Detectives are piecing together how remnants of the Shakahola cult quietly resurfaced at Kwa Bi Nzaro in Chakama Ranch, Kilifi County, reviving deadly fasts and secret burials in shallow graves and once again reminding the country of the horror of the 2023 massacre.
Investigations have revealed an extensive web of connections between suspects in the new deaths and those linked to the Shakahola massacre, where more than 450 followers of the Good News International church (GNI) associated with Paul Mackenzie perished.
So far, detectives from the Homicide Unit, led by director Martin Nyuguto, together with government pathologists Dr Johansen Oduor and Dr Richard Njoroge, have exhumed 34 bodies from extremely shallow graves in the thicket, along with more than 100 body parts scattered in the forest both near and far from the grave sites.
Officers from the Directorate of Criminal Investigations at the site where more graves were discovered at Kwa Binzaro area, within Shakahola Forest, Kilifi County on August 15, 2025.
Photo credit: Kevin Odit | Nation Media Group
The government temporarily suspended the exhumation last week after a week-long operation that unearthed Kwa Binzaro’s grim secrets hidden under sharp thorny shrubs and bushes.
Documentation of the expansive forest is continuing, with a Directorate of Criminal Investigations team still combing the area for more graves. The exercise was briefly closed at 32 bodies, but by Wednesday, September 3, the toll had risen to 34 after two more bodies were found in the forest.
Security agencies are not leaving anything to chance. Clues from reliable sources point to more deaths in the forest than the 34 bodies already recovered. Detectives suspect that more than 50 victims of religious indoctrination may have died at Kwa Binzaro. Preliminary findings link the indoctrination of the Kwa Bi Nzaro victims to Mackenzie’s apocalyptic sermons, which continued to resonate despite his arrest and confinement.
Eleven people are in custody and are assisting police with investigations as the State seeks to understand what went wrong, even after heavy security was deployed at Shakahola Forest, where the first deaths that placed Kenya on the international stage for the scale of cult related fatalities occurred.
Investigators are pursuing reports that a prime suspect in the Kwa Bi Nzaro deaths is closely related to a key figure already on trial over the Shakahola massacre. The two have been in communication since the Shakahola cult activities were disrupted and hundreds of people, including children, were rescued, and others arrested.
“He was in Shakahola Forest. In fact he met one of the key figures of the Good News International church in Kisumu during a seminar. He was later rescued in Shakahola in 2023. I do not know how he went back to Kwa Bi Nzaro,” said a source familiar with the prime suspect, who spoke in confidence.
Officers from the Directorate of Criminal Investigations at the site where more graves were discovered at Kwa Binzaro area, within Shakahola Forest, Kilifi County on August 15, 2025.
Photo credit: Kevin Odit | Nation Media Group
Investigations allege that when the Shakahola deaths were unearthed, the prime suspect got himself out of the forest either as a victim or undetected. His close relative was not so fortunate. He was arrested and eventually charged alongside Mackenzie. The two nevertheless remained in constant communication.
It is worth noting that it is not a crime for inmates or persons detained in prison pending the hearing and determination of their cases to communicate with loved ones. Appearing before the Tononoka Children’s Court on Thursday, Shimo la Tewa Maximum Prison boss Abdi Willy Adan said those in detention have a right to communicate with their loved ones and that this right has not been infringed.
“Different categories of prisoners have designated days to contact relatives and lawyers. Mackenzie’s group missed their scheduled day only because they were in court, not because they were denied access,” Mr Adan said as he responded to Mackenzie’s allegation that they were denied the right to communicate with their advocate while in prison.
Detectives believe that the right to communicate with loved ones might have been exploited to further radicalisation. Last month, Interior Cabinet Secretary Kipchumba Murkomen said Mackenzie has maintained contact with some of his followers from detention, where he is being held over the Shakahola deaths.
According to the State, there was a call from prison where the suspect, later arrested over the Kwa Bi Nzaro deaths, was prayed for over the phone. This occurred before the suspect was arrested in connection with the new wave of cult deaths, which is now under investigation.
Notably, this suspect was among the hundreds rescued from Shakahola Forest in the 2023 operation. “We want to understand the circumstances under which this man, whom we rescued in 2023 from the forest, returned to Kwa Bi Nzaro,” Mr Murkomen said.
Kilifi suspected cult leader Paul Mackenzie (in white and blue stripped shirt) follows proceedings at the Shanzu Law Courts during the mention of his matter in this file photo.
Photo credit: File I Nation Media Group
Detectives have also established that most of the 11 suspects currently in custody have direct links to the Shakahola tragedy. Investigators believe the group quietly regrouped after Shakahola was disrupted and resumed spreading Mackenzie’s radical teachings. They thereafter returned to the forest and moved further in to avoid detection.
A source, who spoke in confidence for fear of victimisation, told the Nation that her husband is among those arrested over the new cult wave.
“I thought he died in Shakahola. I was surprised to receive a call from the police that he was alive and had been arrested at Kwa Bi Nzaro,” she said.
She confirmed that she had been in Shakahola Forest with her husband and their five children. She gave birth to her lastborn in the forest but left the cult three months later.
“I was not happy when I saw my children starving. I made the hard decision to leave the forest together with my children. My husband remained in the forest,” she said.
Kwa Bi Nzaro and Shakahola Forest are both located within the expansive Chakama Ranch and are about 30 kilometres apart. Detectives believe that while the State concentrated on securing Shakahola Forest, where the first crime was committed, the suspects moved deeper into the bush, where it is even more difficult to find them because of minimal human activity.
A police officer mans a homestead in Binzaro area in Chakama Ranch where a body of a middle-age man was found.
Photo credit: Wachira Mwangi | Nation Media Group
A walk through the new crime scene shows that the area is largely frequented by elephants, hyenas, and other wild animals, creating a perfect hideout for criminal elements.
“Preliminary investigation paints a picture of the suspects’ connections to the previous Shakahola massacre and other outcomes that led to mass deaths. Detectives, therefore believe that the respondents had regrouped in order to further the radical beliefs,” the police said in court documents.
Police say they are closing in on seven key suspects believed to have helped extend the radical teachings that killed people in Shakahola to Kwa Bi Nzaro.
Detectives have identified in their documents four individuals who travelled across the country recruiting people to the cult, then took them to Malindi town for radicalisation before moving them to the forest to complete their journey of fasting.
All those they radicalised and caused to go missing from their homes, police say, could be traced to Kwa Bi Nzaro Forest.
Inspector General of Police Douglas Kanja toured the crime scene on Wednesday and called for a multi-agency crackdown on cultic extremism in Kilifi County.
“We want to work as a multiagency team and to engage everybody from intelligence collection , the community and their leadership, and everybody else. We can be able to overcome this when we work together,” he said.
Mr Kanja noted that the expansive Chakama ranch is under tight surveillance, adding that detectives have trained their guns on four main suspects to unmask those behind the deadly indoctrination.
