A Kenyan court convicted doomsday cult leader Paul Mackenzie and roughly 30 co-defendants of murder on Monday for orchestrating the starvation deaths of 190 children and one adult in the Shakahola Forest.
Justice Diana Kavedza Mochache delivered the verdict after a hearing that stretched more than eight hours at Mombasa High Court. Mackenzie, a former taxi driver who founded the Good News International Church, sat in court wearing a striped polo shirt and red trousers alongside his wife, who is among the co-accused. When the judge read his name, he stood in silence and stared into space.
The ruling covers only a fraction of the total dead. More than 400 bodies have been recovered from shallow graves in the coastal forest near southeastern Kenya, many so severely decomposed that just 26 could be identified. Prosecutors say Mackenzie organized a Christian doomsday sect and commanded followers to starve themselves and their children to death in order to reach heaven before an impending apocalypse. He denied the murder charges, claiming he never forced victims to starve, but the court rejected his defense.
Family members of the dead gathered at the courthouse to hear the judgment. Francis Wanje, 62, lost eight relatives including two grandchildren to the cult. Speaking before the verdict, he said: “It has been really a heavy thing (for) us as a family, and it has really taken us very far in terms of psychological problems, … I was hoping for this particular day.”
Mackenzie and his co-accused will be sentenced on Nov. 6. The former pastor faces additional charges over the forest deaths, including terrorism-related counts which he has denied. Prosecutors also allege that while in detention, he directed the killings of 52 more people in Kwa Binzaro village, located about 30 km from Shakahola. He has pleaded not guilty in that separate case.
The horror in Shakahola first surfaced in mid-March 2023, when a local man reported to police that his brother and wife had starved their children to death in the forest on Mackenzie’s orders. Mackenzie was arrested but released on bail, after which relatives say he accelerated the timeline for the world’s end. Police rearrested him in April 2023 and began systematically exhuming mass graves.
People with direct knowledge of the cult said that Mackenzie structured the mass starvation in three phases: children first, then women and young men, and finally the remaining men. He forbade followers from sending children to school or seeking hospital care, labeling such institutions Satanic. Cult members lived in makeshift shelters of polythene sheeting and thatch that Mackenzie divided into zones bearing biblical names like Jerusalem and Judea.
The case has intensified scrutiny of religious oversight in Kenya, where faith holds deep influence in public life. Authorities had been aware of Mackenzie since 2017, when police searched his premises. In 2019, officials shut down his church and he relocated operations to the Shakahola Forest. President William Ruto said in 2023 that government agencies should have prevented the deaths and accepted responsibility as president.
Monday’s judgment addressed 191 deaths while investigations into the remaining victims continue.