Mackenzie, a former taxi driver who led the Good News International Church, was arrested in 2023 after police received a tip-off. Weeks later, authorities began uncovering hundreds of bodies in shallow graves in the Shakahola forest in south-eastern Kenya. Prosecutors said Mackenzie and his sect organised a Christian doomsday cult in which followers were ordered to starve themselves and their children to death to reach heaven before the world ended.
In a hearing lasting more than eight hours, Justice Mochache rejected Mackenzie's defence that he did not force the victims to starve. The court found that in some cases children were isolated and denied food while their parents watched. Mackenzie sat in court wearing a striped polo shirt and red trousers, alongside his wife, one of the co-accused. He was silent, staring into space before the ruling was handed down.
More than 400 bodies have been recovered from the forest, though only 26 have been identified due to severe decomposition. Investigations into the remaining deaths are continuing. Mackenzie also faces other charges, including terrorism-related offences over the forest deaths, which he has denied. Prosecutors say he directed the deaths of 52 people in a nearby village while in detention, a case to which he has pleaded not guilty.
The Shakahola tragedy has gripped Kenya since the discovery of mass graves more than three years ago. It raised questions about how Mackenzie was able to continue operating despite being on the authorities' radar since 2017, when his premises were searched. In 2019, police shut down his church, and he relocated to the Shakahola forest.
According to people with direct knowledge of the cult's activities, Mackenzie planned the mass starvation in three phases: first children, then women and young men, and finally the remaining men. He forbade followers from sending children to school or seeking medical treatment, describing such institutions as satanic. Cult members lived in makeshift homes of polythene sheeting and thatch, in areas with biblical names such as Jerusalem and Judea.
The plight of his followers began to emerge in mid-March 2023, when a local man told police that his brother and wife had starved their children to death on Mackenzie's orders. Mackenzie was arrested but released on bail, after which relatives say he brought forward the date on which he told followers the world would end. Police rearrested him in April 2023 and began a systematic search of the forest.
Relatives of some of those who died gathered to hear the judgment. Francis Wanje, 62, who lost eight family members including two grandchildren, said before the verdict: "It has been really a heavy thing [for] us as a family, and it has really taken us very far in terms of psychological problems … I was hoping for this particular day."
The case has led to calls for tougher oversight of churches and other religious organisations in a country where faith plays a prominent role in public life. President William Ruto said in 2023 that government agencies should have been able to prevent the deaths, adding that he took responsibility as president.