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Anorak News | A Week In The Death Of Bob Woolmer

A Week In The Death Of Bob Woolmer

by | 31st, March 2007

corridor1.jpg“BOB Woolmer: “New twists.”

On Monday cricket’s most enduring whodunit since Shane Warne appeared in public with a fuller, shaggier and more highlighted head of hair was occupying the papers’ minds.

West Indies captain Brian Lara and one of his predecessors, Clive Lloyd, were DNA-tested as part of the Woolmer murder inquiry.

FOUL PLAY

And they were not alone. Also staying in the Pegasus Hotel, Jamaica, scene of Woolmer’s demise, were the Pakistani squad. All have given DNA samples.

So much for looking for traces of steroids and other performance enhancing drugs. But what headlines if one of the samples reveals evidence of altogether darker form of foul play.

And while we looked at that, police in Jamaica were looking at CCTV footage from the Pegasus Hotel crime scene.

“Unfortunately,” said Jamaica’s deputy police commissioner Mark Shields, it does not show the doors but shows the corridors at either end. It may give us an image or images of the killer.”

“Could CCTV footage lead police to Woolmer’s killer?” asked the Mail.

Or will we just see Pakistan bowler Umar Gul charging down the corridor to deliver a ball to a waiting college? He bowls. The ball is struck hard. Woolmer appears. The picure fades. A stifled scream. A shadow falls…

In Tuesday’s “RHYMEWATCH” the Sun introduced the work of an anonymous author who has been posting poems in the streets near where Paul Kelly was killed.

Posters on lampposts. Posters on bus stops. The clues in the verse. But this was no cryptic puzzler, more Carl Sanburg than The Dream of the Rood. The weapon was identified. A name offered up.

Will those who know the identity of Woolmer’s killer or killers offer them up in verse?

And new names were being introduced. “WANTED BY WOOLMER COPS,” announced the Mirror’s front page on Wednesday.

THE THIRD MEN

Readers who had expected the Cricket World Cup to be about palm trees, sunburnt necks and women in conch-shell bikini tops instead saw grainy images of three men.

The trio were, in no special order, Jundi Khan, Hamed Malik and Erfan Chaudhary. They were the “three hanger-on fans”.

“They hung around team for days..now they’re vanished,” said a headline further inside the paper.

Is liking cricket now a suspect hobby? These men are most probably entirely innocent, but they watch cricket and to the football mad tabloid press that marks them out for special attention.

“Fans vanish after murder,” said the Sun. They “vanished” the day Bob Woolmer died.

But the police were looking in the wrong place, said a new voice on Thursday.

And, as the headline went – “WOOLMER ‘NOT MURDER’ RIDDLE” – there was a suggestion that the now former Pakistan team coach was not assassinated.

We heard from Tim Noakes, who was co-writing a book with Woolmer. He called the idea that Woolmer was about to expose corruption in the game “ludicrous”. And he offered an alternative line of enquiry: “This smacks of a crime of passion – a moment of unexpected madness by someone.”

This is what gave the Sun its headline. Was Woolmer’s death a team building exercise that went too far? And why did the Sun overlook the chance for a more salacious headline?

OSAMA’S BARMY ARMY

Questions and puzzles. And Riddles. And on Thursday a dark new twist. “AL-QAEDA LINK TO WOOLMER MURDER,” said the Sun.

Bob Woolmer was killed by al-Qaeda? This was no small matter.

Afghanistan’s links to Pakistan are the stuff of war despatches, but did we ever believe Osama bin Laden and his horde were cricket fans, Osama’s Barmy Army? We know Bin Laden follows the Arsenal. But this was something new. Does the War on Terror break for tea? Will it be ended by a declaration?

Upset by Pakistan’s defeat to the Irish infidels, were orders given for al-Qaeda operatives to exact bloody and merciless revenge?

The hunt for Bin Laden goes on. And in light of the Sun’s news we suggest the Army’s listening devices in Afghanistan be recalibrated to pick up chants of “You don’t know what you’re doing”, “You’re not fit to wear the shirt” and “You’re sh*t and you know you are”?

Friday came and still no declaration in the Bob Woolmer murder case. But a new player was introduced.

The Mirror looked at Hamid Malik, otherwise known to Mirror readers as Hamad Malik and to readers of the Sun as Hamed Malik.

In the interests of justice, Anorak made mention of all names, believing they could be one and the same person or else three people acting in consort. We awaited the arrival on the scene of Hamyd Malik with an eagle eye.

Do you recognise Malik, who may be holidaying under one of his aliases?

The case was gathering momentum. But no arrests. Help was needed. And help was coming.

SCOTLAND YARDIES

On Saturday we saw a Scotland Yard murder squad assemble for a busman’s holiday in Jamaica. British officers would investigate all “major lines of inquiry” and conduct “a forensic review”, said Mark Shields, Jamaica’s deputy police commissioner.

“They will be looking to see if there is anything else we can do,” said Shields in the Telegraph.

“You know when you’re involved in any piece of work and you are right up against it, sometimes you can miss the most blindingly obvious.”

And become distracted by the cricket…



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