The Cult That Mummified Its God: Love Has Won

Summary

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Summary: Scams, Money, & Murder – The Cult That Mummified Its God: Love Has Won (Part 1)

Podcast: Scams, Money, & Murder / Crime House
Date: July 8, 2026
Hosts: Sabrina D'Anarroga & Corinne Vien

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Episode Overview

In this chilling installment, hosts Sabrina and Corinne unpack the strange and disturbing saga of Amy Carlson and the "Love Has Won" cult. The episode explores Amy's evolution from small-town McDonald's manager and troubled mother to "Mother God"—a New Age cult leader surrounded by enablers, believers, and eventually, tragedy. The hosts combine sharp cultural insight, empathy, and incredulity as they break down Amy’s descent into delusion and the web of manipulation and followers that grew around her. This is Part One of a two-part investigation.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Rise of "Mother God" (00:54–05:19)

• Amy’s Claims: Amy Carlson insisted she was "literally God," the reincarnation of historical figures, guided by "dead celebrities," and even performed “over 100 brain surgeries.”
• Dr. Phil Appearance & Public Shenanigans: Amy once appeared on Dr. Phil, claimed to have performed medical miracles, and was kicked out of Hawaii for impersonating the goddess Pele.
• “You can smell God”: The cult's devotion culminated in followers driving Amy's mummified corpse, adorned with Christmas lights, across state lines (07:34–09:16).

“You can smell God. She’s here. That is a rotting corpse.” — Corinne (09:46)

Amy’s Troubled Early Life (10:24–14:43)

• Family Turmoil & Childhood Trauma: Amy’s parents divorced when she was 7. She was shuffled between homes, allegedly abused by her stepmother, and taught by her own mother to repress traumatic memories.
• Early Coping & Body Image Issues: Amy struggled with food, turning to secret binge-eating. Instead of compassion, her mother pushed her onto Nutrisystem at age 14, reinforcing insecurities.

“My mom is saying I’m fat… That’s another layer.” — Corinne (12:28)

From Everyday Mom to Spiritual Seeker (17:33–20:49)

• The Celestine Prophecy Catalyst: After seeing the spiritually themed movie The Celestine Prophecy, Amy becomes obsessed with New Age ideas, online forums, and the concept of “vibrations.”
• Dramatic Life Change: Amy suddenly quits her job and, without warning, abandons her three children to chase a mystical online connection, moving to Crestone, CO, with an older man she met on Lightworkers.org.

“She literally walks out the restaurant, walks out the door, keeps walking… leaving her kids behind.” — Sabrina (19:18)

The Birth of the Cult and Identity Evolution (20:55–26:39)

• Crestone: The New Age Hotspot: The remote town’s spiritual scene enables Amy’s transformation and increasingly eccentric beliefs. Drugs escalate from weed to mushrooms to acid.
• Online Outreach: Amy adopts the name “Mother God,” launches the Galactic Free Press website, and, with help from a tech-savvy partner, expands her reach using YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter.
• Conspiratorial Turn: Her writings and livestreams spiral into increasingly wild and dangerous conspiracy theories.

Recruitment & Growth of Love Has Won (26:39–34:28)

• Charismatic Manipulation: Amy entices vulnerable followers, often in crisis—those with illness, addiction issues, or job loss—convincing them she is their route to salvation.
• Growing Commune: Followers arrive, surrendering their finances and lives; each new arrival is absorbed into commune life and often into personal drama, including a constant musical-chairs of “Father God” figures.
• Delusional Claims Escalate: Amy now claims:
  • 534 reincarnations as famous figures (Marilyn Monroe, Cleopatra…),
  • Dead celebrities (Robin Williams, John Lennon) guide her,
  • She’s fighting a global cabal across lifetimes,
  • And more bizarre ideas live-streamed for global audiences.

Becoming a Public Spectacle (34:33–43:06)

• Money Grabs: The cult peddles herbal supplements, "etheric surgeries" (spiritual healings performed remotely), and colloidal silver—a product with dangerous health risks.
• Enabling Structure: Followers like Michael and Andrew are drawn in for their skills (engineering, marketing) and “donate” their money (e.g., $700/week unemployment checks) while managing the commune.
• Mental & Physical Decline: Amy’s drug and alcohol abuse worsens, her mood swings become violent, and her mental state deteriorates in front of a live audience.

“The more she drank, the more terrifying she became… [followers] loved her, but now they feared her.” — Sabrina (38:24)

Dangerous Ideologies (39:03–40:48)

• Descent into Bigotry: Messages turned racist and antisemitic, sprinkled with completely unhinged conspiracy theories about American tragedies being faked to target her, and defenses of notorious historical figures.
• Public Downfall: Her deterioration happens publicly, with family members, including her estranged mother, now witnessing the spiral in horror.

Notable Cult Products & Scams (40:28–42:35)

• Etheric surgeries (spiritual healing sessions, up to “brain surgery”)
• Herbal supplements, sweatshirts, and colloidal silver, often sold with false medical claims and encouraged for daily consumption—despite grave health risks.

The Final Father God & Prelude to Disaster (42:51–43:41)

• Introduction of Jason Castillo: As Amy’s partners rotate, Jason brings a volatile edge—marked by chaos and violence.
• Her health, claims, and reality collapse even further, inadvertently laying the groundwork for the tragic events of her death—teased here as Part 2’s focus.

"Everything, including Amy's health, her message, her grip on reality, really started to fall apart." — Sabrina (43:06)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Perils of Blind Faith:
  “People walked away from everything in their lives, their jobs, their savings, even their kids just to move in with her…” — Sabrina (04:56)

• On the Absurdity & Tragedy:
  “She’s everything except for a mother to her children.” — Corinne (25:16)

• Summing Up the Spiral:
  “So many of the cults go ... further away from unity and ascension ... into more fear and conspiracy ... and that kind of signals almost the end.” — Corinne (38:31)

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Key Timestamps

• 00:54: Amy Carlson’s outlandish divine claims introduced
• 07:34: Gruesome detail: followers transporting Amy’s corpse with Christmas lights
• 10:24–14:43: Amy’s early life, trauma, and abandonment of children
• 17:33: Spiritual “awakening” after The Celestine Prophecy viewing
• 19:18: Amy walks out on her family—never returns
• 23:42: Transformation into “Mother God” and first cult followers
• 25:00: Amy declares, “Jesus has returned—and Jesus was Amy”
• 29:45–31:27: Rapid influx of vulnerable followers, giving up money and lives
• 33:11: Claims of guidance from Robin Williams and John Lennon
• 38:24: Amy’s frightening alcohol-fueled mood swings
• 39:03: Bigotry, antisemitism, and conspiracy theories spread
• 40:28: Monetized fake healing and dangerous wellness products (et al.)
• 42:51: Enter Jason Castillo—the most chaotic "Father God"

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Tone & Takeaways

The hosts blend empathy for vulnerable followers with clear-eyed criticism of manipulative (and self-deluded) cult leaders. There’s a throughline of dark humor (“She’s everything except for a mother ...”), but also dismay at the depth of trauma, manipulation, and mental illness at play. The story is equal parts tragedy, scam, and cautionary tale—reminding listeners how charismatic narcissists can exploit not only believers, but themselves.

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End of Part 1; Tune in next week for the aftermath and Amy Carlson’s final days.

Transcript

[Vanessa]

Hi listeners, it's Vanessa. Before today's episode, I want to take a brief moment to tell you about a show from Crime House's sister studio, Rewind that I know you'll love. It's called Government that Doesn't Suck, hosted by professors Lindsay Cormack and Greg Jackson from History that Doesn't Suck. Ever wonder how the weather forecast on your phone is so accurate? Or how your mail still gets across the country for less than a dollar? Or who actually built the highway you drove on this morning? Each episode tells the surpr of an American institution that you'll never look at the same way again. Listen to and follow Government that Doesn't Suck every other Monday on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Or watch video episodes on YouTube.

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

This is crime house. Amy Carlson said she was literally God. As in God the creator of the universe.

[Corinne Vien]

She said that she'd lived hundreds of past lives and that a team of dead celebrities were guiding her from beyond the grave.

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

She ended up on Dr. Phil claiming she'd performed over a hundred successful brain surgeries.

[Corinne Vien]

She even got kicked out of Hawaii for claiming that she was the Hawaiian goddess Pele.

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

And honestly, it sounds like something like you would scroll past at 2am but

[Corinne Vien]

for a small group of devoted followers, this was reality. And they were willing to give up everything to be close to Mother God.

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

And that devotion would end with a dead body wrapped in Christmas lights being driven across state lines.

[Corinne Vien]

Welcome to Crimes of Cults.

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

I'm Sabrina deannaroga.

[Corinne Vien]

I'm Corindian.

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

And this season we're exploring the intersections of faith and manipulation, of hope and fear. It's all about the world's most dangerous cult and the charismatic leaders who promised salvation and destroyed their followers lives in the process.

[Corinne Vien]

Subscribe now and step inside the world of Crime of if you're loving Crime of Please follow rate and review us wherever you listen. It helps us build this community and we love hearing from you. To get early access and ad free listening, subscribe to Crime House plus Community on Apple Podcasts and you can also catch us on YouTube where we include visuals that bring every case to life.

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

Part one on the case of Amy Carlson and the Love has Won cult starts now.

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[Corinne Vien]

heard of this case before and still, like, I don't quite understand how everything evolved like it did. Because like, how do we take a McDonald's manager and a mother of three young kids and end up having her believe that she gave birth to the entire human race and that she's been reincarnated, that she was Cleopatra, she was Joan of Arc, she was Marilyn Monroe.

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

It's mind blowing and it's really heartbreaking because in the case of Amy Carlson, it is a combination of things like drugs are absolutely a factor here, but alcohol, probably a lot of unresolved, like mental health issues and repressed traumas.

[Corinne Vien]

Medication probably would have, yes, helped her significantly.

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

And what gets me even more than Amy believing all of it is that she got so many other people to believe it too. I mean, she convinced them that she was the one true God. Like so much so that people walked away from everything in their lives, their jobs, their savings, even their kids just to move in with her and basically devote their entire lives to whatever she wanted.

[Corinne Vien]

Which proves how influential she was. Because I feel like saying you're God or that you're Jesus or something like that is a pretty common thing to come up when people are experiencing psychosis and Things like that. If someone came up to you on the street and said something like that, you assume drug or mental health crisis.

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

Yes. And we're not talking about like one or two people here. We're talking about so many people who got so deep in Amy Carlson's world and what is now known as the Love has Won cult, that when the whole thing unraveled on national tv, they still didn't leave.

[Corinne Vien]

Right. Her followers became almost too loyal and so convinced that Amy was really God that they were willing to do just about anything to prove it. And in a very twisted way, that is what turned Amy into a victim of her own teachings.

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

Yes. Which is actually interesting because I feel like a lot of the cults that we've talked about so far in the season. Yes. Maybe the leader does die with their members and they make people like die on behalf of their message.

[Corinne Vien]

Yes.

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

This is the one cult where fortunately we're not having a leader who's making a bunch of people die. Yeah, it's still terrible, but it's like

[Corinne Vien]

I almost am less shocked at what happened here and more shocked about every other cult because especially with the weeding out process and the amount of manipulation and, and just like breaking down people's psyches, it is kind of surprising that there haven't been as many cases where people on the inside, like, I think that people could be more unpredictable and turn on their cult leaders or make decisions that don't match what their leader wants.

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

I know there's so many instances in this case that we'll talk about where I feel like it was like an accidental cult. But then there are moments that really do contradict that. So it's hard, it's messy as cults are, there's nuance. But as the group's beliefs got more extreme, their behavior got more intense and the line between faith and reality just completely disappeared. And at that point it started to feel inevitable that there was only one way this was going to end and that was with someone who was going to die.

[Corinne Vien]

And with that in mind, we do want to give you a quick heads up that this episode includes mentions of drug and alcohol abuse, abuse of a corpse, brief references to animal and child abuse, and discussions of eating disorders that led to death. Please listen with care. The car smells sweet and rotten at the same time. John sits in the passenger seat, keeping his face turned towards the half rolled window, breathing through his mouth. Even with the fresh air, the scent clings to everything. His clothes, his hair, the back of his throat. But his friend Jason doesn't seem bothered. He has one hand on the wheel and the other stretched behind him with his fingers splayed, like he can feel something that no one else can. That's God, jason says. You can smell her everywhere. In the backseat, Mother's body is wrapped in layers of sleeping bags and blankets, all carefully tied together with a strand of Christmas lights which cast a bright technic glow against the glass of the window. Jason had insisted on those. He said it honored her ascension and channeled her energy. As the car turns down the interstate, John wills himself not to look at her face, but his eyes keep drifting back to her. The glitter is the first thing he notices, caked where her eyes should be catching the light, and sharp flashes. Her mouth is pulled back, leaving her teeth exposed in a way that almost resembles a smile if you don't stare too long. She's still breathing, jason says, quieter now. You just have to listen.

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

So creepy.

[Corinne Vien]

The car falls silent except for the low hum of the road. John strains, hoping to hear it too, and for a fleeting second he does. Outside, another state line passes unnoticed in the dark. Inside, the Christmas lights flicker softly, carrying Mother God home.

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

Let's be very clear. Mother God in the backseat of this car is very not alive. She is very dead, wrapped in Christmas lights. In the backseat was her corpse.

[Corinne Vien]

Yeah, you can smell God. She's here. That is a rotting corpse.

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

That is a rotting corpse. The corpse of Amy Carlson, or as her cult called her mother God. And Amy Carlson is a very complicated person. She's not unlike some of the other cult leaders we've talked about this season, but at the same time she's also very different. But no matter what version you think was like the real Amy, it's really hard to wrap your head around this question and idea of how someone can go from being an ordinary person to a cult leader to then a corpse wrapped in Christmas lights in the back of a car. So what better place to start than the beginning?

[Corinne Vien]

Great, let's go there.

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

Amy Carlson was born in 1975 in McPherson, Kansas, into a lower middle class family and she was the oldest of three sisters. She seemed like a pretty happy kid, but when she was 7, her parents, Linda and Dennis got divorced, which definitely tough, but there's a lot of children whose parents get divorced. Like that's not that out of the ordinary.

[Corinne Vien]

In fact, it's more common than it's not.

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

Yes, but it seems like things really got worse for Amy when she was sent to live with her dad and his new wife. According to Amy's Stepsister, their new stepmom didn't like Linda, their mom, their, like birth mother. And Amy ended up being the easiest target for that anger, which is so sad, like she's a child.

[Corinne Vien]

Yeah.

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

And apparently Linda, Amy's mom, said that Amy would come back from weekends with her stepmom covered in bruises with stories about being locked in the closet like she was being abused.

[Corinne Vien]

Oh, hell no.

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

I mean, there's a lot of issues here. Linda seemed to know that something was wrong, but the Carlson family had a way of dealing with things and that was repress them and not talk about them. So she figured that if Amy didn't think about it and didn't talk about it, then it wouldn't impact her, which we obviously know is the opposite. She basically told Amy, young Amy, to repress those memories, keep them locked away. And that obviously was going to lead to a lot of issues as she grew up.

[Corinne Vien]

Totally. And for Amy, one of the things that she felt like she did have control over and used as sort of like a, a crutch to cope with what was going on was food. Her sister Tara later said she'd find Ding Dong wrappers hidden in Amy's room. But Linda didn't seem to accept this as a coping mechanism for a struggling child. Instead, she saw this as an embarrassment. So she put her daughter Amy on Nutrisystem. When Amy just 14 years old, Linda also signed up too. So I guess they're like doing it together. But to Amy, she's like, my mom is saying I'm fat.

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

Yeah.

[Corinne Vien]

And that is now like another layer.

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

And Linda was saying she's only doing it so that Amy could lose weight. Basically a 14 year old, it's just

[Corinne Vien]

like fully unhealthy all around. Yeah. Amy did end up losing weight, though. And I guess like the silver lining of that situation is with that she gained some confidence. Her grades even improved. And after high school, she took that confidence with her and ended up becoming a manager at the McDonald's chain by the time that she was 23, which is super impressive.

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

Yeah. And like to be 23 and the manager. Yeah, that's young.

[Corinne Vien]

Yeah, it's a good shtick. So now she had a steady income, which was really important. And by then she also had a three year old son named Cole. A few years later, when she's 25, her and her new boyfriend have a daughter named Maddie. So now she's two kids, two young kids. She's in a managerial position at McDonald's. Good income.

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

Seems like things are going well. But as we will see, unfortunately, Amy was not too keen on motherhood. And this will be something we talk about a lot in both part one and part two of this case. She claimed she loved her children, but I think based on her actions, they say otherwise. She would often leave her kids with her mom. Belinda, Amy's mom, recalled one time walking into Amy's apartment to find her daughter Maddie, a baby, alone in a full diaper. Amy was nowhere to be found. Basically, like Amy, just, like, up and left her children. Point being, she was not a very responsible parent. And of course, we can make excuses of which there are many, but it was. She was a mother. It was on her. It was her responsibility to take care of her children, and she did not.

[Corinne Vien]

Mm.

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

And Amy had a pattern of unhealthy relationships with controlling men who did very little to support her or to support her and the kids. And that didn't change with her next relationship when that led to her third child. So now she has three children with three different men, all of which have continued this cycle of abuse and toxicity and are not showing up to take care of her or the kids. And then she isn't really either taking on the responsibility.

[Corinne Vien]

It's also a lot to coordinate with so many people and kids and moving parts. It's not that that's any excuse at

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

all, but there's a lot going on.

[Corinne Vien]

There's a lot going on.

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

And keep in mind, also, Amy has so much repressed trauma that she's not dealing with. Again, no excuse is enough of an excuse. It's safe to say a lot is going on. And according to everyone in Amy's life, she was struggling.

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[Corinne Vien]

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[Vanessa]

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[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

Okay, that's fair.

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[Corinne Vien]

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[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

It's around this time that she went to go see the Celestine Prophecy, which is a movie about a man who travels to Peru to find an ancient manuscript that is said to hold spiritual truths about humanity. And I have not seen this movie. But according to the story, there was something about this movie that really, really struck a chord and spoke to Amy. Not just the message, but the feeling that she was meant to be a part of it and she was ready to leave everything behind to do it. And we mean everything. So Amy's mom and sister recall noticing a shift in Amy almost immediately after she had seen this movie. Pretty much overnight, Amy became obsessed with vibrations. She became more spiritual. She's talking about past lives and UFOs, and these were not things that Amy and her family had ever really talked about before. So they noticed it. They're like, this is different. Whereas you and I talk about this all the time. So it's not weird when we talk about it.

[Corinne Vien]

And it's also not like this is going to be a short interest of hers, like, this is going to continue on. No, it'd be. It's not like going to go see Step up the movie. And, like, everyone thinks that they can be like a pop and lock it and break dancer for like a week, and you practice in your shower and then move on because you're like, oh, wow, that was delusional.

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

Well, at first, I feel like they do kind of think it's like a phase and a temporary interest, and they don't read too much into it. But according to them, Amy was also spending a lot oftime on lightworkers.org which was an online community for people who are also into this type of. Of stuff. They don't think too much of it until November 2007. First, Amy quits her job, which, again, was a good job, and she needed to raise her children.

[Corinne Vien]

That. Yeah, that's. That's enough then. That's the shock.

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

It gets more shocking when one night In November of 2007, Amy went to dinner with her mother, Linda, and her sister Tara. I think it was to celebrate Tara's birthday. Halfway through the dinner, Amy politely excuses herself from the table, like, totally normal. They think she's going to the bathroom, you know, take a call, something. No, she literally walks out the restaurant, walks out the door, keeps walking out of the restaurant, out of town, leaving her old life and her three young kids behind.

[Corinne Vien]

Can you imagine? I'm so curious what our kids say about her now or, like, their memory of this moment in some regards.

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

Like, I'm glad they had a better life because she wasn't with them. I don't know. I mean, it's so, so complicated, so heartbreaking.

[Corinne Vien]

Okay, well, what Amy's family did not know at the time was that she was on lightworkers.org she had been talking to someone named Robert Salzgaver, who went by Amerith White Eagle online. Amerith was a lot older than Amy and had been kind of like giving her this grandfatherly warmth and that sort of energy, something that she hadn't really experienced before, but she very deeply desired that sort of connection.

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

Yeah.

[Corinne Vien]

Just 17 days after meeting Amerith online, Amy left her entire life behind to move to Crestone, Colorado, to be with

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

him, this grandfatherly figure, be with him

[Corinne Vien]

romantically, leaving her three children behind. 17 days.

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

Yeah. I mean, this is why I very much believe there was, like, a very severe mental health issue going on.

[Corinne Vien]

Yeah. Located in a remote town in The San Luis Valley Crestone has always seemed to attract the New Age crowd. It's filled with meditation sites, yoga centers, spiritual institutions, and more than its fair share of cults. In short, perfect place for two budding hippies. And that is the direction that she's starting to go. So once Amy and Meredith settle in Crestone, they started an intimate relationship and basically become a two person commune. So if you set aside the fact that Amy left her kids to get there, the whole thing in like a kind of like hippie New age sense sounds a little bit beautiful. Yeah, A two person commune. Can you not just say that that's like a very intertwined romantic relationship? I don't know. But they spent their days with rescue dogs and horses, watching UFOs drift through the crowd.

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

Like, that part does sound like a dream.

[Corinne Vien]

Kind of like our dream.

[Lemonade Pet Insurance / Ad Voice]

Yeah.

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

You and I going off into the.

[Corinne Vien]

Yes.

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

My dream is this is our retreat. When I die, we die together. And someone brings our bodies across the line into Area 51, that is.

[Corinne Vien]

But also, like, we're a company of two and we should do a company

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

retreat with rescue dogs and horses.

[Corinne Vien]

Yeah, we just find ourselves a farm and just look at the sky.

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

But that's acceptable.

[Corinne Vien]

Yeah.

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

Leaving behind your three children is not something.

[Corinne Vien]

No, no. So they wanted to build heaven on earth, a place where they could be family.

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

Where everyone could be family. That's like the part that kills me because she's saying this after literally leaving behind her family, leaving her family.

[Corinne Vien]

And also, like, is everyone not family? Like, in like a spiritual sense? Are we all human and connected by our humanity? Someone needed to ask some more questions. But this was a commune of one or two, I guess, at this point.

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

At this point, yeah.

[Corinne Vien]

So with this desire, Amy took on some physical changes. She ditched her blonde hair and heavy makeup and she went back to her natural brunette hair. She started wearing long dresses and scarves and smoking a lot of weed. Like, constantly smoking weed. The weed turned to shrooms, shrooms turned to acid. And as the drugs are kicking in, Amy's beliefs start kicking in too. They start to escalate. And at first it's like pretty standard New Age ideology, but now it's getting weird, and more and more of her beliefs are all going to be centered around her. It's all centered around Amy. So she starts hearing voices. And one of them told her that she was destined to become president. And then pretty soon, she saw herself as more than president, even more than human. She was convinced she was God to the point where she started signing her messages as Mother God. And even Amerith was being called Father God. So, like, the two of them together are the gods.

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

Have you watched the False Prophet yet? That documentary on Netflix? It reminds me of this so much. I feel like this is another common thread with cults and cult leaders where they believe that they are president and meant to be president. And I have questions about. Because that just sounds like a very stressful job. But, you know, I digress. Anyway, so here's Amy in Crestone, Colorado, fully believing she was God. And it is here in Crestone. And that the lightworkers.org chat room was still a very big part of Amy's life. So she's continuing to message on it. And now that she had this big epiphany and realization that she is God, she wants to use that to build her audience. If you're God, like, a small online forum is just not enough. So she started her own website and started putting her ideas out into the world through that. It was called the Galactic Free Press. And every day it was filled with Amy's musings about ascension, astrology, and leaving mainstream society behind. And more and more, Amy started leaning into this, like, conspiracy theory side of things. Like she was posting about how some of the nation's more horrific tragedies were nothing more than a government hoax. And this is where conspiracy becomes dangerous. Because we are fans, we love a tinfoil, we love a conspiracy. But hers are starting to become dangerous.

[Corinne Vien]

Yes. Then in 2009, 34 year old Amy posted her first of many YouTube videos with a new message. The message, Jesus has returned. And Jesus was Amy.

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

She's God, she's Jesus. She's Marilyn Monroe, she's Cleopatra.

[Corinne Vien]

She's everything. She's everything except for her mother to her children.

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

Yeah.

[Corinne Vien]

So while Amy spread the word about this revelation on YouTube and on Facebook, Amerith took to Twitter. And believe it or not, people actually started listening, which, like that part is mind boggling. Because, like, As a deep TikTok consumer, I feel like I have definitely seen some people's videos where they're going through these same sort of ramblings. And a lot of people are like, you know what would be really cool is like if you maybe just check yourself into the hospital or like, have you talked to your doctor recently? Like, people in the comments are very much like, this is like, I think he needs a little bit of assistance.

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

We saw, and we're not gonna out them, but a friend of ours kind of started a cult with his mom and People on social media were and

[Corinne Vien]

changed his name and like everything spoke differently and had all these like wearing all white. I totally forgot about that.

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

Yeah. So it happens. Stay tuned. Maybe, maybe we'll add an extra episode this season.

[Corinne Vien]

We bring him on and we bring him back down to reality. Or try to.

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

Yeah.

[Corinne Vien]

Or that's when we get. That's when we get into.

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

Oh my God, I've been waiting for you to totally forgot about that.

[Corinne Vien]

Wow, that's a good example. It's like, you know, people are using social media to reach a lot of other people these days. And she had YouTube and Facebook and Twitter and all of this stuff at her disposal.

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

And it reached the right crowd.

[Vanessa]

It did.

[Corinne Vien]

People were listening. In 2012, Amy met Miguel Lamboy in a lightworker's chat room. And he introduced himself as Michael. And Michael was a computer guy. So like you would expect him to be more logical, left brained type of guy. Not someone who would maybe be the normal participant in something like this.

[Professor Lindsay Cormack]

Yeah.

[Corinne Vien]

But somehow he became convinced that Amy had healed his late stage lung cancer. And now whether or not he even had cancer to begin with is kind of up for a debate. But one thing is for sure, and that is that Michael was quite smitten with Amy and that was before he even met her in person. Like they were just Internet friends at this point. But that's the whole plot of the show, Catfish, you know.

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

Right.

[Corinne Vien]

You can develop deep feelings and relationships and attachments to people that you have never met in person.

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

And I feel like Amy had a really good way of doing this. Like she was charismatic and was able, like so many people were falling in love with her.

[Lemonade Pet Insurance / Ad Voice]

Yeah.

[Corinne Vien]

When he finally did get to meet Amy, they fell for each other and fell for each other fast, which meant that her other romantic partner, Amerith, was now the third wheel.

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

And two years later, in 2014, Amy took away the title that she had bestowed upon Amerith and gave it to Michael. He was now bestowed with the highest honor she could think of. He was her new father, God. And as you can imagine, Amerith didn't stick around for much longer after that.

[Corinne Vien]

No.

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

Now Michael was by her side and we with him by her side. Remember, he's like a computer guy. The following of Amy starts to grow even more. Now a new follower comes in. His name is Andrew Profaci. He's a younger guy who was dealing with a painkiller addiction and had just lost his job. And he had always been into conspiracy theories. And when he first found Amy Through a live stream, she had shared her belief that 911 was an inside job. And from there he was just hooked and kept watching because he had already kind of believed that conspiracy. He bought into Amy. So much so that he starts dreaming about her, which only made him believe in her messaging even more, that she was Mother God. Like, he's like, oh my gosh, she's coming to visit me in my dreams and she has messages for me. And naturally he was like, now I need to seek her out. And it didn't take long before the real life Amy convinced him to drop everything and move to the commune in Crestone, Colorado. And this kind of became a pattern with more members and more people dropping everything in their lives moving to the commune. And it was mostly people who were already struggling. A cancer patient, an addict. Someone who would find themselves drawn to something about Amy and felt called to be in her presence. Maybe it was her appearance or her confidence or her messaging or, I don't know, just her presence. Whatever it was, she had this way of pulling these wayward spirits in and convincing them that if they wanted happiness or enlightenment or salvation, it had to come through her.

[Corinne Vien]

Yeah, and her version of happiness and enlightenment and salvation, it was enticing, but it wasn't exactly what you would picture. When Andrew got off his flight in Colorado, he was greeted by Amy and Michael in the middle of a 36 hour mushroom trip.

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

Can you imagine?

[Corinne Vien]

Oh my God, you're like totally sober, hopping off a plane.

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

Like they're like in another world.

[Corinne Vien]

Am I driving right? What's going on? So they were there. Mother God and Father God so high that they were barely responsive. They were sitting in a filthy one room house. So not the best first impression. But once Amy came to the next day after her trip was done, that initial pull that Andrew felt towards her online came back and he fell for her fast. Yeah, and wouldn't you know it, he was very quickly promoted to be the next Father God, which meant that Michael was demoted.

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

Damn.

[Corinne Vien]

I'm kind of shocked she didn't find a way to just like keep at like everyone with the title.

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

Multiple Father Gods.

[Corinne Vien]

Yeah, the fathers. Anyway, she didn't Michael's ditched and Andrew's in. Andrew also brought something practical to the table because he had a background in marketing and web design. How convenient. So he helped Amy come up with the name Love has Won, which was meant to reflect her so called like godly vision of unity and peace. He launched all of their social media under the new name. And this is when things really started to take off. So Amy had been getting a couple thousand views before this, but now she was pulling in tens of thousands of views on every video and every live stream.

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

Wild.

[Corinne Vien]

Yeah. And there were some increasingly strange claims that she was making about herself on these streams. Claims that maybe at first seemed a bit harmless, but hinted at something much darker lurking beneath the surface. There's never been a better time to get outside and experience the benefits of nature, discover nearby trails and explore the the outdoors with alltrails.

[Vanessa]

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[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

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[Corinne Vien]

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[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

According to Amy, she had been reincarnated 534 times. And in those lives, she was always someone important. Marilyn Monroe, Cleopatra, Joan of Arc, among a long list of others. 534 lives is quite a lot. And in most of those past lives, she claimed that Elvis was her son and that Donald Trump was her father. And Amy also claimed to have a whole spiritual team behind her who she called the Galactics. And this group of Galactics included older historical figures, but was mostly made up of modern celebrities who had passed away, like Robin Williams and John Lennon.

[Corinne Vien]

And they were talking out of this,

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

and they were talking to her on the reg. Like, Robin Williams and John Lennon were, like, popping up and saying, hey, Amy. Hi, Mother God.

[Corinne Vien]

Robin Williams is not talking to Amy.

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

Well, she believed they were, and she told people they were. And a lot of people believed what she believed. According to her, this collection of Galactics were speaking to her from beyond the grave and guiding her every move.

[Corinne Vien]

But, like, why does she need to be guided by dead celebrities if she's already lived a million lives of and she's God people, and she's God and created the universe. Good questions.

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

No one was asking them.

[Corinne Vien]

Apparently everyone on mushrooms.

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

I do think a lot of them were doing drugs. So, yes, according to Amy, the Galactics were all helping her fight a common enemy, the Cabal, which basically the Cabal is love has one's version of the Illuminati. Amy said the Cabal was a dark global force trying to keep Humanity scared and unenlightened. In fact, they were so dangerous that they had been trying to assassinate Amy over all of her past lives. Like, they've been following her through all 534 lifetimes and have continued to try to assassinate her. But every single time, she has survived because she is Mother God.

[Corinne Vien]

It's an Avengers movie. Like it's.

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

But I wish it was right.

[Corinne Vien]

So even as the group grew, with Andrew now as the new Father God, Michael actually did stick around. So Amoreth, he's gone, he's gone, he's out. But Michael's like, maybe I still have a chance. Yeah, he stays and he's in this sort of like, financial advisor position and because being a part of this cult comes with some expectations. Part of that, as with many of the other cults, is that your money is no longer your money. Andrew, for example, was expected to hand over his $700 a week unemployment check, which they then would spend on drugs and booze. But that didn't seem to be enough to sustain the group, so they needed to get more members so that they could get more money. And Amy made it a goal to convince at least 20 people from their online followership to join the commune. And like before, she targeted people that were on the fringes of society, so people who were already struggling and prone to believe whatever she said. And that is when she found Aurora, a law school grad with a once promising future until the 2008 recession left her with nowhere to go. And she had found Amy online and became convinced that she was an archangel. There was another woman, a girl named Hope, that also showed up. And she's always sort of been this like, free spirit, never quite fit into the traditional, like nine to five life. So she was definitely an easier person to bring into the group. And then there was John, who joined not long after finishing a six year contract with the Marines, which really shocked me. But I guess maybe if he's like, looking for the complete opposite of the experience he just had.

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

Yeah, he's looking for, like, peace and

[Corinne Vien]

a safe community, someone to take care of him.

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

Yeah.

[Corinne Vien]

So he was dealing with a lot of, like, hopelessness and despair after seeing the combat. And he said he felt support and warmth that he hadn't felt in years when he first stepped on the commune. And that is why he joined. And then Amy, she felt the same way about John. And it didn't take long for her to move John to the position of father multiverse. It's growing. This world is expanding.

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

Just moving the bar but for those counting at home, that makes him the fourth. I mean, granted, now it's a new title, but it's the same thing. Father God. Yeah, that's number four. So for a while, Amy and John managed the new influx of people and the money that came along with them. Because of course, you needed to give over all your money when you came to the commune. And in more than one case, new recruits would cash out their 401ks and pour their entire bank account straight into Amy's pocket. But also, all the new people that came also came with a downside because this now, what was once like a quiet, peaceful commune, is now overflowing with about two dozen people. They're loud, they're messy, they're also very high. Amy even starts calling it energetically overwhelming. Like she had called upon these people to come and then she's like, you're stressing me out.

[Corinne Vien]

Only she's allowed to have these. These beliefs.

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

Right. So how did she deal with this overwhelming, energetic energy? She self medicate drugs and alcohol. And Amy was a mean drunk. And there are some stories we will get into in part two that like, blow my mind as most people who are alcoholics, they have two different personalities. When they're sober, they can be very sweet, charming, endearing people like Amy was. But the second that she started drinking, she became terrifying. Her moods got more extreme. The more she drank, she would swing from raging to sobbing to screaming to anyone who was in earshot. Which honestly probably worked to keep members even more involved. Like, because they started they like loved her, but now they feared her, which was a common thing with cult leaders.

[Corinne Vien]

Do you have to also take care of her?

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

Yeah, in a way.

[Corinne Vien]

Like, does she need you?

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

Yeah, it's messy.

[Corinne Vien]

It is messy. So as Amy spiraled the message in love has one's video started to also spiral right alongside her? They move further and further away from unity and ascension, which is what she had started into more of, like fear and conspiracy, which is exactly how so many of the cults go. Right. Like that's. Yeah, that kind of signals almost like the end. So she claimed that tragedies like the Holocaust and Sandy Hook elementary school shooting were a hoax orchestrated by the Cabal to target her. Right.

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

So it's all about Amy.

[Corinne Vien]

Then the content turned openly racist and anti Semitic. Some of these things are so offensive.

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

Yeah.

[Corinne Vien]

She opposed any sort of drug control and denounced monogamy, but pushed really far right conspiracies. She also claimed that Hitler was one of their biggest supporters. Yeah, which is weird. Because then, like, she also would then ushered immigrants into her. Their house.

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

Yeah.

[Corinne Vien]

Like, there's just nothing.

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

Mental illness.

[Corinne Vien]

It's. It's mental. It's so clearly mental.

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

I know.

[Corinne Vien]

Like, she's just struggling. Like, this is. She's living in a psychotic break and no one's helping her. So throughout the bigotry and the chaos, one message did stay consistent, and that was that Amy was the true mother God, and she was now here to lead 144th,000 people into the fifth dimension. But the downside of the group's constant videos and live streams was that Amy's mental deterioration was completely public. Anyone could log in and view it and see it and comment on it and gossip about it. And families were watching in real time as their loved ones were getting pulled deeper and deeper by someone who seemed more and more unstable by the day. Even Amy's own mom, Linda, who hadn't spoken to Amy since she left and abandoned her family, started to get really worried. It seems so bad at this point. What is next?

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

Yeah. And even as Amy's mental health was clearly getting worse in public, Michael's main focus was still money. He and Amy figured that if people were willing to believe that she was both the Holy Trinity and Marilyn Monroe, they could probably sell them a few things too. So they started selling herbal supplements, sweatshirts, and of course, a pumpkin spice body

[Corinne Vien]

scrub, which past life brought that one in.

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

Right. So for people who claim to be totally otherworldly, they were pretty quick to jump on whatever trend might make them cash. And one of those trends was something called etheric surgery, which basically meant Amy would physically operate, operate in quotes, on people's bodies and cure whatever was wrong with them. And these surgeries were done virtually purely by the power of Amy's mind. A little bit of, like, Reiki vibes. She would claim that she could cure cancer, Lyme disease, addiction, autism, and even brain tumors. And then even more popular than the pumpkin scrubs and the surgeries was a product called Colloidal Silver. This is like the part of the story that everyone knows about if you've watched the documentary Love has Won, which was on HBO in 2023. Like, you know, this part of the story, it's such a. A fundamental.

[Corinne Vien]

That's why I, like, grimaced when he said it, because I brought back to that part of the documentary.

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

It's basically a liquid with tiny particles of silver suspended in it. And if you ask the fda, it has absolutely zero medical benefits and can actually cause serious side effects, many of which we will See in this story, including organ failure. But according to the Love Is One cult, it was a miracle cure that big pharma didn't want you to know about because it made people too healthy.

[Corinne Vien]

Could they have not just, like, picked a random plant that grew in their area to become obsessed with?

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

No. And the members of Love Has One drank liters of colloidal silver every day. Liters.

[Corinne Vien]

It makes me sick to think about. So even as the group started making real money, Amy still felt like something was missing. Like her journey wasn't quite finished. And what she decided she needed was

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

a new Father God making that number. Five, six. What are we at?

[Corinne Vien]

Like, I don't know. Just moved to Utah. Amy.

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

But it's also so sad because it's clear that there's a big hole in her own life from childhood that she's seeking to fill with a man.

[Corinne Vien]

Enter Jason Castillo. So where the previous father gods had brought spirituality and finance and marketing skills, Jason was bringing a whole different thing to this plate. He was bringing chaos and violence under

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

his regime as Father God. Everything, including Amy's health, her message, her grip on reality really started to fall apart. And we're talking publicly on camera, on YouTube and even on Dr. Phil. But we will get into that and so much more next week in part two of the Story of the Love Has Won cult. And my goodness, you are in for it's shocking, a shocking ride.

[Corinne Vien]

Thank you so much for listening. We are your hosts, Sabrina d' Anarroga and Corinne Vien. Join us next Tuesday for part two of our series on Love Has Won. And if there are any cases that you would like us to cover, please let us know in the comments.

[Sabrina D'Anarroga]

Here at Crime House, we want to thank each and every one of you for your support. If you like what you heard today, reach out on all social media at Crime House. Don't forget to rate, review and follow crimes of wherever you get your podcasts. Your feedback truly makes a difference. We will see you next week for part two. Court is in recess. Thank you jury members for being here. See you next week.

[Corinne Vien]

Bye.