Police set up committee to investigate unresolved murders
The police have reopened investigations into unresolved murder cases that have, over the years, gathered dust while the families of the victims look forward to justice.
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A special committee set up to look into the cases has been tasked with the responsibility to deal with an initial six high-profile unresolved murders.
Those cases include the murder of the paramount chief of the Nanumba Traditional Area, Naa Dasana Andani, who was allegedly attacked along with three family members, by some unknown assailants at his palace in Bimbilla on Thursday, June 18, 2014.
Additionally, the committee will look into the shooting of the Mankrado (sub-chief) of Gomoa Fetteh Kakraba in the Central Region, Nana Kwame Okyere Mpamtu, at 6: 30 p.m. on February 27, 2014 and the death of Peter Keyenso, the Municipal Chief Executive for Nkwanta South in the Volta Region.
“It is our hope that the cases that have kept long on our files and have, for that matter, been classified as cold cases will be solved as quickly as possible,” the Director General of the Public Affairs Department of the Ghana Police Service, Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCOP), Rev David Neenyi Ampah-Benin, said.
Cold case
A cold case is a crime or an accident that has not yet been fully resolved and is not the subject of a recent criminal investigation.
Reopening investigations into a cold case involves gathering new information that can emerge from new witness testimony, re-examined archives, retained material evidence, as well as fresh activities of suspects.
Rev Ampah Benin said although the seven-member committee had not been given a specific time frame to solve the mysteries surrounding the murders, he was hopeful that it would fast-track work on the investigations.
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He said the committee, formed about a forthright ago, was codenamed ‘Cold Case’ and was expected to find the perpetrators of the murders and propose recommendations.
Membership
Though Rev. Ampah-Benin would not give the names of all the committee members for security reasons, he said they were selected from different backgrounds with speciality in crime.
A former Director General of the Criminal Investigations Department (CID), Commissioner of Police (COP) Mr Frank Adu Poku, and the Director General in charge of Research & Planning of the Ghana Police Service, Commissioner of Police (COP) Mr David Asante Apeatu, have been appointed to supervise the work of the committee.
The committee is also to look into any new high-profile murder.
Families cry for justice
Apart from the inability of the police to unravel the motives behind the heinous crimes, in some cases no culprits have been apprehended yet.
There were instances when the police announced cash rewards for anyone who offered information leading to the arrest of the perpetrators.
On October 15, 2014, the Daily Graphic published the concerns of the families of six persons who were murdered between 2005 and 2012 but whose families were yet to see justice served to the perpetrators.
The incidents included one in which gunmen stormed a house at Dome in Accra and gunned down four people, including Kwaku Boateng, a retired accountant of the then Ghana Telecom, on January 25, 2005.
The gruesome murder of a 31-year-old scrap dealer and his 28-year-old girlfriend on November 7, 2007, which turned Onyenase at Awoshie, one of the fastest-growing suburbs in Accra, into a scene of tragedy and mourning, is also yet to be solved.
There are also the killing of Ibrahim Seidu, a stores superintendent of the Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL) at Abirem Achiase, near Kumasi in the Ashanti Region, about 10 p.m. on August 4, 2007 while he was in his car about 300 metres away from his house and the murder of the Chief Executive Officer of Louis Gas, Louis Badu, gunned down in cold blood when armed robbers stormed his residence in the night of September 14, 2010 and bolted with a large amount of money,
On May 2, 2012, residents of Sepe Timpom, a Kumasi suburb, were left in tears and shock after an ex-convict, Kwadwo Yeboah, had stabbed his two children to death and also left his pregnant wife in a pool of blood.
Yeboah has since been on the run, two years and eight months after the sordid act.
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The sixth case concerned a 27-year-old junior doctor at the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital (KATH) who was found dead in his flat at the hospital under mysterious circumstances.
Some relatives of the victims of the murders have expressed shock and anger that the police have failed to seek justice for their departed family members.
Writers email: emelia.ennin@graphic.com.gh