A Kenyan court on Monday, 19 October 2026, convicted self-proclaimed pastor Paul Nthenge Mackenzie and 28 co-accused of the murder of 191 people — 190 of them children — in the Shakahola starvation-cult case, closing one of the darkest chapters in Kenya's recent history and one of the deadliest cult-related tragedies in modern times. The story is trending per news coverage.
Lady Justice Diana Kavedza of the Mombasa High Court delivered the judgment after a hearing lasting more than eight hours, finding all 29 accused guilty under Kenya's Penal Code. Mackenzie, in his early 50s, sat silent and stared into space as the verdict was read, according to courtroom reports. Sentencing is scheduled for 6 November 2026.
What the court found
The judge found that the deaths resulted from "an organised system in which religious teachings and an established hierarchy were used to direct and enforce deadly fasting," in the words of Kenya's Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions. The evidence showed a structured system in which church leaders and armed guards enforced sequential, deadly fasting that began with the children.
Prosecutors presented evidence from 123 witnesses, digital recordings, forensic and DNA reports, and 190 post-mortem samples from minors. Medical findings attributed 76 deaths to starvation, 112 to unascertained causes and the remainder to specific injuries. The court determined that the fasting directive was communicated through village elders, reinforced at regular meetings and enforced by guards who prevented followers from escaping. The judgment covered deaths that occurred between January 2021 and September 2023 in Shakahola, Malindi Sub-County, Kilifi County.
Rejecting the defence claim that the victims had fasted voluntarily, the judge said: "I am satisfied that the prosecution has proved the case against all the 29 accused persons for the murder of 190 children and one adult." The defence's central argument — that the deaths were the result of personal religious choice — collapsed against testimony from survivors and the forensic record.
How Shakahola happened
The tragedy shocked Kenya in April 2023, when police began uncovering bodies buried in shallow graves in the Shakahola forest near Malindi. Investigators have since recovered more than 400 bodies, with one report counting 429, many showing signs of starvation and other trauma. Advanced decomposition has left many remains unidentified, delaying burials and deepening the anguish of families.
Mackenzie established the Good News International Ministries in 2003 and, according to court evidence, built it into an apocalyptic movement that discouraged modern medicine and formal education, cut followers off from outside assistance and preached an imminent end of the world. Followers were told to starve themselves and their children to death so they could "meet Jesus" in heaven. His sermons also warned against digital identity cards, which he described as the mark of the devil. Among the convicted were Mackenzie's wife, Rhoda Maweu, and deputy pastor Smart Deri Mwakalama.
The human cost was on full display outside the Mombasa courthouse. Francis Wanje, 62, who lost eight family members including his daughter and two grandchildren, had said before the verdict that he expected "a ruling that will be a lesson to the whole public, so that such kinds of things will not happen again." Afterward he expressed relief, though his grief remained raw. Not everyone received the outcome the same way: at least one woman was heard saying of Mackenzie, "I still love him and he is still my pastor" — a sobering reminder that the psychological hold of the cult endures for some survivors even now.
What happens next: sentencing and wider cases
The court ordered individual pre-sentence reports to be prepared by probation officers, due by 30 October, after which the defence will make mitigation submissions. All convicts will be physically produced in court on 6 November 2026, when Justice Kavedza hands down the sentence. Under Kenyan law, murder can carry the death penalty — but Kenya has an effective moratorium on executions, so the practical sentence would be life imprisonment.
Crucially, Monday's convictions cover only a fraction of the full Shakahola toll. In January this year, Mackenzie faced fresh charges linked to the discovery of another 52 bodies in a nearby village, and he continues to face separate proceedings on charges of terrorism, radicalisation and child cruelty. Identification work and investigations into the other deaths remain unfinished, with severe decomposition and limited DNA reference samples slowing the process.
Why this verdict matters beyond Kenya
The ruling forces Kenya to confront documented failures in policing and the oversight of religious groups. Official probes have found that state agencies missed warnings about Mackenzie's movement and have recommended disciplinary action, renewing calls for tighter regulation of churches and continued forensic and criminal inquiries. Director of Public Prosecutions Renson Ingonga described the verdict as "momentous," while the judgment also raises a constitutionally significant question for Kenya: whether a court can ground a criminal conviction in a contestable interpretation of religious scripture without undermining the separation of church and state and the constitutional right to freedom of conscience.
Globally, the Shakahola case now sits alongside the deadliest cult tragedies on record, and the guilty verdict establishes one of the clearest legal precedents anywhere that coercive religious authority can amount to murder. Prosecutors elsewhere have likewise tested the limits of how the law reaches complex international criminality, but few cases have involved such a plain chain from doctrine to death on this scale.
The case also unfolded against a backdrop of other Kenyan health and safety strains: the country recently confirmed an imported Ebola case linked to the Democratic Republic of Congo's outbreak. Kenya's Ebola response is unfolding alongside this reckoning with Shakahola, and the Congolese outbreak itself has now passed 9,000 cases. Both stories are reshaping how Kenya and the region talk about public safety and state capacity.
For the families of Shakahola, the legal fight is not over. Monday's verdict gave them the one word they waited years to hear — guilty — but identification of the remaining dead, burial of their loved ones and the unfinished trials still lie ahead. The story is trending per news coverage, and the sentencing on 6 November will be the next major milestone.