A 47-year-old Burkinabe, Boigouna Aloys, has been sentenced to life imprisonment by the High Court in Accra after being found guilty of killing his German wife and their daughter at Kokrobitey in Accra.
He was convicted after a seven-member jury panel returned a unanimous guilty verdict against him on two counts of murder after a full trial.
The convict was said to have used a hammer to hit the head of his late wife, Claudia Weizmann, 53, and, sensing that their 14-year-old daughter would report the matter to the police, strangled her to death.
The prosecution, led by Yvonne Yaachie-Adomako, an Assistant State Attorney, called five witnesses to prove their case.
According to EIB Network’s Legal Affairs Correspondent, Murtala Inusah, the convict, when asked by the presiding judge, Justice Mary Maame Ekue Yanzuh, if he had something to say before his conviction, said he had nothing to say.
Boigouna Aloys, who was 43 years old when the incident happened, buried the two at the extreme end of their 10-plot land at Kokrobitey in Accra to avoid any suspicion.
However, neighbors who noticed the sudden disappearance of the German woman and her daughter and a foul stench of a rotten animal emanating from the compound of the suspect reported the matter to the police, leading to the arrest of Aloys.
The police said their investigations discovered that the stench was that of a human being and suspected the Burkinabe of allegedly killing his wife and daughter.
The suspect has since confessed to the crime and added that he used a hammer to hit his wife in the head after a misunderstanding, thus killing her instantly. For fear that his daughter would report the matter to the police, he strangled the 14-year-old girl to death, after which he buried the two on their compound.
The Burkinabe, after getting married to the woman in Germany, decided to move to Ghana to resettle.
Reports indicate that the couple and their daughter arrived in the country in January 2020 and had been living in their three-bedroom apartment sited on a 10-plot land located at Kokrobitey.