From Dawn: "Bob Woolmer’s widow yesterday insisted he had NOT died from natural causes, saying: “He was murdered — but I haven’t a clue who would do it.”

“Bob must have been subdued because he was a big man and able to defend himself. But who would do it? The average person wouldn’t go to such extremes.”

And,

Seems like the FBI is going to be called in now to aid in the investigations, as the Jamaican police said they want a "third opinion"

Tests found a broken bone in his neck and weedkiller in his blood. But the Yard review said a seizure may have made him fall awkwardly and the weedkiller could have been inhaled from cricket pitches.

Above report from the Sun Online....

This horrible story gets worse by the minute. It is extraordinary to me that the body has now been cremated: the best anyone can ever get now regarding the murder/natural death question is pathologists' opinions based on other pathologists' notes, lab samples and photographs. With respect to Mrs Woolmer, her opinion on this specific point of whether or not it was a natural death is not worth a fig now (unless she is a pathologist with access to the same notes as the other pathologists who are opining).

Maybe Ninjaman will know this: has the Jamaican Coroner delivered a verdict yet, or is the inquest adjourned pending police inquiries? I suspect that, were this to have happened in England, the inquest would probably be adjourned and the body would still be available to the Coroner's Court, but I have no idea what the system is in Jamaica for dealing with sudden or unexplained deaths.

Whatever it is, it's a nasty business all round, and the speculation could run forever.

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Whatever the final decision will be, I have a feeling that even then there will still be speculation. Frankly, I would just like to see a decision made so the book can be closed on this chapter.

We are not getting much from officials and all the rest is either "unsourced media reports" or speculation.

Gill is probably only repeating what she is hearing from Mark Shields: That they are still treating this as a murder investigaion.

That's a horrible thought OF - one would think that the pathologists would have got all the information they needed from the body long ago, I mean what what good would the body be now.

If the initial pathologist was competent - then there is no reason IMO why Bob woolmer should not have been laid to rest.


That's true, to be able to close this case - a motive has to be established, as well as the cause of death.

I don't believe it speculation to say - had he been strangled there would have been tell tale marks, lacking that evidence he was not stangled - surely someone must know if there was pressure marks.

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Ern

The whole thing's horrible, Ern, but it's not uncommon for a Coroner in England to keep control of a body for a very long period of time, especially if he is unable to conclude his inquest for any reason, and especially if the next step is likely to be cremation, which allows no possibility of exhumation. One of the reasons is there in the last line of your post: someone knows what was seen at the initial PM, and I don't doubt that the initial PM was competently performed. But no-one will ever be able to take another look now. Given the controversy of the case, that is why I am surprised that the body was released so soon. Yes, it's horrible, I know, but no-one is any nearer closure following cremation in this case than they would have been if Woolmer's body were still in a mortuary in Jamaica.

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According to today's Sunday Times, a senior police source in Jamaica (unnamed) now believes Bob Woolmer died of natural causes. The Sunday Times also suggests that Mark Shields' trip to Cape Town last week was to advise Woolmer's widow that Woolmer "was probably not murdered".

Report here.

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What a disaster. Everyone appears to be clueless and the speculation continues, in fact, is exacerbated by each rumour and leak.

Woolmer deserved better, really.

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I am not a melodramatic person by nature, but I somehow get the feeling that there is now a concentrated attempt to try and hush-up the real circumstances of Woolmer's death "for the good of the game" in the long run. Somewhere, there will be a bunch of hypocritical admin types sitting cross legged in their tuxedos and telling each other "to look at the big picture". Unfortunately, that's the kind of world we now live in; truth takes a very second place to convenience and political correctness.

I will never believe that the foreign coach of the Pakistani cricket team, who was known to be looking into the match-fixing scenario, suddenly died out of "natural causes" soon after his team succumbed to a shock defeat to a spirited but very minnow Irish team and got knocked out of the World Cup in the process, especially after the investigating Jamaican authorities - who would have had more than their fair share of work with violent crime - found that all the signs pointed to murder. It is as simple as that.

Fair enough, Nostromo. You can write the book on the conspiracy theory.

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Eh?! "Known"? By whom? Where did you get that from? Not from any of Woolmer's interviews obviously, or from the words of those who knew him. So apart from being an expert at investigating suspicious deaths, you also heard regularly from Woolmer by email?

And what has being "foreign" got to do with it? I thought it was only the English tabloids who peddled this sort of xenophobic stuff!

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A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes
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