Kenyan cult leader Paul Mackenzie sentenced to 200 years over murders of 191 people

Paul Mackenzie, founder of the Good News International Church, was sentenced to 200 years in prison on Friday by Lady Justice Diana Kavedza at the Mombasa High Court for the murder of 191 people — all but one of them children — in Shakahola Forest in eastern Kenya.

The sentence comprised two consecutive 100-year terms: one for victims who starved and one for those who died by direct homicide. Kavedza said she did not impose the death penalty because it could reinforce the convicts' belief that dying would reunite them with Jesus rather than deter them, and because she wanted to preserve the possibility that they could help locate the remains of missing children. "In the respectful view of this court, such a sentence would therefore fail to achieve deterrence," she said.

Of the 191 victims, 161 were children aged 9 or younger; 22 were between 10 and 13; five were between 14 and 16. The ages of two others could not be established. Kavedza found that 183 of the 191 died from starvation — 182 children and one adult. The remaining eight, all children, were suffocated, strangled or beaten to death. Mackenzie was convicted alongside more than two dozen others.

Mackenzie had preached that the world would end in August 2023 and that followers needed to fast to reach heaven. He persuaded them to abandon their homes and move to Shakahola Forest, where guards controlled their movements and prevented them from leaving. Children who tried to eat or escape were restrained and punished. Deaths in the forest were celebrated as "weddings to Jesus," with the dead described as "heroes of faith."

Authorities began exhuming bodies from Shakahola in April 2023 and have so far recovered more than 400. The 191 murder convictions relate to the case decided last month; further charges could follow. Mackenzie smiled several times during Friday's sentencing.

Stephen Mwiti, whose six children died in Shakahola, told Reuters that his wife — among those convicted — had taken his family there to fast. "Even if the adults had agreed to fast, what about the children?" he said, adding that no verdict could undo the loss of his family. Rodgers Shibutse, a Nairobi resident who identified his mother's remains among those exhumed in February 2024, told CNN: "I cannot say that I am 100% satisfied. It is not enough to pay for the life of my mum, but we have no other choice."