The mother of a pregnant Angus woman who died in Ghana has spoken of her shock after a murder trial against her son-in-law collapsed.
The body of Charmain Adusah, 42, was found decomposing in a hotel bath on March 20.
Suspicion immediately fell on her husband Eric, a pastor with London-based Global Light Revival Ministries, who had accompanied her to the hotel.
He left two days before Charmain’s body was found, telling hotel staff she was ill and did not want to be disturbed.
Mr Adusah was charged with murder but, at his ninth court appearance on Wednesday, it emerged that a new report by the attorney general said there was no evidence connecting him to his wife’s death.
Charmain’s mother Linda Speirs said she burst into tears when a police liaison officer told her the news.
“I was so shocked, I burst out crying,” she said from her Arbroath home. “To be told he was free and that Charmain’s body would be getting released, it just brought it all back.
“I was so upset. I think money has talked. There’s a lot of corruption over there.”
Mrs Speirs said that at no stage did anyone from Ghana request to speak to her or ask for a statement about what she knew about her daughter’s health, her marriage or her husband.
She passed on information she felt was important through Interpol regarding phone calls and text messages she received from Mr Adusah in the two-day period from when he left Charmain at the hotel and when her body was discovered.
“No one contacted me from Ghana. Nothing I gave them seemed to be followed up,” she said.
“A week before she went to Ghana there was nothing wrong with her.
“There’s been no one fighting for Charmain over there. The prosecutor gave up on it very easily.”
Charmain and Eric wed in September last year and travelled to Ghana in February. They checked in to the Mac Dic Royal Plaza Hotel in Koforidua on March 16. Eric left alone and travelled back to Britain two days later.
An interim autopsy report dated at the end of March indicated that Charmain, who was three months’ pregnant, died of “acute poisoning and opiate heroin” overdose, a banned necrotic substance.
The court case was delayed for months when the full autopsy report went missing. Mrs Speirs said she has also requested a copy of this report.
Mrs Speirs hopes to bury Charmain’s body in Arbroath.