TELLURIDE, Colo. (AP) — The leader of a doomsday cult in Colorado has been sentenced to 64 years in prison for her role in the deaths of two children who were banished to a car without food or water.
The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel reports Madani Ceus was sentenced Friday for felony child abuse resulting in death. Authorities say 10-year-old Makayla Roberts and 8-year-old Hannah Marshall were found on a farm in the town of Norwood in September 2017.
Investigators believe Ceus, of Haiti, declared the girls were possessed by unclean spirits and ordered them kept in a car as the group waited for the apocalypse before the solar eclipse.
In March 2019, a co-defendant, Ashford Archer, was found guilty of two counts of fatal child abuse and being an accessory to a crime. He was sentenced to 24 years in prison for the child abuse and six years for the accessory charge.
