How a Deleted Facebook Post Could Have Stopped Shakahola Tragedy

New details have emerged revealing that months before the Shakahola massacre shocked Kenya and the world, a Facebook whistleblower had already sounded the alarm about the chilling activities within Pastor Paul Mackenzie’s doomsday cult. What was dismissed as defamation at the time would later be revealed as one of the earliest warnings of the tragedy that claimed more than 450 lives.

On November 11, 2022, Mackenzie, who now stands accused of masterminding the mass deaths in Shakahola, walked into Malindi Police Station, not as a suspect, but as a complainant. He told police that a viral Facebook post published in the “Malindi Kenya” group accused him of “killing people and burying them on his farm.”

“Mackenzie told me that a Facebook group called Malindi Kenya had published claims that he was killing people and burying them on his farm,” testified Sergeant Joseph Yator, a former Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) officer in Malindi.

Mackenzie sought police help to trace the post’s author, claiming the allegations were defamatory. Yator told the court, where Mackenzie and 30 others are now facing charges for killing 191 children between 2020 and 2023, that he immediately began investigating.

The post’s author, as it later emerged, was not an outsider but the daughter of one of Mackenzie’s former senior pastors, an insider who had once lived in the Shakahola forest before escaping the cult. Both the ex-pastor and his daughter have since testified as protected witnesses in Mackenzie’s ongoing criminal trial.

“After receiving the report, I contacted the author for clarification, but she declined to speak to me. She later claimed she had received threats from a police officer at Malindi Police Station,” Yator told the court.

Because the whistleblower was based in Nairobi, Yator said he contacted a colleague there to help trace her and record a statement. She had even tagged the DCI in her Facebook post, hoping authorities would investigate.

Yator said he reached out to the administrator of the Facebook group and asked him either to share the information or take down the post. The administrator complied and deleted it.

“I later advised Mackenzie to consult a lawyer and pursue a defamation suit if the allegations were false,” Yator said, adding that the complaint was officially recorded at Lango Baya Police Station under OB 58/8/11/2022.

That marked the end of the matter. No further action was taken. Yet the deleted post would later prove to be an authentic whistleblower alert about the deaths unfolding deep in the Shakahola forest.

Four months later, the same “man of God” who once sought police protection was arrested as the mastermind behind a horrific starvation cult, in which he brainwashed his followers into fasting themselves to death to “meet Jesus.”

By that time, Mackenzie already had a criminal record, with previous arrests for radical teachings, running an unregistered school (2017), operating an illegal film studio, and inciting the public against the Huduma Namba registration, which he had called “satanic” (2019).

As the trial continues, prosecutors have highlighted what they describe as a disturbing pattern of police negligence and complicity, suggesting that Mackenzie may have been shielded by powerful forces long before the Shakahola horror came to light.

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