Jamaican police are narrowing down their investigation of the death-by-strangulation of Pakistan cricket coach Bob Woolmer, according to Jamaican police sources.
Although the police had indicated that the investigation was complicated by the depature from Jamaica of so many players and other potential witnesses, they feel confident they will get the killer.
Police interviewed all the members of the Pakistani squad, who left Jamaica on Sunday night for London, but others who were staying on the same floor of the hotel where Woolmer was strangled have left. They include members of the Irish and West Indies teams.
Deputy Police Commissioner Mark Shields, a former Scotland Yard police officer, said his investigators were closing in on the person they believe killed Woolmer, reports CNN.
Shields told CNN police have just about completed examining enhanced video taken from closed-circuit television cameras from stairwells and corridors in the Pegasus Hotel where Woolmer was found unconscious. An earlier medical report concluded the coach was strangled following Pakistan’s humiliating defeat and elimination from the sport’s World Cup tournament.
Shields said he had “great confidence” in the strangulation finding and that he had “very specific evidence” that Woolmer was murdered.
running for the championship cup and have traveled to matches on other Caribbean islands.
Investigators said they were hoping a security tape from the hotel would help them determine whether any strangers were on the floor between the time Woolmer went to his room the night of March 17 and the next morning, when he was found dead by a hotel maid.
As police worked to crack the case, diplomatic tensions were bubbling up. Pakistani authorities have expressed frustration to their Jamaican counterparts that undue suspicion seemed to be directed at Pakistan’s players, Jamaican officials said.
To show that no assumptions were being made about Woolmer’s killer, Mark Shields, the deputy police commissioner, took two Pakistani diplomats to the scene of the crime Sunday. “The purpose is to demonstrate to the Pakistani government that this is an open and transparent investigation,” he said.
Shields, a former Scotland Yard detective who has become the public face of the inquiry, said he did not consider ordering everyone staying on the 12th floor of the Pegasus Hotel, where Woolmer was killed, to remain in the country.
“That would be like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut,” he said. “If I started to force people to stay in Jamaica, I think, quite rightly, the world’s media and diplomats would be outraged.”
