The Coroner for Kingston and St Andrew, Patrick Murphy, yesterday ordered that the body of Pakistan cricket coach Bob Woolmer be released, five weeks after his sensational murder that cast a heavy shadow over the ICC Cricket World Cup, which enters its semi-final stage today in Jamaica.

Yesterday, Woolmer’s widow, Gill, reacted with joy to the news relayed to her by the Jamaican police.

“I am very pleased that they have decided to do this,” Mrs Woolmer told the Observer from her home in Cape Town, South Africa.

A news release from the national security ministry said that Murphy issued his instruction to release Woolmer’s body and for the process of repatriation to begin after requesting the presence of Deputy Commissioner of Police Mark Shields at the Coroner’s Court yesterday morning.

The decision to send home Woolmer’s body comes days after Murphy announced that an inquest he had ordered into the coach’s death was postponed indefinitely. The inquest was scheduled to start yesterday at the Jamaica Conference Centre in downtown Kingston.

Yesterday, a senior police officer told the Observer that it was not unusual for the Coroner to release the bodies of persons into whose deaths inquests have been ordered, but which have not been concluded.

The national security ministry said the police were making arrangements with the funeral home handling the slain coach’s body to have it sent home at the earliest possible date. Flying time between Kingston and Cape Town is at least 26 hours.

When questioned about reports in the British media that she had told BBC World Service cricket commentator Neil Manthorpe that Jamaican police had told her that snake venom may have been used to poison her husband, Mrs Woolmer declined to comment.

“I have no comment on that at the moment,” she said.

Yesterday, a police officer told the Observer that forensic experts had found a poisonous substance in Woolmer’s body. However, he said that “the snake venom theory is hogwash”.

“All I can say is that a substance was definitely found and it has been sent back for further analysis,” said the police source who declined to be named.

Officials were mum on whether or not they were close to naming a suspect or making an arrest for the high-profile murder. They also threw cold water on speculation that the fingerprint of a Pakistani player was found on Woolmer’s wrist.

“The investigation is progressing. I know nothing of a fingerprint,” the highly-placed police source said.

Woolmer was found unconscious in room 374 on the 12th floor of the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel on March 18. He was later pronounced dead at the University Hospital of the West Indies.

Police at first said the cause of his death was inconclusive, then announced a few hours after that the death was suspicious before conceding that he was strangled after media reports.

Over the weekend, police were deployed on all floors of the Pegasus where the New Zealand and Sri Lanka cricket teams are now staying.