Quansah I Didn’t Kill All

While special aide to former president Rawlings, Victor Smith and other key sympathisers of the convicted serial killer have come to his aid, in-depth investigations conducted jointly by the Police Criminal Investigations Department (CID) and United States of America's Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) revealed that Charles Ebo Quansah, a driver, confessed to some of the killings and denied others.

Though the serial killer admitted under a polygraph test that he killed only 8 out of the 35 murdered women, CID Director General, David Asante-Apeatu was of the strong view that the killer was capable of committing all the crimes, as some of his statements were conflicting under various circumstances.

The CID boss catalogued Quansah's admitted killings as follows: four in Kumasi and two each at Dansoman and Adenta, both suburbs of Accra, saying that murders had been recorded at all the places where he resided.

“Fortunately for us the investigators, he had distributed the murders across,” he said, stressing that he was not surprised Quansah admitted to only some of the crimes.

Explaining further, Apeatu said “In all the 8 admissions, he did not admit to the maidservant he murdered in Kumasi, and for which he was arrested.

He didn't admit to the murder of the girlfriend of his friend, also for which he was arrested.

He didn't admit to the other lady (probably referring to Afua in Kumasi), whose body he was the first to discover, and went and showed people. So do we expect him to admit to all of them?”

On one occasion, for instance, he tacitly admitted to the murders when he told a renowned psychiatrist, Dr. Samuel Ohene of the Accra Psychiatric Hospital, that he was not the only person killing Ghanaian women.

Recalling the interview in the documentary, Dr. Ohene said there was a day he told Quansah, then a suspect, of how another woman was murdered near Atomic in Accra, while he (Quansah) was on prison remand.

“I told Charles about it and he became rather animated and said, or let me paraphrase it because he spoke in Fante: 'Doctor, onye m'anko tii na me kum mesiafo wo Ghana ha', in other words 'I am not the only one who kills women in the country'.

To me this is a clear suggestion and admission that he, at least, did kill a number of women,” the top psychiatrist explained.

Dr. Ohene's examination of the convicted killer indicated that he had no delusions, even though Quansah claimed to have an abnormal reaction anytime he drank alcohol or ate cat meat.

He as well told the psychiatrist that though he occasionally attacked women violently, he did so without any intent to kill or harm them.

This claim of Quansah was, however, contrary to the accounts of three Kumasi-based women, who insisted Quansah would have killed them had he not seen people approaching the scenes of attack or heard their footsteps.

Police investigations showed that all the 35 murdered women had common features such as bodies lying supine, legs wide open, foreign objects inserted in their anal parts, unused condoms scattered at the scenes and victims' footwear neatly arranged beside their bodies.

The question many people are asking is whether Quansah was a lone ranger in all the murders catalogued against him. Others are yet to come to terms with why, if there were accomplices, the murders ceased with the arrest and subsequent death sentence on Quansah.

Accra registered its first serial murder case at about 5.00am on August 20, 1998 at Dansoman, when a lady worker of a popular drinking spot was attacked when she closed from work.

The murders continued till February, 2001, when investigations into the 34th murder, led to the arrest of Quansah.

One other murder case, that of Akua Davordzi, was recorded after his arrest, but that was zeroed down to two other young men, who lived in the same area with the victim.

As Quansah continued to elude the police, another man, Mawuli, murdered Augustina Afia Afriyie (alias Tina) and also tried to imitate the original killer but failed in his bid.

Tina's body was discovered at 2.00pm on June 26, 2000, after it was dumped in her own house, but upon his arrest, Mawuli confessed that he did it for ritual purposes.

According to the statistics, 10 women were murdered in 1998, 15 in 1999, 8 in 2000 and 2 in 2001.

Details of the murders of Akua Davordzi and Augustina Afia Afriyie, which the CID/FBI described as copycat murders, would be published in due course.
To be continued.