The Mummified, Glitter-Encased Remains of Alleged Cult Leader 'Mother God' Have Been Found in a Colorado Home

Authorities have located the remains of Amy Carlson, known as Mother God to her followers, dusted with glitter and shrouded in a sleeping bag wrapped with string lights in the back bedroom of a remote Colorado home. They believe she likely died sometime in March.

Love Has Won, the group Carlson led, could be most generally described as a new-age commune, but as Vice alleged in a film, seems a whole lot like an abusive cult. In the documentary, the 20 or so members panhandle for donations when they were not catering to “Mother God’s” (who often appears drunk and belligerent) every whim. The group also appeared in a September 2020 episode of Dr. Phil, during which Carlson said in her 15 years with the group she had participated in over 100,000 ceremonies in which she “spiritually” removed people’s brains from their bodies.

Carlson’s body was discovered by a follower who says he allowed several members to stay in his residence in a remote Colorado town of less than 100 people. Upon returning from a trip to Denver, he found the body in a back bedroom and contacted authorities, who charged seven members of the group with abusing a corpse and child abuse, as there were also a 13-year-old and a two-year-old child in the home. The BBC is reporting that the body was in a pretty serious state of decomposition, with teeth protruding from the lips and missing eyes, while the Guardian reports the group seems to have been attempting to symbolically preserve it:

“The mummified remains appeared to be set up in some type of shrine” and “have what appears to be glitter type makeup on around the eyes,” affidavits say, according to the Guardian. Investigators searched an SUV on the property and said the backseat was laid down in a position “consistent with someone transporting the mummified remains.”

In the Vice documentary, Carlson can be heard yelling profanities as followers explain that Carlson claims to be billions of years old and had been Donald Trump’s father and Jesus Christ in former lives. There is also footage of Carlson abusing a cat and ordering a small, crying child to have a “time out” in a closet. Another follower was reportedly once found wandering the desert alone, hallucinating and with cactus needles lodged in his feet.

Before she was humanity’s billions of years old savior, Carlson was a Texas woman with three children, who in her 30s walked away from her family and job at McDonald’s to join Love Has Won and eventually become its leader, along with a rotating assortment of “Father Gods,” one of whom appears in the Vice documentary to describe the group as an abusive cult.

“She wasn’t the best mother, even when she was around. But I loved her to death,” one of Carlson’s now-adult children, who has been estranged from his mother for years, told the BBC. Other family members interviewed seem to believe that her followers are primarily to blame for the desecration of Carlson’s remains. “We know she’s not completely innocent in this whole situation, because she chose to join this cult,” her sister told the BBC. “But at the same time, she doesn’t deserve what happened to her in the end.” Police found no evidence of foul play in her death.