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Doomsday cult leader Paul Mackenzie goes on trial after deaths of over 400 followers in Kenya
The leader of a doomsday cult in Kenya went on trial on Monday on charges of terrorism over the deaths of more than 400 of his followers in a macabre case that shocked the world.
Self-proclaimed pastor Paul Nthenge Mackenzie appeared in a packed courtroom in the Indian Ocean port city of Mombasa along with 94 co-defendants.
Principle magistrate Leah Juma ordered the removal of journalists from the court shortly after the start of the hearing to enable a protected witness to take the stand on camera.
Mackenzie, who was arrested in April last year, is alleged to have incited his acolytes to starve to death in order to “meet Jesus” in one of the world’s worst cult-related massacres.
The father of seven and his co-accused pleaded not guilty to the charges of terrorism at a hearing in January.
The 55 men and 40 women also face charges of murder, manslaughter, as well as child torture and cruelty in separate cases.
The remains of more than 440 people have been unearthed so far in a remote wilderness inland from the Indian Ocean coastal town of Malindi, in a case that has been dubbed the “Shakahola forest massacre.”
LUIS TATO/AFP via Getty Images
Autopsies have found that while starvation appeared to be the main cause of death, some of the victims — including children — were strangled, beaten, or suffocated. In February, Mackenzie pleaded not guilty to the murder of 191 children whose bodies were found in mass graves.
Previous court documents also said that some of the bodies had had their organs removed.
“Worst breach of security in the history of our country”
Prosecutors said in a statement that they planned to call about 90 witnesses to testify as well as show physical and digital evidence.
“The prosecution will present evidence to illustrate that the accused did not function merely as a fringe group, but rather as a well-organized criminal enterprise operating under the guise of a church under the leadership of (Mackenzie),” the statement said.
Mackenzie, a former taxi driver, turned himself in after police first entered Shakahola forest in April last year and found the bodies of four people and several other starving people.
The police action came after a relative of one of the victims received a tip-off from a former member of Mackenzie’s Good News International Church about grisly happenings in Shakahola forest.
Family members have said Mackenzie told his followers to join him in the Shakahola forest, where he offered them parcels of land for less than $100. Court documents allege that in early 2023, Mackenzie told his followers in the forest that the end of the world was coming and they must prepare through extreme hunger.
He allegedly split members into smaller groups assigned biblical names. It’s believed these smaller groups died together and were buried together in mass graves.
Andrew Kasuku/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
Mackenzie had set up the church in 2003, but closed it in 2019 and moved to the sleepy town of Shakahola.
In March this year, the authorities began releasing some victims’ bodies to distraught relatives after months of painstaking work to identify them using DNA.
Questions have been raised about how Mackenzie, a self-styled pastor with a history of extremism, managed to evade law enforcement despite his prominent profile and previous legal cases.
Several surviving members of the group have told family members that what he preached would often come true, citing as an example his prediction that “a great virus” would come, just before COVID-19 hit the country. As people struggled during the pandemic, financially and medically, Mackenzie preached about leaving the difficulties of life behind and “turning to salvation.”
Interior Minister Kithure Kindiki last year accused Kenyan police of laxity in investigating the initial reports of starvation.
“The Shakahola massacre is the worst breach of security in the history of our country,” he told a senate committee hearing, vowing to “relentlessly push for legal reforms to tame rogue preachers.”
Reports by the Kenyan senate and a state-funded human rights watchdog have said the authorities could have prevented the deaths.
The Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR) in March criticized security officers in Malindi for “gross abdication of duty and negligence.”
The horrific saga has seen President William Ruto vow to intervene in Kenya’s homegrown religious movements.
“What we are seeing … is akin to terrorism,” Ruto said last year. “Mr. Makenzi … pretends and postures as a pastor when in fact he is a terrible criminal.”
In largely Christian Kenya, it has also thrown a spotlight on failed efforts to regulate unscrupulous churches and cults that have dabbled in criminality.
In 2022, the body of a British woman who died at the house of a different cult leader while on holiday in Kenya was exhumed, according to the family’s lawyer. Luftunisa Kwandwalla, 44, was visiting the coastal city of Mombasa when she died in August 2020 and was buried a day later, but her family has claimed foul play.
Sarah Carter contributed to this report.
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Actor Danny Masterson, who is serving a sentence of 30 years to life in prison, is seeking to overturn his conviction for the rape of two women, with his attorneys arguing he did not receive a fair trial.
A Los Angeles jury found Masterson guilty last year of two counts of rape by force or fear for assaulting two women at his Hollywood Hills home in separate incidents in 2003 — during the same time he was starring on the Fox TV’s “That ’70s Show.” The jury deadlocked on the case involving a third alleged victim. The May 2023 trial followed a mistrial in November 2022.
Masterson, 48, is incarcerated at California Men’s Colony, a minimum- and medium-security prison in San Luis Obispo County.
Cliff Gardner, the attorney handling Masterson’s appeal, filed an appellant’s opening brief Tuesday that alleges witnesses told different versions of their stories over time. The brief also argues that evidence that would have helped Masterson’s defense was not presented due to what Gardner describes as erroneous rulings by the court. Gardner argues in the court filings that those factors support reversing the convictions.
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Masterson’s defense argued at trial that he knew both women socially and his sexual relations with them were consensual.
“It is true, of course, that a defendant is not entitled to a perfect trial. He is, however, still entitled to a fair one,” the brief reads. “Danny Masterson received neither. Reversal is required.”
During the trial, one of the women Masterson was later convicted of raping broke down on the witness stand as she testified that he choked her and smothered her with a pillow when she tried fighting back as he assaulted her, according to the Associated Press.
“I could not breathe,” she said, crying.
When the prosecutor asked what she was thinking at the time, she said she feared for her life, AP reported.
“That he was going to kill me,” she said. “That I was going to die.”
She later testified Masterson took out a gun from inside his bedside table and told her to be quiet when they heard voices at the door. She told jurors she was in and out of consciousness through the night.
Masterson and the victims were members of the Church of Scientology, which became a central focus of the case as the women alleged they were stalked and harassed after reporting the allegations to police.
They sued Masterson and the church years earlier in connection with those accusations.
During the trial, Deputy District Attorney Reinhold Mueller told jurors the church had retaliated against the victims for reporting the the crimes — the rape of a 28-year-old woman in April 2003 and assault of a 23-year-old woman, also that year.
“What happened after they were drugged, they were raped by this man over here,” Mueller said, as he pointed across the courtroom toward Masterson during closing arguments. “You have an opportunity to show there is justice. It does exist.”
The church released a statement at the time refuting the allegations.
“The church has no policy prohibiting or discouraging members from reporting criminal conduct of anyone, Scientologists or not, to law enforcement,” the statement reads. “Quite the opposite, church policy explicitly demands Scientologists abide by all laws of the land. All allegations to the contrary are totally false.”
In the newly filed brief for Masterson’s appeal, Gardner alleges the victims changed their stories “dramatically” over the years and had a financial motive to do so. Gardner argues in court documents that though the statute of limitations to file a lawsuit seeking damages had expired before the trial, under state law it would be revived if Masterson was convicted of forcible rape involving multiple victims.
Gardner says in the brief that a court ruling prevented evidence related to that argument from being admitted at trial.
He also states in the court filings that some witnesses died before the case went to trial, more than a decade after being reported to law enforcement, and alleges that police lost a tape-recorded witness interview that would have helped Masterson’s defense.
After the six-day trial resulting in Masterson’s convictions, one of the women he was convicted of raping released a statement saying she was relieved he had been found guilty.
“I am experiencing a complex array of emotions – relief, exhaustion, strength, sadness – knowing that my abuser, Danny Masterson, will face accountability for his criminal behavior,” said a statement from one of the women whom Masterson was convicted of raping at his home in 2003.