CHAPTER IV

THE IMPERRI CASE

The second case dealt with was the one known as the Imperri case. Fifty-four persons were charged with the murder of a boy aged about twenty years. They were also charged with being accessories after the fact to murder and further with being members of an unlawful society: to wit, the Human Leopard Society.

The murder took place on 13th July, 1912.

The Crown Prosecutor, for want of evidence to corroborate the story told by accomplices who had turned King’s evidence, only proceeded against fifteen of these persons on the capital charge.

The case was commenced on the 13th January and the verdict was given on the 3rd March. Fifty-nine witnesses gave evidence, and the notes of evidence taken reached nearly a thousand foolscap pages.

The facts as alleged by the witnesses for the Crown were as follows:

Very early on the morning of Sunday the 8th July, 1912, the leaders of the Human Leopard Society met at some place near the town of Victoria, the chief commercial town in the Imperri Chiefdom, and decided to hold a general meeting of the Society that same evening in the Imperri Poro bush. The Santiggies (messengers) of the Society were despatched to warn members to attend, and about sixty of them met that same evening.

They began to arrive at the rendezvous, which was a clearing in the centre of the Poro bush, soon after dark. There was only one path leading into this clearing, which was surrounded with dense bush, and on this path were stationed certain executive members of the Society, who passed the members along after they were satisfied as to their membership. They proved this chiefly by the peculiar handshake of the Society.

No lights were allowed at this meeting. Towards midnight the President of the Society, who owed his position to his being the most important man in the Chiefdom, arrived with his staff, and after the names and rank of the persons present were called, he proceeded to address the meeting. He announced that the object of calling members together was to discuss and consider the question of providing food, or in other words “blood” and fat, for their medicine. That it was some time since the parent Borfima was fed, and that it was necessary that their own Borfimas should also be blooded and anointed.

A discussion then arose as to the means of providing the necessary victim. One of the members present was asked to supply a victim, and when he demurred it was pointed out to him that it was his turn to do so by the rules of the Society, and it was suggested that the person to be supplied should be his adopted son Yagba. Both this member and the uncle of the boy Yagba protested strongly, a heated discussion followed, and finally the two members in question were informed that unless they immediately consented to give the boy asked for, either one or both of them would take his place. Under fear of this threat they consented.

It was then arranged that the members should meet again on the Friday following, and both the father and uncle of the promised victim were warned that if the boy disappeared or there was any difficulty about obtaining him one of them would be taken instead. After nominating two of the members to do the killing and others to convey the body to the Poro bush the meeting was adjourned.

On the following Thursday a boy died in the town of Imperri and his body was buried next day. In the ordinary course of events there would have been a funeral dance that evening, but fearing that it might interfere with their projects, some of the members of the Human Leopard Society secured its postponement.

As it grew dark that evening, the members of the Society gathered together in the Poro bush. The members deputed to do the killing were dressed in their regalia of leopard skin.

As the evening wore on and the time for sleep came, the boy Yagba, under instructions from his uncle, spread his mat on the verandah of the latter’s house and lay down and eventually went to sleep. About midnight the two murderers arrived and crept on all fours up to where Yagba was lying. One of them held him while the other stabbed him in the neck with a knife. Death was not instantaneous, and the boy moaned and beat the ground with his feet. This awakened some women and a youth who were in the house, and their screams aroused the whole town. An attempt was made by the two murderers to drag the body away, but as a number of people rushed out of their houses they gave up their attempt and fled into the bush where they warned the others of what had happened and got rid of their leopard-skin dress. The members belonging to the town hastened to get back to their houses before their absence should be discovered.

The townspeople collected round the body of the murdered boy and kept saying to each other, “What is this trouble?” “What has happened?” The uncle of the boy, who had been beside him the whole time and who appeared to be very upset at seeing the body, said in reply to the questions on all sides that koribrah (leopard people) had killed him. He was taken aside by some of the accused, and the seriousness of his admission pointed out to him. He was told to say that owing to distress of mind he did not know what he was saying, that what he really meant to say was that it was a bush leopard that had killed the boy, and that he himself had seen two leopards rushing out of the town after the alarm had been raised. He was promised a sum of money if the matter was hushed up on the basis of the death being attributed to a bush leopard, but it was incidentally mentioned to him that if he did not succeed in creating this belief the town would in all probability lose another of its citizens, as their Borfima had not yet been fed, and they would, in a certain event, know where to look for a victim. The story was then circulated that it was a bush leopard that had killed the boy; and there was some confirmation of this story by the statements of some women and boys who said they saw what looked like a leopard running away after the alarm had been given. From the evidence it appeared that these people had mistaken the murderers in their dresses of leopard skins for real leopards, which are numerous in the vicinity.

About 6.30 the following morning the clerk to the District Commissioner overheard a man at the town of Gbangbama tell a friend that a bush leopard had killed some one at the town of Imperri the night before. The clerk immediately proceeded with some police or, as they are called in the Protectorate, Court Messengers to the town of Imperri, and arrived there soon after 8 a.m. They were met by the chief men of the town and taken to view the body of the boy Yagba, several of the accused being present and volunteering the information that a bush leopard had killed the deceased. The Court Messengers, as a preliminary step, took into custody all the people who occupied the house where the deceased had been killed, including the uncle of the boy. Meanwhile a vigorous search was prosecuted to find the spoor of a leopard, but none was to be found in or about the town. His uncle was then taken on one side by the clerk and Court Messengers and in view of the nature of the wounds and the fact that there were no signs of any leopard was asked to explain how the boy had come by his death.

It was clear, owing to the nature of the wounds, that no leopard had killed the boy; and, faced with this fact and his admission of the night before, he gave an account of the murder and the names of the persons concerned in it. As many of these persons as could then be found were forthwith taken into custody, the others were subsequently arrested, and after a preliminary examination before the District Commissioner all were committed for trial.

The chief testimony against the accused was that of two accomplices who had turned informers. These men confessed to being members of the Human Leopard Society and as having been present at the murders of several victims of the Society. They gave evidence to the effect that all the accused bore the mark of the Leopard Society. The mark on each of the accused was pointed out during the hearing of the case, but although there were certain peculiarities about the mark, and although its position on the person of each of the accused was in most instances approximately the same, yet, owing to the fact that the majority of them had other marks, similar in shape and colour, some doubt existed as to whether the marks pointed out were really the marks received on initiation into the Society.

After hearing the evidence, no one could doubt that a murder had been committed, and that that murder had been committed by members of the Human Leopard Society. Their plans miscarried, they were disturbed at their work by the cries of the occupants of the house; the actual murderers finished their work, but those deputed to carry away the body failed, the uninitiated in the village awakened, and saw what had happened, and it was too late to remove the body. The question then followed as to whether the persons charged were those who had actually committed or who had taken part in the murder. The evidence of the accomplices was strong, but the chief difficulty in regard to the case for the Crown was to obtain corroboration of the evidence of these accomplices. In cases of this sort where the principal men are bound together by the bonds of guilt as well as of secrecy, where the victim is provided by the head of the family, who, instead of ferreting out the crime, uses all his influence to have the matter hushed up, and where the whole people cower down in dread of the terrible vengeance threatened by the awe-inspiring Borfima, it is not to be wondered at that it is exceptional to be able to procure independent evidence. The relatives, even the mother of the victim, will not come forward willingly, and when such witnesses are forced to give evidence they will only say what they think is non-committal, and from that they will not budge. They look upon the “medicine” as being responsible, and hold the view that the members of the Society are forced into killing a victim in order to “feed” the Borfima.

In this case, however, many of the non-committal statements pieced together formed important corroborative evidence, and that, together with other evidence, satisfied the Court as to the guilt of six of the accused, who were found guilty of murder.

The sentence on four of them was publicly carried out at the town of Imperri on 18th April, 1913. The fifth and sixth, who were domestic slaves, were also found guilty of murder and sentenced to death, but the sentences, on the recommendation of the Court, were afterwards commuted by the Governor-in-Council to life imprisonment. The Lavari to the principal accused was found guilty of being an accessory after the fact to the murder and was sentenced to life imprisonment.

There is little doubt that but for the chance overhearing by the District Commissioner’s clerk that a boy had been killed by a leopard this crime would never have been brought to light. After a time, when all trace of evidence had vanished, it would have been given out that the boy had been killed by a bush leopard. And this story would have been all the more difficult to disprove from the fact that in that neighbourhood leopards abound. Within a few hundred yards of where the Court sat was a leopard trap, whilst during the hearing of this particular case at least two leopards were shot within a mile of the Court barri.