(BBC) When the leader of the Good News International Church, Pastor Mackenzie, said the world would end in June 2023, Stephen Mwiti’s wife believed him.
Now, he is certain that she starved to de@th along with their six children.
The 45-year-old, who makes his living selling mandazi, or fried bread, holds up a crumpled photograph of his wife and four of his children asking if anyone has seen them.
He has been doing this over and over again in the town of Malindi, south-east Kenya, since she disappeared from there last August.
Mr Mwiti has also been to look for them in the Shakahola forest, where members of Pastor Mackenzie’s church had isolated themselves.
His wife, Bahati Joan, was pregnant when she left last year with their children: Hellen Karimi, nine years old, Samuel Kirimil, seven, Jacob Kimathi, three, Lillian Gatumbi, 18 months, and Angelina Gatumbi, seven months.
Mr Mwiti later found out that his wife had given birth to a son, who also d!ed.
She had been an ardent follower of Pastor Mackenzie since 2015 and had first gone to Shakahola in 2021, and then kept coming and going.
After alerting the police numerous times and failed personal attempts to rescue them, he learned recently from other children who had escaped and were being held by Kenyan police, that his own children had d!ed.
“They could identify them from the pictures. They knew their names and where Jacob and Lillian had been buried,” he recounts, fighting back tears.
“I was told not to try to look for my children again. They were all de@d. I was too late.”
He believes they were buried in the forest but their bodies have not yet been identified.
Those who exhumed the corpses say the sight of people buried without dignity haunts them. So far 110 people have been confirmed de@d, but there are fears the de@th toll could rise as more of the forest is searched.
Post-mortems still have to be carried out but police and state prosecutors say as well as dying from starvation, some members may have been strangled, suffocated or beaten to de@th with blunt objects.
Former members of the Good News International Church have said they were forced to starve as part of their adherence to its teachings.
Titus Katana, who managed to escape, says those who tried to leave the cult were branded as traitors and faced violent attacks.
He also suggested there was an order in which people were supposed to d!e ahead of the end of the world.
“The children were the first to die. Then after the children, they went for the unmarried. Then after, the mothers and the elderly were next in line.”
The church leaders were supposed to be the last to d!e.
Explaining what drew him to the church, Mr Katana said he thought that Pastor Mackenzie was “charismatic and preached God’s word well”.
An additional attraction was that “Mackenzie was also selling land to his followers. That appealed to me. I bought 15 acres. But when I saw his preaching was odd, I chose to leave.”
Source: BBC