Telegraph : Spy Gareth Williams 'in good spirits' before death, family say

Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Spy Gareth Williams 'in good spirits' before death, family say

By John Bingham | August 31, 2010

The family of a British spy found dead in a bag in his bath insisted last night he was “happy and in good spirits”, casting doubt on claims his personal or financial problems played a role in his death.


Relatives of Gareth Williams described him as “steady, quiet and well balanced” and said he had shown no sign of any change in recent months.

It came as one former friend of the MI6 codebreaker claimed that he had been plagued by his own “demons”.

Pathologists have been unable to explain how the 31-year-old, whose body was found in a sports bag in the bath of a flat in Pimlico, central London, last week, died.

Remembered by school mates as a “maths genius”, Mr Williams was on a one-year secondment to MI6 from GCHQ, the government’s “listening post” in Cheltenham, Glos, where he worked for almost a decade.

His position regularly took him to the US where he liaised with the National Security Agency and the CIA and he is also reported to have made a number of visits to Afghanistan.

There were no obvious injuries on his body, which is thought to have lain undiscovered for more than a week and further tests are being carried out after a post mortem examination proved inconclusive.

Although detectives are working on the assumption that he was murdered they have not ruled out the possibility that Mr Williams died in a bizarre accident, from an overdose or even suicide.

One theory is that someone who was present at the time panicked and put his body in the bag but failed to remove it.

William Hughes, 61, Mr Williams’s uncle, insisted there was “no way” he could have taken his own life.

“He just wasn't that kind of person,” said Mr Hughes, who lives near the home of Mr Williams's parents, Ian and Ellen, in Anglesey, north Wales.

“He was always very steady. He was a quiet person, but he was a happy one, there'd been no shift in his personality.”

He added: “I saw Gareth a couple of months ago when he came home for a cycling event and he was in good spirits.

“He was just the same as he always was – friendly, happy and well balanced.”

Police have been interviewing friends and family in an attempt to find possible clues in his background.

But detectives have played down lurid claims that Mr Williams, remembered as a solitary figure despite his heavy involvement in competitive cycling, could have died in some form of sexual game.

Reports that a series of payments into and out of his bank account remain unaccounted for have also been dismissed as “speculation”.