A new BBC podcast series has added fresh testimony to one of the most unresolved cases connected to Ghana in recent years, exploring the 2015 death of Scottish woman Charmain Speirs, whose body was found in a hotel bathtub in Koforidua six months after her marriage to Ghanaian Pentecostal pastor Eric Adusah.
The podcast, titled Charmain and the Prophet, follows a BBC Disclosure documentary that aired in April 2026 and raised significant questions about the account Adusah gave to Ghanaian police on the night his wife was last seen alive. Adusah was arrested on suspicion of murder but was later released due to lack of evidence. He has denied any involvement in Charmain’s death.
The new podcast centres on testimony from Elma Adams, an elderly Scottish woman who had served as an informal mentor to Adusah after meeting him in an Edinburgh Christian bookshop in 2012. Adams, who helped him establish the Edinburgh branch of his Global Light Revival Church, says she now believes Charmain travelled to Ghana in March 2015 on a deliberate mission to investigate her husband’s true identity and background.
“She was adamant, she wanted to find out more about him and she wanted to meet his background,” Adams says in the podcast, adding that Charmain had become “angry enough to go on what I say was a bit of a mission to find out what it was really all about.”
A witness who had remained in telephone contact with Charmain during her time in Ghana told British police, in a statement made one month after her death, that Charmain had discovered her husband used another name, was older than he had claimed, and allegedly had another wife in Ghana. The witness says Charmain told her on March 16, the day before she was last seen alive, that she intended to check into a hotel with Adusah and confront him. The witness claims she later received a call from Charmain’s number during which she could hear Adusah shouting and what sounded like a table being struck before the call ended abruptly.
A hotel employee, identified only as Edward, told BBC Disclosure that late at night two tall men arrived with Adusah and went with him to the room where Charmain was staying, one of them carrying a briefcase. He says the men stayed for up to an hour before helping Adusah load bags into his car, after which Adusah left telling staff not to disturb his wife. Edward says the last time he saw Charmain alive was approximately five hours before Adusah and the men departed. Adusah did not mention these visitors to Ghanaian detectives.
The BBC’s investigation also found that Adusah has used multiple identities. In Ghana he is reportedly known as Eric Adu Brefo, and in the United States, where he now lives, he uses the name Eric Isaiah Kusi Boateng. He did not respond to the BBC’s questions.
Retired Scottish Detective Superintendent Allan Jones reviewed the Ghanaian police files and found significant gaps in Adusah’s account of events at the hotel.
For those closest to Charmain, the decade since her death has brought no resolution. Her friend Anne-Marie Bond, who says Charmain had told her she was planning “an exit strategy” from the marriage, says she wishes she had done more. Adams, reflecting on her own relationship with Adusah, says: “We’ve both been conned. Charmain was used. She was a commodity.”
The case remains officially unresolved.
