Kenyan Pastor Found Guilty of Killing Nearly 200 People as Leader of Doomsday Cult: 'Followers Believed He Was Jesus' Mouthpiece,' Judge Says
Pastor Paul Mackenzie ran a death toll where people starved themselves to get closer to God.
Oct. 21 2026, Published 2:00 p.m. ET
A Kenyan preacher who led a doomsday cult that urged followers to starve themselves and their children to death was convicted of murdering 190 children and one adult, RadarOnline.com has learned.
Pastor Paul Mackenzie was convicted on October 19. Judge Diana Kavedza delivered the ruling at the Mombasa High Court after an eight-hour judgment.
Death Toll Details
In 2024, 429 was the death toll linked to the cult.
Twenty-eight other leaders of Mackenzie’s Good News International Church were also convicted of murder. More than 400 bodies have been exhumed from shallow graves in Shakahola forest near Malindi since April 2023.
The death toll linked to the cult reached 429 in 2024, according to the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights.
Nearly half of the recovered bodies were children, and many victims remain unidentified because of severe decomposition.
Pastor Paul Mackenzie's Disturbing Crimes
Kids (not pictured) were starved and strangled to death and were ordered to be killed first.
Mackenzie instructed his followers to starve themselves and their children to death to get closer to God. Children were expected to die first, followed by women and then men.
The kids did not die from starvation alone; other causes included strangulation, suffocation, and asphyxia. Armed militia enforced the fasting, and those who resisted or tried to escape were reportedly beaten or strangled.
A co-accused told the court Mackenzie said those who refused should be forced to heaven "through kicks and blows." Judge Kavedza said followers treated the children’s deaths as spiritual achievements.
"Starvation became the way to heaven as parents watched their children die as a profit of spiritual reward," she said.
Followers celebrated the dead as having "wedded with Jesus."
Mackenzie also banned education and modern medicine, calling both evil, and isolated his followers from mainstream society.
Inside Pastor Paul Mackenzie's Rise
Pastor Paul Mackenzie founded of Good News International Church and it got shut down in 2019 and relocated to a remote forrest.
As the founder of Good News International Church in 2003, Mackenzie ran church services that included a learning program. Documents list his birth year as 1973, although some official records give 1976.
He was born in Lunga Lunga, Kwale County, in southeastern Kenya, and records show he worked as a taxi driver throughout the 1990s. He registered a television company in 2012 and built a YouTube following with sermons about exorcisms and demonic spirits.
In a March 2023 video, Mackenzie claimed he was guided by "the voice of Christ" and said the world would end that year.
Police had already investigated him in 2017 after finding dozens of children living at his Malindi compound without schooling. He faced charges of operating an unregistered school and radicalization.
His church was shut down in 2019, after which he moved the community to the remote Shakahola forest. The Kenya National Commission on Human Rights later said the earlier arrest should have triggered deeper investigations.
"This points to a failure in the investigation and prosecution processes," the commission stated.
President William Ruto acknowledged the government’s failure to prevent the deaths.
Some Survivors Continue to Defend Pastor Paul Mackenzie
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Some of his victims still believe in him despite their children's deaths.
Stephen Mwiti lost his wife and all six of his children. "I'm a happy man, that all persons have been convicted," he told a publication.
Other relatives described losing mothers, siblings and young grandchildren. Dan Mackenzie, the pastor's eldest son, said his younger siblings were still being forcibly starved two weeks before he spoke to the publication.
He reported the situation to police, who rescued eight children. "They were basically forcibly fasted because they were denying food to them for almost three days," he claimed.
Dan himself had been forced to fast for nearly a week at age 12 and was beaten for hours to attend services. He left school at seven and now works as a motorcycle taxi driver supporting his younger siblings.
However, some survivors continued to defend the pastor even after the mass graves were found.
Peter Shukrani, who moved to Shakahola at age eight, said he "would have died" without rescue because his mother refused him medicine.
"I still love him, and he is still my pastor," Shukrani said. Other followers insisted pastor's earlier predictions, including the emergence of "a great virus," had come true.
He faces sentencing on November 6 and additional charges linked to 52 more deaths at a second site.
