Police claim new information on Woolmer death

The Jamaican police have said they are analysing new information about the death of Bob Woolmer though they refused to comment on reports in the media that Woolmer had died of natural causes.

Lucius Thomas, the Jamaican police commissioner, said the police were studying some material which had come in to their possession. "We will make a statement shortly to address the whole issue of Bob Woolmer," Thomas told Associated Press.

On June 2 The Daily Mail reported that Scotland Yard detectives had told the Jamaican police that Woolmer had not been murdered. "Mr Woolmer was not a well man," a source close to the inquiry told the Daily Mail. "It is now accepted that he died of natural causes."

Last month The Sunday Times said that police in Jamaica had privately admitted that Dr Ere Seshaiah, the Kingston pathologist, was wrong to say that Woolmer had been strangled. But Seshaiah told the paper that he stood by his diagnosis that Woolmer was killed by "asphyxia as a result of manual strangulation". Yet Seshaiah declared the first autopsy, conducted two days after Woolmer was found dead in his hotel room, inconclusive and asked for further tests before the police could treat it as a case of murder.