A church leader is suggesting that Deputy Commissioner of Corrections Reverend Orville Moore, who was found dead off the Spur Tree Hill main road last month, was murdered.

Bishop Dr Alvin Bailey, head of the Holiness Christian Church of Jamaica and a prominent leader of various church fraternities on the island, made the suggestion while officiating at the funeral service for Moore on Saturday at the Black River Independent Baptist Church in St Elizabeth.

Moore had gone missing on May 29, when he was last seen on Fairwell Avenue, Molynes Road. On June 1, he was found dead near the wreck of his car off the crash-prone Spur Tree Hill main road. His death was initially believed to be as a result of the crash, but an autopsy determined that he died of strangulation. At the time, the police said they did not suspect foul play.

WATCH: Deputy commissioner of corrections died of strangulation – post mortem

However, according to Bishop Bailey, an independent autopsy commissioned by Moore’s family revealed several inconsistencies.

“Externally, when his body was inspected, it was (smooth) like a baby bottom; for a man whose vehicle flew 300 feet down, impeccable,” Bailey said at the thanksgiving service. “They also picked up where the wire that hung him from a green tree in that precipice ran around his neck, behind his ears and hung him … so for him to have hung himself, he would have had to be able to hold those two wires and then sit down in a comfortable position and stay there until the wire hung him.”

He said, outside of a shaving cut on Moore’s scalp, no other external bruise was found by the independent autopsy. He said the autopsy revealed two internal injuries.

“One was a fractured rib – one rib, inconsistent with a man who would have gone over a precipice and had an accident – and a lower dislocated back, which injury if he had suffered it, he could not walk or would have been in excruciating pain,” Bailey said, adding “But the autopsy says that he did not suffer those injuries while he was alive because there was no seepage so he suffered those injuries while he was dead, gone to heaven.”

He said the inconsistencies have led many people to question whether Moore was murdered.

“So the question is being asked where the instructions came from for the assassination of Reverend Moore, and the question says did it come from within the correctional institution, prison,” Bailey said.

“Is it true that instructions are being given from prison for man fi dead outta road, I don’t know,” the clergy said.

Bailey also questioned what he said was the seeming “haste” of the police to close the investigation and the relative silence of the Department of Correctional Services.