MOMBASA — A court in Kenya's coastal city of Mombasa sentenced Paul Mackenzie, leader of a Christian doomsday sect, to 200 years in prison for the murders of 190 children and one adult. The sentence came two weeks after his conviction.
The judgment specifies 100 years for murder by starvation and 100 years for direct homicide. Prosecutors said Mackenzie and his Good News International church instructed members to starve themselves and their families to death, believing it would lead them to heaven before a prophesied end of the world.
Accomplices threatened and beat victims to ensure compliance. Investigators found emaciated bodies in shallow graves and dumped in latrines within the Shakahola forest. Authorities confirmed some victims had been buried alive.
The tragedy surfaced in March 2023, when police received a report that a man's brother and wife had starved their children to death in the forest under Mackenzie's direction. Mackenzie was arrested later that year but released on bail. After his release, relatives of cult members said Mackenzie advanced the date he had told followers the world would end. Police rearrested him and conducted a systematic search of the Shakahola forest, exhuming numerous mass graves.
More than 400 bodies have been recovered from the forest area near the coast in southeastern Kenya. Due to severe decomposition, only 26 could be identified.
Mackenzie, a former taxi driver, denied the murder charges, claiming he did not force victims to starve. Justice Diana Kavedza-Mochache, who presided over the trial, rejected his defense and detailed specific cases where children were isolated and denied food while their parents watched.
The conviction covered 191 deaths. Investigations into more than 200 other deaths remain ongoing.
Police records show Mackenzie was flagged as early as 2017, when officers searched his premises. In 2019, authorities shut down his church, after which he relocated operations to the Shakahola forest. Mackenzie forbade cult members from sending children to school or seeking medical care at hospitals, labeling such institutions as satanic. Cult members lived in rudimentary homes made from polythene sheeting and thatch, arranged in areas Mackenzie named after biblical locations including Jerusalem and Judea.
The case has intensified calls for stricter oversight of religious organizations in Kenya, where religious faith holds a central place in public life. Mackenzie faces additional charges beyond those covered by the recent conviction.
