The missing people with ties to online cult ‘don’t want to be found,’ police say
The four people missing from a St. Louis suburb, who are believed to have ties to an online cult led by a convicted child molester, have gone completely off the grid with two young children in tow, the Missouri police officer leading the investigation said Wednesday.
"They've shut off their phones, shut off their social media, shut off everything," Berkeley Police Maj. Steve Runge told NBC News. "We've even sent them money via a cash app and they haven't collected it. They're just gone."
In a telephone interview, he said, "it's like they don't want to be found."
The six were last seen at a Quality Inn in Florissant, about 18 miles north of downtown St. Louis, Runge said. They stayed there from Aug. 2 to Aug. 6 of last year, he said.
Before that, the group was renting a home in nearby Berkeley.
There have been reports that they were evicted from that home, but, Runge said, "I don't know that to be the case."
What is clear, he said, is that the adults appear to have ties to the cult led by Rashad Jamal, who is serving an 18-year prison sentence in Georgia after he was convicted in August of one count of child molestation and one count of cruelty to children.
The former rapper-turned-online guru operates what he calls the University of Cosmic Intelligence. And in an interview with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, he denied knowing the six missing people.
Jamal also denied being a cult leader even though, in videos posted online that have had more than 200,000 views, he regularly calls himself a god, a prophet or a messiah.
His website claims its mission is to illuminate the minds of Black and Latino people.
The missing six have been identified as Gerielle German, 26, and her 3-year-old son, Ashton Mitchell; Naaman Williams, 29; Mikayla Thompson, 23; Ma’Kayla Wickerson, 25, and her 3-year daughter, Malaiyah.
Wickerson’s mother, Cartisha Morgan, told NBC affiliate KSDK of St. Louis recently that she has not had any contact with her daughter or her granddaughter since August.
Like Williams and Thompson, Wickerson is from the St. Louis area. And Williams, according to business records, appeared to be running a business out of a home in St. Louis called Crystal Clarity that offers "people access to a variety of metaphysical items and life clarity via readings."
Unlike the others, German and her 3-year-old son are from Mississippi and moved to the St. Louis area abruptly last year, her mother, Shelita Gibson, told KSDK.
Before they left, Gibson said, German had started meditating on a blanket outside her house and was quoting Jamal.
“She was saying things about high frequency, low frequency and cosmic husbands," Gibson said. "And she was kind of acting a little weird, but I really didn’t pay any attention to it at the time."
When German announced that she was leaving for Missouri with her son — and abandoning her 4-year-old daughter, as well as the rest of her family — Gibson said she told her, "You need to rethink this."
But German simply replied, "Well, I'm leaving," her mother recalled.
Jamal, who is originally from Chicago, appears to have followers across the country. And some of them have had serious run-ins with the law.
Earlier this month, Yasmine Hider was hit with a 35-year prison sentence for her role in the fatal shooting of 22-year-old Adam Simjee of Apopka, Florida, in the Talladega National Forest in Alabama. She and her accomplice, Krystal Pinkins, had been living off the grid in the forest when they tried to rob Simjee and his girlfriend.
In social media postings seen by NBC News, Hider repeatedly mentioned Jamal.
Pinkins, who received a life sentence for the Simjee killing, was also a follower of Jamal, according to various published reports.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
