Jamaican police begin murder hunt after strangulation of Bob Woolmer
Bob Woolmer, the Pakistan cricket coach found dead in a hotel room in Jamaica, had been strangled and then suffocated, police said last night as they confirmed they were treating his death as murder.
Jamaican police said more than one person could have been responsible for the killing of Mr Woolmer, whose body was discovered by a chambermaid in the Pegasus Hotel in Kingston on Sunday morning. He had been strangled by hand.
The announcement came after days of fevered speculation that Mr Woolmer, who played 19 times for England, had been murdered following Pakistan's shock defeat to Ireland in the Cricket World Cup.
The door to Mr Woolmer's room appeared to have been forced but his room had not been disturbed, Jamaica's deputy commissioner said. He was unconscious when found and died in hospital the same day.
Mark Shields, a former Scotland Yard officer, said: "It would take some force because Bob was a large man, therefore it would have taken some significant force with which to suffocate him.
"Of course, we do not know at this stage how many people were in the room. It is one or more people involved in this murder," he said. He added: "It may well be that someone has information on what the motive would have been."
An initial post-mortem examination had found that Mr Woolmer had a fractured bone in his neck. But Mr Shields said that his body did not have any outer signs of a struggle and a second examination was needed to conclude that he had been murdered. The indications were that strangulation played a greater part in the killing than suffocation, he added.
Earlier yesterday all 23 members of the Pakistan team and staff were questioned and fingerprinted by detectives and were then told they were free to leave the country. They were scheduled to fly out to Montego Bay before heading back to Pakistan tomorrow. Other teams staying at the hotel had also been interviewed.
Police Commissioner Lucius Thomas confirmed that a murder investigation had been launched, at a press conference at Mr Woolmer's hotel. He said: " It is our belief that those associated with or having access to Mr Woolmer may have vital information that would assist this inquiry."
Appealing for anyone who saw Mr Woolmer in the last minutes of his life, Mr Shields said he was "absolutely positive" that somebody would have seen him after Saturday's game: "Someone may have been in the elevator with him. Someone may have been in the lift. Someone would have seen him."
Police have set up an international and domestic hotline and are urging anyone with information to come forward.
Speaking before the investigation was announced Sarfraz Nawaz, a former Pakistani fast-bowler, claimed that Mr Woolmer, who was about to stand down as the coach of Pakistan and planned to write a cricket book and update his autobiography, was killed to stop him blowing the whistle on match-fixing. Cricket sources said that although there were rumours that a small number of players were starting to rig results again for bookmakers, no one thought that the coach was involved.
Questioned on corruption at the press conference, the chairman of the International Cricket Council Malcolm Speed conceded that the game did have a problem with corruption but stressed that much had been done to address the issue since match fixing scandals which plagued the game in 2003.
Mr Speed admitted: "We do have a problem with corruption." But he added that no one should "leap to the conclusion" that the murder was related to corruption. He said that the cricket world had been " shocked and outraged" by Mr Woolmer's death but added that the World Cup would continue as planned.
Mr Woolmer's widow, Gill, who is in South Africa, was being "supported by friends and family", Mr Shields said. Speaking earlier yesterday she rejected suggestions that he may have committed suicide and said that murder was a possibility.
She said: "It fills me with horror. I just can't believe that people could behave like that or that anyone would want to harm someone who has done such a great service to international cricket." She said she had been given "some indication" of why police thought her husband's death was suspicious
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