August 28, 2025 • 58 mins
On this Colorado quilt episode, we revisit Karen and Georgia's coverage of "Love Has Won" cult leader Amy Carlson from December 23, 2021 and the cold case murders of Barbara Oberholtzer and Annette Schnee from September 16, 2021.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:16):
Hell, Hello, and welcome to My Favorite Murder.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
So this is very exciting for us when you hear this.
We're about to do our first live show after six years.
We'll be doing two of them in Denver.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
I can feel my nerves from the future in Denver. Yeah,
And so because of that, we're bringing you a quilt
episode where we combine two of our favorite Colorado stories.
First up, Karen is covering the twisted cult of Love
has Won and it's leader Amy Carlson.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
And then Georgia, we'll be telling you the story of
the cold case murders of Barbara Olberholtzer and Annette Schnee.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
So the Denver show the is already sold out, but
limited tickets are available in some other cities. So go
to My Favorite Murder dot com slash live to get yours.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
And now please enjoy this Colorado quilt episode.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
Goodbye.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
So this is something that cropped up and I remember
it from basically kind of mid quarantine, before any kind
of vaccination had been developed, when we were all still
washing our hands for thirty seconds while singing the theme
to the Mister Rogers Neighborhood or whatever, like just past
the point where we were wiping down cereal boxes but
(01:31):
still stuck in our houses and very unsure is yeah,
what was going on? So this was the kind of
story that when it popped up, it was like, oh,
it's what's that about? And it just kind of like
hit my radar essentially. So this is the story of
the death of Amy Carlson and the Love Has Won cult.
So there's an amazing article by Virginia Pelly. I hope
(01:53):
I'm pronouncing that right, Virginia in the magazine Marie Claire
called Love has Lost. Got a lot of information about
that because it was very comprehensive. Also, there's an article
in the Washington Post by Marisa at there's an episode
of Doctor Phil that actually has the whole family of
(02:14):
Amy Carlson on it. A Vice documentary called False Gods,
Cult Leader, Abuser or Goddess, Meet Mother God, a BBC
News article by Joshua Nevitt, a Denver Post article by
Noel Phillips. There's obviously a Wikipedia article, a People Magazine
article by Jeff Truesdale, and a Honolulu Star Advisor article
(02:35):
by the Star Advisor staff. For a second, I thought
it was a woman named Star Advisor. It's just like
a way to go. And it's funny because this is
such a recent story. There's been so far, doesn't rying
bells Okay? So in September of twenty twenty, so about
six months into quarantine, there's a news story out of Kawhi,
(02:55):
one of my favorite Hawaiian islands, Beautiful, that popped up
about a group of roughly eleven people calling themselves Love
Has Won, who tried to relocate to the island from
Colorado in August of twenty twenty. So aside from breaking
the States quarantine protocols, the group, whom many believe to
be a cult, had been co opting Native religious practices
(03:17):
and generally pissing everyone off in the island. Because many
of us know who like to go to Hawaii and
like to visit there, it's like going to a very
small town and you know it's white people are very
invasive over there. Their tourists and there oftentimes can be
very disrespectful. So ingratiating yourself into the culture over there
(03:41):
is a very important part of visiting those islands because
it's about respecting. The reason you love it there so
much is because of the Hawaiian people and the Native culture,
and so a big group of people coming over there
and basically ripping them off and you know, disrespecting basically, yeah,
(04:02):
just being kind of a bunch of assholes. It of
course didn't sit well. People were immediate and also they
already knew because this was the second cult that had
come to Kui during the quarantine. So this was actually
a kind of problem for the people.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
They're the locals, especially like the fact that they're disrespecting
them and possibly bringing COVID over.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
It's like, yes, it's unsafe, it's really shitty, it's disrespectful,
and it's like, go fuck yourself. So there was vandalism,
there was several small fires. It was just a huge
problem almost from the get go, and so for the
safety of the residents of Kawhi, the police end up
escorting this group of people back to the airport on
September fourth, and they end up flying back home to Colorado.
(04:50):
So at the time, this story was just kind of
a blip in an already very overwhelming news cycle until
about seven months later, on the night of Wednesday, April
twenty eighth, twenty twenty one, when forty three year old
Miguel Lamboy arrives at the Salida police station near the
tiny hundred person mountain town of Moffat, Colorado in Swich County.
(05:13):
So basically, Lamboy is there to report that a group
of people have brought a dead body into his home.
He explains it's the corpse of Amy Carlson, the leader
of a local religious group Love has Won, and they
got there the day before and they needed a place
to stay. Lamboy has also is a member of this
(05:35):
religious group unquote, and he didn't realize they had this
body until the next day. And so there are seven
people I believe in the group. And so when he
does realize this dead body is in his house, he
takes his two year old son and he goes to leave,
and they say you can leave, but the boy has
(05:56):
to stay here, and that's when he decided it's time
to go to the police. So the police, the local
police are well aware of this group. Many locals have
claimed it's a cult, and the Sawich County Sheriff's Department
was quoted as saying, quote, they've received many complaints from
families saying that the group is brainwashing people and stealing
(06:16):
their money, and that from all over the country not
just in the area. So, according to Miguel Lamboy, this
group drove from California to Colorado with Carlson's dead body
in the back of their suv Holy shit, and then
they landed at his house because they needed a place
to stay. So the police are granted a search warrant
(06:37):
for Lamboy's house, which they execute at around eleven fifty
that night, and they find this group of seven people
as well as the dead body as Lamboy had described
to them, but the body is an even more disturbing
state than they had imagined. In the back bedroom, police
discover what appears to be a mummified corpse with gray
(06:59):
skin wrap in a sleeping bag, lying on a bed.
Her teeth are showing through her lips, her eyes are missing,
and her eye sockets are painted with glittery makeup.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
Oh my god.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
The whole body is wrapped in Christmas lights. What and
a shrine has been She's basically surrounded by a shrine
of trinkets and different lights.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
How do seven people like agree that this is? Like
seven people? That's so many. I mean, that's what cults do.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
But yeah, I mean it's the This is a long
this has been a long process to getting to this point. Basically,
so all seven adults are arrested and charged with abuse
of a corpse. And because one woman who's in this group,
her name's Karen Raymond, her thirteen year old daughter is
(07:51):
with the group and Lamboy's two year old son are
in the house, the group is also charged with two
counts of child abuse, even though both she'll have found
asleep and safe. It's just child abuse that they would
even be in that scenario. So Raymond's daughter's taken into
social services custody after the mom's arrest. Lamboy's two year
(08:12):
old son has returned to him after the search of
the house is finished. So when the corner inspects the body,
it's so decomposed that fingerprints can't be taken, and it
leads him to believe that Amy Carlson must have been
dead for at least a month, if not longer.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
Yeah, oh chills.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
In fact, the body is so decomposed it takes him
three months to confirm that this is indeed the body
of forty five year old Amy Carlson. So over the
weekend following the raid, other members of the Love Has
Won group post a video on their Facebook page about
their leader's death, saying that she has ascended to the
(08:52):
fifth dimension. So this video is later deleted, but Carlson's
devoted followers still hold this belief, and in fact, the
idea of Amy's ascension had become the main tenant of
the group. Amy was called Mother God in this group,
and she claimed to already have been reincarnated five hundred times. WHOA, yeah,
(09:14):
that sounds exhausting, she well, and more so when you
realize that she has already been Jesus, Joan of Arc
and Marilyn Monroe. Right, as this is the old joke.
No one ever is reincarnated as just the person down
the street. It's always Joan of Arc. And on her
next ascension, she was telling believers in these video streams
(09:36):
that she was making that starships were going to come
and take her away, and that when she ascended, her
followers would finally learn this truth that a powerful quote
unquote cabal had been keeping from the people of Earth
in every incarnation, that she had so right when she
(09:57):
was about to right, when the people of Earth about
to learn like the ultimate truth, the cabal comes in
kills her and keeps the truth from coming out. That's
basically her theory. What a bummer, right, It's really unfortunate
and kind of kind of tidy. You know, it's all
(10:17):
just this one. This is the reason we're all suffering
one cabal of like rich people. It's the same as
you always hear. It's like the cabal is super rich people,
Hollywood people, and you know, and then just like villains
from around the world, any non believers that don't follow
Mother God will be sent to live on the quote
(10:38):
central galactic sun or be turned into rocks. So there's
a former member named Ash McCoy who said that the
shrine that the police found around the body wasn't new.
They didn't put that there when the body got there.
It had actually been made long before Amy Carlson's death,
with the idea that when she did finally ascend in
(10:59):
this lifetime, her followers would want a place where they
could come and commemorate her life and basically treat it
like a museum exhibit. So they have been preparing for
her quote unquote ascension for years.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
The members of the Love Is One cult are convinced
their leader, Mother God will go down in history as
the greatest being who has ever lived, which is just
if you think about all of this is just a
perfect twenty twenty one vibe, just like super intense, super apocalyptic.
Everything's like everything is conspiracy. It's simplistic and it's kind
(11:36):
of like do what I say, yeah, or the cabal
will get you.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
It's because we're living in an unprecedented time, so anything
as possible, and people just want to believe something.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
Yeah, people are disenfranchised, they're scared, they're alone. A lot
of people are sick or feel like they can't, they're
not healthy, and they're looking for answers online. Right, And
as many as many webmbs and like websites that are,
you know, standardly reliable, there are just as many websites
(12:09):
that start out as kind of new age quote unquote
holistic medicine, alternative practices that and that's how this started. Okay, Okay,
so we'll talk about Amy Carlson's early life. She's born
on November thirtieth, nineteen seventy five, and grows up in Dallas,
Texas with her two sisters, Chelsea and Tara. Their parents
divorce when Amy's young. She lives with her dad at first,
(12:32):
but then she goes back to live with her mom
and her new stepdad. She's a popular, straight a student
with a beautiful singing voice, and her sisters say she
was always really sweet and kind, but as she gets older,
she starts dating a lot of controlling or abusive men.
By the time she's in her early twenties, she's basically
on her third marriage, Oh my god, and she has
(12:55):
a child with each husband, so she has a daughter
and two sons. But then and after her third marriage,
she basically starts to settle down. She gets a manager
job at the local McDonald's, and her family and friends
people on the outside believe.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
That she's happy.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
But shortly after her third child is born, there's a
noticeable change in her personality. She begins to grow distant.
Her mom, Linda, admits all that Amy's never really been maternal,
but now she's basically become a neglectful mother, and she
disengages from her children's lives, and she's spending all her
time online looking at bizarre new ag kind of websites.
(13:36):
And this is when her basically her worldly view begins
to change. Then Amy starts meeting up with the people
that are also on these websites, meeting them in real life,
and soon she's constantly talking about these things about ascension,
about alternative medicine, about starships, all kinds of kind of
nonsensical New Age philosophy. And then when Ami in her
(14:00):
early thirties, she decides to leave her husband and her children,
who are aged two, seven and twelve. Oh heartbreaking, heartbreaking.
She moves out of state with an unidentified man that
she had met online.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
It reminds me so much so far of Heaven's Gate.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
Yes, of the yeah yeah, of the idea of people
that have always kind of been unhappy in some way
that stumble upon a group.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
That has all the answers. Oh way.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
Yeah, So she moves out of state. Her family tries
to contact her, she doesn't ever respond. She basically cuts
herself off from her family completely. They're convinced Amy's new
boyfriend has tricked her into joining a cult, but when
she finally re emerges and they see her again years later,
she's the one.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
That's leading the cults. Oh twists. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
So the man Amy ran off with called himself Father
God and convinces Amy that she's Mother God, and he
brings her to Crestone Call Her, which is a remote
area two hundred miles south of Denver that is considered
sacred by the Native people, and because of that, it's
attracted it's almost like a Sedona type of town in Colorado.
(15:14):
It's attracted spiritual seekers for decades. The town itself only
has about eighteen hundred people, but it has over or
around twenty four spiritual centers the full range of There's Buddhists,
there's Catholic, there's it's I mean, it's everything. So after
a couple years, father and Mother God split up, but
(15:35):
Amy keeps the title Mother God.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
And they can't make it work. Yeah, who can.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
I mean, that's a real sign relationships are so hard
that gods can't even get it. So she of course
keeps on basically pursuing these interests, and then she starts
releasing YouTube videos and Facebook live streams, and she is
claims to be the leader of a group called the
Galactic Federation of a Life, so it's not in any
(16:02):
way associated with Star Trek. She preaches about her plan
to save humanity, and in these videos, at first she's
just the voiceover and it's just kind of like images,
but then after a while she's front and center. She's
the leader and she's got followers in the videos who
were talking about Amy as if she is God.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
So we've gone from this kind of like, oh, an
alternative to Western medicine to I Am God, which is
pretty that's a pretty steep incline. And then in twenty
eighteen is when they change the name of the group
to Love Has Won. So Amy's followers believe that she's
God in human form and being with an elevated consciousness
(16:45):
that's been continually reincarnating for the last nineteen billion years
so that she can complete her mission, which is to
save humanity by leading a chosen one hundred and forty
four thousand people into the mystical dimension. They claim that
she's currently on her five hundred and thirty fourth incarnation,
(17:06):
and she also claims, very strangely, after Robin Williams dies
in twenty fourteen, that she has a direct spiritual connection
with him. We've been alone for real. She broadcasts herself
channeling on these live streams. She claims that Donald Trump
was her father and in another lifetime.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
I wouldn't brag about that. But to the.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
People who are starting to get into this kind of
like this, it's a conspiracy community. So she's kind of
using the buzzwords that attract people who are online in
the first place because they're kind of like starting to
be believers in these things. And they're also I've said
this before, but it's my personal theory. These are people
(17:47):
that didn't grow up with computers. They don't understand that
websites can be made by anyone, right, and they can
say anything.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
I mean, talk to Janet. It's just how.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
It is for people that it's like they're looking at
their people who grew up with one newspaper and that
newspaper was just telling you the truth. There was no
reason to question it. So now we're in the world
of the digital age of anyone can make any website,
and suddenly everything is this kind of believable. And it's
also about numbers. The more people believe it, the more
(18:20):
believable it gets.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
I definitely screamed at my mom the other day, what
was the source? What was the source? That's something fucking
but Nana's batshit thing. She said it was www That's
the source. So a lot of her teachings end up
dovetailing with QAnon conspiracy theories and basically the entire foundation
of Love has one draws from New Age spirituality, Christianity, astrology, scientology, numerology,
(18:48):
and basically anything else that appeals to amy and that
appeals to kind of like quote unquote spiritual seekers. She
claims to have lived in the magical ancient land of Uria.
She claims the lost city of Atlantis is real but
sunk from an explosion that took place after a certain
technology was stolen, and that her and her followers must
(19:10):
fight an everlasting war against the cabal. And that's all
the same. That's that's kind of same theme that comes
up all the time, is that it's people declaring this
small group are the pure, they're the noble.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
They're the they're the they're there heroes of the story,
and that basically whoever they decide, Hollywood, rich people, whoever,
you know, believable, believable theories. But it's like but that
these people are then whatever they decide, and that they're
they're trying to attack them, they're trying to kill them,
they're trying to they're trying to squash the truth, the truth,
(19:49):
and keep the world in darkness essentially. So there's anywhere
from twelve to twenty followers who actually live with Amy,
like in a commune between Colorado, California, or again sometimes Florida.
They wind up Basically, they come back to that area
in Colorado on two pieces of land, one ranch house
(20:09):
in Salita and then this mobile home and Moffitt. These
two places become the home base for the group. So
essentially how it goes is every day at six in
the morning, Amy and her followers begin about a three
hour live stream, and in the beginning the videos are
about energy connecting with spirit, essentially new Age stuff that's
(20:34):
like lots of people ascribed to and that isn't in
any way destructive. Yeah, Then they start talking a lot
about frequencies and about you know, negative versus positive. It's
that kind of thing. Then basically the videos devolve into
these outlandish concepts about the cabal and you know, them
(20:55):
being hunted.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
And all of that.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
There's two young women in the group that serve as
basically hosts at the top of the show, and their
group names are Archia Hope and Archia Aurora, and they're
like young, kind of beautiful women who like it's just
it's good marketing. Yeah, Basically they're hosting this and talking
about the tenets of these beliefs, but they get into
(21:20):
some stuff that's like incredibly fucked up. They start talking
about like basically the pros of Hitler.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
I knew it. I knew. I pointed at myself because
I was like, you're like there were anti this and that.
I'm like, say, jus like.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
Come on, well, that's the thing is they they're basically
kind of floating the idea of being Holocaust andiurs and
then floating the idea of maybe that Hitler's intentions were
better than you know, it's all that shit. Yeah, And
basically they they preach Amy's god status, her plan to
save humanity, and they start offering these things called spiritual surgeries.
(21:59):
So that's a virtual healing session with Amy. It costs
eighty eight dollars. She does spiritual surgery on you and
claims that she can cure everything from addiction to cancer,
saying that her words in her hands have strong healing powers.
So this is where they get people who are sick,
people who have who have gone to doctor after a
(22:20):
doctor of a typical Western medicine and haven't been cured
and or been told that they're it's all in their mind,
or they've been treated poorly by traditional doctors, and they're
they're on here looking for other stuff. So in the beginning,
that idea, and sometimes it really is just that mental
thing of somebody going I can spiritually surgically cure you
(22:43):
over the internet. And just the idea of that there's
a solution and it's eighty eight dollars is very alluring
to people. Then you're coming in with and while we're here,
maybe we'll talk about how the Holocaust isn't real. I mean,
they're playing upon people who are already like at low
points and weak.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
Runs in their life.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
So as insane as that seems, Love has One's Facebook
group climbs to about twenty thousand members shit and their
YouTube channel gains nearly ten thousand followers, and their videos
have like one point five million views. So people are watching.
We don't know how they're watching or what their approaches,
but it's being seen. There's lots of fan engagement. Viewers
(23:27):
communicate with each other in the comment sections, and Amy
and her followers answer questions or give shout outs to
people who are commenting in the live streams. Plus, of course,
the crucial element of it, money is pouring into the
group in the form of donations made out to either
loves One or Mother's Joy. So throughout the duration of
(23:48):
this group, Love has won. They see a rotating cast
of father Gods who partner up with Amy, but the
most notable is the most recent, Jason Cristio. He joins
Amy in mid twenty eighteen when the group changes its
name to Love His One. It's uncertain how he and
Amy have met, but what is certain is his criminal record.
(24:09):
His rap sheet list charges for drunk driving, breaking and entering,
and child neglect. So after his arrival, things on the
commune go from bad to worse. Members are only allowed
to sleep when Mother God sleeps, so they're usually limited
to maybe four or five hours a night. They're always
forced to rise at five am. The live streaming starts
at six am every single day, and they usually last
(24:33):
three hours. They are also not allowed to sit for
very long. No, the whole thing is leading to exhaustion
for every time totally. And here's the other one. They're underfed,
so Carlson claims that eating too much is a symptom
of our rampant ego, which Amy claims stands for edging
God out. They're only allowed to get small amounts of
(24:57):
food that are donated from local food banks and no
snackings allowed. So they've bame out.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
I'm out on so many levels.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
I can't I can't do any of it. I'm all
about that ego. But this is this is fucking by
the book cult brainwashing practices, exhaustion and starvation. The members
live on there on the compound rent free, but they
have to serve Mother God with whatever she needs, and
(25:24):
they don't get paid for anything, and they don't get
any of the donation money. Most of the time, members
wind up giving whatever money they have to Mother God.
And as one former member named Taylor puts it, quote,
everything is revolved around Amy, of course, but she's not
the gentle, compassionate leader that she claims to be. Even
though drugs and alcohol are espressly forbidden in the group,
(25:45):
she drinks to excess every day and openly on camera.
What yeah, so this is a real like we're watching
this is? This really parallels the Synanon story where the
leader who starts out with these really loft goals about
helping people. It slowly slides into saving humanity, which slides
into I Am God, which goes right along with some
(26:09):
kind of substance abuse. So when Amy's sober, she puts
on a warm, kind facade, but at night she launches
into drunken, cursed filled tirades on the live stream holy shit,
And on one she shouts into the camera quote spiritual ego,
whores die. If you're not connected to me, you're out damn.
So it's turning.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
Yeah, I feel so bad for her kids back at home,
like I have to be explained where mom is. It's
so sad, it's so sad.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
It's yeah, it's a lot of victims here.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:42):
She also starts calling the followers atoms at O m
like an atom, And there's one live stream where he
brings her meatballs for dinner, but she asks for chicken parmesan,
so she starts screaming, my vision was chicken parmesan. So
the fucking Atoms turn around on and get me meatballs.
I didn't say meatballs. I love meatballs, but I didn't
(27:04):
fucking say that chicken parmesan. She's just like flipping out
the fuck and recording it, Like.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
Why that's yeah, you want to hide that behavior.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
You would think. Also, Father God, he also gets in
on it. He can be seen getting into Robertson's face
and glaring at him with rage and chastising him while
he while Robertson hangs his head in shame. So he
got the order wrong and he's just being attacked by
mother and father. God got you know the way, the Lord,
the Lord you've always heard about. There's also a thing
(27:34):
where there's on video they give a two year old
child a time out by putting it in a closet
and screaming at the child and saying that they're not
that normal people. Their child rearing is programming, and it's
it's basically a society that's the cult. Love has Won
is the only same group of people got to be it. Okay,
(27:56):
So around that time is when they try to go
to Kawhi. They basically get kicked out real quick. So
they come back and then so they start pushing these
holistic health products. They make a thing called plasma coasters,
which quote act as receivers and transmitters with the ability
to neutralize harmful energy, and you're supposed to put them
(28:17):
in glasses of water. They sell for sixty six dollars
in sixty six fuck.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
They almost like a shrinking ink or something. Yes, see,
what were those sea creatures you'd put in water? Oh,
sea monkeys, sea monkeys.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
They also are big on colloidal silver and old supplements.
Those were big or colloidal silver was huge for a
while there. So basically they sell their own version of it,
of course they do, yeah, and they claim that it
can cure COVID. They end up getting a letter from
the FDA saying you have to stop claiming this, You
(28:53):
have to stop selling these products. And they don't. They
they're not available anymore. So some of their other terrible
medical advice, they'realistic alternative medical advice. They say that turmeric
cures diabetes, that lemon and baking soda cures cancer. And
they actually tell people that it's a myth that staring
into the sun makes you go blind.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
Oh yep.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
They say that you need to stare into the sun
to receive healing quote unquote like codes and that it
quote burns away the darkness inside you.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
They also tell people that you don't have to worry
about having heart attacks because it's just your heart expanding. No,
it's okay, it's not so they it's just a bunch
of super dangerous and very crazy like basically personal theories
and creative writing that they're now telling people is like
(29:44):
medical the medical truth.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
Yeah, okay, dangerous.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
Basically, she's gone so far off the rails that her
family goes on to doctor Phil in September of twenty
twenty to try to get her to basically be like this,
you have to come out of this. This is brainwashing.
And her sisters and mother are there and they're all
really worried about her. Doctor Phil confronts her about how
(30:10):
she's not a peaceful being. There's that they show the
videos of all her cursing and confrontation. She claims that
one of the reasons is she's been raped several times
and that her house has burned down, and that she's
basically grown weary of it all. But essentially it's, you know,
it just is kind of like it doesn't make uses, yeah,
(30:33):
and it's an ineffectual way to kind of try to
break this person out of the cults. The problem is
that her health is clearly on the taking a downturn,
maybe from the drinking, maybe from all the colloidial silver
that she's constantly ingesting. But they her mom notices on
the live stream she's being carried around by her followers,
(30:55):
and she seems to be paralyzed from the waist down.
What yeah, something her her sisters are seeing it. They're
so scared and worried. They say that they knew she
was ill. She looked weak and frail, and that she
was basically that she was kind of turning a gray
blue from how much chloidal silver she was ingesting.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
Do we know, like is that not good for you now?
Like do we know that now? Or it's just large quantities.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
I have no idea, but yeah, if she if she
was ill and they were saying this is what's going
to fix you, then then right, large quantities of anything
like that.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
But I know, I'd hate to say anything about chloid
chloidal silver and not knowing.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
During a live stream on October fifteenth, twenty twenty, two,
of her followers admit Amy has expressed a desire to
see a doctor, but they refuse to take her. And
they say, there's moments when mom has asked us to
take her to the hospital. Nope, there's no way. We
know how a hijacking works. So the hijacking is this
idea that right is when she's about to ascend the
(32:00):
all comes in kills her and represses the truth. So
they're basically like, you can't go to the hospital because
it's a hijacking. So all of her own crazy theories
are now turned against her, and her followers are basically
becoming the ones in charge. The last time an outsider
confirmed seeing Amy alive is on April tenth, twenty twenty one.
(32:22):
She's in California. She gets a visit from her landlord
and he sees that he thinks she's dying, like she
looks so bad. The members say she has cancer, but
she hasn't gone to a doctor, so there's no official
diagnosis or records of that anywhere. It's just what the
followers say. So her mother calls the authorities in California
asking to do wellness checks, but every time they go
(32:43):
to where the followers and Amy are, they turn the
police and the ambulances away. Then on April sixteenth, twenty
twenty one, a photo is posted in one of the
Love Has Won private chat rooms of Father God holding
a very frail, incoherent looking Amy in his arms, and
it is unclear if she's alive or dead in the photo. Okay,
so her cause of death is as yet to be
(33:07):
determined because of the lack of medical records and because
of the state of the body when the coroner got it.
Charges against four of the seven members that were arrested
on April twenty eighth have been dropped, including those against
Father God Jason Castillo. Sawatch County District Attorney Alonzo Payne
tells Dateline our office looked at all the documents and
(33:30):
everything that was provided, and from our perspective, the allegations
could not be met beyond a reasonable doubt. Charges against
the remaining three members are still pending. The group that
existed under the name Loves One has since disbanded, but
many of its members has splintered off and they continue
preaching the same ideas under different names. And all the
(33:51):
shops that sold products have been shut down, but Lamboys
opened a new nonprofit that basically it gets him out
of paying taxes, so any of the money that goes
there they don't have to pay taxes on it. They
now have one of the groups that still live streams
has They have a tapestry with a photo of Amy
on it that's like behind them in the shot. Some
(34:13):
of them are still selling etheric surgeries like the way
that Amy did. Spiritual surgeries. Those are fifty five to
fifty five for thirty minutes discounted, and they're described as
your ticket to heaven. For the people who have escaped
Love has Won, their search for spiritual fulfillment continues, but
now with a much more cautious approach. A former member
(34:34):
goes by the name Sarah does. That's not her real name.
She's scared of retaliation. She says, Amy took a lot
of spiritual teachings about vibration and energy that are on
the right track, but she hijacked them and said they
were hers. I still believe there's truth in those principles,
but I'm working on taking Amy out of them. And
(34:55):
essentially that is the very strange, bizarre death Amy Carlson
and the story of the Love His Won cult.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
Wow. I want to find out how she died eventually, right.
Speaker 2 (35:08):
Yeah, Well, I mean sounds like she whatever sickness she had, yeah,
there was never any Like they were just doing holistic
practices and no one there, So she could have gotten
pancreatic cancer, yeah, or something that's quick and awful and
just ravage as your body and then she's just taking
(35:28):
colloidal silver or drinking right right, and liver cancer maybe horrifying,
so fucking wild, I know, wild, great job, so crazy,
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
I know.
Speaker 2 (35:40):
Sorry that was so long, but it's like there was
so much. It's just the weirdest thing because I remembered it.
I remember seeing the story and I think people posting
about it on Twitter.
Speaker 1 (35:50):
But it was just at that.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
Point in the pandemic where I'm like, no, only comedies,
I can't do this, Like I don't want to know,
I can't look at this.
Speaker 1 (35:58):
I mean, it's wild that, in the middle of a
pandemic that everyone's freaking out about, you could have such
an like outside wild story. Yeah, it's like, didn't everything stop?
Did everyone's a lifestyle?
Speaker 2 (36:09):
Right? Why didn't you just But also I think it's
like that's the thing, like you said, in these unprecedented times,
people are scared shitless and they're looking for answers. They're
looking for easy, like digestible answers and solutions, and it
makes sense. They're right to want that. They're human to
want that. Yeah, just don't be stupid, just like it's
(36:34):
I don't know, Yeah, well, here's the thing. You know,
there's very clear you know they say in cults, it's like,
if it's one leader, you're not allowed to contradict, You're
not allowed to like take in outside information. You cut
yourself off from your family. Like there's the whole there's
a whole thing of like is your are you just
(36:56):
you know, is it just a group of people who
are like minded spiritual seekers or are you are you
basically being indoctrinated? And those are the things where it's
like if basically there's one person, the air god, they
have all the answers.
Speaker 1 (37:09):
And the rules are theirs.
Speaker 2 (37:10):
Yeah, to make and suddenly the rules become about Carr,
you know, like you serve me, yeah, chicken parmesan.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
Wow. Yeah, let's keep it. Let's keep an eye on
that one. Yeah, yeah, good job, thank you. I'm going
to tell you a story that I found during one
of my many late night Cold Case news scrollings that
piqued my interest and is going on right now, and
there's a recent twist to it. So the sources I
(37:45):
used in today's episode are The Guardian, by an article
by Richard Let's Calm, the Unsolved Mysteries fandom page, which
is really cool, The Rocky Mountain Cold Case website, a
UPI article, a New York Times article by Maria Kramer,
a nine News article by Matt Jablo, and a Fox
thirty one news article by Evan Krugel. Okay, so, have
(38:10):
you ever heard of Breckenridge, Colorado?
Speaker 2 (38:12):
No?
Speaker 1 (38:12):
Okay. It's a former mining town dating back to the
Gold Rush. It's at the base of the Rocky Mountains,
about eighty miles from Denver. So like a cute, little,
quaint ski resort town. Lots of beautiful old buildings, breweries,
you know, like nice restaurants and art scene. Small, cool,
little town. So. On the evening of January sixth, nineteen
(38:35):
eighty two, twenty nine year old Barbara Joe ober Holtzer,
whose nickname is Bobby I'm gonna call her that from
now on, she is at a Breckinridge bar with some
friends celebrating a promotion at work. A little before eight pm,
she decides to leave early and head back to her
husband named Jeff. Instead of getting ride back with her
friends who are leaving a little later, she decides to hitchhike,
(38:57):
which of course, is totally normal at the time. Everyone
hitchhikes around town and the area is known for being
a popular ski resort, so there's a lot of rich tourists,
but the people who live in town, a lot of
them can't afford their own car, so hitchhiking is the norm.
Bobby has a couple rules she follows when she hitch hikes.
She doesn't get into cars with two men in there,
(39:19):
and she won't it into van. So hitchhiking is super normal,
but everyone's still a little aware of that it's dangerous
and are still careful about it. But by the next morning,
she's not home, and so Jeff, her husband, tries to
file a missing person's report, but you know, as it
was in the eighties, you can't file one for an adult.
It's too early. She probably just fucking spent the night
(39:40):
at a friend's house. Sort of a thing, however, and
so he goes out with his friends trying to find her.
They can't track her down, but the next day, at
around three pm, a farmer who lives thirty miles outside
of Breckenridge finds Bobby's license, gets a hold of Jeff,
and he comes out to pick up the license, and
on his way he spot something in a snowy field
(40:04):
and he finds it's Bobby's backpack his wife's backpack, so
he also finds a blood spattered wool glove and some
tissues that are also covered in blood, and also found
there is a woman's orange booty, like her orange sock
like snow booty that doesn't belong to Bobby. Jeff and
his friends start searching for Bobby, and two hours later,
(40:26):
ten miles south of wreckage, they find her body fifteen
miles from where her backpack was recovered. It's almost like
someone scattered her, you know, possessions. After leaving the body,
police find a pair of eighteen inch zip ties tied
to one of Bobby's wrists, meaning they think someone had
tried to bind her, but she maybe got away before
(40:50):
they were able to bind both wrists. In the parking
lot of the bar that Bobby had been in that night,
police find her keyring and there's also this like metal
hook on the key ring that her husband had made
her as like a defensive tool just in case she
ever gotten any trouble, and it looks like maybe she
had pulled it out to like try to use it,
so they think maybe she had gotten in the in
(41:12):
the car with you know, whoever picked her up, realized
something was a miss. He tried to zip tie her.
She took out her tool and ran and was able
to escape the car. And then they think that she
ran downhill to get away, and then the killer caught
up with her, and so she had been shot twice.
So they think that that's how she was how she
was stopped when she was running away, and then she
(41:34):
died a short distance away of blood loss. Then law
enforcement gets word that that very same day, the day
before that Bobby had gone missing, another young woman had
also disappeared from wreckage. And this is a small town
about a thousand residents, so this is like two women
in one day. That is very odd. So at around
(41:56):
four forty five that day, a twenty one year old
woman named an At Schnee, who is a cocktail waitress,
had been hitchhiking home after running some errands. But Annette
didn't make it home. There's no trace of her until
six months later on July third, when her body is
found by what is called like a young boy or
a youth which always is terrible, while he was fishing.
(42:20):
It's an isolated mountain area where she's found in what's
called Sacramento Creek twenty miles south of Breckenridge. Anette's body
had been well preserved because of the freezing temperatures, and
the medical examiner is able to determine that and Nett
died from a gunshot, same as Bobby. She's wearing bow shoes,
and on one of her feet is an orange booty.
(42:42):
It's the same as the one found at Bobby's scene,
so clearly or connected. Police speculate that the killer had
murdered a Net first, and then hours later picked up
Bobby and murdered her, and then I discarded the belongings
between the two scenes, and so the orange sock must
have somehow been mixed up by the killer and accidentally discarded.
(43:03):
Also in Anet's possession is one of Bobby's husband, Jeff's
business cards. Oh right, yeah, so of course Jeff immediately
becomes top suspect. Law enforcement questions him about a Net,
so at first he denies knowing her at all, but
then he sees a picture of her on the news
(43:24):
later and goes back to law enforcement It's like, yeah,
I actually do know her. I have met her once.
He said he had picked up a net once while
she was hitchhiking and given her his business card of
his appliance repair shop after she mentioned needing something fixed.
So like fucking coincidence with a capital seam right. Of course,
(43:45):
he denies any involvement in her disappearance or in his
wife's death, takes a polygraph test and passes. Apparently has
an alibi for the night, but it's sketchy, and of
course law enforcement consider him the top suspect but aren't
able to collect enough evidence to charge him. The case
goes cold and becomes the area's biggest most enduring cold case. Okay,
(44:10):
fast forward about seven years retired Denver homicide detective Charlie McCormick.
He gets burnt out on the Denver homicide scene. It's
too stressful for him, so he finally retires and moves
to Breckinridge. He hears about the mysterious double murder that
happened on the same day in his new hometown, and
(44:31):
because he's a homicide detective at heart, his interest is piqued.
Over time, he becomes more and more involved in the
case until nineteen eighty nine, a net's family hires him
as their private investigator on the case. He chases some
leads throughout the years of serial killers in Montana and
Idaho other suspects as well. Later, he volunteers for the
(44:55):
District Attorney's task force that's opened. He continues to work
on the case almost every day for the next three decades.
And guess how much he charges for his detective services
private detective services for Annetts family. Nothing a dollar a year. Oh,
I know, I know. So he's like, I want to
do and do this. Let's it's so symbolic.
Speaker 2 (45:17):
Well, you know what I like about that is is
that he clearly wanted to be a homicide detective. Like
the culture, you know, like was part of why he
can do it, right, But he can do it by himself,
independently and separately, and he still wants to be a
person that's helping clear like solve those crimes and clear
(45:40):
those cases.
Speaker 1 (45:41):
Yeah, like as soon as you heard about it in
his new small hometown, he's not just going to be like,
well whatever that is by He's Yeah, he wants to.
Speaker 2 (45:50):
It's like like anyone else who would hear about that
and have the interest would be like I need to
know what happened. Yeah, he's somebody who could actually who
has this the skills in the availability or the means, yeah,
to get it done totally.
Speaker 1 (46:06):
So Originally the blood on the glove and tissue found
near Bobby's belongings were thought to be her blood, but
in the nineties the blood is tested and results show
that the blood actually belongs to a man. So that
male DNA is tested against Jeff's the husband of Bobby.
It's not his DNA.
Speaker 2 (46:25):
Oh wow.
Speaker 1 (46:27):
And so as a result of this and other evidence,
including several alibi witnesses, he's eventually cleared as a suspect.
So the fact that his wife gets killed on one
day and another woman gets killed on the same day
and happens to have his fucking business card in her
wallet is just a.
Speaker 2 (46:45):
Coincidences, literally and truly just to go on, how fucking
bananas is that? Yeah, that's horrifying.
Speaker 1 (46:51):
Yeah, and you imagine, like so many years, everyone in
town thinks she fucking did it well.
Speaker 2 (46:56):
And also it's that thing of that these in those cases,
that it's one thing like that that it even if
it's not enough evidence to prosecute, it just is enough
evidence to change everyone's mind about you. Totally totally, and
it would be hard to explain that where it's just.
Speaker 1 (47:14):
Like, yeah, it's not out of this realm of possibility
that everyone would think he's guilty. It totally makes sense. Yeah.
So unfortunately, the male DNA is not in the criminal database,
so the case goes cold again. In the nineties, police
look into several different suspects in the case. One is
a cab driver named Thomas Edward Luther who in February
(47:34):
nineteen eighty two in Breckrage had picked up a hitchhiker
and had raped and assaulted her, and while in jail,
he allegedly bragged about being responsible for the murders, and
according to his girlfriend, he didn't come home on the
night of the murders. And then another suspect named Tracy
Petrocelli murdered his fiance in nineteen eighty one and went
(47:55):
on a multi state crime spree. And during this crime spree,
he stayed at the holiday in where a networked. Oh wo.
So another fucking crazy coincidence. Neither suspect DNA matches the
evidence from the crime scene, all right, So twenty years later,
in twenty eighteen, authorities decide to go the friends of
(48:15):
genealogy route in hopes of finding a DNA match. So
the company United Data Connect finds twelve thousand people who
are a possible match to the DNA profile that's on
the glove and the tissue, and private investigator Charlie McCormick,
who's now eighty years old and still on the case,
I know, and he's like the photo of him, he's
(48:37):
like salt to the earth, grandpa. Sure, So he and
his team start going through the twelve thousand people, like,
you know, genealogy can only get you so far. You
still have to do the groundwork. Groundwork, footwork, footwork.
Speaker 2 (48:52):
Thank you, I'm but it's the same your feet are
on the ground, that's right. I have to be pick one.
Speaker 1 (48:57):
So the team reaches out to a people who like
make sense in those twelve thousand people, and they all
agree to give DNA and so finally, after a year
of searching, the team finds a direct match to whoever
the killer is. So a relative of the killer, all right,
So I'm gonna pivot real quick for another story that
(49:18):
made news in the area at the same time as
the missing women did so. On January sixth, nineteen eighty two,
same day that the women went missing, at just before midnight,
Sheriff Harold E. Bray is on a United Airlines flight
to California. As the plane is flying over the Guanella
(49:38):
Pass in Colorado. Over these mountain ranges thousands of feet above,
the sheriff sees headlights blinking the Morse code signal for SOS.
Like he just happens to be looking at the window.
He happens to be a sheriff, so he knows SOS
and he fucking sees blinking SOS.
Speaker 2 (49:58):
Oh my, you keep going back.
Speaker 1 (50:02):
That chills like, what what did he do? I know?
The sheriff tells the flight crew and they radio the FAA,
the Federal Aviation Administration. The controller for the FAA asks
a close by plane to investigate. The plane circles the area,
spots a car that had blinking SOS, flashes his light
(50:23):
to let the driver know that he's been located, and
then the FAA contacts Clearcreek County Fire Chief David Montoya.
He's like, can't fucking believe what he's hearing. A sheriff
in an airplane saw a car on the ground using
headlights to signal SOS. Later, he says, he tells nine News,
(50:44):
I thought it was the craziest thing I'd ever heard of.
So Dave drives at the top of the Guenela Pass,
which has an elevation over eleven thousand feet and is
widely known to be unpassable during the winter. Again it's January.
Dave finds a truck stuff in a snow drift, and
inside is a thirty year old local mechanic named Alan
Lee Phillips. Dave says, sure as heck. There he was
(51:08):
in his little pickup and he saw me and said,
oh my god, I'm saved. It's a small town sheriff
like this. Shit like this doesn't happen, you know. So
the fire chief, Dave asks Alan what he's doing in
the Guenela Pass when it's twenty below freezing and has
been snowing heavily, and he doesn't have chains on his tires,
like kind of everyone in the area knows not to
(51:30):
be driving there. He said he'd been drinking at a
bar with some friends and had decided to drive home,
which you know, over the pass, and he'd been drinking,
so he thought it was a good idea at the time,
you know, the eighties, when drinking and driving.
Speaker 2 (51:45):
Were an excuse you could tell the sheriff and that
would be okay, right.
Speaker 1 (51:50):
Alan says that as he traveled over the pass, his
truck got stuck. He tried to dig the truck out,
didn't work, started walking to a nearby ski area, realized
it was too cold, so he got back in his truck,
covered with an emergency blanket, and then thought about what
to do. He heard the airplane flashed sos and so
that you know, so he got your flucking saved. He
(52:13):
would have frozen to death in his truck, yeah, like quickly.
Before driving Alan home, Dave, the fire chief, notices that
Alan has a quote sizeable bruise on the side of
his face. When asked about the bruce, Alan says, while
he was waiting for help, he'd gotten out of his
truck the pee. When he tried to get back in,
(52:34):
he was blinded by the snow and was and slammed
headfirst into the corner of the truck. The story of
this crazy rescue of a man who otherwise would have
frozen to death becomes huge news well almost forty years later,
forty years from the day that the two women had
been murdered and this guy had been found on the pass,
(52:57):
the DNA from the glove and tissue along turns out
to none other than that man who had been disposing
of a net's body after he had gone over the pass.
So like these two fucking separate stories just in twenty
eighteen turned out to be related. Holy shit. Yeah, So,
(53:21):
alanly Phillips is his name. He's matched to the DNA
via a discarded fast food rapper that had traces of
his saliva on You know, it still took a while
for them to track him down and to match the DNA.
It isn't until his mugshot is shown on local television
news that the now retired fire chief Dave our friend
Dave Montoya recognizes him as the guy who forty almost
(53:44):
forty years ago he had saved from the mountain pass.
So they hadn't even put it together yet, thought it
was the same dude, and that's exactly he had been
fucking disposing of a net's body. Oh my god, I know, chilling, right,
Dave says, quote, we ended up picking up the guy
straight out of hell. So, as it turns out, Alan
hadn't been driving home from the bar that night. He
(54:06):
was heading home after killing Bobby and Annette. Alan is
now seventy years old and the father of three, and
since nineteen eighty two, he had been still living in
the Breckenridge area. On February twenty fourth, twenty twenty one,
police arrest Allan without incident at a traffic stop in
Clear Creek County. He's charged with kidnapping, first degree assault,
(54:28):
and first degree murder of both Annette Schnee and Bobby
Joe Oberholtzer. Today, Monday the thirteenth, was his preliminary hearing.
Oh whoa yeah, And as of this recording, we don't
have much info about him. I did the best I
could about who he is and what he did. He
might be connected to more murders, so I'll keep everyone posted.
Speaker 2 (54:48):
We also, if he's on his way to court, might
be found innocent. Oh, right, alleged important to mention right,
it's all alleged.
Speaker 1 (54:57):
It's all alleged. Right. Bobby's husband, Jeff, who at one
time was a suspect, released a statement saying that he
praised the arrest. Quote, well, finally, after all these decades,
bring closure in peace to this hideous nightmare. After Philip's arrest,
Annette's mother, Eileen, who is now eighty eight years old,
says her family has endured quote thirty nine years of hell.
(55:21):
She said, quote it's been a rough forty years. I
thought maybe i'd be gone before I had closure in
this case. And then she said, I'm ready to go
when it's my time now. And that is the story
of Annette Schnee and Bobby Joe Oberholtzer. I mean, holy shit, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (55:42):
That is the craziest, most roundabout. First of all, I
can't believe I've never heard.
Speaker 1 (55:49):
That, because it just happened. They were just connected as
two cold cases you hadn't heard about. It was one
guy driving over a fucking mountain pass you hadn't heard about.
And then it turns out they' connected.
Speaker 2 (56:00):
Yeah, I mean the mountain past story feels like the
kind of weird news story that you would read separately
in any way. Yeah, the idea that they're all the
same storyline in out of chronological order, right, is mind blowing.
Speaker 1 (56:15):
And it's not until this guy sees him on the
news that he puts it all together. Fucking forty years later,
I can't recognize someone I met last weekend.
Speaker 2 (56:22):
But it must have been well, because it was weird
enough as it was, but it must have been.
Speaker 1 (56:28):
Very I mean it made the news. Yeah, yeah, the
event itself.
Speaker 2 (56:32):
But I'm saying I wonder if that fire chief just
had some kind of a vibe of like, oh this
is interesting and weird and off yeah and whatever. But
he's also not a cop, so he's just like, all right,
let's just get you out of here. Yeah, that's that
part isn't really.
Speaker 1 (56:47):
Now suspicious except for the bruise, But that does make
sense of how he would get it.
Speaker 2 (56:53):
Right, sure, well absolutely, and that as much as the
business card in Rye Dead Woman's Possessions, you know, you
can write that off or you would have to. Anyonere
gonna have a bruise for any reason, totally one you
don't even remember, like yeah, wow, that's that's a mind
(57:13):
that's mind blowing.
Speaker 1 (57:14):
So if anything comes up, all all update everyone, Oh good,
all right, that's it. We did our job, We absolutely did,
and you guys did yours. Thank you so much for listening.
We appreciate all of you. Send us your hometowns, send
us like, you know, high fives and helloes. Whatever you want.
Sure get in there and you know, stay sexy and
(57:35):
don't get murdered. Goodbye, Elvis Do you want a Cookie?
Speaker 2 (57:47):
This has been an exactly right production.
Speaker 1 (57:49):
Our senior producers are Alejandra Keck and Molly Smith.
Speaker 2 (57:51):
Our editor is Aristotle oce Vedo.
Speaker 1 (57:54):
This episode was mixed by Leona Squalacci.
Speaker 2 (57:56):
Our researchers are Mayaron McGlashan and Ali Elkin.
Speaker 1 (57:59):
Email your hometown on to My Favorite Murder at gmail
dot com.
Speaker 2 (58:02):
Follow the show on Instagram at my Favorite Murder.
Speaker 1 (58:04):
Listen to My Favorite Murder on the iHeartRadio app, Apple
Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2 (58:09):
And now you can watch us on exactly Right's YouTube page.
While you're there, please like and subscribe.
Speaker 1 (58:14):
Goodbyeye
Hell, Hello, and welcome to My Favorite Murder.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
So this is very exciting for us when you hear this.
We're about to do our first live show after six years.
We'll be doing two of them in Denver.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
I can feel my nerves from the future in Denver. Yeah,
And so because of that, we're bringing you a quilt
episode where we combine two of our favorite Colorado stories.
First up, Karen is covering the twisted cult of Love
has Won and it's leader Amy Carlson.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
And then Georgia, we'll be telling you the story of
the cold case murders of Barbara Olberholtzer and Annette Schnee.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
So the Denver show the is already sold out, but
limited tickets are available in some other cities. So go
to My Favorite Murder dot com slash live to get yours.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
And now please enjoy this Colorado quilt episode.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
Goodbye.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
So this is something that cropped up and I remember
it from basically kind of mid quarantine, before any kind
of vaccination had been developed, when we were all still
washing our hands for thirty seconds while singing the theme
to the Mister Rogers Neighborhood or whatever, like just past
the point where we were wiping down cereal boxes but
(01:31):
still stuck in our houses and very unsure is yeah,
what was going on? So this was the kind of
story that when it popped up, it was like, oh,
it's what's that about? And it just kind of like
hit my radar essentially. So this is the story of
the death of Amy Carlson and the Love Has Won cult.
So there's an amazing article by Virginia Pelly. I hope
(01:53):
I'm pronouncing that right, Virginia in the magazine Marie Claire
called Love has Lost. Got a lot of information about
that because it was very comprehensive. Also, there's an article
in the Washington Post by Marisa at there's an episode
of Doctor Phil that actually has the whole family of
(02:14):
Amy Carlson on it. A Vice documentary called False Gods,
Cult Leader, Abuser or Goddess, Meet Mother God, a BBC
News article by Joshua Nevitt, a Denver Post article by
Noel Phillips. There's obviously a Wikipedia article, a People Magazine
article by Jeff Truesdale, and a Honolulu Star Advisor article
(02:35):
by the Star Advisor staff. For a second, I thought
it was a woman named Star Advisor. It's just like
a way to go. And it's funny because this is
such a recent story. There's been so far, doesn't rying
bells Okay? So in September of twenty twenty, so about
six months into quarantine, there's a news story out of Kawhi,
(02:55):
one of my favorite Hawaiian islands, Beautiful, that popped up
about a group of roughly eleven people calling themselves Love
Has Won, who tried to relocate to the island from
Colorado in August of twenty twenty. So aside from breaking
the States quarantine protocols, the group, whom many believe to
be a cult, had been co opting Native religious practices
(03:17):
and generally pissing everyone off in the island. Because many
of us know who like to go to Hawaii and
like to visit there, it's like going to a very
small town and you know it's white people are very
invasive over there. Their tourists and there oftentimes can be
very disrespectful. So ingratiating yourself into the culture over there
(03:41):
is a very important part of visiting those islands because
it's about respecting. The reason you love it there so
much is because of the Hawaiian people and the Native culture,
and so a big group of people coming over there
and basically ripping them off and you know, disrespecting basically, yeah,
(04:02):
just being kind of a bunch of assholes. It of
course didn't sit well. People were immediate and also they
already knew because this was the second cult that had
come to Kui during the quarantine. So this was actually
a kind of problem for the people.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
They're the locals, especially like the fact that they're disrespecting
them and possibly bringing COVID over.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
It's like, yes, it's unsafe, it's really shitty, it's disrespectful,
and it's like, go fuck yourself. So there was vandalism,
there was several small fires. It was just a huge
problem almost from the get go, and so for the
safety of the residents of Kawhi, the police end up
escorting this group of people back to the airport on
September fourth, and they end up flying back home to Colorado.
(04:50):
So at the time, this story was just kind of
a blip in an already very overwhelming news cycle until
about seven months later, on the night of Wednesday, April
twenty eighth, twenty twenty one, when forty three year old
Miguel Lamboy arrives at the Salida police station near the
tiny hundred person mountain town of Moffat, Colorado in Swich County.
(05:13):
So basically, Lamboy is there to report that a group
of people have brought a dead body into his home.
He explains it's the corpse of Amy Carlson, the leader
of a local religious group Love has Won, and they
got there the day before and they needed a place
to stay. Lamboy has also is a member of this
(05:35):
religious group unquote, and he didn't realize they had this
body until the next day. And so there are seven
people I believe in the group. And so when he
does realize this dead body is in his house, he
takes his two year old son and he goes to leave,
and they say you can leave, but the boy has
(05:56):
to stay here, and that's when he decided it's time
to go to the police. So the police, the local
police are well aware of this group. Many locals have
claimed it's a cult, and the Sawich County Sheriff's Department
was quoted as saying, quote, they've received many complaints from
families saying that the group is brainwashing people and stealing
(06:16):
their money, and that from all over the country not
just in the area. So, according to Miguel Lamboy, this
group drove from California to Colorado with Carlson's dead body
in the back of their suv Holy shit, and then
they landed at his house because they needed a place
to stay. So the police are granted a search warrant
(06:37):
for Lamboy's house, which they execute at around eleven fifty
that night, and they find this group of seven people
as well as the dead body as Lamboy had described
to them, but the body is an even more disturbing
state than they had imagined. In the back bedroom, police
discover what appears to be a mummified corpse with gray
(06:59):
skin wrap in a sleeping bag, lying on a bed.
Her teeth are showing through her lips, her eyes are missing,
and her eye sockets are painted with glittery makeup.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
Oh my god.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
The whole body is wrapped in Christmas lights. What and
a shrine has been She's basically surrounded by a shrine
of trinkets and different lights.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
How do seven people like agree that this is? Like
seven people? That's so many. I mean, that's what cults do.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
But yeah, I mean it's the This is a long
this has been a long process to getting to this point. Basically,
so all seven adults are arrested and charged with abuse
of a corpse. And because one woman who's in this group,
her name's Karen Raymond, her thirteen year old daughter is
(07:51):
with the group and Lamboy's two year old son are
in the house, the group is also charged with two
counts of child abuse, even though both she'll have found
asleep and safe. It's just child abuse that they would
even be in that scenario. So Raymond's daughter's taken into
social services custody after the mom's arrest. Lamboy's two year
(08:12):
old son has returned to him after the search of
the house is finished. So when the corner inspects the body,
it's so decomposed that fingerprints can't be taken, and it
leads him to believe that Amy Carlson must have been
dead for at least a month, if not longer.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
Yeah, oh chills.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
In fact, the body is so decomposed it takes him
three months to confirm that this is indeed the body
of forty five year old Amy Carlson. So over the
weekend following the raid, other members of the Love Has
Won group post a video on their Facebook page about
their leader's death, saying that she has ascended to the
(08:52):
fifth dimension. So this video is later deleted, but Carlson's
devoted followers still hold this belief, and in fact, the
idea of Amy's ascension had become the main tenant of
the group. Amy was called Mother God in this group,
and she claimed to already have been reincarnated five hundred times. WHOA, yeah,
(09:14):
that sounds exhausting, she well, and more so when you
realize that she has already been Jesus, Joan of Arc
and Marilyn Monroe. Right, as this is the old joke.
No one ever is reincarnated as just the person down
the street. It's always Joan of Arc. And on her
next ascension, she was telling believers in these video streams
(09:36):
that she was making that starships were going to come
and take her away, and that when she ascended, her
followers would finally learn this truth that a powerful quote
unquote cabal had been keeping from the people of Earth
in every incarnation, that she had so right when she
(09:57):
was about to right, when the people of Earth about
to learn like the ultimate truth, the cabal comes in
kills her and keeps the truth from coming out. That's
basically her theory. What a bummer, right, It's really unfortunate
and kind of kind of tidy. You know, it's all
(10:17):
just this one. This is the reason we're all suffering
one cabal of like rich people. It's the same as
you always hear. It's like the cabal is super rich people,
Hollywood people, and you know, and then just like villains
from around the world, any non believers that don't follow
Mother God will be sent to live on the quote
(10:38):
central galactic sun or be turned into rocks. So there's
a former member named Ash McCoy who said that the
shrine that the police found around the body wasn't new.
They didn't put that there when the body got there.
It had actually been made long before Amy Carlson's death,
with the idea that when she did finally ascend in
(10:59):
this lifetime, her followers would want a place where they
could come and commemorate her life and basically treat it
like a museum exhibit. So they have been preparing for
her quote unquote ascension for years.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
The members of the Love Is One cult are convinced
their leader, Mother God will go down in history as
the greatest being who has ever lived, which is just
if you think about all of this is just a
perfect twenty twenty one vibe, just like super intense, super apocalyptic.
Everything's like everything is conspiracy. It's simplistic and it's kind
(11:36):
of like do what I say, yeah, or the cabal
will get you.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
It's because we're living in an unprecedented time, so anything
as possible, and people just want to believe something.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
Yeah, people are disenfranchised, they're scared, they're alone. A lot
of people are sick or feel like they can't, they're
not healthy, and they're looking for answers online. Right, And
as many as many webmbs and like websites that are,
you know, standardly reliable, there are just as many websites
(12:09):
that start out as kind of new age quote unquote
holistic medicine, alternative practices that and that's how this started. Okay, Okay,
so we'll talk about Amy Carlson's early life. She's born
on November thirtieth, nineteen seventy five, and grows up in Dallas,
Texas with her two sisters, Chelsea and Tara. Their parents
divorce when Amy's young. She lives with her dad at first,
(12:32):
but then she goes back to live with her mom
and her new stepdad. She's a popular, straight a student
with a beautiful singing voice, and her sisters say she
was always really sweet and kind, but as she gets older,
she starts dating a lot of controlling or abusive men.
By the time she's in her early twenties, she's basically
on her third marriage, Oh my god, and she has
(12:55):
a child with each husband, so she has a daughter
and two sons. But then and after her third marriage,
she basically starts to settle down. She gets a manager
job at the local McDonald's, and her family and friends
people on the outside believe.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
That she's happy.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
But shortly after her third child is born, there's a
noticeable change in her personality. She begins to grow distant.
Her mom, Linda, admits all that Amy's never really been maternal,
but now she's basically become a neglectful mother, and she
disengages from her children's lives, and she's spending all her
time online looking at bizarre new ag kind of websites.
(13:36):
And this is when her basically her worldly view begins
to change. Then Amy starts meeting up with the people
that are also on these websites, meeting them in real life,
and soon she's constantly talking about these things about ascension,
about alternative medicine, about starships, all kinds of kind of
nonsensical New Age philosophy. And then when Ami in her
(14:00):
early thirties, she decides to leave her husband and her children,
who are aged two, seven and twelve. Oh heartbreaking, heartbreaking.
She moves out of state with an unidentified man that
she had met online.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
It reminds me so much so far of Heaven's Gate.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
Yes, of the yeah yeah, of the idea of people
that have always kind of been unhappy in some way
that stumble upon a group.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
That has all the answers. Oh way.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
Yeah, So she moves out of state. Her family tries
to contact her, she doesn't ever respond. She basically cuts
herself off from her family completely. They're convinced Amy's new
boyfriend has tricked her into joining a cult, but when
she finally re emerges and they see her again years later,
she's the one.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
That's leading the cults. Oh twists. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
So the man Amy ran off with called himself Father
God and convinces Amy that she's Mother God, and he
brings her to Crestone Call Her, which is a remote
area two hundred miles south of Denver that is considered
sacred by the Native people, and because of that, it's
attracted it's almost like a Sedona type of town in Colorado.
(15:14):
It's attracted spiritual seekers for decades. The town itself only
has about eighteen hundred people, but it has over or
around twenty four spiritual centers the full range of There's Buddhists,
there's Catholic, there's it's I mean, it's everything. So after
a couple years, father and Mother God split up, but
(15:35):
Amy keeps the title Mother God.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
And they can't make it work. Yeah, who can.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
I mean, that's a real sign relationships are so hard
that gods can't even get it. So she of course
keeps on basically pursuing these interests, and then she starts
releasing YouTube videos and Facebook live streams, and she is
claims to be the leader of a group called the
Galactic Federation of a Life, so it's not in any
(16:02):
way associated with Star Trek. She preaches about her plan
to save humanity, and in these videos, at first she's
just the voiceover and it's just kind of like images,
but then after a while she's front and center. She's
the leader and she's got followers in the videos who
were talking about Amy as if she is God.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
So we've gone from this kind of like, oh, an
alternative to Western medicine to I Am God, which is
pretty that's a pretty steep incline. And then in twenty
eighteen is when they change the name of the group
to Love Has Won. So Amy's followers believe that she's
God in human form and being with an elevated consciousness
(16:45):
that's been continually reincarnating for the last nineteen billion years
so that she can complete her mission, which is to
save humanity by leading a chosen one hundred and forty
four thousand people into the mystical dimension. They claim that
she's currently on her five hundred and thirty fourth incarnation,
(17:06):
and she also claims, very strangely, after Robin Williams dies
in twenty fourteen, that she has a direct spiritual connection
with him. We've been alone for real. She broadcasts herself
channeling on these live streams. She claims that Donald Trump
was her father and in another lifetime.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
I wouldn't brag about that. But to the.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
People who are starting to get into this kind of
like this, it's a conspiracy community. So she's kind of
using the buzzwords that attract people who are online in
the first place because they're kind of like starting to
be believers in these things. And they're also I've said
this before, but it's my personal theory. These are people
(17:47):
that didn't grow up with computers. They don't understand that
websites can be made by anyone, right, and they can
say anything.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
I mean, talk to Janet. It's just how.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
It is for people that it's like they're looking at
their people who grew up with one newspaper and that
newspaper was just telling you the truth. There was no
reason to question it. So now we're in the world
of the digital age of anyone can make any website,
and suddenly everything is this kind of believable. And it's
also about numbers. The more people believe it, the more
(18:20):
believable it gets.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
I definitely screamed at my mom the other day, what
was the source? What was the source? That's something fucking
but Nana's batshit thing. She said it was www That's
the source. So a lot of her teachings end up
dovetailing with QAnon conspiracy theories and basically the entire foundation
of Love has one draws from New Age spirituality, Christianity, astrology, scientology, numerology,
(18:48):
and basically anything else that appeals to amy and that
appeals to kind of like quote unquote spiritual seekers. She
claims to have lived in the magical ancient land of Uria.
She claims the lost city of Atlantis is real but
sunk from an explosion that took place after a certain
technology was stolen, and that her and her followers must
(19:10):
fight an everlasting war against the cabal. And that's all
the same. That's that's kind of same theme that comes
up all the time, is that it's people declaring this
small group are the pure, they're the noble.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
They're the they're the they're there heroes of the story,
and that basically whoever they decide, Hollywood, rich people, whoever,
you know, believable, believable theories. But it's like but that
these people are then whatever they decide, and that they're
they're trying to attack them, they're trying to kill them,
they're trying to they're trying to squash the truth, the truth,
(19:49):
and keep the world in darkness essentially. So there's anywhere
from twelve to twenty followers who actually live with Amy,
like in a commune between Colorado, California, or again sometimes Florida.
They wind up Basically, they come back to that area
in Colorado on two pieces of land, one ranch house
(20:09):
in Salita and then this mobile home and Moffitt. These
two places become the home base for the group. So
essentially how it goes is every day at six in
the morning, Amy and her followers begin about a three
hour live stream, and in the beginning the videos are
about energy connecting with spirit, essentially new Age stuff that's
(20:34):
like lots of people ascribed to and that isn't in
any way destructive. Yeah, Then they start talking a lot
about frequencies and about you know, negative versus positive. It's
that kind of thing. Then basically the videos devolve into
these outlandish concepts about the cabal and you know, them
(20:55):
being hunted.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
And all of that.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
There's two young women in the group that serve as
basically hosts at the top of the show, and their
group names are Archia Hope and Archia Aurora, and they're
like young, kind of beautiful women who like it's just
it's good marketing. Yeah, Basically they're hosting this and talking
about the tenets of these beliefs, but they get into
(21:20):
some stuff that's like incredibly fucked up. They start talking
about like basically the pros of Hitler.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
I knew it. I knew. I pointed at myself because
I was like, you're like there were anti this and that.
I'm like, say, jus like.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
Come on, well, that's the thing is they they're basically
kind of floating the idea of being Holocaust andiurs and
then floating the idea of maybe that Hitler's intentions were
better than you know, it's all that shit. Yeah, And
basically they they preach Amy's god status, her plan to
save humanity, and they start offering these things called spiritual surgeries.
(21:59):
So that's a virtual healing session with Amy. It costs
eighty eight dollars. She does spiritual surgery on you and
claims that she can cure everything from addiction to cancer,
saying that her words in her hands have strong healing powers.
So this is where they get people who are sick,
people who have who have gone to doctor after a
(22:20):
doctor of a typical Western medicine and haven't been cured
and or been told that they're it's all in their mind,
or they've been treated poorly by traditional doctors, and they're
they're on here looking for other stuff. So in the beginning,
that idea, and sometimes it really is just that mental
thing of somebody going I can spiritually surgically cure you
(22:43):
over the internet. And just the idea of that there's
a solution and it's eighty eight dollars is very alluring
to people. Then you're coming in with and while we're here,
maybe we'll talk about how the Holocaust isn't real. I mean,
they're playing upon people who are already like at low
points and weak.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
Runs in their life.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
So as insane as that seems, Love has One's Facebook
group climbs to about twenty thousand members shit and their
YouTube channel gains nearly ten thousand followers, and their videos
have like one point five million views. So people are watching.
We don't know how they're watching or what their approaches,
but it's being seen. There's lots of fan engagement. Viewers
(23:27):
communicate with each other in the comment sections, and Amy
and her followers answer questions or give shout outs to
people who are commenting in the live streams. Plus, of course,
the crucial element of it, money is pouring into the
group in the form of donations made out to either
loves One or Mother's Joy. So throughout the duration of
(23:48):
this group, Love has won. They see a rotating cast
of father Gods who partner up with Amy, but the
most notable is the most recent, Jason Cristio. He joins
Amy in mid twenty eighteen when the group changes its
name to Love His One. It's uncertain how he and
Amy have met, but what is certain is his criminal record.
(24:09):
His rap sheet list charges for drunk driving, breaking and entering,
and child neglect. So after his arrival, things on the
commune go from bad to worse. Members are only allowed
to sleep when Mother God sleeps, so they're usually limited
to maybe four or five hours a night. They're always
forced to rise at five am. The live streaming starts
at six am every single day, and they usually last
(24:33):
three hours. They are also not allowed to sit for
very long. No, the whole thing is leading to exhaustion
for every time totally. And here's the other one. They're underfed,
so Carlson claims that eating too much is a symptom
of our rampant ego, which Amy claims stands for edging
God out. They're only allowed to get small amounts of
(24:57):
food that are donated from local food banks and no
snackings allowed. So they've bame out.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
I'm out on so many levels.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
I can't I can't do any of it. I'm all
about that ego. But this is this is fucking by
the book cult brainwashing practices, exhaustion and starvation. The members
live on there on the compound rent free, but they
have to serve Mother God with whatever she needs, and
(25:24):
they don't get paid for anything, and they don't get
any of the donation money. Most of the time, members
wind up giving whatever money they have to Mother God.
And as one former member named Taylor puts it, quote,
everything is revolved around Amy, of course, but she's not
the gentle, compassionate leader that she claims to be. Even
though drugs and alcohol are espressly forbidden in the group,
(25:45):
she drinks to excess every day and openly on camera.
What yeah, so this is a real like we're watching
this is? This really parallels the Synanon story where the
leader who starts out with these really loft goals about
helping people. It slowly slides into saving humanity, which slides
into I Am God, which goes right along with some
(26:09):
kind of substance abuse. So when Amy's sober, she puts
on a warm, kind facade, but at night she launches
into drunken, cursed filled tirades on the live stream holy shit,
And on one she shouts into the camera quote spiritual ego,
whores die. If you're not connected to me, you're out damn.
So it's turning.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
Yeah, I feel so bad for her kids back at home,
like I have to be explained where mom is. It's
so sad, it's so sad.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
It's yeah, it's a lot of victims here.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:42):
She also starts calling the followers atoms at O m
like an atom, And there's one live stream where he
brings her meatballs for dinner, but she asks for chicken parmesan,
so she starts screaming, my vision was chicken parmesan. So
the fucking Atoms turn around on and get me meatballs.
I didn't say meatballs. I love meatballs, but I didn't
(27:04):
fucking say that chicken parmesan. She's just like flipping out
the fuck and recording it, Like.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
Why that's yeah, you want to hide that behavior.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
You would think. Also, Father God, he also gets in
on it. He can be seen getting into Robertson's face
and glaring at him with rage and chastising him while
he while Robertson hangs his head in shame. So he
got the order wrong and he's just being attacked by
mother and father. God got you know the way, the Lord,
the Lord you've always heard about. There's also a thing
(27:34):
where there's on video they give a two year old
child a time out by putting it in a closet
and screaming at the child and saying that they're not
that normal people. Their child rearing is programming, and it's
it's basically a society that's the cult. Love has Won
is the only same group of people got to be it. Okay,
(27:56):
So around that time is when they try to go
to Kawhi. They basically get kicked out real quick. So
they come back and then so they start pushing these
holistic health products. They make a thing called plasma coasters,
which quote act as receivers and transmitters with the ability
to neutralize harmful energy, and you're supposed to put them
(28:17):
in glasses of water. They sell for sixty six dollars
in sixty six fuck.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
They almost like a shrinking ink or something. Yes, see,
what were those sea creatures you'd put in water? Oh,
sea monkeys, sea monkeys.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
They also are big on colloidal silver and old supplements.
Those were big or colloidal silver was huge for a
while there. So basically they sell their own version of it,
of course they do, yeah, and they claim that it
can cure COVID. They end up getting a letter from
the FDA saying you have to stop claiming this, You
(28:53):
have to stop selling these products. And they don't. They
they're not available anymore. So some of their other terrible
medical advice, they'realistic alternative medical advice. They say that turmeric
cures diabetes, that lemon and baking soda cures cancer. And
they actually tell people that it's a myth that staring
into the sun makes you go blind.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
Oh yep.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
They say that you need to stare into the sun
to receive healing quote unquote like codes and that it
quote burns away the darkness inside you.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
They also tell people that you don't have to worry
about having heart attacks because it's just your heart expanding. No,
it's okay, it's not so they it's just a bunch
of super dangerous and very crazy like basically personal theories
and creative writing that they're now telling people is like
(29:44):
medical the medical truth.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
Yeah, okay, dangerous.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
Basically, she's gone so far off the rails that her
family goes on to doctor Phil in September of twenty
twenty to try to get her to basically be like this,
you have to come out of this. This is brainwashing.
And her sisters and mother are there and they're all
really worried about her. Doctor Phil confronts her about how
(30:10):
she's not a peaceful being. There's that they show the
videos of all her cursing and confrontation. She claims that
one of the reasons is she's been raped several times
and that her house has burned down, and that she's
basically grown weary of it all. But essentially it's, you know,
it just is kind of like it doesn't make uses, yeah,
(30:33):
and it's an ineffectual way to kind of try to
break this person out of the cults. The problem is
that her health is clearly on the taking a downturn,
maybe from the drinking, maybe from all the colloidial silver
that she's constantly ingesting. But they her mom notices on
the live stream she's being carried around by her followers,
(30:55):
and she seems to be paralyzed from the waist down.
What yeah, something her her sisters are seeing it. They're
so scared and worried. They say that they knew she
was ill. She looked weak and frail, and that she
was basically that she was kind of turning a gray
blue from how much chloidal silver she was ingesting.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
Do we know, like is that not good for you now?
Like do we know that now? Or it's just large quantities.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
I have no idea, but yeah, if she if she
was ill and they were saying this is what's going
to fix you, then then right, large quantities of anything
like that.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
But I know, I'd hate to say anything about chloid
chloidal silver and not knowing.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
During a live stream on October fifteenth, twenty twenty, two,
of her followers admit Amy has expressed a desire to
see a doctor, but they refuse to take her. And
they say, there's moments when mom has asked us to
take her to the hospital. Nope, there's no way. We
know how a hijacking works. So the hijacking is this
idea that right is when she's about to ascend the
(32:00):
all comes in kills her and represses the truth. So
they're basically like, you can't go to the hospital because
it's a hijacking. So all of her own crazy theories
are now turned against her, and her followers are basically
becoming the ones in charge. The last time an outsider
confirmed seeing Amy alive is on April tenth, twenty twenty one.
(32:22):
She's in California. She gets a visit from her landlord
and he sees that he thinks she's dying, like she
looks so bad. The members say she has cancer, but
she hasn't gone to a doctor, so there's no official
diagnosis or records of that anywhere. It's just what the
followers say. So her mother calls the authorities in California
asking to do wellness checks, but every time they go
(32:43):
to where the followers and Amy are, they turn the
police and the ambulances away. Then on April sixteenth, twenty
twenty one, a photo is posted in one of the
Love Has Won private chat rooms of Father God holding
a very frail, incoherent looking Amy in his arms, and
it is unclear if she's alive or dead in the photo. Okay,
so her cause of death is as yet to be
(33:07):
determined because of the lack of medical records and because
of the state of the body when the coroner got it.
Charges against four of the seven members that were arrested
on April twenty eighth have been dropped, including those against
Father God Jason Castillo. Sawatch County District Attorney Alonzo Payne
tells Dateline our office looked at all the documents and
(33:30):
everything that was provided, and from our perspective, the allegations
could not be met beyond a reasonable doubt. Charges against
the remaining three members are still pending. The group that
existed under the name Loves One has since disbanded, but
many of its members has splintered off and they continue
preaching the same ideas under different names. And all the
(33:51):
shops that sold products have been shut down, but Lamboys
opened a new nonprofit that basically it gets him out
of paying taxes, so any of the money that goes
there they don't have to pay taxes on it. They
now have one of the groups that still live streams
has They have a tapestry with a photo of Amy
on it that's like behind them in the shot. Some
(34:13):
of them are still selling etheric surgeries like the way
that Amy did. Spiritual surgeries. Those are fifty five to
fifty five for thirty minutes discounted, and they're described as
your ticket to heaven. For the people who have escaped
Love has Won, their search for spiritual fulfillment continues, but
now with a much more cautious approach. A former member
(34:34):
goes by the name Sarah does. That's not her real name.
She's scared of retaliation. She says, Amy took a lot
of spiritual teachings about vibration and energy that are on
the right track, but she hijacked them and said they
were hers. I still believe there's truth in those principles,
but I'm working on taking Amy out of them. And
(34:55):
essentially that is the very strange, bizarre death Amy Carlson
and the story of the Love His Won cult.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
Wow. I want to find out how she died eventually, right.
Speaker 2 (35:08):
Yeah, Well, I mean sounds like she whatever sickness she had, yeah,
there was never any Like they were just doing holistic
practices and no one there, So she could have gotten
pancreatic cancer, yeah, or something that's quick and awful and
just ravage as your body and then she's just taking
(35:28):
colloidal silver or drinking right right, and liver cancer maybe horrifying,
so fucking wild, I know, wild, great job, so crazy,
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
I know.
Speaker 2 (35:40):
Sorry that was so long, but it's like there was
so much. It's just the weirdest thing because I remembered it.
I remember seeing the story and I think people posting
about it on Twitter.
Speaker 1 (35:50):
But it was just at that.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
Point in the pandemic where I'm like, no, only comedies,
I can't do this, Like I don't want to know,
I can't look at this.
Speaker 1 (35:58):
I mean, it's wild that, in the middle of a
pandemic that everyone's freaking out about, you could have such
an like outside wild story. Yeah, it's like, didn't everything stop?
Did everyone's a lifestyle?
Speaker 2 (36:09):
Right? Why didn't you just But also I think it's
like that's the thing, like you said, in these unprecedented times,
people are scared shitless and they're looking for answers. They're
looking for easy, like digestible answers and solutions, and it
makes sense. They're right to want that. They're human to
want that. Yeah, just don't be stupid, just like it's
(36:34):
I don't know, Yeah, well, here's the thing. You know,
there's very clear you know they say in cults, it's like,
if it's one leader, you're not allowed to contradict, You're
not allowed to like take in outside information. You cut
yourself off from your family. Like there's the whole there's
a whole thing of like is your are you just
(36:56):
you know, is it just a group of people who
are like minded spiritual seekers or are you are you
basically being indoctrinated? And those are the things where it's
like if basically there's one person, the air god, they
have all the answers.
Speaker 1 (37:09):
And the rules are theirs.
Speaker 2 (37:10):
Yeah, to make and suddenly the rules become about Carr,
you know, like you serve me, yeah, chicken parmesan.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
Wow. Yeah, let's keep it. Let's keep an eye on
that one. Yeah, yeah, good job, thank you. I'm going
to tell you a story that I found during one
of my many late night Cold Case news scrollings that
piqued my interest and is going on right now, and
there's a recent twist to it. So the sources I
(37:45):
used in today's episode are The Guardian, by an article
by Richard Let's Calm, the Unsolved Mysteries fandom page, which
is really cool, The Rocky Mountain Cold Case website, a
UPI article, a New York Times article by Maria Kramer,
a nine News article by Matt Jablo, and a Fox
thirty one news article by Evan Krugel. Okay, so, have
(38:10):
you ever heard of Breckenridge, Colorado?
Speaker 2 (38:12):
No?
Speaker 1 (38:12):
Okay. It's a former mining town dating back to the
Gold Rush. It's at the base of the Rocky Mountains,
about eighty miles from Denver. So like a cute, little,
quaint ski resort town. Lots of beautiful old buildings, breweries,
you know, like nice restaurants and art scene. Small, cool,
little town. So. On the evening of January sixth, nineteen
(38:35):
eighty two, twenty nine year old Barbara Joe ober Holtzer,
whose nickname is Bobby I'm gonna call her that from
now on, she is at a Breckinridge bar with some
friends celebrating a promotion at work. A little before eight pm,
she decides to leave early and head back to her
husband named Jeff. Instead of getting ride back with her
friends who are leaving a little later, she decides to hitchhike,
(38:57):
which of course, is totally normal at the time. Everyone
hitchhikes around town and the area is known for being
a popular ski resort, so there's a lot of rich tourists,
but the people who live in town, a lot of
them can't afford their own car, so hitchhiking is the norm.
Bobby has a couple rules she follows when she hitch hikes.
She doesn't get into cars with two men in there,
(39:19):
and she won't it into van. So hitchhiking is super normal,
but everyone's still a little aware of that it's dangerous
and are still careful about it. But by the next morning,
she's not home, and so Jeff, her husband, tries to
file a missing person's report, but you know, as it
was in the eighties, you can't file one for an adult.
It's too early. She probably just fucking spent the night
(39:40):
at a friend's house. Sort of a thing, however, and
so he goes out with his friends trying to find her.
They can't track her down, but the next day, at
around three pm, a farmer who lives thirty miles outside
of Breckenridge finds Bobby's license, gets a hold of Jeff,
and he comes out to pick up the license, and
on his way he spot something in a snowy field
(40:04):
and he finds it's Bobby's backpack his wife's backpack, so
he also finds a blood spattered wool glove and some
tissues that are also covered in blood, and also found
there is a woman's orange booty, like her orange sock
like snow booty that doesn't belong to Bobby. Jeff and
his friends start searching for Bobby, and two hours later,
(40:26):
ten miles south of wreckage, they find her body fifteen
miles from where her backpack was recovered. It's almost like
someone scattered her, you know, possessions. After leaving the body,
police find a pair of eighteen inch zip ties tied
to one of Bobby's wrists, meaning they think someone had
tried to bind her, but she maybe got away before
(40:50):
they were able to bind both wrists. In the parking
lot of the bar that Bobby had been in that night,
police find her keyring and there's also this like metal
hook on the key ring that her husband had made
her as like a defensive tool just in case she
ever gotten any trouble, and it looks like maybe she
had pulled it out to like try to use it,
so they think maybe she had gotten in the in
(41:12):
the car with you know, whoever picked her up, realized
something was a miss. He tried to zip tie her.
She took out her tool and ran and was able
to escape the car. And then they think that she
ran downhill to get away, and then the killer caught
up with her, and so she had been shot twice.
So they think that that's how she was how she
was stopped when she was running away, and then she
(41:34):
died a short distance away of blood loss. Then law
enforcement gets word that that very same day, the day
before that Bobby had gone missing, another young woman had
also disappeared from wreckage. And this is a small town
about a thousand residents, so this is like two women
in one day. That is very odd. So at around
(41:56):
four forty five that day, a twenty one year old
woman named an At Schnee, who is a cocktail waitress,
had been hitchhiking home after running some errands. But Annette
didn't make it home. There's no trace of her until
six months later on July third, when her body is
found by what is called like a young boy or
a youth which always is terrible, while he was fishing.
(42:20):
It's an isolated mountain area where she's found in what's
called Sacramento Creek twenty miles south of Breckenridge. Anette's body
had been well preserved because of the freezing temperatures, and
the medical examiner is able to determine that and Nett
died from a gunshot, same as Bobby. She's wearing bow shoes,
and on one of her feet is an orange booty.
(42:42):
It's the same as the one found at Bobby's scene,
so clearly or connected. Police speculate that the killer had
murdered a Net first, and then hours later picked up
Bobby and murdered her, and then I discarded the belongings
between the two scenes, and so the orange sock must
have somehow been mixed up by the killer and accidentally discarded.
(43:03):
Also in Anet's possession is one of Bobby's husband, Jeff's
business cards. Oh right, yeah, so of course Jeff immediately
becomes top suspect. Law enforcement questions him about a Net,
so at first he denies knowing her at all, but
then he sees a picture of her on the news
(43:24):
later and goes back to law enforcement It's like, yeah,
I actually do know her. I have met her once.
He said he had picked up a net once while
she was hitchhiking and given her his business card of
his appliance repair shop after she mentioned needing something fixed.
So like fucking coincidence with a capital seam right. Of course,
(43:45):
he denies any involvement in her disappearance or in his
wife's death, takes a polygraph test and passes. Apparently has
an alibi for the night, but it's sketchy, and of
course law enforcement consider him the top suspect but aren't
able to collect enough evidence to charge him. The case
goes cold and becomes the area's biggest most enduring cold case. Okay,
(44:10):
fast forward about seven years retired Denver homicide detective Charlie McCormick.
He gets burnt out on the Denver homicide scene. It's
too stressful for him, so he finally retires and moves
to Breckinridge. He hears about the mysterious double murder that
happened on the same day in his new hometown, and
(44:31):
because he's a homicide detective at heart, his interest is piqued.
Over time, he becomes more and more involved in the
case until nineteen eighty nine, a net's family hires him
as their private investigator on the case. He chases some
leads throughout the years of serial killers in Montana and
Idaho other suspects as well. Later, he volunteers for the
(44:55):
District Attorney's task force that's opened. He continues to work
on the case almost every day for the next three decades.
And guess how much he charges for his detective services
private detective services for Annetts family. Nothing a dollar a year. Oh,
I know, I know. So he's like, I want to
do and do this. Let's it's so symbolic.
Speaker 2 (45:17):
Well, you know what I like about that is is
that he clearly wanted to be a homicide detective. Like
the culture, you know, like was part of why he
can do it, right, But he can do it by himself,
independently and separately, and he still wants to be a
person that's helping clear like solve those crimes and clear
(45:40):
those cases.
Speaker 1 (45:41):
Yeah, like as soon as you heard about it in
his new small hometown, he's not just going to be like,
well whatever that is by He's Yeah, he wants to.
Speaker 2 (45:50):
It's like like anyone else who would hear about that
and have the interest would be like I need to
know what happened. Yeah, he's somebody who could actually who
has this the skills in the availability or the means, yeah,
to get it done totally.
Speaker 1 (46:06):
So Originally the blood on the glove and tissue found
near Bobby's belongings were thought to be her blood, but
in the nineties the blood is tested and results show
that the blood actually belongs to a man. So that
male DNA is tested against Jeff's the husband of Bobby.
It's not his DNA.
Speaker 2 (46:25):
Oh wow.
Speaker 1 (46:27):
And so as a result of this and other evidence,
including several alibi witnesses, he's eventually cleared as a suspect.
So the fact that his wife gets killed on one
day and another woman gets killed on the same day
and happens to have his fucking business card in her
wallet is just a.
Speaker 2 (46:45):
Coincidences, literally and truly just to go on, how fucking
bananas is that? Yeah, that's horrifying.
Speaker 1 (46:51):
Yeah, and you imagine, like so many years, everyone in
town thinks she fucking did it well.
Speaker 2 (46:56):
And also it's that thing of that these in those cases,
that it's one thing like that that it even if
it's not enough evidence to prosecute, it just is enough
evidence to change everyone's mind about you. Totally totally, and
it would be hard to explain that where it's just.
Speaker 1 (47:14):
Like, yeah, it's not out of this realm of possibility
that everyone would think he's guilty. It totally makes sense. Yeah.
So unfortunately, the male DNA is not in the criminal database,
so the case goes cold again. In the nineties, police
look into several different suspects in the case. One is
a cab driver named Thomas Edward Luther who in February
(47:34):
nineteen eighty two in Breckrage had picked up a hitchhiker
and had raped and assaulted her, and while in jail,
he allegedly bragged about being responsible for the murders, and
according to his girlfriend, he didn't come home on the
night of the murders. And then another suspect named Tracy
Petrocelli murdered his fiance in nineteen eighty one and went
(47:55):
on a multi state crime spree. And during this crime spree,
he stayed at the holiday in where a networked. Oh wo.
So another fucking crazy coincidence. Neither suspect DNA matches the
evidence from the crime scene, all right, So twenty years later,
in twenty eighteen, authorities decide to go the friends of
(48:15):
genealogy route in hopes of finding a DNA match. So
the company United Data Connect finds twelve thousand people who
are a possible match to the DNA profile that's on
the glove and the tissue, and private investigator Charlie McCormick,
who's now eighty years old and still on the case,
I know, and he's like the photo of him, he's
(48:37):
like salt to the earth, grandpa. Sure, So he and
his team start going through the twelve thousand people, like,
you know, genealogy can only get you so far. You
still have to do the groundwork. Groundwork, footwork, footwork.
Speaker 2 (48:52):
Thank you, I'm but it's the same your feet are
on the ground, that's right. I have to be pick one.
Speaker 1 (48:57):
So the team reaches out to a people who like
make sense in those twelve thousand people, and they all
agree to give DNA and so finally, after a year
of searching, the team finds a direct match to whoever
the killer is. So a relative of the killer, all right,
So I'm gonna pivot real quick for another story that
(49:18):
made news in the area at the same time as
the missing women did so. On January sixth, nineteen eighty two,
same day that the women went missing, at just before midnight,
Sheriff Harold E. Bray is on a United Airlines flight
to California. As the plane is flying over the Guanella
(49:38):
Pass in Colorado. Over these mountain ranges thousands of feet above,
the sheriff sees headlights blinking the Morse code signal for SOS.
Like he just happens to be looking at the window.
He happens to be a sheriff, so he knows SOS
and he fucking sees blinking SOS.
Speaker 2 (49:58):
Oh my, you keep going back.
Speaker 1 (50:02):
That chills like, what what did he do? I know?
The sheriff tells the flight crew and they radio the FAA,
the Federal Aviation Administration. The controller for the FAA asks
a close by plane to investigate. The plane circles the area,
spots a car that had blinking SOS, flashes his light
(50:23):
to let the driver know that he's been located, and
then the FAA contacts Clearcreek County Fire Chief David Montoya.
He's like, can't fucking believe what he's hearing. A sheriff
in an airplane saw a car on the ground using
headlights to signal SOS. Later, he says, he tells nine News,
(50:44):
I thought it was the craziest thing I'd ever heard of.
So Dave drives at the top of the Guenela Pass,
which has an elevation over eleven thousand feet and is
widely known to be unpassable during the winter. Again it's January.
Dave finds a truck stuff in a snow drift, and
inside is a thirty year old local mechanic named Alan
Lee Phillips. Dave says, sure as heck. There he was
(51:08):
in his little pickup and he saw me and said,
oh my god, I'm saved. It's a small town sheriff
like this. Shit like this doesn't happen, you know. So
the fire chief, Dave asks Alan what he's doing in
the Guenela Pass when it's twenty below freezing and has
been snowing heavily, and he doesn't have chains on his tires,
like kind of everyone in the area knows not to
(51:30):
be driving there. He said he'd been drinking at a
bar with some friends and had decided to drive home,
which you know, over the pass, and he'd been drinking,
so he thought it was a good idea at the time,
you know, the eighties, when drinking and driving.
Speaker 2 (51:45):
Were an excuse you could tell the sheriff and that
would be okay, right.
Speaker 1 (51:50):
Alan says that as he traveled over the pass, his
truck got stuck. He tried to dig the truck out,
didn't work, started walking to a nearby ski area, realized
it was too cold, so he got back in his truck,
covered with an emergency blanket, and then thought about what
to do. He heard the airplane flashed sos and so
that you know, so he got your flucking saved. He
(52:13):
would have frozen to death in his truck, yeah, like quickly.
Before driving Alan home, Dave, the fire chief, notices that
Alan has a quote sizeable bruise on the side of
his face. When asked about the bruce, Alan says, while
he was waiting for help, he'd gotten out of his
truck the pee. When he tried to get back in,
(52:34):
he was blinded by the snow and was and slammed
headfirst into the corner of the truck. The story of
this crazy rescue of a man who otherwise would have
frozen to death becomes huge news well almost forty years later,
forty years from the day that the two women had
been murdered and this guy had been found on the pass,
(52:57):
the DNA from the glove and tissue along turns out
to none other than that man who had been disposing
of a net's body after he had gone over the pass.
So like these two fucking separate stories just in twenty
eighteen turned out to be related. Holy shit. Yeah, So,
(53:21):
alanly Phillips is his name. He's matched to the DNA
via a discarded fast food rapper that had traces of
his saliva on You know, it still took a while
for them to track him down and to match the DNA.
It isn't until his mugshot is shown on local television
news that the now retired fire chief Dave our friend
Dave Montoya recognizes him as the guy who forty almost
(53:44):
forty years ago he had saved from the mountain pass.
So they hadn't even put it together yet, thought it
was the same dude, and that's exactly he had been
fucking disposing of a net's body. Oh my god, I know, chilling, right,
Dave says, quote, we ended up picking up the guy
straight out of hell. So, as it turns out, Alan
hadn't been driving home from the bar that night. He
(54:06):
was heading home after killing Bobby and Annette. Alan is
now seventy years old and the father of three, and
since nineteen eighty two, he had been still living in
the Breckenridge area. On February twenty fourth, twenty twenty one,
police arrest Allan without incident at a traffic stop in
Clear Creek County. He's charged with kidnapping, first degree assault,
(54:28):
and first degree murder of both Annette Schnee and Bobby
Joe Oberholtzer. Today, Monday the thirteenth, was his preliminary hearing.
Oh whoa yeah, And as of this recording, we don't
have much info about him. I did the best I
could about who he is and what he did. He
might be connected to more murders, so I'll keep everyone posted.
Speaker 2 (54:48):
We also, if he's on his way to court, might
be found innocent. Oh, right, alleged important to mention right,
it's all alleged.
Speaker 1 (54:57):
It's all alleged. Right. Bobby's husband, Jeff, who at one
time was a suspect, released a statement saying that he
praised the arrest. Quote, well, finally, after all these decades,
bring closure in peace to this hideous nightmare. After Philip's arrest,
Annette's mother, Eileen, who is now eighty eight years old,
says her family has endured quote thirty nine years of hell.
(55:21):
She said, quote it's been a rough forty years. I
thought maybe i'd be gone before I had closure in
this case. And then she said, I'm ready to go
when it's my time now. And that is the story
of Annette Schnee and Bobby Joe Oberholtzer. I mean, holy shit, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (55:42):
That is the craziest, most roundabout. First of all, I
can't believe I've never heard.
Speaker 1 (55:49):
That, because it just happened. They were just connected as
two cold cases you hadn't heard about. It was one
guy driving over a fucking mountain pass you hadn't heard about.
And then it turns out they' connected.
Speaker 2 (56:00):
Yeah, I mean the mountain past story feels like the
kind of weird news story that you would read separately
in any way. Yeah, the idea that they're all the
same storyline in out of chronological order, right, is mind blowing.
Speaker 1 (56:15):
And it's not until this guy sees him on the
news that he puts it all together. Fucking forty years later,
I can't recognize someone I met last weekend.
Speaker 2 (56:22):
But it must have been well, because it was weird
enough as it was, but it must have been.
Speaker 1 (56:28):
Very I mean it made the news. Yeah, yeah, the
event itself.
Speaker 2 (56:32):
But I'm saying I wonder if that fire chief just
had some kind of a vibe of like, oh this
is interesting and weird and off yeah and whatever. But
he's also not a cop, so he's just like, all right,
let's just get you out of here. Yeah, that's that
part isn't really.
Speaker 1 (56:47):
Now suspicious except for the bruise, But that does make
sense of how he would get it.
Speaker 2 (56:53):
Right, sure, well absolutely, and that as much as the
business card in Rye Dead Woman's Possessions, you know, you
can write that off or you would have to. Anyonere
gonna have a bruise for any reason, totally one you
don't even remember, like yeah, wow, that's that's a mind
(57:13):
that's mind blowing.
Speaker 1 (57:14):
So if anything comes up, all all update everyone, Oh good,
all right, that's it. We did our job, We absolutely did,
and you guys did yours. Thank you so much for listening.
We appreciate all of you. Send us your hometowns, send
us like, you know, high fives and helloes. Whatever you want.
Sure get in there and you know, stay sexy and
(57:35):
don't get murdered. Goodbye, Elvis Do you want a Cookie?
Speaker 2 (57:47):
This has been an exactly right production.
Speaker 1 (57:49):
Our senior producers are Alejandra Keck and Molly Smith.
Speaker 2 (57:51):
Our editor is Aristotle oce Vedo.
Speaker 1 (57:54):
This episode was mixed by Leona Squalacci.
Speaker 2 (57:56):
Our researchers are Mayaron McGlashan and Ali Elkin.
Speaker 1 (57:59):
Email your hometown on to My Favorite Murder at gmail
dot com.
Speaker 2 (58:02):
Follow the show on Instagram at my Favorite Murder.
Speaker 1 (58:04):
Listen to My Favorite Murder on the iHeartRadio app, Apple
Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2 (58:09):
And now you can watch us on exactly Right's YouTube page.
While you're there, please like and subscribe.
Speaker 1 (58:14):
Goodbyeye
Hosts And Creators
Georgia Hardstark
Karen Kilgariff
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