Was there a finality to this horrific story?

The May 28 2008 edition of the Daily Graphic newspaper reported the discovery of human skeletons in a septic tank at Tsito in the Volta region. It said several arrests were made in connection with the murder of nine-year-old twins Joseph and Benjamin Bani. The prime suspect was reportedly on the run.

The suspects were thought to have lured the children to an isolated place where they were killed for ritual purposes. The Volta regional police commander at the time, Mr. Bernard Dery had told journalists that the police moved straight to where the bodies were hidden upon a tip-off, there and then they found the skeletons in a septic tank.

Though identity disclosures of crime informants are forbidden, one is curious to ask the rhetorical question, ”How did the police informant know about the killings, or was it a case of self-confession?

On claims of a bloodline between some of the suspects and the deceased, it makes sense to ask whether the police have embarked on some form of public education about such causes and effects since it has antecedents in 1988 when Benjamin Affi killed his nephew Kofi Kyintoh in the infamous Sefwi Bekwai murder case that resulted in the executions of offenders?

”The police suspected that the suspects could be members of a syndicate,” is a phrase in the Daily Graphic report on the Tsito case. The Tsito twins went missing on January 8 and their remains were found four months later.  Suspected ritual murders keep happening in Ghana. In 2017, a man who had attended a funeral in a town in the Volta region could not find his four-year-old son and six years on, that missing child is unaccounted for.

How did the Tsito case end? Was the absconded prime suspect arrested? Were the other members of the syndicate nabbed? Why would the media give all the attention to the breaking news, and show little interest in the aftermath? This includes the punishment meted out to the suspects, what became of the parents of the slain children, and in situations like these the affected families have entitlement to some form of compensation.

Can the media treat such cases as developing stories and piloting the active public through all phases of the chase to their logical conclusion?