Pakistan’s cricket coach Bob Woolmer was strangled in his hotel room after the team’s shocking World Cup loss to Ireland and police are investigating it as murder.
”The official report from the pathologist states that Mr Woolmer’s death was due to asphyxia as a result of manual strangulation. In these circumstances, the matter of Mr Woolmer’s death is now being treated by the Jamaican police as murder,” police commissioner Lucius Thomas said in a statement that was read by a police spokesperson on Thursday at the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel.
Woolmer was killed in his hotel room on Sunday.
”There is an ongoing murder investigation into the death of Robert Woolmer and as a result the security arrangements at the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel are a part of those investigations,” Owen Ellington, assistant police commissioner, said in a statement. He declined to elaborate.
Pakistan cricketers were fingerprinted and interviewed by police officers at the hotel on Thursday and later left for the northern resort of Montego Bay.
Team spokesperson Pervez Jamil Mir said the team heard it had become a homicide investigation on TV.
Jamaica police ”didn’t tell us anything”, Mir told the Associated Press in a telephone interview.
”Obviously when we heard it was murder, we were all really shocked. ”I’ve spoken to the chairman and he’s totally devastated. He can’t believe it. He’s very, very distressed. The team is distressed. Everybody is absolutely in a state of shock.”
Mir said the Jamaica police did not prevent the Pakistan team leaving and the players were not the only people who had to give fingerprints.
”It is not that we were singled out. It was just routine.”
The team will depart on Saturday for Lahore, Pakistan, via London.
Match-fixing?
Deputy Commissioner Mark Shields said the Pakistan players have pledged full cooperation whether they are in the Caribbean island or back home in Pakistan.
Shields appealed to Woolmer’s killer or killers to come forward, vowing to track them down if they failed to do so. He said he would investigate every possible motive for the murder, including match-fixing and the involvement of betting syndicates, which has been widely speculated.
No arrests have been made and there are no suspects in the case.
Asked about the brutality of the killing, Shields said: ”Bob was a large man, therefore it would have taken some considerable force to subdue him and cause strangulation.”
There was ”very little” evidence of any struggle, he added, though there were signs of vomiting in the bathroom. Police are still waiting for the results of toxicology and tissue sample tests which might reveal whether any drugs or poisons were involved.
Shields stressed that investigators did not know how many people were in the room at the time of the killing, raising the spectre of a multiple crime.
Investigators on Thursday night launched an international hotline and appealed for people to come forward with information.
The hotel was full on Sunday and swarming with guests, staff and visitors, and police are confident that somebody will have seen Woolmer in the lift or walking down the corridor to his room 374 on the 12th floor in the company of one or more others.
Woolmer (58) was found in his hotel room by cleaning staff and pronounced dead later on Sunday in hospital.
Former Pakistani player Sarfraz Nawaz on Tuesday said he believed Woolmer was killed by gambling interests he was going to expose in a book, although he had no proof.
Woolmer was South Africa’s coach in the 1990s when the team’s captain, Hansie Cronje, admitted taking money to fix matches and was banned for life. Woolmer was never implicated.
His widow, Gill Woolmer, said her husband had not recently mentioned anything about match fixing.
Lord Paul Congdon, head of the International Cricket Council’s (ICC) anti-corruption unit, will investigate if corruption played a role in Woolmer’s death, ICC chief executive Malcolm Speed said.
The Jamaican police have also been in contact with the ICC anti-corruption unit, said police spokesperson Karl Angell.
Earlier on Thursday, assistant police commissioner Les Green, formerly of Scotland Yard, said the team was fingerprinted as part of standard procedure ”to eliminate persons from fingerprints which would be found in the room.”
”After a thorough investigation, fingerprints not belonging to Mr Woolmer were found in the room,” he told the Associated Press.
Speaking on British TV before the police announcement, Gill Woolmer had not ruled out that her husband was murdered.
”I mean some of the cricketing fraternity, fans are extremely volatile and passionate about the game and what happens in the game, and also a lot of it in Asia, so I suppose there is always the possibility that it could be that [murder],” she told Sky Sports in an interview from her home in Cape Town, South Africa.
The murder investigation announcement happened just after 5am Pakistan time, where TV broadcasters ran news alerts along the bottom of the screens.
The Jamaica Gleaner newspaper, citing an unnamed high-ranking police officer, had reported in its Thursday edition that authorities found a bone broken in Woolmer’s neck. The Jamaica Observer newspaper, citing unnamed sources, reported that Woolmer’s body had marks on the throat and that bones in the lower part of his face were broken.
When Shields was asked about the condition of the body, he declined to comment.
”There are some issues surrounding marks on his body, but for the moment I would rather we stick to the cause of death, which is asphyxia,” he said.
Britain’s Scotland Yard has offered its help, but Jamaican authorities have yet to make a decision on that proposal.
On Wednesday, a forensics team spent hours combing Woolmer’s room on the 12th floor and reviewing security cameras from the hotel in Kingston.
Pakistan played its last match at the World Cup on Wednesday, the team rallying around Inzamam-ul-Haq to ensure the captain’s last match was a proper tribute for Woolmer and not another debacle.
”We dedicate this game to Bob because he was a wonderful person,” Inzamam said. ”He’s not in this world now and every Pakistani and every cricket lover is sad.” – Sapa-AP