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Bob Woolmer (Politics)
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Mick Harper
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In: London
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Posted on the Questsite 26th March 2007

Since I am now the only person in the world who believes it, may I put on record that Bob Woolmer was not in fact murdered. I will explain my reasoning when more is known.
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Ishmael


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Autoerotic asphyxiation???
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Hatty
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Autoerotic asphixiation???

Now you're making a murky story even murkier. All the allegations of match-fixing are making people, me anyway, lose faith in cricket. It's happened with football already. I'm quite prepared for the news that Woolmer was assassinated like Hanse Cronje probably was for the 'greater good', part of a cover-up.
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Mick Harper
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27th March 2007

Since Hansie Cronje's death was confidently ascribed to 'accident' at the time, Hatty, I am surprised that you are going with authority-knows-best this time.

Yes, I immediately thought autoerotic asphyxiation but since Ol' Bob is a hero of mine (he played for Kent) I have decided it's just plain heart attack with complications. Of course most of you will have spotted the AE aspect to this: the sheer improbability of the event means that you are obliged to look at the expertise of the expert evidence. And even with a Brit in charge and a Miami laboratory on the case, I just don't think Jamaican CSI is up to it.

What is interesting is that I have not read one account of the general competence of Jamaican murder investigations -- presumably nobody wants to be racist, but it may be simply due to all the papers having cricket correspondents on the spot rather than hard-bitten crime reporters.

As an aside, I think Jamaica is one of the countries that still uses the House of Lords as its ultimate Appellate Court and retains the death penalty. This case might get even more interesting.
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Ishmael


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Wasn't it confirmed that he was strangled? Or was that a "diagnosis error"?
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Mick Harper
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27th March 2007

Well now, this is one of the difficulties inherent in AE. We are reliant on skating across the top of the experts and, frankly, I do not know the status of "strangulation". As I recall from my own extensive research (ie a lifetime of watching crime reconstructions on telly) this normally involves the breaking of the hyoid bone where violence is used -- no mention of this though. So presumably we are left with "marks on the throat". But a very revealing detail that has emerged is the presence of vomit in the bathroom (where the nude body was found). So perhaps these marks were self-induced -- what exactly does one do in circumstances of choking/heart attack etc?

The vomit was explained to us by the incredibly unlikely explanation that the murderer(s) poisoned Woolmer prior to strangulation. Presumably this theory, having achieved its object, will be quietly dropped when the tox reports come back negative.
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Keimpe


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Mick Harper wrote:
a very revealing detail that has emerged is the presence of vomit in the bathroom (where the nude body was found).... what exactly does one do in circumstances of choking/heart attack etc?

I once choked on a piece of candy and couldn't breath anymore. I was so panic-stricken that I put my finger in my throat in order to try to vomit, thinking this would help.

Perhaps Bob thought the same.

I found out later that you're supposed to be 'squeezed' from behind, because choking on something means that something went down your windpipe instead of your ... (don't know the English word).

And yes, I was alright thank you. The candy suddenly came loose and I could breathe again. The people in the car with me made a vow never to be in a confined space with me ever again.
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Mick Harper
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An interesting detail. Woolmer, as a sports coach, might have known that one has to squeeze one's own throat.

Assuming we are right, what next? Possibly a curious application of 'careful ignoral'. With no murder there can be no murderer so the Jamaican authorities may have to weigh up the choice between
1) being heavily criticised worldwide for not being able to catch the criminal(s) or
2) being heavily criticised worldwide when admitting that the whole thing was natural causes in the first place.
What price a fit-up?
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Keimpe


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Mick Harper wrote:
An interesting detail. Woolmer, as a sports coach, might have known that one has to squeeze one's own throat.

No, no, no! You're not supposed to squeeze your own throat. Someone else is to stand behind you and squeeze you really hard like this:



I found out the name of this technique, it's called the Heimlich Method (that's probably why the guy in the picture seems to be 'sneaking up' on the Japanese factory worker) and you can read all about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdominal_thrusts

The article says something very interesting under Indications that someone is choking, namely this:

The person desperately grabs at his or her throat.

So now we have an explanation for the death, the vomit and the throat marks.
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TelMiles


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Posted 14th June 2007

Why would anyone watch cricket?
_________________
Against all Gods.
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Hatty
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More pertinent perhaps, why is the rest of the cricket-playing world so much better than the Brits who invented it?

Woolmer officially declared to have died of natural causes though unspecified. Was Keimpe right in his diagnosis?
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Mick Harper
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More pertinent perhaps, why is the rest of the cricket-playing world so much better than the Brits who invented it?

Invention is not the issue. The question is, "How is it that England doesn't always dominate cricket and rugby given that it always has ten times more players than any other country?" But this is only part of the wider question, "Why, in any given war, is an English army division worth only half a Scottish one and a quarter of an Australian or New Zealand one?"

It would appear that people who emigrate are more sportif than people who stay at home (and/or people always try harder when playing the Mother Country/Big Brother). India of course proves the case: she has ten times the cricket players even than England but doesn't dominate, and Indian infantry divisions are only so-so.
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Hatty
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Cricket used to be the epitome of 'gentlemanliness', maybe warfare also obeyed scrupulous codes of conduct? At any rate the cavalry, not perhaps the longbowmen (Welshmen, and assorted non-nobility), would have been from the 'officer class'. The navy, on the other hand, press-ganged all manner of thieves of vagabonds, didn't they?
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Mick Harper
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Your social grasp of warfare is patchy. If you take, let's say, a typical battle of the Alamein or Normandy campaigns ie the main military effort of the British, you find that typically there will be one (one!) English infantry division. This would be at the same time that Germany is routinely putting two hundred German infantry divisions into the field.

On the other hand, the vast preponderance of all the other more technical arms -- armoured, artillery, logistics, air force, navy -- would be English.This reflects the English's ability to get other people to fight their wars for them. Which in turn reflects England being an island....but it's a long story.
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Hatty
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How much difference does it make if the troops are home-grown or mercenaries? As in sport. Do people feel inspired enough by patriotism to die for their country? Perhaps sport is a sort of substitute warfare in peacetime.
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