A Mombasa High Court judge on Oct. 19 found Paul Mackenzie guilty of murdering 191 people, 190 of them children, in a case tied to a starvation cult he led in eastern Kenya. The verdict also convicted 28 co-accused of the same murders, according to the Associated Press.
The 28 co-accused were part of an original group of 31 defendants. According to Citizen Digital, two defendants died during the proceedings, and a third, Enos Amanya Ngala, pleaded guilty to all 191 murder counts and is awaiting sentencing. Mackenzie and the remaining 27 defendants were convicted after a full trial, bringing the total number convicted to 29.
“I am satisfied that the prosecution has proved the case against all the 29 accused persons for the murder of 190 children and one adult,” Justice Diana Kavedza Mochache said, according to DW.
The Court’s Findings
The court found the deaths resulted from what Kenya’s Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions described as an “organised system in which religious teachings and an established hierarchy were used to direct and enforce deadly fasting among Mackenzie’s followers.”
“Fasting was implemented sequentially, beginning with children, while guards controlled movement and prevented followers from escaping,” the office said in a statement. Prosecutors had alleged that Mackenzie ordered extreme fasting at his 800-acre ranch under a “structured hierarchy of death,” in which children were to die first, followed by teenagers, then women, then men.
Prosecutors said postmortems and police reports showed most of the children died from starvation, though some deaths were attributed to asphyxia, neck compression and traumatic head injury. “Children were restrained, denied food and punished for attempting to eat or escape,” the office said.
Kavedza took more than eight hours to deliver her ruling, CNN reported, laying out how Mackenzie used sermons and written materials to paint the outside world as evil and the forest as his followers’ only road to salvation.
Background on Mackenzie and the Church
Mackenzie, a former taxi driver, founded the Good News International Church in Malindi in 2003, according to multiple outlets including DW and the BBC. The court found the church operated as a cult that isolated followers and discouraged modern medicine and formal education. At its height, the church had branches in Nairobi and along Kenya’s coast and drew thousands of followers. Mackenzie later claimed he had shut it down in 2019.
He built his following through fiery sermons at his Malindi church and an online presence, and some members said his predictions came true, pointing to one about a “great virus” that he preached shortly before COVID-19 hit Kenya, CBS News reported.
Defense and Families
Mackenzie pleaded not guilty to the 191 murder counts in 2024 and has separately denied manslaughter and terrorism charges in other cases. His lawyers argued the prosecution’s case rested on weak ground, saying it was “largely founded on circumstantial evidence, hearsay accounts and inconclusive forensic findings.”
After the verdict, defense lawyer Lawrence Obonyo called the ruling “perplexing” and said the defense plans to appeal.
Rodgers Shibutse, whose mother followed Mackenzie’s teachings, told CNN that Mackenzie caused immense pain and should face a life sentence.
The Shakahola Investigation
Authorities began exhuming bodies from Shakahola Forest in April 2023 and have recovered 429 so far, CNN reported. The murder charges against Mackenzie and his co-accused came in 2024, after the remains of hundreds of children had been pulled from the forest.
Mackenzie’s run-ins with the law predate Shakahola. According to AFP, he was arrested in 2017 on radicalization charges and acquitted, then arrested again in 2019 after two children died at Shakahola, and was released on bail.
His April 2023 arrest came after a rights group alerted authorities, leading to the rescue of some followers. In January, Mackenzie was charged in connection with another 52 bodies found at Kwa Binzaro, a village about 30 kilometers from Shakahola.
Prosecutors have called the trial one of the most consequential criminal cases in Kenya’s history.
What’s Next
Mackenzie and his co-accused are scheduled to be sentenced Nov. 6.
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