Police looking for group - including 2 children - who are missing, believed involved with cult

Six people — one man, three women and two young children — from a St. Louis-area home disappeared in August and police fear they are the victims of an online cult.

Naaman Williams, 29, Gerielle German, 26, her 3-year-old son Ashton Mitchell, Mikayla Thompson, 23, Ma’Kayla Wickerson, 25, and her 3-year daughter Malaiyah were last seen in a rented home in Berkeley, Mo., near St. Louis Lambert International airport.

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According to Berkeley police Major Steve Runge, the four missing adults are believed to be part of a cult allegedly revolving around Rashad Jamal. Jamal was convicted of child molestation in 2023 and is serving a prison sentence in Georgia.

Jamal, whose full name is Rashad Jamal White, has amassed thousands of followers on social media with his spiritual teachings, operating what he calls the University of Cosmic Intelligence, which according to its website is “geared toward enlightening and illuminating minds” of Black and Latino people, according to People.com.

Jamal, who is also a rapper, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, that his “University of Cosmic Intelligence” is simply a spiritual YouTube channel.

“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,” he said to the Post-Dispatch. “That doesn’t make me a cult leader.”

Runge said Jamal has encouraged followers to: change their name to a spiritual god or goddess; have a very active social media platform that displays videos on conspiracies; share Rashad Jamal videos; disconnect from family and friends; quit their jobs; live off of credit cards; embrace sovereign citizenship; polygamy; meditate in the nude in the front and rear yards with neighbors present; and refer to their mother as a shell that brought spirit into the universe.

German’s mother Shelita Gibson told TV station KSDK that her daughter and grandson left their hometown in Mississippi suddenly saying only that they were going to Missouri.

“And I said to her, ‘You don’t know where you’re going. I just got a bad feeling about this. Something just doesn’t sit well with my spirit. you need to rethink this. This is like you’re just walking away from your whole life, that you just created. You got children, you got a significant other, like, really? What’s going on?’

“So, then she was like, ‘Well, I’m leaving,’” Gibson said.

Before her abrupt departure, Gibson told KSDK that German was acting strange, meditating on a blanket outside and mentioning the teachings of Rashad Jamal.

Gibson said she abandoned her 4-year-old daughter as well as the rest of her family.

“I would like to know that they’re okay so that I can get a good night’s sleep. I would like to know they’re not hungry, they’re not cold, that no one is making her do things that she would have to pay for in the long run,” Gibson said.

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