Detectives probing the murder of Pakistan cricket coach Bob Woolmer said on Wednesday that better-than-anticipated security video footage could provide vital clues in the hunt for his killer.
A painstaking operation to transfer hours of footage from well-worn VHS tape into a digital format has been completed, and early results were promising, Jamaica deputy police commissioner Mark Shields said.
”I looked at a few still images myself and I’m satisfied that I can easily identify people,” Shields told journalists.
”There were some people in the footage that I’d met in the week after the murder of Bob Woolmer that I could clearly and easily identify.”
Woolmer was found strangled in his room at the Pegasus Hotel on March 18, one day after Pakistan were dramatically dumped out of the World Cup after a shock defeat to minnows Ireland.
The killing has sparked one of the most complex murder investigations in Jamaican history and triggered speculation about possible links to match-fixing and illegal betting in cricket.
Around 50 officers are now attempting to track down hundreds of potential witnesses who were either visiting or staying at the Pegasus Hotel in the days leading up to Woolmer’s death.
Shields said analysis of video camera footage had been slow because of a desire to preserve the integrity of the original film.
Parts of the video footage would also require further enhancement, he added.
Several reports have suggested that police had given up gleaning information from the security cameras because of poor quality footage.
Detectives were also awaiting the results of toxicology and histology tests which will help to pinpoint Woolmer’s time of death, allowing them to focus their analysis of video footage on a fixed period of time.
On Tuesday Shields announced an international appeal for witnesses to come forward in order to eliminate as many people as possible.
The former Scotland Yard detective, who last week said Woolmer probably knew his killer, said Wednesday police would continue their investigation from ”the inside out”.
”My priority is to identify locate and interview as many witnesses as we possibly can,” Shields said.
”We are working from the inside out — it is those that we know were close to Bob Woolmer, were associates of Bob Woolmer, people who were on the same floor or close to him from the time he returned to the hotel until the time he was murdered.”
Pakistan’s players, who returned home on Wednesday to be greeted by thousands of angry fans, were tested for DNA and gave fingerprints before they left Jamaica at the weekend.
Shields said he was confident Woolmer’s killer or killers had left traces of DNA at the crime scene.
”I think it’s highly likely,” he said. ”In a murder investigation such as this, people do leave traces of DNA at the scene. The reason we’re taking DNA samples from everybody is to exclude them.”
Meanwhile Shields denied British press reports which had quoted him as saying that a second post mortem of Woolmer’s was to be carried out in order to ward speculation the first examination had been mishandled.
”I can assure you there is no post mortem, there is no planned second post mortem,” Shields said, reiterating his position that there was clear evidence Woolmer had been murdered.
Contradictions?
However, Pakistan cricket board officials suspect that the death of Woolmer was due to natural causes and that the Jamaican police acted hastily by declaring it a murder.
A senior official of the board, who asked not to be identified, said it had received information that there could have been mistakes in the first autopsy on Woolmer’s body.
”We believe that the autopsy by the pathologist may have had error counts and they [police] are now considering having a second autopsy to confirm the cause of death,” the official told Reuters on Wednesday.
”The feedback we have got is there are some contradictions in the version of events after Woolmer’s body was found unconscious. But we will get a clearer picture after our manager briefs the board on what took place there,” he said.