Jamaican investigators will travel with the body of slain Pakistan cricket coach Bob Woolmer when it is returned to South Africa, and hope to gather information from relatives here to help identify any suspects in his killing, police officials said.
Police Deputy Commissioner Mark Shields and several other investigators will return the body on Thursday to Woolmer’s widow and sons in South Africa, where the 58-year-old Englishman lived in a Cape Town suburb, Karl Angell told the Associated Press on Wednesday.
Shields, the lead investigator in the homicide probe, told AP Television News on Tuesday that they will seek information from the coach’s widow that could help identify any suspects.
Mystery has swirled around the killing of Woolmer, who was found unconscious in his hotel room in the Jamaican capital, Kingston, on March 18 and pronounced dead at a hospital. The day before, the Pakistani squad suffered a stunning loss to Ireland that eliminated them from the Cricket World Cup, the sport’s biggest event.
A pathologist who conducted Woolmer’s autopsy initially ruled that his cause of the death was inconclusive, but four days later determined he had been strangled.
His body has been kept in Jamaica pending a coroner’s investigation. But an inquest into his death was postponed indefinitely because of ”recent and significant developments” in the case, the Jamaican government said last week.
Jamaica’s Justice Ministry did not give details on the developments that led to the interruption of the inquest.
The postponement came days after police announced they had received toxicology test results but decided not to release them pending further analysis. — Sapa-AP