His mood was sombre as he ordered lasagne and apple pie with ice cream from room service on the evening of March 17. Bob Woolmer sat alone and, according to Deirdre Harvey, the waitress who brought him his last meal, looked desperately sad. “His eyes were red, like somebody who had been crying,” she said later.
The death of Bob Woolmer at the 2007 World Cup in the Caribbean shocked cricket and left a pall over the tournament. The night of his death – and the wild rumours that followed it – were examined in depth in the 2008 Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack.
Woolmer knew all about cricketing disappointment. In his time as coach at Warwickshire, with South Africa through the Hansie Cronje years, and now at Pakistan, the most mercurial team of all, he had seen just about everything. But only South Africa being knocked out by Australia in the 1999 World Cup semi-final compared with losing to Ireland, and with it early elimination for one of the favourites, at the World Cup in 2007.
In the witness stand Seshaiah changed his verdict to “asphyxia secondary to manual strangulation in association with cypermethrin poisoning”. Then he went on to admit that he did not know how much cypermethrin – an insecticide – was in Woolmer’s system. Another expert, Fitzmore Coates, a senior forensic officer of the Jamaican government-run laboratory, claimed the amount of it in a sample of Woolmer’s stomach contents was “significant”. Yet the 3.402mg/ml he found was about a third of what is recognised as the maximum safe daily intake of 10mg/ml.
The inquest was headed by coroner Patrick Murphy, the son of an Irish father who served in the Jamaican police force. The young Murphy became a lawyer in Britain before he returned to Jamaica to become a magistrate in 1990. Now he was the coroner in a high-profile inquiry where his deliberate methods were to become features of the case. Murphy recorded each testimony in long-hand despite the presence of two stenographers, and repeatedly told witnesses they were speaking too fast.
He was joined in his deliberations by 11 local people, the jury which Jamaican law necessitates for inquests. Together they had to decide what happened to Bob Woolmer in room 374 of the Pegasus Hotel in the early hours of March 18. By this time Shields, one of 57 witnesses to give evidence, had no doubt that Woolmer had died of natural causes. He said so with complete conviction during his six days of evidence to the inquest.
It was, in many ways, the worst possible verdict. Because it means we just do not know. After eight months of drama, intense scrutiny and pain, the question remained of whether Bob Woolmer had his life taken from him or simply succumbed naturally to the stresses inherent in his very demanding job.
At least Gill Woolmer and her two sons have found some sort of peace. Shortly after Christmas, speaking from Cape Town, she said: “Having studied all the evidence available to us, my boys and I are completely satisfied that Bob died of natural causes. I am not surprised that the inquest returned an open verdict because of the earlier uncertainty, but Mark Shields and the Jamaican police have been fantastic and have done everything for us they possibly could.”
