Controversial televangelist, Bishop Gilbert Deya, a man once hailed as a miracle worker and condemned as a con artist, has died in a grisly road accident near Kisumu.
His life ended as dramatically as he lived it, wrecked in twisted metal, leaving behind wounded bodies and even more fractured truths.
Deya, 72, died instantly on 17th June, 2025 evening when his car collided with a university bus and another vehicle.
His wife and several others were injured more than 30 people in total, including at least 15 students. For a man whose name once stirred crowds into frenzied belief and provoked global outrage, his final act was one of chaos and carnage.
To many, Gilbert Deya was a beacon of hope: a charismatic preacher who promised the impossible-miracle pregnancies to barren women. But to others, he was a predator cloaked in prayer, whose “miracles” masked a harrowing child-trafficking operation.
In the early 2000s, his London-based ministry gained notoriety as desperate women flocked to his altar, convinced that the laying of hands and faith would grant them children.
But the babies delivered not in hospitals, but in shady backroom clinics in Nairobi didn’t come from miracles. They were, prosecutors alleged, stolen from poor families, their cries the price of someone else’s salvation.
He was extradited from the UK after a bitter 10-year legal battle, accused of masterminding the cruelest kind of deception.
But in 2023, after years in and out of courtrooms, the case against him collapsed for lack of evidence. Some called it justice. Others called it failure.
Even then, he never apologized. In a now-infamous BBC interview, Deya shrugged off the damning DNA evidence linking babies to neither mother nor father. “They are of God,” he said. “And things of God cannot be explained.”
His wife at the time, Mary Deya, was jailed for stealing a baby and pretending it was her own. The couple divorced. “She tarnished my name,” he told a judge.
Yet, despite the scandals, he returned to the pulpit-unrepentant, undeterred. His YouTube sermons, often rambling and cryptic, still drew followers. In his last days, he appeared online with his new wife, Diana Deya, as if rewriting the narrative once more.
On Wednesday, Siaya Governor James Orengo called Deya’s death “tragic” and confirmed that one of the vehicles involved in the crash belonged to the county.
Photos from the scene paint a picture of horror -metal torn open like paper, lives abruptly altered, legacies sealed in blood and twisted steel.
Gilbert Deya died as he lived surrounded by controversy, belief, disbelief, and unanswered questions. Was he a man of God who stumbled? Or a manipulator who walked free while others suffered?
In death, as in life, Bishop Gilbert Deya divides a nation, between those who mourn a spiritual father and those who can never forget the cries of stolen children, the heartbreak of false hope, and the danger of blind faith.
