Dr. Jones Opoku-Ware has weighed in on the Wa serial killers who were busted by the Ghana Police Service.
“You need a lot of time to be able to pick the chain to connect it to a particular person or group of people who do those kinds of operations,” the lecturer and criminologist at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) explained.
“It’s something that is very complex, and over the years, if you look at crime literature, you will get to know that it’s been very, very difficult all over the world to pin down serial killers because of their modus operandi, which we call the MO.”
Dr. Opoku-Ware emphasized that such breakthroughs require careful detective work and attention to detail.
“It is very key when we have to talk about what the police have done in the Upper West Region. I think I will really give it up to them because they’ve been able to use the trace and all the key things that the person must have left and been able to connect all the dots and hand it to this person. So I think they’ve really done well,” he stressed.
He also shed light on the psychological aspect of serial killing, revealing that many offenders are often diagnosed with mental conditions such as schizophrenia.
“If you look at the typology of serial killers, many of them have been diagnosed with certain mental conditions, especially schizophrenia.
“So a lot of time, if we are to do a proper assessment of these kinds of guys, we need to also take into account their psychological state at any point in time,” he said.
Dr. Opoku-Ware further explained the difference between types of killers, pointing out that some kill purely for thrill.
“We have those that we call the spree killers, they kill for fun; they get some kind of thrill, and most of the time when you interview them, they tell you that they hear voices in their head that tell them to go and kill,” he noted.
“So if you have such kinds of people on the loose, it means that apart from the fact that they are committing murder, they actually derive some form of joy from the very act that they commit.”
Analyzing the Wa case, the criminologist said the suspect’s choice of victims revealed a disturbing mix of motivations.
“If you look at the pattern of what we have, the guy that we’ve arrested now, apart from the fact that I suspect this form of thrill-seeking behaviour, I also see some form of the classic typology of the serial killers who want to get some form of financial reward.
“But then what is even more interesting is the choice of people this guy was targeting mad people and watchmen,” he observed.
