Stephen Mwiti, 48, says all six of his children died in Shakahola Forest. His wife took them there in 2022. Cult leader Paul Mackenzie is due to be sentenced on Friday for the murders of 190 children and an adult, the Daily Nation reported. Mwiti and other relatives of the victims fear Mackenzie could keep spreading his deadly message.
"Even if he were to be hanged, I will never see my children again," Mwiti told Reuters this week. He spoke while visiting the grave of his son Samuel in the coastal city of Malindi. Samuel was about seven years old when the family entered the forest. He is the only one of Mwiti's children whose remains could be identified.
Many of the bodies were badly decomposed. Officials could confirm the identities of only 26 of the more than 400 bodies recovered from the forest. Prosecutors said Mackenzie ordered his followers to starve themselves and their children to death so they could go to heaven before the world ended.
Mackenzie and 28 co-defendants were convicted of murder last month. Mwiti's wife is one of them. They could face the death penalty, but Kenya has not executed anyone in decades. Mwiti said he hoped the convicts would be held in solitary confinement if jailed, so they could not influence other prisoners.
Most of the defendants, including Mwiti's wife, denied the charges. Mackenzie said he did not force anyone to starve. Mwiti said that argument made no sense. He asked why children died even if the adults had agreed to fast. He added that a post-mortem showed Samuel had been strangled. "Was that also by will?" he said.
After Mackenzie's arrest, officials said his followers kept promoting his ideas. Last year, authorities found dozens more bodies in a nearby village and linked them to his cult.
Four years after he last saw his children, Mwiti says their absence haunts him. He said he gets startled when he meets children after work. Some look so much like his own that it shocks him. At the cemetery, Samuel lies beneath a wooden cross. There, Mwiti held photographs of his children and some of their old school uniforms. He had hoped to bury the uniforms with them.