How sly Kwa Binzaro 'priestess' reenacted Shakahola horror tale

About a 27-kilometre drive from the infamous Shakahola forest, multi-agency teams turn off the tarred road into a thicket of thorn trees and enter a five-acre secluded homestead.
This is believed to be the new epicentre of another cult-like activity, where victims were kept temporarily before being killed through starvation and suffocation.

Kwa Binzaro village has shifted the country’s focus from Shakahola forest, where government agencies in 2023 camped to exhume more than 420 bodies of people who died after marathon fasting inspired by the Good News International Church.

A walk through the new crime scene at Kwa Binzaro shows that the area is largely frequented by elephants, hyenas, and other wild animals, creating a perfect hideout for criminal activity.

At the homestead, there are several mud houses and one special three-bedroom house with a single entrance. Inside, there is a preparation room and a prayer room, which was where people died. Each person had to graduate through every stage before they perished.

The preparation for death involved gradually reducing meals for victims to the point where one could survive on water alone, leading to starvation.
Those who defied these procedures were beaten and suffocated to death.

At the home, a grave dug out contained baby clothes, painting a grim picture of how children became victims of the cult. Security agencies exhumed 34 bodies and 102 body parts.

Prime suspect
Inspector General of Police Douglas Kanja toured Kwa Binzaro on 3 September 2025 and called for a multi-agency crackdown on cult activities in Kilifi County.
“We want to engage everybody, from intelligence collection, the community, the leadership from the community, and everybody else,” he said.

Kanja added that many of the victims were not locals. The police boss named self-styled priestess Sharleen Temba Anido as the prime suspect in the new cult.

Detectives have revealed that Anido and three of her close associates – James Kazungu, Thomas Mukunwe, and Kahindi Garama – regrouped and played key roles in reviving radical teachings after fleeing Shakahola in 2023, where more than 450 devotees of pastor Paul Makenzi died through forced starvation.

According to police, the four planned mass deaths, which they described as a “holy safari (exodus) to see Jesus.”

Preliminary findings link the indoctrination of the Kwa Binzaro victims to Makenzi’s end-times sermons, which continued to resonate despite his arrest and confinement.

Investigations suggest that Makenzi and his accomplices, though in prison, continued to influence followers and the new group’s activities through mobile phones used for family communication.

“Makenzi used to make phone calls to his associates and would address a group of not less than 20 people in Vihiga. These conversations were always about end-times sermons and encouraging people to embrace them even in his absence,” said a detective close to the investigations.

During his phone conversations, he would allegedly deliver sermons such as, “When Jesus ascended to heaven, he instructed his disciples to continue with his work of spreading the gospel. So do not relent. Do not get discouraged.”

Police are still investigating how the new cult emerged even after heavy security was deployed to Shakahola forest and declared it a crime scene, restricting entry.

Police believe Anido left Shakahola when the mass graves were discovered, either as a victim or undetected.

Despite Makenzi being arrested, she remained in constant communication with him and established the new base at Kwa Binzaro.

While the government concentrated on securing Shakahola forest, the suspects moved deeper to Kwa Binzaro.

“They continued spreading apocalyptic messages through door-to-door and cross-country recruitment efforts, then took the recruits to Malindi town for radicalisation before moving them to Kwa Binzaro to complete their fasting journey,” said an investigator.

Victims were mostly transported to the forest at night using motorbikes to avoid raising suspicion.

Anido reportedly rented rooms at Kaoyeni village in Malindi, which acted as holding cells for victims destined for Kwa Binzaro.
She would always pay her bills in cash and, at times, use false names to avoid detection.

Police documents revealed that Anido continually brought new people she claimed were her relatives. However, they would disappear after a few weeks of their arrival.

“The cells at Kaoyeni village served as transit points. Victims were isolated, indoctrinated, and weakened through controlled fasting. The secrecy around these movements allowed the cult to evade detection for months until an arrest in July exposed the network,” said an investigator.

Documents tabled before the Malindi law courts indicate that the suspects currently in custody channelled money to facilitate their operations.

Affidavits filed in court show that all four suspects lived in Shakahola with their families before escaping after security agencies moved in.

Court documents show that Anido was living in Shakahola with her husband, who is missing and believed to be dead.

The second suspect, Kahindi Garama, who went missing in 2023 from Shakahola forest and presumed dead, went into hiding and later regrouped with the other suspects.
Garama is said to have lived in Shakahola with his wife Salama Masha and five children. The children are in a children’s home in Kilifi County.

An affidavit sworn by a detective at the Malindi High Court states that on 2 September, detectives conducted a search at Garama’s rented house in Malindi and found 15 SIM cards from multiple service providers, flash disks, and a national identity card belonging to one of the victims.

The police also discovered a land purchase agreement for the five-acre piece of land bearing Anido’s name. They also found a jembe believed to have been used in the burials at Kwa Binzaro.

In addition, the detectives found a sale agreement pertaining to Garama’s ownership of a motorcycle, registration number KMDD, believed to have been used in ferrying the victims to Kwa Binzaro.

The third suspect, Mukunwe, reportedly stayed in Shakahola with his wife and three children, who are believed to have died.

The fourth suspect, Kazungu, lived in Shakahola with his wife Dhahabu Kabwere Chea, who is facing manslaughter and radicalisation charges at the Mombasa High Court. Their five children are missing and are believed to be dead.

Destroy evidence
The four will be charged with radicalisation, facilitation of terrorist acts, engaging in organised criminal activity, and murder.

Investigators believe that some bodies were buried a year ago. This means they were alive during Makenzi’s arrest in 2023 and for much of 2024.

Prosecutors told Malindi High Court that the recovery of 102 commingled body parts was evidence that many victims had not been properly buried but abandoned deliberately to be eaten by scavengers.

“Some victims were dumped in the forest to be devoured by wild animals in a deliberate attempt to destroy evidence, while some were buried in shallow mass graves less than a foot deep, exposing them to wild animals and the vagaries of weather, thereby degenerating the quality of DNA material recoverable and lengthening the time it takes to successfully profile bodies for DNA identification,” said Deputy Director of Public Prosecution Jamie Yamina.

Speaking at the Malindi Sub-County Hospital mortuary, Chief Government Pathologist Dr Johansen Oduor said that while starvation appeared to be the main cause of death, some victims were hit or beaten to death.

“One of the bodies was still fresh and had a haemorrhage to the brain caused by a blunt object. We found injuries to the head, a lot of haematoma on the right centre of the head, and the brain showed a global haemorrhage,” said Oduor.

The government acknowledged that the vastness of the 50,000-acre Chakama ranch, where Shakahola and Kwa Binzaro are domiciled, makes it fertile ground for illegal activities that often go unnoticed by security agencies until disaster strikes.