Detectives on Thursday, May 18 exhumed eight more bodies from mass graves in Shakahola Forest, Kilifi County, on land linked to cult leader Paul Mackenzie.
This increased to 235, the number of bodies so far recovered from the place.
Mackenzie is being investigated for crimes including aiding suicide, after allegedly convincing members of his Good News International Church to starve themselves to death in order to meet Jesus.
The cult leader and tens of suspects have been arrested amid investigations and a court case to establish what happened in Shakahola.
Coast Regional Commissioner Rhoda Onyancha said 31 suspects are in custody.
Onyancha further reported a total of 89 people have been rescued from starvation so far.
Four of them were rescued on Thursday, May 18. One was in bad condition, police said.
The number of people reported missing stood at 613 as of Thursday.
She also said that 14 victims had been reunited with their families and that the number of DNA samples collected stood at 93.
Last week, a Mombasa court allowed an application by the police to have the Shakahola cult leader Mackenzie and his wife Rhoda Maweu detained for 30 days.
Sixteen other people suspected of working in cahoots with the infamous pastor will also be held for the same period.
Shanzu Principal Magistrate, Yusuf Shikanda ruled that the respondents’ safety and security may be at risk if released on bond.
Police have identified 20 new grave sites which they are working on.
The area has been cordoned off and declared a disturbed.
The government has sent a 30-day cancellation notice to the New Life Church of Pastor Ezekiel Odero and the Good News International ministries of Mackenzie.
The two churches have been under investigation for the Shakahola cult in which now 235 people starved themselves to death so they could go to heaven.
Others, post-mortems revealed, were strangled and suffocated.
They were all buried in mass graves.
The second phase of the exhumation exercise started last Tuesday with Interior Cabinet Secretary Kithure Kindiki presiding over the process, which he described as a legal, medical, and human rights exercise that must be undertaken methodically and carefully to protect the dignity and privacy of families of the deceased persons.
Kindiki said the investigation team is closing in on level two and level three perpetrators who aided the cult leader Paul Mackenzie to execute the heinous atrocity.
The entire 50,000-acre Chakama ranch remains a security area and scene of the crime with limited access for all persons who are unauthorized.
Dozens more bodies are believed to be buried in shallow graves therein.
Mackenzie, who is in police custody, is being investigated for influencing his followers to starve to death in order to meet their maker.
Police also suspect that some of the victims did not starve to death and may have been killed and then buried on the property.
He has denied wrongdoing but has been refused bail.
He insists that he shut down his church in 2019.
The followers say he told them to starve themselves in order to “meet Jesus“.
