The Woolmer tragedy revisited

On 12th June, the JCF announce that Mr Woolmer had not been murdered.

Woolmer’s Death
The entire Caribbean went into a state of shock when it was first announced that Bob Woolmer, Pakistan’s coach to the Cricket World Cup 2007, CWC 2007, had been found dead in his hotel room in Jamaica on 18th March 2007.
Given the high murder rate in Jamaica and the fact that in the first 10-days of this year some 52 murders had been reported, many of the peoples in the Caribbean feared for the worst.
Even before any possible cause of death was announced, therefore, the Caribbean felt that it was the wrong thing to have happen in the region at all and more particularly during the CWC 2007.
It was the Jamaica Government’s pathologist, Dr Ere Sheshiah, who conducted the autopsy on Woolmer. When the authorities in Jamaica announced that Woolmer had been strangled, the entire region felt sick. Nothing could have been more heart rending, or so we thought. That fingers started pointing in all directions may well have shown the world that at least we were competent enough to deal with such a crime with some dispatch. The fact that there was someone from Scotland Yard, Deputy Commissioner Mark Shields, working with the Jamaican police and who was an apparent point man in the investigation seemed, momentarily at least, to have given us in the region something of a reprieve.

Confusion Reigns
Over successive weeks and months we were told that the authorities were reviewing the tapes from the Closed Circuit Television in the hotel and that this may yield evidence of those who would have entered Woolmer’s room. Then we were told that the tapes were not so clear and that it was difficult to really identify anything of substance from them.
Further, the international media got into the act and began counting just how long the Jamaican authorities were taking to find the possible murderer and any possible cause for the commission of such a dastardly act.