Police in Missouri are looking for six missing people who are believed to be linked to an alleged online cult led by an incarcerated man who touts himself as a “prophet” and “revolutionary.”
The Berkeley Police Department said the group led by Rashad Jamal [White] — who is a social media influencer, poet, and rapper with thousands of followers across platforms — disappeared in St. Louis County last summer, KSDK reported. It includes Gerille German and her son Ashton Mitchell, Naaman Williams, and Mikayla Thompson.
Per the report, Ma’Kayla Wickerson and her 3-year-old daughter Malaiyah have disappeared, too. Family members are desperate to know their whereabouts and if they are safe. Wickerson’s mother said the 25-year-old had stopped going to work and iced them out before unexpectedly moving out.
“She was probably suffering from postpartum depression. Meeting these people online, and they just preyed on her weakness,” Cartisha Morgan told the outlet.
Police said Williams started what is described as his “spiritual journey” in 2022 and connected with Thompson online, the report said. She picked him up from Washington, D.C., and both returned to Missouri.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that Jamal runs a YouTube channel called “The University of Cosmic Intelligence,” which has nearly 200,000 subscribers and was created following the death of George Floyd in 2020. In a recent video on Jan. 2, he slammed the idea of being labeled as a cult leader.
“I’m just giving you my opinion 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. I’m giving you my opinions on these things,” Jamal said to the newspaper. “That doesn’t make me a cult leader.”
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