Re: Breaking News: Woolmer died of a heart attack
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/13/world/americas/13cricket.html?ex=1339387200&en=05e21f9b8d66481e&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
Lots of information about the infamous Dr. Sheshiah
** Cricket Coach’s Death Not a Murder, Police Say **
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By MARC LACEY
Published: June 13, 2007
MEXICO CITY, June 12 — Bob Woolmer, the coach of the Pakistani cricket team who was found unconscious in his hotel room in March after his team was ousted from the Cricket World Cup, was not murdered as the police had previously thought but died of unspecified natural causes, the Jamaican police said Tuesday.
Lucius Thomas, commissioner of the Jamaica Constabulary Force, who made the announcement, is the official who issued a statement on March 22, four days after the death, declaring that a postmortem conducted by the government’s pathologist, Ere Sheshiah, had established the cause of death as “asphyxia as a result of manual strangulation.”
On Tuesday, Mr. Thomas said reviews of the autopsy results by three independent pathologists from Britain, Canada and South Africa, as well as follow-up toxicology tests, had indicated no signs of strangulation or poisoning, which had been another theory.
“The Jamaica Constabulary Force accepts these findings and has now closed its investigation into the death of Mr. Bob Woolmer,” Mr. Thomas said in a statement.
As for what caused the death of Mr. Woolmer, 58, a British citizen who was born in India, the police said the three pathologists had not come to an agreement. Initial speculation had focused on a heart attack, brought on by his team’s upset loss to Ireland, which forced Pakistan out of the tournament. But that would not explain the vomit and diarrhea that were found with his body.
The Jamaican coroner, Patrick Murphy, will review the findings and issue a follow-up report on the cause of death, the police said.
Asked whether he would resign over the case, the deputy police commissioner, Mark Shields, a former Scotland Yard detective who led the homicide investigation, said he intended to serve out the remaining two years of his contract. Mr. Shields had been the public face of the inquiry and had once told reporters he was “100 percent certain” that Mr. Woolmer was murdered.
“Murder investigations are not like TV series, where everything is wrapped up in 45 minutes,” Mr. Shields told reporters. “All we could do was conduct a thorough investigation and not rush.”
The death had cast a pall over the World Cup in March and April, in which nine Caribbean nations served as hosts. It was viewed as a chance to show off the cricket-crazy region to the world.
Instead, everybody became a possible suspect as police investigators looked at a variety of explanations, including alleged game-fixing, enraged gamblers and disgruntled fans and team members.
The police sealed off the 12th floor of the Pegasus Hotel after a maid discovered Mr. Woolmer’s body sprawled on the floor of his room on the morning of March 18. In searching for a killer, the police fingerprinted and took DNA samples from members of the Pakistani cricket team and interviewed many of them about their movements.
In all, nearly 400 people were interviewed in what became one of the biggest murder investigations in Jamaica’s history.
A Pakistani team spokesman, Pervez Jamil Mir, complained in recent days that the Jamaican police should face legal action for focusing suspicion on Pakistan’s players.
“The name of Pakistan has been maligned and the names of Pakistani cricketers have been maligned, because everybody became a suspect,” he told The Associated Press.
Dr. Sheshiah, the government pathologist, had originally called Mr. Woolmer’s death “inconclusive.” But four days later, he ruled it a strangling and the government called a news conference to announce a worldwide search for the killer or killers.
But Dr. Nat Carey, a top British pathologist who was called in later to review the postmortem, came to a different conclusion, officials said. He disagreed with Dr. Sheshiah’s finding that a small bone broken in Mr. Woolmer’s neck pointed to strangulation.
This was not the first brush with controversy for Dr. Sheshiah, a native of India who has worked in Jamaica for 12 years. In 2001, Amnesty International sent a Danish pathologist to observe Dr. Sheshiah’s autopsy of seven men who were killed by the police in a celebrated case known as the Braeton Seven.
The Danish pathologist, Dr. Peter Leth, was critical of the way Dr. Sheshiah had conducted his autopsy and said it did not conform with international standards.
Dr. Sheshiah could not be reached for comment. But fellow members of the Jamaica Association of Clinical Pathologists were hesitant to criticize him without having seen the autopsy results themselves.
“It’s not an exact science, we know that,” said Dr. Garfield Blake, a pathologist at Cornwall Regional Hospital in Montego Bay, in an interview this week.
In an earlier interview with a Jamaican newspaper, Dr. Blake had said he would have expected that a determination of strangulation would be relatively straightforward. “I would expect that great force would be employed to strangle, so there would be bruises, scratches on the neck or on the skin,” he said.
Dr. Suzanne E. Shirley, president of the Jamaican pathologists association, said she feared that the reputations of all the country’s pathologists, those in private practice and government coroner’s like Dr. Sheshiah, would suffer as a result of the case. “The coroner’s office perhaps needs looking at,” she said, suggesting that panels of pathologists be convened to review results in homicide cases.
Mr. Woolmer’s widow, Gill Woolmer, issued a statement in South Africa, where she lives, saying the family was pleased the ordeal was over.
Ms. Woolmer said, “My sons and I are relieved to be officially informed that Bob died of natural causes and that no foul play is suspected in his death.”
Mr. Woolmer, who was born to British parents in India, played cricket professionally for Kent and appeared in 19 matches for England from 1975 to 1981. But he was best regarded for his innovations as a coach for South Africa and Pakistan. He was one of the pioneers of computer and video analysis.
Ross Sheil contributed reporting from Kingston, Jamaica.
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