15-Month-Old Girl Was Starved To Death By Dad Connected To Black Supremacist Cult

2024 Author: Steven Freeman | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 08:15

A Georgia man authorities say was connected to a black supremacist cult pleaded guilty Tuesday in the starvation death of his 15-month-old daughter, PEOPLE confirms.

Calvin McIntosh, 48, also pleaded guilty to three counts of cruelty to children, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.

Per his plea agreement, McIntosh was sentenced to life in prison followed by 30 years on probation, according to the Gwinnett County prosecutor's office. However, McIntosh will be eligible for parole in 30 years.

McIntosh entered Alford pleas to the charges against him, allowing him to accept punishment while still maintaining his innocence.

McIntosh had been charged with cruelty against Iasia Sweeting, the mother of the slain baby, Alcenti. Sweeting was found starving inside an Extended Stay Hotel in Peachtree Corners, but that charge was dropped as part of the plea.

Sweeting has alleged that McIntosh kidnapped, raped and held her in captivity for four years before she was discovered by officers in the hotel room. She could not be reached for comment.

The surprise plea came on the second day of jury selection for McIntosh's trial.

Also charged in the case is McIntosh's daughter Najlaa, who is also accused of murdering Alcenti and depriving three of McIntosh's children of food - two of whom he fathered with her.

It is unclear when Najlaa will go to trial. Najlaa's attorney Charles Wrinkle has said that Najlaa was also a victim of McIntosh.

The case came to light on November 11, 2014 when McIntosh nonchalantly walked into Atlanta's Northside Hospital with the lifeless body of Alcenti.

The infant weighed only 7 pounds at the time of her death.

Police later discovered Sweeting inside the Extended Stay room. She was catatonic and emaciated, wrapped in a blanket on the floor, 59 pounds and barely alive.

Dwight York

"She was almost in a vegetative state and she was trying to communicate but all she could do was moan and make a little bit of noise," says former Gwinnett County Police Department detective James Sweeney. "It was almost like looking at a skeleton but the skeleton is a living person."

McIntosh was allegedly devoted to the United Nuwaubian Nation of Moors, a largely defunct Georgia-based cult founded by Dwight “Malachi” York, a convicted child molester who in 2004 was convicted of five counts of racketeering and six counts of transporting minors across state lines for sexual purposes. (The cult was featured on a 2018 episode of People Magazine Investigates: Cults.)

York, who blended his belief in black supremacism with Eygyptian mysticismand UFOs, was also a staunch believer in polygamy and had sex with many of his female followers. A select group of his favorites became his wives.

Sweeney says McIntosh showed no remorse during a police interview. "It was like talking to somebody who is just so out of touch with reality that you can't even bring them to reality even if you try."

After Sweeting was found in the hotel, authorities also found journals referencing death and ritualistic practices, literature about the Nuwaubian cult and York.

"York had sexual relationships with multiple generations of the mother and the daughter," Putnam County Sheriff Howard Sills tells PEOPLE. "Calvin is nothing more than an emulation of York."