Doomsday cult boss who ordered fatal abuse of two young sisters because they were 'unclean' jailed for 64 years
SAN MIGUEL COUNTY, COLORADO: An accused doomsday cult leader has been given 64 years in jail for ordering two young girls to be starved and left dehydrated in a hot car, while other members of the doomsday cult group awaited an apocalypse to take place. The sisters, Hannah Marshal and Makayla Roberts, eventually died in the summer of 2017, while locked inside the car that was parked near a farm in Telluride, Colorado.
According to reports, Madani Ceus of Haiti, the cult leader, had ordered her followers, including the two sisters’ mother, Nashika Bramble, to lock the girls in the car without food or water because she felt they were "unclean". Hannah was eight, while Makayla was ten when they died.
Ceus received two back-to-back sentences, worth 32 years each, in connection to the death of the girls after being charged with felony child abuse resulting in death.
Investigators believed that the girls were dead for weeks when their bodies were found on September 8, 2017. While a forensic pathologist who conducted autopsies on the victims said that it’s “quite likely” the two died of dehydration, malnourishment and hyperthermia. However, a doctor said he could not say that "for sure as the girls’ bodies were found in such a poor condition", The Sun reported.
This comes after the owner of the farm, where the car with the dead bodies of the girls was found, identified as Frederick Alec Blair, reached a plea deal in May 2018 for his role in the incident. He faced two counts of child abuse charges resulting in death. However, being an accessory, and as part of a plea deal, his child abuse charges were dropped in return for pleading guilty to the accessory charge. While in 2019, the girls’ mother, Bramble, was given a life sentence with no parole for her involvement in the deaths of her daughters. She was a member of "The Family" – a small nomadic religious group that had settled in a Norwood farm in the summer of 2017. In October 2019, the mother was given double life sentences — one each for the death of her daughters.
In a similar incident, a one-year-old baby died after his mother left him in the car and went to work in August 2019. The incident reportedly happened on August 29, 2019. The mother dialed 911 in the evening of the day after realizing she had "left her child in the car all day". Soon the child was taken to the Atrium Pineville, a local hospital, but could not be saved. Pineville Police Lt. Corey Copley said, "Every life-saving measure was attempted but unfortunately failed.”
“The 12-month-old is currently in the custody of the Mecklenburg County Medical Examiner’s Office, where our investigation will continue. We have many questions and realistically we won’t have all the answers right away,” police said in a statement at the time as reports claimed that they were interviewing the family and witnesses outside the shopping mall. They were also looking at security videos.
In addition, the next day after the tragic incident, Pineville Police said that the woman was the foster mother of the deceased child and that no criminal charges have been filed against her as of now. “The mother continues to be cooperative with Pineville Police and we have extended Mobile Crisis help to her and her entire family as they deal with this tragedy. No criminal charges have been filed at this time and our case is ongoing,” police said.