Kenyan Court Sentences Cult Leader Paul Mackenzie to 200 Years for 191 Murders

The Mombasa High Court sentenced Paul Mackenzie to 200 years in prison on November 6 for the murder of 190 children and one adult.

Justice Diana Kavedza divided the sentence into 100 years for 183 counts of murder by starvation and 100 years for eight counts of murder by direct homicide. The court had convicted Mackenzie and 28 others in October of the 191 counts. Mackenzie, founder of the Good News International Church, ordered followers to relocate to a remote site in Shakahola Forest in Kilifi County and to fast until death so they could meet Jesus before the world ended.

Prosecutors established that starvation was the cause of death in 72 cases. Other victims died from asphyxia, manual neck compression or traumatic head injury. In 110 cases the precise cause could not be determined because of decomposition, but the circumstances supported the conclusion that the victims died under the fasting regime. The court found that Mackenzie issued a directive requiring children to die first, followed by youths, women and men. Accomplices enforced the order through confinement, threats and violence.

More than 400 bodies were recovered from shallow graves in the forest after police began excavations in April 2023. The Kenya National Commission on Human Rights recorded 448 bodies in total. Mackenzie faces additional charges related to other deaths. The trial covered only the 191 cases in which evidence met the standard for murder convictions. Kenya has not carried out a death sentence since 1987, so the court imposed lengthy prison terms instead.

Twenty-eight co-defendants received sentences ranging from 10 to 160 years. Fifteen received 160 years. Ten received 140 years. One received 100 years. Two others, including Enos Amanya Ngala who entered a plea agreement, received 10 years each. Mackenzie, a former taxi driver, registered the church in 2020. It operated from a headquarters in Malindi and maintained branches across Kenya. Followers lived in mud huts on an 800-acre ranch and rejected formal education, modern medicine and government identification programmes.

The judge stated that Mackenzie bore primary criminal culpability for relocating the group and directing the fast. She declined to impose the death penalty because it could reinforce the convicts' belief that death would reunite them with Jesus. Mackenzie denied forcing anyone to starve. The court rejected that defence after hearing evidence that the directive was enforced through violence and the withholding of food and water.

The case has been compared in scale to the 1978 Jonestown massacre in Guyana, in which more than 900 people died, and to a 2000 doomsday cult in Uganda that killed more than 700. Families of victims attended the sentencing. One relative who lost eight family members, including two grandchildren, had told reporters he hoped for a sentence that matched the scale of the deaths in the forest.

Mackenzie and the other convicts asked the court for mercy before sentencing. The judge imposed the terms after an eight-hour judgment in October that detailed the structure of the settlement, which was organised into villages named after biblical places. The sentences run consecutively in effect because of their length. Mackenzie will spend the rest of his life in prison under the judgment as issued.

The discovery of the mass graves in 2023 prompted a national reckoning in Kenya over the regulation of religious groups and the response of local authorities. Police had received earlier reports of missing people and of fasting in the area. The court findings established that the directive to fast to death was deliberate and enforced. The remaining charges against Mackenzie in other courts will determine whether further terms are added.