A lecturer and criminologist at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Dr. Jones Opoku-Ware, has commended the Ghana Police Service for what he described as a major achievement in crime detection following the arrest of two suspects linked to the Wa killings.
Speaking on the JoyNews AM Show, Dr. Opoku-Ware emphasized that identifying and arresting serial killers is one of the most complex tasks in criminology due to the unpredictable and scattered nature of their crimes.
“All over the world, you know, when it comes to serial killing, these are one of the types of murders that are very difficult to identify the perpetrators of. So if you look at the way they operate, it is not easy for you to identify them,” he explained.
According to him, serial killers often choose their victims and crime locations randomly, making it difficult for law enforcement agencies to establish connections between cases quickly.
“What they do is that they engage in very geographically unrelated kinds of operations, so it becomes tough for you to be able to connect to one particular person at a relatively shorter point in time,” Dr. Opoku-Ware stated.
He further noted that most serial killers tend to live ordinary lives among unsuspecting communities, which makes profiling them even more challenging.
“Many serial killers, as we know over the period, are people that walk in plain sight. I mean they are people that live with us within a community; they are not sophisticated people.
“So they will be living with us, but we wouldn’t know these are the kinds of activities they engage in. It makes it very difficult for us to be able to profile and identify them over the period,” he said.
The criminologist described the police breakthrough as commendable, given the complexity of such investigations.
His remarks followed confirmation by the Ghana Police Service that two suspects had been arrested in connection with the Wa murders, with one reportedly confessing to 15 killings.
