TELLURIDE, Colo. — 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.
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 2017 solar eclipse.
The girls' mother Nashika Bramble was sentenced to life in prison without parole in October 2019 for her role in the deaths. She was convicted in July of that year of two counts of first-degree murder.
The sisters' bodies were found in September 2017 in a car parked on a farm near Norwood, a town of about 500 people 30 miles (48 kilometers) west of the Telluride ski resort. Heat, dehydration and starvation killed the girls, and they had been dead for several weeks before their bodies were found, authorities said.
The farm's owner, Frederick "Alec" Blair, told investigators he met the group at a gas station outside Grand Junction and invited them to use his land. He soon joined them in living on the property in tents and cars, according to court documents. He pleaded to accessory charges.
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