The judge rejected the death penalty, preserving the chance that the convicted might reveal where missing children are buried, as hundreds of unidentified remains await burial.
Good News International Church pastor Paul Mackenzie attends the reading of the verdict in his murder trial in Mombasa, Kenya, on Oct. 19, 2026. (AP Photo/Brian Wachira)
Stephen Mwiti was a father of six when his wife left their home in Malindi, Kenya, with the children in 2022 and followed their pastor into the Shakahola Forest. None of the children came home. This week, the 48-year-old visited his son Samuel's grave in Malindi. He told Reuters that a post-mortem showed Samuel, who was about 7, had been strangled. He said no punishment, even execution, could bring his children back.
On Friday, that pastor, Paul Mackenzie, founder of the Good News International Church, was sentenced to 200 years in prison for the murders of 190 children and one adult who died under the forced fasting he ordered. Justice Diana Kavedza of the High Court in Mombasa imposed 100 years for the 183 victims who died of starvation and another 100 years for the eight children killed by direct violence, to be served one after the other, the Associated Press reported.
Twenty-eight co-defendants, including Mwiti's wife, received terms of 10 to 160 years. The case covers 191 of the 448 bodies the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights says were recovered from the forest, according to Reuters. Mackenzie's lawyer said he would appeal, AFP reported.
Good News International Church pastor Paul Mackenzie sits under guard at the Mombasa High Court in Mombasa, Kenya, on Nov. 6, 2026, the day he was sentenced to 200 years in prison. (Luis Tato/AFP)
The court found that Mackenzie moved his followers into the forest, passed his instructions through village elders and presided over burials the group called weddings, Capital FM reported. Guards kept followers from leaving. Children were restrained, denied food and punished when they tried to eat or escape, according to CNN. "Parents would cook and eat and watch their kids starve," the judge said at the October verdict, The Standard reported.
Kavedza found that the church had the defining features of a cult. Isolation and domination broke family bonds until mothers starved their own children and "what was once instinctive becomes sin," she said, according to AFP.
The church began as something else. As EEW Magazine Online reported in 2023, Mackenzie, a former taxi driver turned televangelist, got his start preaching in the stone courtyard of Ruth Kahindi, whom he met at a Baptist church. Her daughter Naomi said the home church that became Good News International was “normal” at first and preached salvation through faith in Christ.
After Kahindi and Mackenzie parted ways in 2008, his preaching turned apocalyptic. In Shakahola, he was said to cast himself as a Christ-like figure, living in a section of the settlement he called Galilee. The court found that he presided over meetings where he ordered followers to fast to death, with children as the first victims.
Prosecutors had asked for the death penalty. Kavedza declined. She said a death sentence would fail to deter convicts who believed dying would reunite them with Jesus and their dead children, Pulse reported. Long imprisonment, she said, would keep them accountable while preserving the chance that they might reveal where the remains of missing children lie, according to Capital FM.
The entrance to Malindi Sub-County Hospital in Malindi, Kenya, where county officials said in September that 443 bodies and body parts from the Shakahola Forest were still being held. (Courtesy of Malindi Sub-County Hospital)
The warning signs came years before the graves. Mackenzie had been arrested several times since 2017 on allegations including child neglect and radicalization, the Kenyan judiciary said in 2023, according to Reuters. Reports by Kenya's Senate and the state-funded human rights commission concluded that authorities could have prevented the deaths, Al Jazeera reported.
On Friday, Kavedza called on Parliament to create a regulatory framework that protects religious freedom. Proposals published in 2024 have not become law amid opposition from church leaders who favor self-regulation.
The dying did not stop with Mackenzie's arrest. Prosecutors allege that he directed the deaths of 52 people found in 2025 around the village of Kwa Binzaro while he was in detention, Reuters reported. He has pleaded not guilty in that case.
Most families are still waiting to bury their dead. In September, Kilifi County officials reported that 443 bodies and body parts remained at Malindi Sub-County Hospital, with only 14 identified through DNA matching, according to The Standard.
The county is seeking to bury the unclaimed remains near the forest by December, in graves arranged so relatives can still identify them later, and has said it will seek court approval first, Switch TV reported. Families have demanded assurances that DNA records will be preserved, Citizen Digital reported.
Mwiti has been able to bury Samuel. He still keeps photographs of his children and some of their old school uniforms, which he had hoped to bury with them.
