Long before she was known as “Mother God” to some and a cult leader to others, her family knew her as Amy Carlson. And it turns out that the controversial spiritual figure had Dallas roots.

Carlson’s life and bizarre death are the subject of Love Has Won: The Cult of Mother God, a new three-part HBO documentary series. The show includes photos and videos from throughout the guru’s time in Texas, where she lived before leaving her loved ones behind to move to Colorado.

Carlson was the founder of a group called Love Has Won, which broadcast their hodgepodge brand of metaphysical gospel on the internet. Core members lived with her in the Centennial State and would hawk spiritual wares online. The group also advertised energy healing and reportedly earned considerable money that way.

Love Has Won attracted headlines in 2021 after authorities found Carlson’s body in the group’s Colorado home. The grisly discovery prompted criminal charges to be filed against several members, but the charges would later be dropped.

Here’s what you need to know about Love Has Won and Carlson’s North Texas ties.

Love Has Won’s Ideology

Members of Love Has Won viewed Carlson as an in-the-flesh deity on a mission to process humanity’s trauma. They were persuaded that she would eventually shepherd her chosen followers into the so-called Fifth Dimension.

Mother God, as she was called, was supposedly a reincarnation of prominent historical figures, including Joan of Arc, Cleopatra, Jesus Christ and Marilyn Monroe. Other famous people, such as former President Donald Trump and the late comedian Robin Williams, were believed to be part of her “Galactic A-team.”

Carlson had a series of romantic partners, all of whom were invariably christened “Father God.”

Love Has Won blended various conspiracy theories, such as Holocaust denial, belief in reptilians and QAnon — another “cult-like” group with connections to Dallas. In Love Has Won’s mythos, Carlson would someday part ways with her earthly existence and “ascend” via starship.

In addition to its fringe beliefs, the group came under fire for its frequent alcohol and drug use and for glorifying anorexia.

Mother God’s Strange Death

The cause of Carlson’s death is only part of what makes this case so odd. An autopsy report found that she “died as a result of global decline in the setting of alcohol abuse, anorexia, and chronic colloidal silver ingestion,” The Guru magazine first reported in December 2021.

The 45-year-old habitually ingested a dangerous amount of colloidal silver, which the group viewed as tonic for a variety of ailments. The supplement turned her skin a blue-gray color as her health deteriorated, and she appeared emaciated in her final days.

Carlson died in spring 2021, but her followers held onto her corpse, transporting it from Northern California to their “mission house” in Colorado. They enveloped the body in a sleeping bag and wrapped it with Christmas lights, turning it into a sort of macabre shrine.

Carlson’s corpse was mummified by the time a member contacted the authorities. A crown had been placed on Carlson’s head and she was “adorned with make-up.” She had been dead for around a month before officers responded to the scene.

Amy Carlson Used to Live in Dallas

Love Has Won’s core members would film livestreams and conduct business out of a home in Moffat, Colorado, near the New Age destination city of Crestone, according to The Denver Post. They also stayed in a rental cabin in Salida but would at times hop between Oregon, Florida and California.

Carlson’s followers weren’t the only ones to participate in the docuseries. Her mother, Linda Haythorne, also appears.

Haythorne describes getting a divorce and taking her young daughters out of a rocky home environment. Carlson would eventually wind up moving to the Lone Star State.

“If you take a map and put an ‘X’ in the middle of the United States, that’s where I was born — in a little town of McPherson, Kansas,” Carlson says in an audio diary played in the doc. “It was tornado alley: I went through Kansas, Oklahoma City, Dallas, Houston. Tornadoes showed up wherever I was.”

Haythorne recalled that Carlson, her first child, was a good student in school, bringing home As and Bs. She had big dreams and “wanted to be somebody,” her mother says.

Carlson would later become the manager of a McDonald’s in Dallas, where she would quickly climb the ranks, Haythorne says. She was beloved by her employees and “had a gift” for knowing how to make them feel good about themselves.

But then, at some point, a shift occurred within Carlson.

“She quit McDonald’s, just quit,” Haythorne says. “Her path was starting to change.”

In a recording, Carlson describes the first time that she took ecstasy. Photos of the Dallas skyline flash on screen as she speaks, including images of Bank of America Plaza and Reunion Tower at night.

“I was just rollin’, rollin’, rollin’ in these waves of love, and joy and happiness,” Carlson says. “I was like ‘This is reality! Did they take that from me? Who stole this?’”

The experience seems to have altered Carlson’s entire life trajectory. Before long, her mom says, she was constantly spending time on the computer and turned increasingly spiritual.

Carlson would ultimately leave behind her own three children and family in pursuit of her mystical path, one that ended with her as a mummy in Colorado.