The death of an Arbroath woman at a hotel in Ghana remains shrouded in mystery as a coroner recorded an open conclusion.
Charmain Speirs, 41, was found lifeless in the bath of a hotel room in the city of Koforidua in March last year, two days after her husband had returned to the UK, an inquest in Chelmsford heard.
Her husband Eric Adusah, a Christian preacher from Ghana, was arrested on suspicion of murder by Ghanaian police but the case was dropped in October due to insufficient evidence.
An initial post-mortem examination in Ghana gave the medical cause of death as a heroin overdose, and a second post-mortem eight months later in the UK found no evidence of assault.
At the inquest, Mr Adusah asked Home Office pathologist Charlotte Randall, who conducted the second post-mortem examination: “Is there any way you could find out how it got in the body?”
He continued: “I wasn’t there but my name has gone everywhere and I have no idea what happened. I don’t know how it got in her body.
“My wife never took that in the house. I never saw her do anything like that.”
Senior Essex coroner Caroline Beasley-Murray rejected possible conclusions of unlawful killing, suicide and accidental death.
“Because there wasn’t sufficient evidence for any of these possible conclusions, I’m going to return an open conclusion,” she said.
“We shall never quite know what happened. There just isn’t the evidence.”
Ms Speirs, who had lived in Ronald Drive, Rayleigh, Essex, had family in Scotland and spent several years in Swansea where she worked for the NHS.
The coroner extended her sympathies to loved ones, noting that Speirs was a “striking-looking, attractive woman who had a bright future in front of her, and it’s very clear that she was much loved”.
