THE death of Peter Osgood means that another witness has gone to his grave without illuminating one of football’s biggest mysteries.

Osgood was believed to have been in the vicinity of the jewellery shop in Bogotá in 1970, when a £600 diamond and emerald bracelet was stolen. Bobby Moore, the England captain, was arrested for questioning in Colombia while England flew to Mexico for the World Cup finals. He rejoined the party four days later, only after the intervention of Harold Wilson, the Prime Minister.

It was revealed only in 2002 that Moore, who repeatedly protested his innocence, had been advised by government officials “to lie very low indeed” for two years to avoid provoking a prosecution. In 1972, a Colombian judge finally ruled that the player had no case to answer.

However, in his biography of Moore, Jeff Powell, the sports journalist, said that the former England captain had hinted to him before his death in 1993 “that perhaps one of the younger lads with the squad did something foolish, a prank with unfortunate circumstances”.

In a television documentary four years ago, Powell claimed that Moore had told him the full story, but only after exacting the promise that he would never reveal it.

In his autobiography, Ossie: King of Stamford Bridge, the former Chelsea player makes a joking reference to the incident, saying that he had a bracelet in a drawer, having been given it by Moore.

The mystery deepened further three years ago, when documents released by the Public Record Office, now known as the National Archives, said that the British Embassy was told within weeks of the allegations against Moore that the police knew that the thief was a woman and the bracelet had been “hawked round the underworld”.

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