A Kenyan court convicts starvation cult leader Paul Mackenzie of murdering 190 children

The judgment took more than eight hours to read, and the families sat through it.

At the High Court in Mombasa on Monday, Justice Diana Kavedza Mochache found Paul Mackenzie and 28 co accused guilty of murder over the deaths of 190 children and one adult, in one of the worst cult related disasters in recent history. The judge said that in some cases children were isolated and denied food while their parents watched. Mackenzie, in a striped polo shirt and red trousers, stood silently staring into space when his name was read out. His wife, one of the co accused, sat alongside him. Sentencing is set for November 6, and defence lawyer Lawrence Obonyo said he had been instructed to appeal.

Mackenzie was arrested in 2023 after a tip off, and weeks later authorities began uncovering bodies in shallow graves in the Shakahola Forest near the Kenyan coast. Prosecutors say his Good News International Church ran a Christian doomsday sect whose followers were ordered to starve themselves and their children to death to go to heaven before the world ended. Mackenzie denied forcing anyone to starve. The court rejected that argument. In total, more than 400 bodies have been recovered from the forest, many so decomposed that only 26 could be identified. Monday's judgment covered 191 deaths; investigations into the rest are ongoing.

The case has raised the question Kenya has not answered: how Mackenzie kept operating. Police had been aware of him since 2017, when his premises were searched. Authorities shut his church down in 2019, and he relocated to the Shakahola Forest, where the dying happened out of sight.

Francis Wanje, 62, lost eight family members to the cult, including two grandchildren. Speaking before the verdict, he told Reuters: “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.” Afterward he said the judgment gave him confidence in the judiciary, and a warning to pass on: “You find churches everywhere, but they have got ill reasons for the churches. So it is good for members of the public to be very careful.”