A court in the Kenyan port city of Mombasa has sentenced doomsday cult leader Paul Mackenzie to 200 years in prison for the starvation deaths of 190 children and one adult, closing — for now — one of the worst mass-killing cases in Kenya’s history. Justice Diana Kavedza handed down the sentence on Friday, splitting it into two consecutive 100-year terms: one for murder by starvation, the other for direct homicide.
Mackenzie, who led the Good News International Church, was convicted on 19 October along with 28 followers of all 191 murder counts. Prosecutors had asked for the death penalty. The judge declined, saying the case came close to the threshold for the rarest of cases, but a death sentence could fail as a deterrent because some of the convicted men saw death as a path to heaven and reunion with their dead children. She also rejected the defence’s request for sentences of no more than 10 years, saying such a punishment would bear no rational relationship to the loss of 191 lives.
Stephen Mwiti, 48, lost six of his children at Shakahola. His wife, who took the children to the forest settlement, is among those convicted. “I lost children and I will not be able to get them back no matter what happens to Mackenzie and his accomplices,” he told Reuters before the hearing. “I expect him to be sentenced to death or be jailed for life so that he never comes out to cause more deaths.” Even if the adults had agreed to fast, he asked, “what about the children?”
Mackenzie’s own son Dan, who left the church before the deaths, said his father “did not spare his own family”. “I lost friends too, and my younger brother. It’s justice to the people who we lost over there in Shakahola,” he told Reuters.
The case began in April 2023, when police digging in Shakahola Forest, near the coastal town of Malindi, started uncovering shallow graves. Mackenzie had told his followers to starve themselves — and their children — to meet Jesus before the end of the world. His accomplices threatened and beat those who wavered. The emaciated bodies were found in shallow graves and dumped in latrines; some victims had been buried alive. Mackenzie had been on the authorities’ radar since 2017. His church in Malindi was shut down in 2019, and he moved his followers into the forest.
Although the trial covered 191 victims, the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights says 448 bodies were ultimately recovered from the forest. Mackenzie has pleaded not guilty in a separate case over 52 more deaths at a village about 30 kilometres away, which would bring the suspected total to 500.
The sentence is the heaviest ever handed down in Kenya for a crime of this kind, and one of the largest cult-murder sentences anywhere since Jonestown in Guyana in 1978, when more than 900 people died, and the Ugandan doomsday cult deaths of 2000, when more than 700 people were killed. But the verdict also leaves hard questions unanswered. Ojiro Odhiambo, head of rapid response at the Kenya Human Rights Commission, said accountability should go further: local administrators, police, intelligence officers and religious leaders all failed to act on repeated warning signs. “All these people have failed the people,” he said. President William Ruto appointed a task force in May 2023 to review the law governing religious groups, and proposals were published in 2024 — but they have yet to become law. The sentence closes the courtroom chapter; the regulatory one is still open. Readers wondering why people join doomsday cults can read our explainer on the pull such groups exert.
The 28 co-accused were sentenced alongside Mackenzie, with terms set according to their roles; two of them received 160 years each. Mackenzie smiled as he entered a tent outside the court for the hearing, wearing a grey polo shirt and black trousers. He had denied the charges throughout, insisting he forced no one to starve. The court rejected that defence.
