Towel strangulation theory doing rounds in Woolmer case

Could Pakistan cricket team coach Bob Woolmer have been strangled with a towel? That is the question doing the rounds here though local police investigating into the March 18 murder are not saying as much.

"If it's some form of manual strangulation and there are no physical marks on the neck of the victim, therefore there may have been something between the hands of the assailant and the neck of the victim. That is as far as I will go," Mark Shields, Jamaica's deputy commissioner of police, told reporters here Thursday.

Specifically asked if the murderer, or murderers, killed the former England player with a towel, Shields said: "I say no comments."

Shields, however, confirmed that when Woolmer's naked body was found in his room at the Pegasus Hotel here "there were towels nearby, there were towels in the room".

Woolmer, 58, was killed a day after Pakistan shockingly lost to minnows Ireland here March 17, sending the 1992 World Cup winners Pakistan crashing out of the ninth edition of the tournament.

It has been speculated that Woolmer could have been killed as he was planning to expose match-fixing or unfair television deals in his forthcoming book.

Shields, for the first time, spoke about the chambermaid who found Woolmer's body in the bathroom of Room No. 374. "The chambermaid has been traumatised and she's going to need a lot of support," he said.

Woolmer went up to his room at 7.30 p.m. March 17, and was found dead at 10.45 a.m. the next day.

The Pakistani team has since returned home.

A right-handed batsman and medium pacer, the Kanpur-born Woolmer played 19 Tests and six One-day Internationals for England in the 1970s.

(IANS)

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