Six people, including two children, who went missing in the St. Louis area are believed to have become involved with an online spiritual cult before their disappearance.
The six victims — Naaman Williams, 29, Mikayla Thompson, 23, Ma’Kayla Wickerson, 25, her three-year daughter Malaiyah, Gerielle German, 26, and her three-year-old son Ashton — all lived together and had recently been evicted from their rented home. They were reported missing in August 2023 after vanishing from a nearby Quality Inn hotel in suburban St. Louis.
Last week, police told local media that the four adults had become followers of online guru Rashad Jamal, who is currently serving an eight-year prison sentence in Georgia for child molestation and cruelty to children.
Jamal operates the “University of Cosmic Intelligence” and gives livestreamed lectures from prison. His website states the “online university is geared towards enlightening and illuminating the minds of the carbonated beings a.k.a your so called Black & Latino people of Earth.”
Enrolling in Jamal’s courses costs a minimum of US$33.69 per month.
Jamal states he is not a cult leader and maintains his innocence in the child molestation case. Last week he told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that his social media presence is simply him giving “opinions on a plethora of different subjects: from metaphysics to quantum physics to molecular biology to marine biology to geography to Black history to world history.”
“That doesn’t make me a cult leader.”
Full Story: https://globalnews.ca/news/10229441/missing-people-st-louis-online-cult/
