A Texan woman, previously considered missing, was discovered residing with a so-called ‘lost’ Hebrew tribe in a Scottish forest. Her aunt disclosed that she had left the U.S. with her infant daughter without informing her family.

Kaura Taylor, aged 21, was declared missing by her family until she was found in a Jedburgh forest, Scotland. She was living as the ‘handmaiden’ to the self-appointed leaders, King Atehene and Queen Nandi.

The couple claims to lead the ‘kingdom of Kubala’, describing it as a ‘tribe’ of lost Hebrews, and are on a mission to reclaim supposed ancestral land allegedly taken 400 years ago.

However, the local council, owning the land they occupied, disagreed with their claims and issued an eviction notice for their ‘illegal encampment,’ requiring them to relocate.

The backstory of how Taylor wound up joining the couple’s ‘kingdom’ in the Scottish wilderness has been shrouded in mystery – until now.

Taylor’s aunt, Vandora Skinner, shared with the Daily Mail how Taylor’s behavior changed after meeting the couple online, preceding her departure from America in May with her young daughter.

The one-year-old has since been placed under the care of UK authorities after officials located her and Taylor living in a temporary campsite within a Scottish woodland.

Skinner, 60, told Daily Mail that her niece and baby were living with her in Cedar Hill, south of Dallas, Texas, before they suddenly left around May 23.

Two days after they disappeared, Skinner says she received a message from Taylor saying she had left and ‘decided to explore a little bit’.

‘I tried to respond to the message, saying “Where are you, though?”

‘And she said, “I will have to call you when I get Wi-Fi.”

‘I never got a call, and I never got a response to where she was. She didn’t let nobody know that she was gone.’

Skinner says she mounted a search for Taylor, speaking to her friends and her ex-boyfriend, who alerted her to a Facebook page named ‘Lady Safi’, with the description: ‘Asnat, Lady Safi, handmaidens of Queen Nandi, the Kingdom of Kubala’.

‘And there she was, I see her on the posts. At first, the family believed the pictures were photoshopped, and we didn’t believe that she was in the UK,’ she added.

Taylor appears in online videos calling herself ‘Asnat of Atehene’, while ‘Lady Safi’ is the name of another woman who previously served as the ‘kingdom’s’ handmaiden.

Skinner called police in Scotland, who she says found Taylor with the couple in the woods and took her baby.

‘They also told me Kaura was not cooperating with them, saying that she wasn’t coming back,’ she added.

Skinner said the baby was taken from the woods by UK social services but declined to elaborate further.

‘All I can say is, the baby is in safe care and is on the way back to the USA.’

Taylor’s mother Latonya Melba Whitehead, father Kirk ‘Domino’ Taylor and other family members have urged her on Facebook to leave the couple and return to the US.

Skinner says she has tried too, but eventually ‘backed off’ after her niece made ‘hurtful’ claims that she was sexually abused by someone in her family.

She added: ‘Kaura did a video… saying how she was sexually assaulted as a kid, and how she fled from a toxic, abusive family.’

In a June 23 video shared to Facebook, Taylor said she had ‘fled willingly from a very oppressive, very abusive, very toxic and utterly wicked family structure’ and had been sexually abused.

Addressing the UK authorities, she said: ‘Leave me alone. I am an adult, not a helpless child’.

In subsequent posts, the young woman has insisted she is ‘very happy with my King and Queen’, is ‘not being abused’ and was ‘never missing’.

Skinner angrily denied Taylor’s claims of sexual abuse, calling them ‘a bald-faced lie’, adding: ‘No one has ever abused her. The family is not toxic.’

In an explosive claim, she fears her ‘very intelligent’ but ‘easily influenced’ niece is being ‘coerced’ by the couple.

‘You can tell that she was reading. They were telling her what to say, because she was stumbling over her words,’ she added.

Skinner sent Daily Mail what she said were happy family photos of her niece graduating high school and spending time with her baby, cousins and late grandmother.

She said she is ‘fearful’ for her niece’s safety over her choice of campmates, adding: ‘The stories we’ve heard that the woman had like eight kids already [and] they were all taken by social services.’

The king, real name Kofi Offeh, is a 36-year-old former opera singer from Ghana and Queen Nandi is Jean Gasho, 42, a mother-of-seven originally from Zimbabwe.

The couple were due to face a trial for child cruelty in Teesside, in north-east England, but all charges were dropped earlier this year.

Skinner accused Gasho of ‘claiming Kaura’s baby as her own’, adding: ‘In videos, we never saw Kaura with the baby. The woman and the ‘King’ always had the baby.’

She hit out at the trio’s unorthodox lifestyle, after seeing videos of the trio talking about polygamy as a ‘sacred’ part of their tribe’s culture and Taylor describing herself as a ‘surrogate’ for the Queen and ‘inferior mistress’ to the King.

Skinner is mystified as to how exactly Taylor – a ‘very smart’ high school graduate and church-going youngster – wound up joining the couple’s ‘cult’.

But she believes she met them online and said in the months before she left the USA, her niece began acting differently and withdrawing from her family.

‘I have no idea how she ended up mixed up with these people, she kept that totally hidden from the family.

‘But we did see behavioral changes in her, like before left, she wouldn’t come to the family gatherings anymore.

‘She wouldn’t go to church anymore. She started putting markings on her head and on the baby’s head, markings for this religion that they’re practicing.’

Skinner said when she asked Taylor what was going on, she was told ‘It’s Yahowah [the Hebrew name for God], and this new religion they’re practicing.’

She claims Taylor had been ‘acting out’ and her mother tried to get her into counselling ‘but she quit going’.

Before she left, Taylor worked in Five Guys, the fast-food restaurant chain, and a Murphy USA gas station, but quit both jobs, her aunt added.

She added: ‘She would say things like, ‘I can’t see myself working on a white man job.’

‘She had that mentality that she didn’t want to be in the system, she didn’t want to work, she didn’t want to go to college.

‘And then I noticed these people don’t want to work either. Y’all living in the woods.’

In their encampment, the trio have lived off the land and donations from locals – including a typically Scottish offering of Iron Bru and Shortbread from a journalist.

A TikTok account thought to be linked to the couple advertises a Cashapp name and a subscription option to followers.

But it has been far from plain sailing for the three-person kingdom.

The group claim their tents were burned down by locals before they moved to another site, near a school, where the self-proclaimed King is often seen loitering outside a Co-op to use its Wi-Fi.

Taylor is believed to have entered the UK on a six-month visa due to expire in November.

But Skinner says she doesn’t know what will happen then, as her niece has repeatedly refused to return to Texas.

‘We just pray that Kaura is safe and comes to her senses and gets away from those people before something dangerous happens.’

The trio claim they are part of a lost tribe of Hebrews, whose ancestors were kicked out of Scotland when Queen Elizabeth I deported native black Jacobites.

They are now trying to rebuild their kingdom and bring other ‘lost tribes’ back into the fold, as Atehene – who claims he is descended from the ancient King David – declaring that a prophecy foretold that they would return to Scotland after 400 years. 

Daily Mail has contacted Gasho, Offeh, and Taylor via multiple channels for comment but did not hear back.

A Scottish Borders Council spokesman told Daily Mail the authority had been ‘working with Police Scotland’ in relation to the trio’s ‘illegal encampment’ on its land at Hartrigge near Jedburgh.

It said the group were served with an eviction note on July 30 and left the site for non-council owned land.