Cult followers starved to ‘meet Jesus’ and death toll keeps climbing, Kenya cops say
The death toll keeps climbing as investigators search a forest in Kenya where a starvation cult gathered. The lead pastor is in custody, but hundreds of people are missing.
The horrific tragedy is still unfolding as investigators search the site where pastor Paul Nthenge Mackenzie led a group called the Good News International Church, Kenya’s Directorate of Criminal Investigations said in an April 24 news release.
The cult group gathered at an 800-acre site in Shakahola forest, Malindi, where Mackenzie “told his followers to starve themselves in order to ‘meet Jesus,’” police said.
Police began investigating the site after receiving a tip on April 14, the release said. Investigators found “shallow mass graves” and linked a growing number of deaths to the cult.
The death toll reached 90 and included several children, police told AFP and Reuters on April 25.
“The bodies were all badly decomposed” and “thought to have died weeks” ago, police told The Nation.
Authorities are investigating “whether some of the victims could have been murdered before being buried,” Japhet Koome, Inspector General of the National Police Service, said in the release. He described the deaths as “disturbing and inhuman.”
Thirty-four people have been rescued, though the full extent of the tragedy is unknown.
The Kenya Red Cross is coordinating with police and helping track reports of people missing in connection with the Good News International Church, the organization said on Twitter on April 24. The organization has received reports of at least 212 unaccounted-for victims.
“We don’t know how many more graves, how many more bodies, we are likely to discover,” Interior Minister Kithure Kindiki told AFP.
The making of a deadly cult: From television to police custody
The Good News International Church was founded in 2003 by Mackenzie and describes its “mission” as nurturing “the faithful holistically in all matters of Christian spirituality as we prepare for the second coming of Jesus Christ through teaching and evangelism,” according to its website.
Mackenzie gained prominence as a “controversial televangelist,” The Standard reported.
His televangelism led to his first arrest “in 2017 on charges of ‘radicalisation’ after urging families not to send their children to school,” AFP reported.
Mackenzie was arrested again March 23 in connection to the starvation death of two children, police said. He was arraigned and released after posting cash bail.
Police arrested the religious sect’s leader once more on April 14 and kept him in custody. While Kenyan officials have indicated their willingness to press charges, it’s unclear the charges Mackenzie is or will be facing.
Fourteen other cult members are also in custody, Reuters reported.
McClatchy News could not find a way to reach Mackenzie or a representative of him as of April 25.
Mackenzie’s most-recent public comments were made as he left the Malindi Law Courts on April 17, The Nation reported. “You don’t know the magnitude of what you are fighting. You will soon face the consequences,” he said, according to the outlet’s translation.
‘We are desperate and grieving’
As police continue to search Shakahola forest for survivors and bodies, families of cult followers have flocked to the scene hoping to find their missing loved ones, The Nation reported.
The wife of a cult follower who was rescued alive and later arrested spoke to The Nation, saying, “My husband refused to leave the forest … I am relieved he is alive.”
Many other family members of cult followers are waiting for answers.
“We are desperate and grieving,” a man looking for his sister, brother-in-law and grandson told The Nation. “The bodies are in bad shape. We don’t know whether our relatives are among the dead. We need answers although we know it could take some time.”
Kenyan officials have expressed strong condemnation of the tragedy and the cult involved.
“The unfolding Shakahola Forest Massacre is the clearest abuse of the constitutionally enshrined human right to freedom of worship,” Interior Minister Kindiki said on Twitter on April 23.
Malindi is about 350 miles southwest of Nairobi and near the Kenyan coast.
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