Left: Photo obtained by Law&Crime through the Berkley Police Department depicting some of the missing suspected victims of an alleged online cult run by leader Rashad Jamal aka Rashad Jamal White of the “University for Cosmic Intelligence.” Right: Rashad Jamal Instagram photo obtained by Law&Crime.
Six people who have been missing for nearly six months, including two 3-year-old children, have prompted police to sound the alarm about a suspected online cult that they allege is operated by a man currently serving 18 years in prison for child molestation.
Rashad Jamal, also known as Rashad Jamal White, is a self-professed online “prophet” who runs a YouTube channel where he describes himself as the leader of the “University of Cosmic Intelligence.” Less advertised on his own website is his conviction on a single count of child molestation and another count of cruelty toward a child last August, Law&Crime previously reported.
Despite the fact that Jamal is behind bars, police in Missouri are now spreading the word investigators believe that in the time since Jamal was sentenced, four adults who started following him online have cut ties with their loved ones, quit their jobs and otherwise gone rogue after being lured into Jamal’s bizarre web of conspiracy theories.
In videos reviewed by Law&Crime’s Sierra Gillespie last week, Jamal is seen in one post proclaiming that “winter is not real” and that it is actually “a weapon” with the “true name of sub-zero technology.”
“They make fake clouds, they put ice crystals in the clouds, use fake 5G towers to activate those ice crystals in the clouds,” Jamal rambles, before later adding that birds seen on power lines are “government drones [who] report surveillance.”
Jamal also promotes polygamy and encourages followers to go into debt by living off their credit cards, meditate in the nude in public including at their homes in their front yards and backyards, declare sovereign citizenship and more.
Police in Missouri think Naaman Williams, 29, Gerielle German, 26, German’s 3-year-old son Ashton Mitchell, Mikayla Thompson, 23, Ma’Kayla Wickerson, 25, and Wickerson’s 3-year-old daughter, Malaiyah, have been sucked into the cult.
Mikayla Thompson, left, Gerielle German, back, and Ma’Kayla Wickerson appear on security footage obtained by Berkeley Police in Missouri and shared with Law&Crime.
German’s mother Shelita Gibson told St. Louis NBC affiliate KSDK her daughter abruptly vanished last summer from Mississippi after telling her she was going to Missouri without any explanation. Wickerson’s mother Cartisha Morgan said she thinks her daughter was suffering from postpartum depression and that Jamal preyed on her vulnerabilities.
Other friends and family say those who went missing cut off contact, quit jobs, and maxed out credit cards.
Cult expert Rick Alan Ross told Law&Crime that while running an online cult from prison may sound improbable, it isn’t.
Warren Jeffs still operates the extremist Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, or FLDS, as he serves out a life sentence in Texas for sexually assaulting two underage girls he made his “spiritual” brides, Ross noted.
Jamal fancies himself a rapper as well a god and vows on his website that he is “geared toward enlightening and illuminating the minds of the carbonated beings,” or Black and Latino people.
The approach isn’t new.
Another cult leader known as Eligio Bishop, or “NatureBoy,” made similar proposals to his followers online for the group “Melanation” in 2016. He ultimately coaxed victims in Georgia to do things like funnel him huge amounts of cash, move to Honduras and toil on land they purchased for him.
One of Bishop’s victims described rampant sexual abuse to Georgia NBC affiliate WXIA in 2022.
Back in Missouri, the Berkeley Police Department say German and her 3-year-old son Ashton were last seen at a Quality Inn just outside of the airport in St. Louis in August.
Police know she, the boy, and the four others missing were last known to be renting an apartment in Berkeley. They were evicted in August and according to The Root, the home was rented in Ma’Kayla Wickerson’s name. Police says Wickerson has changed her name and now goes by Intuahma Aquama Auntil.
Jamal told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in an interview from prison this week that he does not know the six missing people reported missing. He also denies being a cult leader, saying he merely expresses his opinions online on everything from molecular biology to Black history.
“I am pretty sure I have never met these people,” he said, adding he doesn’t know who comes in and out of his livestreams online.
Though the six missing people allegedly connected to Jamal were living in Missouri, they are not all from the state. Naaman Williams is from Washington, D.C., and Gerielle German and her son are from Mississippi.
Berkley Police Department Major Steve Runge said this week the suspected cult members have been seen running naked in the rain outside of the Berkeley home. They have also been seen digging things up from the dirt.
Runge also said the FBI is helping them in their search.
Meanwhile, as of Tuesday, a Change.org petition urging Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp to clear Jamal of his child molestation conviction is just shy of 10,000 signatures.
Have a tip we should know? [email protected]
