Pathologists and detectives conducted 34 autopsies on Monday bringing the number of postmortems conducted on bodies of the Shakahola catastrophe to 79 since the exercise resumed last week.
Chief Government Pathologist Dr. Johansen Oduor told journalists at the Malindi Sub County Hospital Funeral Home that his team had investigated 22 bodies of adults and 12 of children, representing 21 females and 10 males as well as three whose sex or gender could not be determined.
He said the team, which had taken a weekend rest due to exhaustion, was unable to determine the causes of death for 20 of the bodies while 12 had features of starvation.
He said the team found that most of the bodies were severely decomposed, in that 32 of the bodies were severely decomposed while two of them were moderately decomposed.
“As for the cause of death, we found many of the bodies were very badly decomposed, we were unable to get the cause of death in 22 of them while in 12 of them we found features which looked like of starvation,” he said
He said since many of the bodies were unidentifiable, the team took samples for further tests which the Government Chemist would use for DNA purposes so they can be identified.
So far, a total of 191 out of the 141 bodies of the victims of Mr. Paul Mackenzie’s cultic teachings in which the controversial preacher is accused of influencing his followers to starve to death to meet Jesus.
It is likely that the postmortem exercise could end this week, paving the way for a resumption of the exhumations within Mr. Mackenzie’s 800-acre farm in Shakahola, which Interior Cabinet Secretary Kithure Kindiki suspended last week.
Mr. Kindiki said there were still many more graves in the farm, including about 10 mass graves that had already been identified.
By Emmanuel Masha
