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MALINDI, Kenya (AP) — Shukran Karisa Mangi always showed up drunk at work, where he dug up the bodies of doomsday cult members buried in shallow graves. But the alcohol couldn’t numb his shock the morning he found the body of a close friend, whose neck had been twisted so severely that his head and torso faced opposite directions.
This violent death upset Mangi, who had already unearthed children’s bodies. The number of bodies kept rising in this community off Kenya’s coastline where extremist evangelical leader Paul Mackenzie is accused of instructing his followers to starve to death for the opportunity to meet Jesus.
While he sometimes sees the remains of others when he tries to sleep, Mangi said recently, the recurring image of his friend’s mutilated body torments him when he’s awake.
“He died in a very cruel manner,” said Mangi, one of several gravediggers whose work was suspended earlier in the year as bodies piled up in the morgue. “Most of the time, I still think about how he died.”
In one of the deadliest cult-related massacres ever, at least 436 bodies have been recovered since police raided Good News International Church in a forest some 70 kilometers (40 miles) inland from the coastal town of Malindi. Seventeen months later, many in the area are still shaken by what happened despite repeated warnings about the church’s leader.
Mackenzie pleaded not guilty to charges in the murders of 191 children, multiple counts of manslaughter and other crimes. If convicted, he would spend the rest of his life in prison.
Some in Malindi who spoke to The Associated Press said Mackenzie’s confidence while in custody showed the wide-ranging power some evangelists project even as their teachings undermine government authority, break the law, or harm followers desperate for healing and other miracles.
It’s not only Mackenzie, said Thomas Kakala, a self-described bishop with the Malindi-based Jesus Cares Ministry International, referring to questionable pastors he knew in the capital, Nairobi.
“You look at them. If you are sober and you want to hear the word of God, you wouldn’t go to their church," he said. "But the place is packed.”
A man like Mackenzie, who refused to join the fellowship of pastors in Malindi and rarely quoted Scripture, could thrive in a country like Kenya, said Kakala. Six detectives have been suspended for ignoring multiple warnings about Mackenzie’s illegal activities.
Kakala said he felt discouraged in his attempts to discredit Mackenzie years ago. The evangelist had played a tape of Kakala on his TV station and declared him an enemy. Kakala felt threatened.
“Those were some of his powers, and he was using them,” Kakala said.
Kenya, like much of East Africa, is dominated by Christians. While many are Anglican or Catholic, evangelical Christianity has spread widely since the 1980s. Many pastors style their ministries in the manner of successful American televangelists, investing in broadcasting and advertising.
Many of Africa’s evangelical churches are run like sole proprietorships, without the guidance of trustee boards or laity. Pastors are often unaccountable, deriving authority from their perceived ability to perform miracles or make prophecies. Some, like Mackenzie, can seem all-powerful.
Mackenzie, a former street vendor and cab driver with a high school education, apprenticed with a Malindi preacher in the late 1990s. There, in the laid-back tourist town, he opened his own church in 2003.
A charismatic preacher, he was said to perform miracles and exorcisms, and could be generous with his money. His followers included teachers and police officers. They came to Malindi from across Kenya, giving Mackenzie national prominence that spread the pain of the deaths across the country.
“As a religious leader, I see Mackenzie as a very mysterious man because I can’t fathom how he was able to kill all those people in one place,” said Famau Mohamed, a sheikh in Malindi. “But one thing that’s still puzzling, even at the moment, is he still talks with so much courage. … He feels like he did nothing wrong.”
The first complaints against Mackenzie concerned his opposition to formal schooling and vaccination. He was briefly detained in 2019 for opposing the government’s efforts to assign national identification numbers to Kenyans, saying the numbers were satanic.
He closed his Malindi church premises later that year and urged his congregation to follow him to Shakahola, where he leased 800 acres of forest inhabited by elephants and big cats.
Church members paid small sums to own plots in Shakahola, and were required to build houses and live in villages with biblical names like Nazareth, according to survivors. Mackenzie grew more demanding, with people from different villages forbidden from communicating or gathering, said former church member Salama Masha.
“What made me (realize) Mackenzie was not a good person was when he said that the children should fast to die,” said Masha, who escaped after witnessing the starvation deaths of two children. “That’s when I knew that it’s not something I can do.”
The grass-thatched house with a solar panel where Mackenzie lived was known as “ikulu,” or statehouse. Police found milk and bread in Mackenzie's refrigerator as his followers starved nearby. He had bodyguards. He had informers. And, decisively, he had his aura as the self-proclaimed prophetic “paapa” to thousands of obedient followers.
“(He’s) like a chief, because they had a small village and my brother’s the elder of that particular village,” said Robert Mbatha Mackenzie, speaking of his older brother’s authority in Shakahola. “He went there, and, in only two years, he made a big village. And many people followed him there.”
Mbatha Mackenzie, a mason who lives with his family and goats in a tin shack in Malindi, said that while Mackenzie was generous to his followers, he never treated his extended family with similar kindness.
“My brother — he seemed like a politician,” he said. “They have a sweet tongue, and when he talks something to the people, people believe him.”
A former church member who escaped Shakahola said she lost faith in Mackenzie when she saw how his men handled people on the verge of dying from starvation. She said Mackenzie’s bodyguards would take the starving person away, never to be seen again.
The woman said it was “like a routine” for the bodyguards to rape women in the villages. She says she, too, was sexually assaulted by four men while she was pregnant with her fourth child. The Associated Press does not identify victims of alleged sexual assault unless they choose to publicly identify themselves.
Those who tried to the leave the forest without Mackenzie’s permission faced beatings, as did those who were caught breaking fast, according to former church members.
Autopsies on more than 100 bodies showed deaths from starvation, strangulation, suffocation, and injuries sustained from blunt objects. Mangi, the gravedigger, said he believed more mass graves were yet to be discovered in Shakahola. At least 600 people are reported missing, according to the Kenya Red Cross.
Priscillar Riziki, who left Mackenzie’s church in 2017 but lost her daughter and three grandchildren in Shakahola, broke down as she remembered Mackenzie as “good at first” but increasingly discourteous to his followers. Her daughter Lorine was not allowed to take her children on family visits without Mackenzie's approval, Riziki said.
One of Riziki’s grandchildren was identified through DNA analysis and received a proper burial. Lorine and two of her children are presumed dead.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, which witnesses said strengthened Mackenzie’s vision of the end times, the leader ordered more rigorous fasting that became even more stringent by the end of 2022. Parents were forbidden from feeding their children, witnesses said.
Some church members who escaped Shakahola spread word of suffering there, once causing a fight inside the forest when outsiders riding motorcycles attempted a rescue mission, said village elder Changawa Mangi Yaah.
The rescue party had two of their motorcycles burned in Shakahola, but the police failed to act beyond making brief arrests, Yaah said, adding that he realized “Mackenzie was more powerful than I thought.”
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Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.