Kenyan cult leader found guilty over 190 children starved to death in the hope of ‘meeting Jesus’

The leader of a Kenyan Christian cult has been found guilty of the murder of 190 children through an organised system of enforced fasting and abuse.

Paul Mackenzie was on Monday convicted along with about 30 other suspects at Mombasa High Court over the deaths of 191 people, all but one of them children in Shakahola forest in eastern Kenya. Prosecutors have dubbed the trial one of Kenya’s “most consequential” criminal cases ever.

The court found the deaths resulted from an “organised system in which religious teachings and an established hierarchy were used to direct and enforce deadly fasting among Mackenzie’s followers,” the office of the director of public prosecutions in Kenya said.

“Fasting was implemented sequentially, beginning with children, while guards controlled movement and prevented followers from escaping,” the office said in a statement. Mackenzie also discouraged modern medicine and formal education, the court heard.

Mackenzie, who is in his early 50s, and his co-accused were charged with the murders in 2024 after hundreds of children’s bodies were exhumed from Shakahola forest where Mackenzie and his associates were accused of running a death cult.

Authorities started digging up bodies in Shakahola forest in April 2023. So far they have recovered 429 bodies. Further charges could follow.

Mackenzie, who ran the Good News International Church, was accused of instructing his followers to starve themselves and their children to death so they could reach heaven and meet Jesus, CNN previously reported.

Postmortem findings cited by Lady Justice Diana Kavedza on Monday indicated that some victims died from suffocation, neck compression or head injuries, rather than starvation alone.

In a lengthy ruling lasting more than eight hours on Monday, the judge described how Mackenzie used sermons and written materials to persuade followers that the outside world was evil, and that they could only find salvation by moving to the forest.

Evidence extracted from his phone, including WhatsApp messages, showed communications with followers before they relocated to Shakahola, according to the judge. She said followers were persuaded to abandon their homes, families and livelihoods.

The judge also described how those who resisted Mackenzie’s directive to fast were forced to comply. “Children were restrained, denied food and punished for attempting to eat or escape,” the director of public prosecutions said.

CNN previously reported on families searching for relatives who had disappeared into Shakahola forest. Rodgers Shibutse, a Nairobi resident, said he found his mother’s remains among those exhumed in February 2024.

Shibutse told CNN on Monday that Mackenzie had caused immense pain and that he wanted him sentenced to life in prison. Mackenzie and his co-accused will be handed their sentence on November 6.

Asked whether that would bring justice for his mother, Shibutse said: “Not 100% justice, but at least the government has done something.”