Kalyn Womack
The Root
January 18, 2024
January 18, 2024
The Missouri police have dug their heels into the sudden vanishing of four adults and two children believed to be in association with an online cult member who is currently behind bars. Their latest finding, however, suggests the group went off-grid on purpose.
Berkeley Police Maj. Steve Runge told NBC it is likely the group doesn’t plan to be found given the recent bits of evidence he’s collected.“They’ve shut off their phones, shut off their social media, shut off everything. We’ve even sent them money via a cash app and they haven’t collected it. They’re just gone,” Runge said via NBC.
After the group vanished in August, police discovered they were followers of Rashad Jamal White, an online conspiracy theorist who calls himself a god, supports polygamy, teaches mythology and basically tries to convince Black people that they are of another multiverse. Their family members told local St. Louis reporters they often found the group members meditating and chanting outside their homes.
So far, this is the biggest lead toward an explanation as to why the group up and left civilization. However, the report says this wasn’t the first Rashad Jamal White-worshipper who did something sideways like this.
Earlier this month, Yasmine Hider was hit with a 35-year prison sentence for her role in the fatal shooting of 22-year-old Adam Simjee of Apopka, Florida, in the Talladega National Forest in Alabama. She and her accomplice, Krystal Pinkins, had been living off the grid in the forest when they tried to rob Simjee and his girlfriend.
In social media postings seen by NBC News, Hider repeatedly mentioned Jamal.
Pinkins, who received a life sentence for the Simjee killing, was also a follower of Jamal, according to various published reports.
The whole connecting to the cosmos, looking for portals to Africa in the Grand Canyon and hyperspiritual teachings would seemingly encourage a person to disconnect. However, their guru can’t be of much guidance serving an 18-year sentence in prison on child molestation charges.
Actually, he denied knowing these people at all.
“I am pretty sure I have never met these people. I get on my phone and I give a lecture. I go live, and then I get off the phone. I do not know the people that are in my live(stream). It’s too many people,” he said in a phone interview with St. Louis Post-Dispatch from Georgia prison.
He also denied being a cult leader but insisted he was an educator on metaphysics, molecular biology, Black history - and so on and so forth. With that being said, he then argued that the police “put a target on his back” upon the group’s disappearance.
Berkeley Police Maj. Runge could not be reached for comment on next steps in the investigation.
https://www.theroot.com/new-developments-in-the-search-for-missing-cult-followe-1851173720
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