizarre changes in Carlson.  “She started calling herself Mother God and she believed that she was God,” one of her sisters said on Dr. Phil.

A Leader Called 'Mom'

In about 2007, Carlson met a man online named Amerith WhiteEagle, who convinced her that she had otherworldly powers, according to reporting by The Denver Post. Choosing to leave everything behind in the world, from her children to her job as a McDonald’s manager, she moved with him to Colorado where they started a group called the Galactic Federation of Light, the outlet reports.

Eventually, Carlson left WhiteEagle and went off on her own, renaming the group Love Has Won.

She believed her mission was to save the world, her sister said on Dr. Phil.

Her followers were drawn to Love Has Won and its leader they called “Mom” because of her spiritual teachings and because of her self-professed healing powers.

Hawking Dubious Supplements Online

Carlson used the internet to promote Love Has Won and to peddle dubious health products and supplements through daily livestreams, videos, posts and blogs.

Her online presence grew on Facebook and YouTube, where her videos were watched more than 1.5 million times, according to Vanity Fair.

She made money selling questionable supplements online, including colloidal silver, which Carlson herself took — and which an autopsy said was a factor in her death.

Alcohol, Drugs and Abuse

Many videos show Carlson and her followers telling the world how happy they were. 

But other members later claimed that Carlson abused and at times, sexually exploited her dutiful followers.

Often high on drugs or drunk, Carlson hurled curses and insults at them, her followers have said.

She forced some of her followers to have sex with her, physically abused them and to wait on her non-stop, others claimed.

Her family alleged on Dr. Phil that Carlson was running a scam, something Carlson herself denied.

Body Found Wrapped in Christmas Lights

In April 2021, Saguache County sheriff’s deputies were shocked when they found a mummified body in a home in Crestone, Colo., draped with Christmas lights and a sleeping bag. The eyes of the corpse were missing. But smudged on the eye sockets was a glittery powder.

"I used to say I've seen it all," Saguache County Sheriff Dan Warwick told Dateline NBC in a 2021 broadcast. "I don't say that anymore."

The corpse belonged to Carlson, whose followers said had ascended to the next dimension.

When Carlson's health declined and she wanted medical help, her followers, who feared what could happen to her in what they thought of as the "3D" world, refused, Vanity Fair reported.

"Amy created a palace of lies that she could not escape from,” the docuseries' director Hannah Olson told Vanity Fair.

Reality Check

“We talk a lot about how the loss of consensus reality has affected us politically,” says director Olson, whose work includes the HBO documentaries Baby God and The Last Cruise. “But we do not talk about how it has affected us socially or spiritually quite as much.

While the topic of internet cults has been covered a lot, "I hadn't seen something that took a more empathic approach and looked at some of the social factors that brought people down the wormhole in the first place," she says.

People might think that the Love Has Won followers' beliefs “are really far out,” she says. “It’s easy to write people off whose beliefs are very different."

But what Olson discovered about Carlson’s followers is that they wanted what most Americans want: “a different life, a bigger life or a more meaningful life,” she says.

That can be difficult when the “economic reality”  is that many people lack access to affordable healthcare and mental health care, she says. 

“I think that a lot of the social factors that brought people to Love has Won, are actually quite relatable,” she says. “Everyone who found Love Has Won was simply Googling how to heal their body or mind.”

Sarah, one of the Love Has Won followers, “had $500,000 of medical debt,” she says. “Andrew was struggling from an opioid addiction.” With the older woman, Mary, "No one was taking care of her," she says. "We don't take care of the elderly in this country." Living in Carlson's chaotic, dysfunctional home base "is a material upgrade for her."

Carlson took advantage of their struggles “She empowered vulnerable people with a framework to make sense of their often troubled realities,” she says.

Carlson Was 'Malignant Narcissist': Expert

Noted cult expert Rick Alan Ross of the nonprofit Cult Education Institute, who has helped save more than 500 people from predators such as Branch Davidian leader David Koresh and NVIVM founder Keith Raniere, says Love Has Won was one of the most dangerous groups he’s ever encountered.

“This was a very controlled, tightly wound group,” he tells PEOPLE, “led by an outrageously destructive and abusive leader.”

Carlson, he says, “could be extremely physically and emotionally abusive. She would scream at them, slap them and lock them in closets.”

She made sure to socially isolate members and make them completely dependent on her for everything, including what to think, he says.

They endured her abuse, he says, because she had made them believe she was their “all-powerful” leader with godlike powers.

“In that alternate reality those people had no alternate perspective,” he says. “She controlled the environment until her death and exploited them terribly.”

Like other cult leaders, he says, Carlson “was a malignant narcissist obsessed with grandiose claims about herself, including that she was god manifested on earth. When you have a leader as crazy and delusional as Amy Carlson, it’s a formula for tragedy.”

Love Has Won: The Cult of Mother God, a three-part docuseries, ran on successive Mondays on HBO and is streaming now on Max.