"To Meet Jesus, You Have to Starve to Death"... Kenyan Cult Leader Who Killed 190 Children

Sentenced to 200 years in prison more than three years after the case came to light

A cult leader who starved hundreds of people, including children, to death in Kenya, Africa, has been sentenced to 200 years in prison.

Paul Nthenge Mackenzie, a Kenyan religious leader and former taxi driver. EPA/Yonhap News

According to major international news outlets, including the Associated Press and Agence France-Presse, on November 6, Diana Kavedza-Mochache, a judge at the Mombasa High Court, sentenced Paul Nthenge Mackenzie to 200 years in prison. Mackenzie had been charged with killing 191 people, including 190 children and one adult. The sentence comes more than three years after the mass starvation was uncovered.

The case came to light in March 2023, when a man told police that his brother and wife had starved children to death in a forest on Mackenzie's orders. Police began searching Shakahola Forest near the church, and bodies were exhumed. More than 400 bodies had been found by the following year. The case, which shocked Kenya and the wider world, became known as the "Shakahola Forest Massacre."

Mackenzie is accused of forcing followers of the Good News International Church, which he led in the eastern Kenyan coastal city of Malindi, to starve to death, telling them, "You have to starve to death to meet Jesus." He is also accused of forbidding parents who followed him from sending their children to school or taking them to hospital when they were sick, and of making them starve their children until they died. He allegedly threatened and assaulted them to ensure they followed these orders. Judge Kavedza-Mochache said that in some cases, children were isolated and denied food while their parents watched.

Investigators found that Mackenzie promoted what he called a "hierarchy of death," according to which people were to die in order of age, starting with children, followed by teenagers, women, and men. Prosecutors said that while most of the children died of starvation, some died from suffocation or trauma.

Kenyan homicide detectives and forensic experts examine bodies exhumed from Shakahola Forest. EPA-Yonhap News

Mackenzie was initially charged with the murder of 191 people whose identities had been confirmed. He was also charged in connection with 52 additional bodies discovered in January 2026.

Mackenzie and his accomplices denied the charges. However, on October 19, the court found all the defendants guilty, ruling that the charges had been proven and that they bore criminal responsibility.

Mackenzie founded his church in 2003 and was arrested in 2017, but was acquitted. He was reportedly arrested again in 2019 in connection with the deaths of two children, but was released on bail. After his release, authorities shut down his church, but he reportedly moved to Shakahola Forest.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.