A devastated 60-year-old man broke down in the Mombasa High Court on Tuesday as he described losing his entire family to the doomsday cult led by pastor Paul Mackenzie in the Shakahola forest massacre.
Titus Ngonyo Gandi told the packed courtroom that his wife Esther Mbila began preaching against schooling in 2019 and warned neighbours never to work for the government or hold national identity cards.
Within years, she, two of their children (including a serving General Service Unit officer who died last week), a daughter-in-law and a grandchild were all dead, starved or beaten to death after joining Mackenzie’s Good News International Church.
“I have buried five family members from Shakahola,” Gandi said, voice cracking. “My wife, my children, my grandchild. Only I remain.”
Another witness, 23-year-old former follower Robert Kithi, testified that Mackenzie personally ordered mass fasting in 2023, telling believers it was God’s command to “meet Jesus”.
Kithi said he fled when the starvation intensified, later burying two siblings whose mother refused to let him retrieve their bodies, insisting they had “gone to the Messiah”.
Detective Paul Oguta from DCI headquarters told the court his team arrived in Shakahola after reports of two murdered children and instead found dozens of emaciated people dying under trees.
He personally attended 88 post-mortem examinations and presented the reports showing death by starvation, strangulation and blunt-force trauma.
Mackenzie and thirty co-accused face multiple murder charges over the deaths of more than 430 followers exhumed from shallow graves in the forest. The trial continues.
