The First Post : Did spy Gareth Williams die in bizarre art accident?

Did spy Gareth Williams die in bizarre art accident?
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Police now believe MI6 man zipped himself in holdall as art project

By Eliot Sefton | January 16, 2011

In a theory which seems so totally bizarre it might just be true, police now believe MI6 officer Gareth Williams zipped himself into a holdall in the bath in his flat as research for an art project - but suffocated before he could get out again.

A GCHQ codebreaker on secondment to MI6, where his work made him privy to highly classified anti-terrorism material, Williams was found dead on August 23 last year in a government safe house where he had been living.

At least a week after he had last been seen alive, his body was discovered in a North Face holdall in the bath at his top-floor apartment in Pimlico, a short walk from MI6 headquarters.

Problematically for investigators, no cause of death could be determined. Theories about Williams's death have since ranged from polonium poisoning by foreign agents to bizarre sex games gone wrong.

Now, the Sunday Mirror says, police have come up with the strangest theory yet.

Investigation of Williams's laptop revealed he had paid £695 to join a 10-week part-time course at Central St Martin's College in London titled Fashion Design for Beginners.

St Martin's is an illustrious place to study fashion, with alumi among the world's top designers, including Alexander McQueen, John Galliano and Stella McCartney - so it is evident that the thorough codebreaker had done his research and was serious about the course.

The fashion course also explains the presence of £15,000-worth of designer dresses, including some by Stella McCartney, and pairs of shoes in Williams's flat. It had earlier been claimed he was a cross-dresser - though the clothes were still wrapped.

Police also discovered Williams had visited bondage websites on his laptop. The new theory suggests there may have been no sexual motive for this.

A police source told the newspaper: "He had also visited websites linked to bondage although he may have simply been looking up ways to lock himself up and then unlock himself."

Why? Because, police believe, he had been given a project by his St Martin's tutor titled 'Living Spaces'.

They now think the holdall may have been an attempt by Williams to research a project on exactly how little living space it is possible to exist in - research that went horribly wrong when the fit 31-year-old found himself trapped and suffocated in the August heat.

The theory is so bizarre it's tempting to believe it: and it certainly should provide comfort for Williams's family, who have made public their dismay at the suggestion he was leading secret double life as a cross-dressing, gay, bondage enthusiast.

Williams's close friend Sian Lloyd-Jones said last month: "It would have been fine [by us] if he was [gay] but he had too much ­interest in women.

"He was really open with his friends and family about his ­personal life and I truly believe if he had any interest in homosexuality he would have spoken to his sister and to me as well."

But at least one person close to story seems to find the new theory less than convincing: Williams's fashion tutor, Cheryl Eastap. She told the newspaper: "The police did come to see me.

"The idea that his death and his work on the course was linked is a crazy idea that the police dreamed up. They said it might relate to it but I can’t see how it relates at all."

And security analysts reacted with extreme scepticism to the suggestion that Williams could have zipped himself into the holdall when it was first mooted in September. At the time it was thought he had zipped himself in for sexual reasons.

But if the theory is bunk, where did it come from? Could it be a clumsy attempt to atone to Williams's family and friends for the earlier slurs - while the truth of his death remains an espionage-shrouded mystery?

The First Post : MI6 man ‘locked himself in his holdall’. Oh yes?

MI6 man ‘locked himself in his holdall’. Oh yes?

Latest theory about the death of Gareth Williams is preposterous, say security experts

By Jack Bremer | September 20, 2010

National security experts reached by The First Post last night have reacted with a mixture of astonishment, ridicule and suspicion to the idea that Gareth Williams, the MI6 agent found dead in a London flat last month, padlocked himself in a zip-up holdall in search of a sexual thrill and then suffocated because he couldn't get out again.

"With all due respect to Williams and his family, I haven't stopped laughing since I read the paper at breakfast," one former agent said. "It's more than unlikely - it's preposterous."

The hypothesis was reported by the Sunday Times, quoting anonymous "security sources".

The paper claimed police had established that Williams, a single man, had a record of engaging in autoerotic practices, and that the greatest likelihood was that he had died as result of an experiment going wrong.

According to the Sunday Times' source, police recently invited an escapologist to show them whether it was possible to lock oneself in a holdall and get out again. The escapologist duly climbed into the bag, padlocked it from the inside and then unzipped it using a sharp-tipped pen.

Convinced by this - and without addressing whether a 31-year-old codebreaker would necessarily have the skills honed over the years by a seasoned escapologist - the police were apparently persuaded that Williams must have got into the bag and then suffocated in the August heat before he could release himself.

"The emerging background is something almost certainly autoerotic," a "senior official" told the paper.

The "emerging background", to coin a phrase, for those observing this case unfold, is that the police are at a total loss as to how Williams died.

This is either because forensics are revealing nothing - it is possible he was murdered by an enemy using undetectable poison, for instance - or because someone somewhere has succeeded in throwing the police off the scent.

According to The First Post's security sources, there are good reasons why government agencies might want this investigation to "go away". These include the possibility that what Williams was working on - and what might have led to his murder - is simply too sensitive to be allowed to go public. It is also possible that his employers slipped up in some respect.

One security consultant who spoke anonymously to The First Post said he had been surprised from the start at the considerable delay - at least a week, longer according to some reports - before anyone was alerted to Williams's absence.

This did not tally with our source's experience of working for British intelligence: he said the slightest hiccup in established routine would bring instant inquiries.

Another source was puzzled by the differing messages being leaked - mainly to the Sunday Times - by those claiming to be close to the investigation. "One minute we're looking for a suspicious couple of Mediterranean appearance, the next we're being told he could have been poisoned by polonium-210 like Alexander Litvinenko - now we're expected to believe that he locked himself in a suitcase."

The facts are that Gareth Williams was a GCHQ codebreaker on secondment to MI6, where his work made him privy to highly classified anti-terrorism material. On August 23, at least a week after he had last been seen, his body was found in a North Face holdall in the bath at his top-floor apartment in Pimlico, a short walk from MI6 headquarters.

Yes, there are instances of auto-asphyxiation fetishists accidentally killing themselves. But invariably these cases involve hanging, not climbing into airtight suitcases.

As Crispin Black wrote for The First Post a week ago, the discovery of Gareth Williams's corpse bore all the hallmarks of a murder by someone who had killed before.

The perpetrator had prepared the victim for transport, put the bag in the bath where any final traces of the crime could most easily be washed away, and was then presumably interrupted before being able to remove the body for disposal.

The First Post : MI6 murder mystery: how the spy got into the bath

MI6 murder mystery: how the spy got into the bath

Killers aimed to destroy any forensic residue after moving Gareth Williams’ body, says intelligence analyst

By Crispin Black | September 8, 2010

In the James Bond novels, only one of 007's fellow agents is ever killed: in Moonraker, 0011 disappears on a job in Singapore. In the films, a number of 00 agents are bumped off by the bad guys, notably 002, who is shot through the neck in Beirut by "the man with the golden gun". Roger Moore and Britt Ekland are dispatched to even the score.

But in real life the agents of Britain's intelligence agencies tend, like the rest of us, to die of natural causes in their beds. Kim Philby's bed was unfortunately in Moscow, but it was a bed nevertheless.

The suspicious death of the GCHQ cipher and code expert Gareth Williams is therefore a highly unusual event.

The post-mortems have been inconclusive and the police are currently awaiting the results of sophisticated tests for obscure poisons. It certainly looks like murder - but what kind of murder?

To begin with, it was reasonable for the police to assume that the reason for his death could be found in his private, not professional, life. Statistically this was the most likely option.

In police slang, this was probably 'an ordinary decent crime' rather than an assassination or terrorist-related. At some point an outraged husband or unsuitable sexual partner would emerge.

This is becoming less likely by the day. Go with the facts. If you find a neatly packed suitcase by the door it is because someone is about to leave - ­ someone efficient. If you find a body in a padlocked bag in a bath, then what you see is what you get. The body is in a bag because it's going somewhere and it's in the bath because once it has been removed it is easy to destroy any forensic residue.

For some reason the disposal of the body was interrupted - but the killer or killers knew what they were doing.

Getting rid of a body is difficult for amateurs but easy enough if it's your trade. The IRA were good at it - so good that since the Good Friday Agreement, and as part of the reconciliation process, they have had difficulty in revealing the whereabouts of some of their unfortunate victims. At least some of them disappeared into meat processing factories close to the border. The moors and peat bogs outside Belfast still hold their secrets.

In the case of Gareth Williams, the omens are not good. The police are looking for a couple of "Mediterranean appearance" - what Scotland Yard used to call in less politically correct days 'swarthy'.

Apparently this couple were filmed going into the front door of Williams's flat. Broadcasting CCTV footage on national television is sadly a sign of desperation: the Crimestoppers approach to this baffling crime.

Maybe it was them. Maybe not. Maybe it's related to intelligence. Maybe not. But one thing is for sure: whoever killed Williams has killed before.

The First Post : MI6 murder: Who planted the gay contacts stories?

MI6 murder: Who planted the gay contacts stories?

Gareth Williams’s uncle points finger at the state - and there is a precedent

By Nigel Horne | August 30, 2010

The case of Gareth Williams, the murdered MI6 codebreaker, becomes curiouser and curiouser. The First Post was among the first to suggest that the 'evidence' pointing towards a homosexual and/or sadomasochistic murder might be a ruse, possibly planted by the killer to lead investigators astray.

Now it appears we were right to be suspicious - but that the misinformation might not be the work of the killer, as we suggested, but of the government, possibly MI6 itself.

Police who found Williams's body at his Pimlico flat have now made it clear that reports about the discovery of bondage gear, gay contact magazines and male escorts' phone numbers at the scene are quite wrong. No such things were found.

According to the Guardian, the officers described the killing as "a neat job", indicating a professional hit.

So who has been putting out the story that Williams might have been part of a London gay scene and was probably killed as a result?

Williams's uncle, William Hughes, says the dead man's family have been "furious" at the way the innuendo has been allowed to circulate. He believes that some agency of the government might be trying to discredit Williams by creating a smear campaign.

With that in mind, it is instructive to recall the case of another MI6 man, Jonathan Moyle, who died 20 years ago.

Moyle was the 28-year-old editor of the magazine Defence Helicopter World. He was found dead in a bedroom at the Carrera Hotel in Santiago in 1990. It later transpired that he had been employed by MI6 and was visiting the Chilean capital to investigate an arms dealer trying to sell helicopters to Saddam Hussein.

His body was found hanging inside his hotel room wardrobe with a padded noose around his neck. In other words, it looked like a sex game gone tragically wrong. Later, a Foreign Office official, believed to be an MI6 source, let it slip at a reception that Moyle had died accidentally while engaged in an auto-erotic act.

Just as Williams's parents don't believe a word of the stories circulating about their son, so Moyle's parents, Diana and Tony, were convinced their son's death scene was phony.

Diana Moyle, interviewed by the Mail on Sunday yesterday, says she spoke to her son on the phone 10 minutes before he is supposed to have died. "He was in good spirits even though he had just got back to discover his room had been ransacked and there were papers scattered everywhere".

Her husband Tony, a retired teacher who died three years ago, investigated his son's death and worked out that he had most likely been suffocated and injected with a lethal substance before being strung up in the wardrobe. According to the Mail on Sunday report, the same view was reached by a coroner who returned a verdict of unlawful killing.

Diana Moyle said yesterday: "My heart goes out to the family of Gareth Williams. Why should they have to hear such cruel untruths being spread about his death?

"Perhaps some would claim it was in the national interest. But we went through exactly the same thing when Jonathan was killed two decades ago. The pain which those lies caused me then and now is unbearable."

Mrs Moyle claims that the Foreign Office official who talked about her son's death at the reception had written to her and husband apologising for his claims which, he said, had been "overheard".

But, said Mrs Moyle, "I know that such things are not accidentally leaked. It is done deliberately."

The First Post : Bondage gear found at MI6 flat - but was it planted?

Bondage gear found at MI6 flat - but was it planted?
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‘Male escort evidence’ and porn said to have been found at murdered spy’s flat

By Jack Bremer | August 27, 2010

Police investigating the murder of the MI6 codebreaker Gareth Williams have discovered bondage equipment in his London flat, along with evidence linking him to a male escort, according to reports emerging overnight. The findings appear to support the theory that his private life rather than national security was the motive for his murder - unless the items were planted by his killer.

Assuming they were not planted, their discovery raises concerns among national security personnel - in London and Washington - that an MI6 employee enjoying high security clearance might have had a secret lifestyle that risked his being compromised.

The CIA and the Pentagon are reported to have come into the picture because Williams travelled regularly to the States, possibly on codebreaking jobs for the US National Security Agency at Fort Meade, Maryland. The US Defence Department has refused to confirm whether he ever worked for the agency.

As The First Post reported yesterday, Williams's body was found stuffed into a holdall, sitting in the bath of the Pimlico flat where he was living while working on secondment at the MI6 headquarters, a short walk away.

Early reports said escort agency numbers had been found on one of the many mobile phone SIM cards discovered in the flat. Now police have removed porn films, bondage items and "paraphernalia associated with sado-masochism", according to a source quoted by the Times, as well as the evidence linking him to a male escort.

While investigators attempt to discover whether or not these findings are a red herring, further press interviews with old friends and acquaintances paint a picture of a loner - a gifted mathematician who had few friends.

Dylan Parry, who attended secondary school with Williams in Anglesey, north Wales, said he was "the kind of person who found it difficult to engage with people on a normal level".

But Williams's family are adamant that he is not a homosexual. His uncle William Hughes said today that his parents were "very, very angry... It's not the picture they have of their son.

"Maybe it's the Government or somebody trying to discredit him."

The First Post : Dead MI6 man: ‘private life’ not national security

Dead MI6 man: ‘private life’ not national security
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Escort agency numbers discovered on SIM card. Did a sex game go wrong?

By Jack Bremer | August 26, 2010

Police are investigating the private life of an MI6 officer whose body was found stuffed into a holdall and dumped in the bath of the flat where he had been living in London, just round the corner from the spy agency's headquarters.

Many theories have been offered by the media this morning - including murder by Islamic terrorists or even by Russian agents involved in the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko four years ago. But a trusted Whitehall source has said that "national security" is unlikely to be the motive.

Gareth Williams, 31, was single. He was a cipher and codes specialist at the top-secret government listening station, GCHQ, in Cheltenham, who had been working on secondment at the MI6 headquarters for the past year.

His neighbours in Alderney Street, Pimlico said they rarely saw him.

His landlady in Cheltenham - where he was due to return on September 3 - said he was "a really nice guy... who wouldn't hurt a fly." Jenny Elliott, 71, said that in the 10 years he had been renting a one-bedroom flat in her house, she had never known him to bring a girl home.

Police went to the London flat on Tuesday night "following reports that the occupant had not been seen for some time". As well as Williams's decomposed body, they found his mobile phone and - laid out in "ritual" fashion - a number of SIM cards.

According to a Daily Mail police source, one of those cards contained phone numbers for escort agencies. Pornographic material was also found in the flat. One theory is that Williams was the victim of a risky sex game gone wrong.

Early reports yesterday that he had been stabbed, or even dismembered, have now been discounted. Results of a first post-mortem examination were inconclusive but he is thought to have been asphyxiated before his body was put in the holdall.

Williams is understood to have been recruited by the Foreign Office for a job at GCHQ in 2000, while he was taking an MA in advanced mathematics at Cambridge. He dropped out of the year-long course and started at Cheltenham in 2001.

His parents, who live in Anglesey, north Wales, were informed of his death yesterday. His uncle, William Hughes, said: "I knew he was working in London doing something. He would never talk about his work and it felt rude to ask really."

Elliott said: "He would not talk about his job as it was a secret, on account of working for GCHQ. All he told me was it was something to do with codes."