‘PRESEC FBI’ CRACKS TOUGH CASE

Dark, dense and ominous cumulonimbus clouds gathered over Presec that Fall term morning in 1979. It did not produce the usual associated thunderstorms but it did provide great comic relief that lasted over weeks. An Odadee feeling horny, abandoned his Presbyterian morality lessons, threw caution to the wind and had an amorous one night stand with a female relative of a tutor making her pregnant. The only thing this village girl remembered about this Odadee was that he was called Mensah; a name many believed was a ‘wrongstu’. [Presec term for wrong student name given to deceive]

To unravel the case and bring the culprit to book, the authorities decided to summon all Odadees from form four to upper sixwho had Mensah as part of their names for an identification parade to enable this girl point out her lover that night. The goal was to get the parents of the culprit to foot the bill for the termination of the pregnancy. There was an initial reluctance to include my SU (scripture union) brethren. (Imagine the shock and awe with this girl mistakenly pointing to any of our SU leaders at the time). But that reluctance gave way to cogent and persuasive arguments by other staff members that Man is fallible; that the Adamic nature of man very unpredictable and that Lust &Temptation are no respecter of persons!!!! So the affected Mensahs were hauled to the assembly hall. This charade however failed to bring out the suspect as the Odadees ‘kpemi’(squeezed their faces) in an uncompromising war mood. This lady failed to identify the mensah who slept with her and the over 100 Odadees were ‘acquitted and discharged’. The tutor reportedly took this relative back to the village after visiting the hospital to take care of things.

Not satisfied with letting the ‘matter die’, the ‘Presec FBI’ went to work. A combined crack team from Engmann and Akro Houses pored over surveillance tapes [Who told you there were no CCTVs on the compound those days?] People had big eyes that recorded all they saw even with sound bites!! After 48hrs, the team took a closer look at the school layout vis a vis the location of that tutor’s bungalow and eliminated Labone, Engmann, Akro and Riis houses. It was thus left with Kwansa and Clerk Houses. There was no DNA sample to work with but the team was not perturbed. Using old time tested detective work and working on the assumption that the mensah name given was a ‘wrongstu’, the team got an artist impression of the suspect based on the description given by the lady. Applying some facial imagining techniques and the fact that the suspect was absent from prep that fateful evening, the team cracked the case and finally had chief suspect XYZ [name withheld]from Kwansa House  as the one who sowed his royal odadee oats on this poor village lady. He was approached and confronted. There was no Perry Mason to defend him.  He sat on his bed and only smiled. Boys will always be boys.

By Eddie Cofie