Kids made to go first in doomsday cult mass starvation suicide ‘to meet Jesus’ with some buried alive as 200 dead found
CHILDREN were made a go first when Doomsday cult members starved themselves to death with some even buried alive, survivors have said.
The leader of the Kenyan cult is accused of ordering followers to starve themselves to death “to meet Jesus” and so far 200 bodies have been found with 600 others missing.
Paul Mackenzie, leader of the Good News International Church, is in custody after the gruesome discovery of corpses in woods in mid-April.
The taxi driver-turned-pastor told cult members, starving themselves to death would allow them to enter heaven before the end of the world, which he predicted would happen on April 15.
Since then more horrific details have emerged including that some of the dead had organs missing, leading to fears they were harvested.
Now survivors have described in chilling detail the horror of what happened.
Titus Katana, an ex-member and deputy pastor told The Sunday Times, the first who were told to starve themselves to death were the children.
He said: “They were shut in huts for five days without food or water. Then they wrapped them in blankets and buried them, even the ones still breathing.”
After that the women on the cult would be next, then the men with the pastor and his family due to kill themselves last.
Former cult member Stephen Mwiti’s children and wife Joan are among those missing and he has been searching for their bodies.
The 45-year-old said his wife was pregnant when she left home with the children several months ago and gave birth to another son in the forest.
“Some survivors told me that my wife was allowed to breastfeed him for one day only,” he said.
“After that they closed his eyes, a hand was placed over his mouth and nose, he was suffocated.
“Everyone clapped and celebrated. The son I never met was going straight to heaven.”
Mwiti has said he once attempted to rescue his wife and children from the forest, where he saw them living with Mackenzie and about 50 other women and their children.
“We tried calling out and nobody was responding to our calls,” he said.
If the number feared dead materialises then it could rival the Jonestown massacre as one of the worst-ever cult massacres.
American Jim Jones led 909 of his followers to their deaths in November 1978 in Guyana, South America.
Hundreds of bodies have been dug up from dozens of mass graves spread across his 800-acre property, located in the coastal county of Kilifi.
Police plan to charge McKenzie with terrorism-related offences.
Mackenzie, his wife and 16 other suspects will appear in court at the end of the month.
Coast regional commissioner Rhoda Onyancha on Saturday said the total number of those arrested stood at 26, with 610 people reported as missing by their families.