Kenyan cult leader convicted of starving 190 children to death

Ben Farmer and David OchamiOctober 20, 2026 — 7:30pmWARNING: Distressing contentCape Town: A taxi driver-turned-apocalyptic preacher has been convicted of murdering 190 children and one adult in one of the worst cult atrocities of recent history.Paul Mackenzie led a starvation cult that encouraged acolytes to starve themselves and their children to death to meet Jesus.Pastor Paul Mackenzie of the self-styled Good News International Church attends court.APAfter police broke up Mackenzie’s self-styled church in a remote coastal forest in Kenya in 2023, officers eventually found more than 400 bodies in shallow graves near the town of Malindi.Justice Diana Kavedza Mochache used an eight-hour verdict to depict Mackenzie as a charismatic leader with a hypnotic hold on his followers, who were controlled through indoctrination, radicalisation and isolation from society.He invented an apocalyptic creed requiring followers to reject secular authorities, modern education and medicine, and prepare for a splendid death to “meet Jesus”.Under his teachings, the cult planned three stages of starvation, with children dying first, then women and then men.Body bags laid out at the scene where dozens of bodies of Mackenzie’s followers were found.APWitnesses had earlier said Mackenzie told his flock that “all followers must fast to death and that his own children would fast next and that he would fast and die last”.He also forbade cult members from sending their children to school and from going to hospital when they were ill, branding such institutions as satanic.Mackenzie was convicted alongside 28 of his associates after a lengthy trial which gripped and horrified the country.‘Hierarchy of death’“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,” the judge said.The court in Mombasa had heard Mackenzie “initiated and directed” extreme fasting at his 3.2-square-kilometre ranch in Shakahola Forest, claiming there was a “structured hierarchy of death” which said children should die first, followed by teenagers, women and then men.Judge Diana Mochache presides over Mackenzie’s trial.APPost-mortem examinations and police reports showed the children mostly died from starvation, but also from “asphyxia, neck compression and traumatic head injury”, prosecutors said.Mackenzie’s co-accused had helped him achieve mass starvation, acting as his lackeys or enforcers, including by beating and suffocating starving followers, isolating them, denying them food and water, obstructing police, digging graves or participating in secret burials.Mackenzie had denied charges of murder, manslaughter, child torture and terrorism in a case that highlighted the failings of Kenyan authorities to keep track of the activities of fringe churches and sects.The authorities have been accused of failing to stop the murders by not acting on earlier tip-offs about the cult’s harmful teachings.Mackenzie founded his Good News International Church in 2003 and over the years amassed a large congregation.He was able to evade the law for years and set up branches in Nairobi and along Kenya’s coast that attracted thousands of devotees.He was arrested in 2017 on charges of radicalisation, acquitted, and then again in 2019 in Shakahola, after the deaths of two children from starvation.The court heard that many of the dead had never been identified.There have also been concerns that vulnerable brainwashed acolytes who escaped the police round-up in 2023 have remained under the cult’s spell and have continued to starve themselves.Police said in September 2025 they had uncovered dozens of new bodies in fresh graves dating from the time after the Shakahola Forest operation was broken up.Mackenzie and his co-accused will be sentenced on November 6.The Telegraph, LondonGet a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what’s making headlines around the world. Sign up for our weekly What in the World newsletter.From our partners