Paul Mackenzie, leader of a Kenyan doomsday group, has been found guilty of murdering 191 people, nearly all children ordered to starve so they could “meet Jesus.”
The Sun reported that Mackenzie, head of Good News International Ministries, was convicted of the murders along with 29 other leaders who also faced murder findings after pleading not guilty.
All but one of the 191 victims were children. Court documents tied the convictions to deaths tied to the group’s extreme fasting orders in Kenya’s Shakahola forest.
Mackenzie and the co-accused insisted nobody was forced to die. Survivors and prosecutors described a different sequence: children first, then women, then men, with church leaders last.
Mackenzie built the church in 2003 and drew thousands of followers across Kenya. He broadcast fiery End Day sermons on Times TV from a base in Malindi.
In 2019 he shut down the public operation and moved loyal supporters deep into the woods to prepare for doomsday. Education was called “evil.” Modern medicine was said to go “against doctrine.”
Survivors said he drew up a death order. Children were forced to starve first. One follower claimed anyone who resisted the fast had to be pushed “to heaven through kicks and blows.”
Kenya’s Office for the Director of Public Prosecutions said in a July statement that victims buried at the site may have been “starved and suffocated as a result of adopting and promoting extreme religious ideologies.”
"We once found 12 bodies of children in a line inside a grave. It was massive, the bodies were arranged like clothes, one on top of another."
A gravedigger hired by local authorities gave that account to the BBC after crews cleared the site. Remains included children as young as a few weeks old. Many bodies could not be identified because of severe decomposition and were tagged only by grave location or discovery date.
In total, 429 bodies were dug up from the plot in Shakahola forest in Kilifi County. Arrests of Mackenzie and co-accused followed in 2023.
Stephen Mwiti, 48, lost all six of his children in the forest. His ex-wife was among the accused. He found and buried only the remains of his son Samuel.
Mwiti spoke in plain terms about the man he holds responsible.
"If I met Pastor Mackenzie today, one of us would have to die. All six of my children died in Shakahola forest. I only found and buried the remains of my son Samuel."
Justice Diana Mochache delivered a scathing eight-hour judgement and said the preacher believed he was “Jesus’s mouthpiece.” Mackenzie and the 29 others were set to appear at Mombasa High Court on a Monday morning ahead of judgement by Justice Diana Kavedza.
Enos Amanya Ngala, once Mackenzie’s head of security, had been charged with murder before striking a plea deal to become a prosecution witness.
Beyond the 191 murder convictions, Mackenzie faces separate cases involving terrorism, radicalisation, and denying education to children. He has denied the charges against him.
The pattern was not subtle. A self-proclaimed pastor rejected schools and medicine, moved families into a remote forest, and preached that starvation was the path to meet Jesus. Children paid first.
Local authorities had to hire gravediggers to open the ground. Prosecutors tied the deaths to extreme religious ideology. A father buried one son and still waits for the rest.
Courts exist to draw a hard line when adults turn faith into a death order for kids. Accountability here is not optional. It is the minimum.
