This Is London : Secret agents will give evidence behind screen at inquest of spy-in-the-bag Gareth Williams

Secret agents will give evidence behind screen at inquest of spy-in-the-bag Gareth Williams

‘No evidence will be taken in closed hearing... all will be presented before this court’ - Coroner Dr Fiona Wilcox

Paul Cheston | April 23, 2012

Four secret service witnesses will give evidence anonymously from behind a screen at the inquest into the death of MI6 spy Gareth Williams, the coroner said today.

Mr Williams, 31, was found padlocked inside a sports bag in the bath at his home in Pimlico in August 2010.

His parents have suggested that the “dark arts” of intelligence agencies could have been involved in the death and a possible cover up.

The inquest into his death, described by coroner Dr Fiona Wilcox as “highly controversial”, opened today. She emphasised that all evidence to the inquest in Westminster will be heard in open court.

But she granted public interest immunity certificates to confer anonymity on three MI6 witnesses known as K, F and G, and on a “corporate witness” known as SIS F.

The first three will give evidence from behind a screen protecting their identity from the court, including from Mr Williams’s family. The corporate witness, however, will be visible to the family.

A further witness, Stephen Gale of GCHQ, will give evidence without a screen or anonymity.

Dr Wilcox said she was taking these steps because of the risk “to national security and therefore the public interest”.

Mr Williams’s parents Ian and Ellen and his sister, Ceri Subbe, were at the hearing today. The inquest, which is expected to last five days, is not being heard by a jury and the coroner alone will record a verdict.

Mr Williams, a maths prodigy worked as a cipher and codes expert for the government listening station GCHQ and had been on secondment with MI6. His naked and decomposing body was found inside a large holdall sealed by a padlock in the bath at his top-floor flat. A series of post-mortem tests failed to discover exactly how he died.

Dr Wilcox told the inquest: “Unlike other courts no one is on trial, least of all the deceased. This inquest, like all others, is an inquiry to answer four important but limited factual questions: who was the person who died, and how, when and where did the death come about? “The question ‘How’ will lead to an examination of a direct sequence of events that led to the cause of death.

“I intend to conduct this inquest as a full, fair and fearless inquiry into the evidence of this highly controversial death. No evidence will be taken in closed hearing and all evidence I deem relevant and all the material I have seen will be presented before this court.”

Family lawyer Anthony O’Toole told an earlier hearing at Westminster coroner’s court that “the impression of the family” was that “an unknown third party [in the flat at the time] was a member of some agency specialising in the dark arts of the secret services, or evidence has been removed post-mortem by experts in those dark arts”.

The hearing continues.

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Six key questions

Was there someone else in the room with Gareth Williams?

Police say it would have been impossible to get into the locked bag alone. Mr Williams’s body had no signs of defence injuries from a struggle.

Why did it take so long to raise the alarm?

Mr Williams was last seen on August 15, 2010 and police believe he died in the early hours of the following day. But he was not reported missing by anyone until his sister rang police seven days later.

Were the black arts of the spooks involved?

Mr Williams’s family suspect members of an intelligence service were involved in what they see as a possible murder and cover-up.

Was Mr Williams being followed?

His friend Elizabeth Guthrie is said to have told police he had told her he feared he was under surveillance. But he did not reveal by whom.

Was Mr Williams’s work behind his death?

He had just returned from holiday in the United States but neither MI6 nor GCHQ have wanted to make public what the codebreaker was involved in at the time of his death.

Did a sex game go wrong?

Mr Williams had visited a number of bondage websites. There was no trace of alcohol or recreational drugs in his body. But if he was interested in auto-eroticism why was it not picked up when he was vetted?

CBC : Inquest into mysterious U.K. spy death begins

Inquest into mysterious U.K. spy death begins

Gareth Williams found dead inside padlocked sports bag in his London home

The Associated Press | April 23, 2012

A British codebreaker had complained of friction at the country's overseas spy agency before his naked and decomposing body was found inside a padlocked sports bag, his family told an inquest Monday.

Gareth Williams worked for Britain's secret eavesdropping service GCHQ and was attached to the country's MI6 overseas spy agency when he was found in the bathtub of his central London home in August 2010. While detectives have suggested Williams, 31, may have died in a sex game gone wrong, his family has suggested that British spy agencies were involved in the death.

Williams' sister Ceri Subbe told an inquest into his death that her brother was unhappy with the "rat race" in London and had requested to be sent back to GCHQ's headquarters in Gloucestershire, western England

"The job was not quite what he expected," Subbe said. "He encountered more red tape than he was comfortable with."

The inquest's central focus will investigate whether Williams could possibly have climbed inside the sports bag and locked it from the inside.

There were no signs of struggle, and no drugs or poison in Williams' body, the discovery of which launched a media frenzy and flurry of conspiracy theories.

Experts consulted by police said Williams could not have locked himself inside the bag.

No arrests

Police have made no arrests in the case and are still not certain exactly how Williams died. But Scotland Yard raised the possibility that criminal charges could still arise, telling the inquest Monday that it objected to the release of some material to the media because that could prejudice future criminal proceedings.

Subbe told the inquest Monday that she did not believe her brother would let a potential killer in his flat, saying he was extremely conscientious.

Her testimony came after the coroner leading the inquest agreed to allow four intelligence agents to give evidence anonymously.

Coroner Fiona Wilcox acknowledged "there will be a real risk of harm" to national security and international relations if the identities of some of those giving evidence at the inquest are exposed.

In Britain, inquests must be held when someone dies unexpectedly, violently or from unknown causes. However, the coroner's task is to determine the cause of death, rather than to identify any suspect.

© The Associated Press, 2012

Telegraph : MI6 spy inquest will hear anonymous evidence from security agents

MI6 spy inquest will hear anonymous evidence from security agents

Security agents giving evidence at the inquest of MI6 spy Gareth Williams, who was found dead inside a padlocked bag, can do so anonymously and from behind screens, the Coroner ruled today.

By Martin Evans and Tom Whitehead, Crime Correspondent and Security Editor | April 23, 2012

At the opening of the hearing into what she described as Mr Williams’ “highly controversial death”, Dr Fiona Wilcox said there would be no secrecy at the inquest.

But she said there would be a “real risk of harm to national security” if witnesses from the security services were required to give evidence without the protection of anonymity.

Four witnesses, identified only as K, F, G and SIS F will all give evidence from behind a screen.

Mr Williams’ sister Ceri Subbe will also give evidence at the inquest about her brother’s upbringing, character and background.

His parents Ian and Ellen were present at the hearing, which is taking place at Westminster Coroner’s Court in central London.

The inquest will attempt to establish the cause and circumstances of Mr Williams’ mysterious death in August 2010.

His naked and decomposing remains were discovered in a holdall which had been locked from the outside and placed in the bath at his Pimlico flat.

Almost 40 witnesses will give evidence during the hearing, which is expected to last five days.

Mr Williams was a mathematics prodigy who graduated from Bangor University at the age of 17 before going on to complete a PhD and post-graduate studies at Manchester and Cambridge Universities.

A keen cyclist, he joined GCHQ – the government’s listening station - in 2001, where he was employed as a cipher and code breaker. In 2009 he was seconded to MI6, the secret intelligence service, where he qualified for “operational deployment” in the field.

Shortly before his death he returned from a fly drive holiday on the west coast of the United States and the last confirmed sighting of his was on August 15 2010 when a CCTV camera captured him shopping at the Harrods department store.

However despite failing to turn up for work, it was not until more than a week later on August 23 when he was reported missing by the human resources department at GCHQ.

Officers from Scotland Yard attended his top floor flat in Alderney Street, Pimlico, where they discovered his badly decomposed body in the holdall.

Mr Williams’ family believe he may have been murdered because of his work for the security services.

At a pre-inquest review, held last month, Mr O’Toole said: “The impression of the family is that the unknown third party was a member of some agency specialising in the dark arts of the secret services, or evidence has been removed post-mortem by experts in those dark arts.”

MSN : Spy 'unhappy with job in London'

Spy 'unhappy with job in London'

April 23, 2012

Spy Gareth Williams was unhappy in London and complained of "friction" at MI6 before he was found dead in a sports holdall, his family have said.

Cycling enthusiast Mr Williams was due to return to the West Country a week after he was found dead because he hated the "rat race" and the "flash car competitions", sister Ceri Subbe said.

She told the inquest at Westminster Coroner's Court into his death she did not believe Mr Williams would let a potential killer in his upmarket London flat, adding: "I cannot emphasise enough his conscientiousness."

MI6 were "dragging their feet" in approving his request in April 2010 to return to GCHQ's Gloucestershire HQ, she added.

Her statement added: "He disliked office culture, post-work drinks, flash car competitions and the rat race. He even spoke of friction in the office."

Explaining her comment, Ms Subbe added: "The job was not quite what he expected. He encountered more red tape than he was comfortable with."

She added: "It's impossible to do justice to Gareth's impressive character without meeting him."

Ms Subbe told how she "had a truly magical time" during her last meeting with Mr Williams for "dainty finger sandwiches" at the Ritz hotel. As a family we were incredibly close," her statement said.

Mr Williams was supposed to be on a three-year secondment in London but "as time went by his enthusiasm began to fade", Ms Subbe said. Bosses had agreed to let him leave on September 1 2010 - just a week after his body was discovered.

The naked and decomposing body of Mr Williams, 31, was found in the bath of his home in Pimlico, west London, on August 23 2010. The discovery sparked a painstaking investigation, worldwide media frenzy and several outlandish conspiracy theories.

Toronto Star : U.K. spy found dead had complained of friction at work, family says

U.K. spy found dead had complained of friction at work, family says

Cassandra Vinograd | Associated Press | April 23, 2012

LONDON—A British codebreaker had complained of friction at the country’s overseas spy agency before his naked and decomposing body was found inside a padlocked sports bag, his family told an inquest Monday.

Gareth Williams worked for Britain’s secret eavesdropping service GCHQ and was attached to the country’s MI6 overseas spy agency when his body was found in the bag in the bathtub of his central London home Aug. 25, 2010. While detectives have suggested Williams, 31, may have died in a sex game gone wrong, his family has countered that British spy agencies may have been involved in the death.

An inquest being held into his death will investigate whether Williams could possibly have climbed inside the sports bag and locked it from the inside. There were no signs of struggle, and no drugs or poison in Williams’ body, the discovery of which launched a flurry of conspiracy theories.

Women’s dresses and shoes worth around 20,000 pounds ($32,000 Canadian) were also found at the flat, creating another mystery in an already complex case. They had never been worn.

The coroner leading the inquest agreed Monday to allow four intelligence agents to give evidence anonymously.

Coroner Fiona Wilcox acknowledged “there will be a real risk of harm” to national security and international relations if the identities of some of those giving evidence at the inquest are exposed.

Williams’ sister was the first to give evidence to the inquest, saying that her brother was unhappy with the “rat race” in London and had requested to be sent back to GCHQ’s headquarters in Gloucestershire, western England.

“The job was not quite what he expected,” Ceri Subbe said. “He encountered more red tape than he was comfortable with.”

Subbe told the inquest Monday that she did not believe her brother would let a potential killer into his flat, saying he was extremely careful.

A lawyer for the dead man’s family said last month that “a member of some agency specializing in the dark arts of the secret services” might be responsible for his murder, fuelling speculation that he was killed by foreign spies and that MI6 might have covered it up.

At the time of his death, Williams was on a three-year secondment to MI6, which deals with foreign espionage matters and is headquartered at a large, modern, imposing building on the banks of the River Thames which often features in James Bond films.

But Subbe said her brother had wanted to return to his old post as a code breaker at the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the state eavesdropping service which is based in a striking doughnut-shaped modernist building in Cheltenham, western England.

He had wanted to escape London for the countryside and return to a quieter pace of life, she said.

“His enthusiasm had begun to fade,” she said. “I think the job wasn’t quite what he had expected.”

A keen cyclist and hill runner, who gained a university first-class degree in mathematics at the age of just 17, Williams was single and intensely private.

She told the inquest that, in April 2010, Williams had sought to end his secondment to MI6. He had been due to return to Cheltenham just days after his body was found.

His body was not discovered until his family reported him missing, up to 12 days after he was last seen, raising questions about his employer’s apparent lack of concern.

Policeman John Gallagher told the inquest how he made the grim discovery of Williams’ body when he went to the man’s apartment to check on the missing spy.

Toxicology tests found no traces of alcohol, drugs or poison in his body.

Experts later consulted by police said Williams could not have locked himself inside the bag.

Police have made no arrests in the case and are still not certain exactly how Williams died. But Scotland Yard raised the possibility that criminal charges could still be filed, telling the inquest Monday that it objected to the release of some material to the media because that could prejudice future criminal proceedings.

The inquest is due to hear from 37 witnesses, including four unnamed members of the intelligence services.

In Britain, inquests must be held when someone dies unexpectedly, violently or from unknown causes. However, the coroner’s task is to determine the cause of death, rather than to identify any suspect.

With files from Reuters

BBC : MI6 spy Gareth Williams was 'scrupulous risk assessor'

MI6 spy Gareth Williams was 'scrupulous risk assessor'

April 23, 2012

An MI6 officer found dead in his flat had been a "scrupulous risk-assessor" and only let "vetted" people into his home, his sister has told an inquest.

The body of Gareth Williams, 31, originally from Anglesey, was found padlocked in a bag in a bath in his Pimlico flat in August 2010.

Ceri Subbe said only family had keys to her brother's flat and that he would not have let in a potential killer.

The inquest is expected to examine whether anyone else was involved.

Ms Subbe said her brother had never told her he had been followed or felt threatened.

"I cannot think as to why anybody would want to harm him," she told the inquest.

In a statement read to the court, Ms Subbe said MI6 had been "dragging their feet" over her brother's request to return to government communications surveillance agency GCHQ's headquarters in Gloucestershire.

The mathematics prodigy had worked as a cipher and codes expert for GCHQ since 2001.

He had been working for MI6 in London on what had been meant to be a three-year secondment, but "as time went by his enthusiasm began to fade", Ms Subbe said.

"He disliked office culture, post-work drinks, flash car competitions and the rat race. He even spoke of friction in the office," the statement said.

Giving evidence at Westminster Coroner's Court, Ms Subbe added: "The job was not quite what he expected. He encountered more red tape than he was comfortable with."

Mr Williams had asked to return to GCHQ in April 2010 and MI6 had agreed he could leave on 1 September 2010.

The inquest was told that he failed to show up to a meeting that day and Ms Subbe had spoken to one of his colleagues.

"He is very conscientious. The person I spoke to agreed, and said Gareth was like a Swiss clock - very punctual, very efficient, and it was very unlike him not to attend a meeting," she said.

Ms Subbe told the inquest he had seemed upbeat the last time she spoke to him.

She said it was "not particularly" surprising that £20,000 of women's clothes had been found in her brother's flat and that they could possibly have been intended as gifts.

The police officer who discovered the bag in the bath, PC John Gallagher, told the inquest he was let into the locked flat by a letting agent after reports that Mr Williams was missing.

He said that, once inside, his attention was drawn to a woman's wig hanging on the corner of a chair.

When he got to the bathroom, there was a bathrobe on the floor outside the closed door, he added.

When he opened it, he noticed the bag in the bath but only became aware of the "particular smell" of a body when he tried to lift it.

"I noticed that the side nearest the door had a round bulge," he said.

"I noticed there was a padlock with the two zips joined together.

"At this point I am realising it is something serious and my concern was to not damage anything in a crime scene."

He said he could only see red fluid seeping out after he lifted the bag up "by six or seven inches".

He called for back-up and Det Sgt Paul Colgan arrived who cut open the holdall to reveal the body inside.

The inquest has been adjourned until Tuesday.

Opening proceedings earlier, coroner Dr Fiona Wilcox said evidence into Mr Williams's death would be heard in public but that some sensitive information would be withheld because of a "real risk of harm" to national security.

Summaries or "gists" of any withheld evidence would be revealed in court and there would be "a full, fair and fearless inquest into this highly controversial death", she said.

The inquest will hear from Mr Williams's colleagues from MI6 and the GCHQ, toxicology experts and bag experts.

Most of the 37 witnesses will give evidence in person, but some officers will be able to testify anonymously and behind screens.

Broadcasters and newspaper have applied for photographs, video and documents referred to in open court to be supplied to the media.

But a lawyer for the Met Police, Vincent Williams, said there was a "live complex ongoing investigation" into the death and charges were still a "real possibility".

Dr Wilcox suggested that the lawyers agree a compromise outside court.

A lawyer for Mr Williams's family said they opposed the release of video footage showing an attempted reconstruction of how he may have climbed into the bath.

'Dark arts'

A post-mortem examination and further toxicology tests - which found no trace of drugs, alcohol or poison - and the police investigation have all failed to establish a cause of death.

Police originally found it would have been impossible for Mr Williams to have locked himself inside the holdall his naked body was found in.

But they have been unable to establish whether he died at the hands of a third party.

Dr Wilcox told a pre-inquest hearing in March that whether the code-breaker was able to lock himself in the bag would be "at the very heart" of the inquest.

Lawyer Anthony O'Toole told the pre-inquest hearing that Mr Williams's family believed a third party was present at his death or later destroyed evidence.

"The impression of the family is that the unknown third party was a member of some agency specialising in the dark arts of the secret services - or evidence has been removed post-mortem by experts in the dark arts," he said.

Telegraph : Secret meeting between MI6 and police hours after discovery of spy Gareth Williams's death

Secret meeting between MI6 and police hours after discovery of spy Gareth Williams's death

The head of MI6 met Britain’s most senior policeman hours after the discovery of the body of a spy inside a locked holdall.

By Patrick Sawer and Gordon Thomas | April 22, 2012

Sir John Sawers, the chief of the Secret Intelligence Service, held a secret meeting Sir Paul Stephenson, the then commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, to discuss how Scotland Yard would handle the investigation into Gareth Williams’s death.

MI6 feared that detectives would extend their inquiries into sensitive areas, including the top secret nature of the work carried out by the 31-year-old codebreaker for both MI6 and the US National Security Agency (NSA), leading to potential breaches of security.

Intelligence sources claim Sir John sought assurances from Sir Paul that his officers would not stray beyond their remit during the investigation into the discovery of Mr Williams’s body inside a locked North Face holdall left in the bath of his Pimlico flat, in August 2010.

The revelation raises questions over the independence of the police inquiry and will add to fears in some quarters of a secret service cover-up.

It comes ahead of the opening of the full inquest into his death, due to open at Westminster Coroner’s Court this week.

Mr Williams, who worked at the Government’s listening centre GCHQ, was on secondment to MI6 when his body was found. The alarm was raised after he failed to turn up to work for over a week.

His family, in Holyhead, north Wales, believe his death may have been linked to his work at MI6, where he had recently qualified for “operational deployment”.

They fear that fingerprints, DNA and other evidence was wiped from the scene in a deliberate cover up.

Anthony O’Toole, the barrister representing the family, told an interim hearing ahead of the inquest last month that Mr Williams could have been killed by someone who specialised in “the dark arts of the secret services”.

He later added: “To properly explore the circumstances of his death we do need to know something of the deceased’s work.”

Among the matters discussed by Sir John and Sir Paul during their meeting, which is thought to have been held at Sir John’s private dining room at SIS headquarters, in Vauxhall, was the question of which senior officer was to head the investigation.

It is understood that Sir John expressed his satisfaction with the choice of Detective Chief Inspector Jackie Sebire as lead officer in the inquiry.

An intelligence source said: “SIS wanted to make sure that the Met didn’t stray too far into the question of what Gareth Williams’s job entailed. They did not want any potential leaks over the nature of his work for the NSA, GCHQ or MI6.”

It has also emerged that the US State Department asked MI6 to ensure that no details of Mr Williams’s work should emerge at the forthcoming inquest. US officials asked SIS to raise the matter with the Foreign Office.

Sir John, who attended Mr Williams’s funeral, is understood to have discussed the matter with William Hague, the Foreign Secretary.

Mr Hague subsequently signed a public interest immunity certificate authorising the withholding of details from the inquest about Mr Williams’s secret work and joint operations with the Americans.

it is understood that as a result NSA and FBI officers who would have been called as witnesses at the inquest will no longer be asked to attend.

Mr Williams had been working at NSA shortly before his death, where he was helping to develop a joint GCHQ-NSA defence against cyber attack’s on the west’s computer infrastructure, particularly in the banking and transport sector.

At one stage during his work at NSA, shortly before he returned to London, Mr Williams was given security clearance to visit its facility in the Utah desert, which the agency classifies as “above top secret”.

Mr Williams also spent several months at Menwith Hill, the secret listening station in Yorkshire used by the United States to intercept coded messages, and Fort Meade in Maryland, the home of the NSA.

Police told the interim hearing that experts were agreed it was impossible for Mr Williams to have locked himself in the holdall before his death. Mr O’Toole said that if he had not locked the bag himself, there was “a high probability that there was a third party present in the flat” at the time.

He suggested that “the unknown third party was a member of some agency specialising in the dark arts of the secret services, and perhaps evidence was removed from the scene post mortem by an expert in those dark arts”.

Outside the hearing, Mr O’Toole said the family did not know whether the “third party” might have belonged to a British or foreign agency.

An intelligence source said: “Given the sensitivity of the situation, both Hague and Hillary Clinton, US Secretary of State, would have been kept informed after the claims made by the Williams family barrister.”

There has been speculation that either the Russian or Chinese security services could have been responsible for Mr Williams’s death.

SVR, the Russian foreign intelligence service, is understood to have around forty spies in this country. They are either working under diplomatic cover at their embassy or with trade missions. MSS, the Chinese foreign intelligence service, is believed to have staff of over three thousand based in every country, including a number of 'hit’ teams.

Britain’s three main intelligence services – MI6, MI5 and GCHQ – have a number of safe-houses in and around London.

They are used as bases to interrogate foreign spies before they are handed over to Scotland Yard for arrest and trial and to brief or debrief an officer before or after a mission.

They also provide accommodation for an officer in transit from one posting to another, as in Mr Williams’s case.

His Pimlico safe-house had an unlisted number which gave him direct contact with MI6. All his calls were logged on the service’s switchboard facility. These were later checked and apparently produced no clue to assist the police.

Scotland Yard said it was not prepared to discuss details of the investigation into the death of Mr Williams, which its says remains an ongoing inquiry.

Independent : Family fear cover-up over MI6 spy whose body was found in bag

Family fear cover-up over MI6 spy whose body was found in bag

Nina Lakhani | April 21, 2012

Relatives of the MI6 spy found dead in a locked holdall have spoken out about the family's anguish over the unsolved death as they prepare for the inquest on Monday.

The body of Gareth Williams, 31, a GCHQ code-breaker, was found naked and decomposing in a bag in the bath at his flat in south London in August 2010. His family believes he was murdered by a member of "some agency specialising in the dark arts of the secret services". Police have admitted that their investigation had been set back by a forensic blunder.

His aunt and uncle, Judith and Dafydd Thomas from Anglesey, North Wales, said the family was "very raw" and they hoped the inquest would provide some answers. "This was not a body in the bag – he was our nephew, a wonderful young man," Mr Thomas said. His wife added: "We could fill newspapers with words to describe Gareth ... It's a distressing time for us, especially with the inquest starting."

The inquest, at Westminster Coroner's Court, must decide whether the young mathematician could have physically locked himself in the bag without help. The coroner, Dr Fiona Wilcox, is considering testing this by ordering a live demonstration at the inquest, which is scheduled to last five days. The Foreign Secretary, William Hague, has ordered key evidence to be heard in secret. Mr Williams' work with British and US secret services will not be disclosed.

Friends, neighbours and his family believe he will become another victim of a "cover-up".

A school friend, David Jones, 31, told the London Evening Standard: "This is David Kelly all over again. A cover-up. There was no evidence at the scene, it just doesn't add up."

London Evening Stardard : End our agony: Plea of family of spy in the bag Gareth Williams

End our agony: Plea of family of spy in the bag Gareth Williams

Kiran Randhawa | April 20, 2012

The grieving family of the MI6 spy found dead in a locked bag broke their silence today as they called for their agony to be brought to an end.

Relatives of Gareth Williams said they still felt “very raw” and demanded to be told the truth about his death, which they are convinced was murder.

The GCHQ codebreaker’s naked and decomposing body was found in a holdall in the bath of his Pimlico flat in August 2010. The family hope his inquest, which begins on Monday, will help to end their suffering and at last give them some answers. More than 18 months on, police are still unable to explain what happened to the talented 31-year-old mathematician and recently revealed that their investigation has been hampered by blunders.

His aunt Judith Thomas, from the village of Trearddur Bay in Anglesey, North Wales, said: “We could fill newspapers with words to describe Gareth. You couldn’t find enough paper in this world to say how we feel about him. It’s a distressing time for us, especially with the inquest starting.”

Her husband Dafydd said: “Our feelings are still very raw. This was not a body in a bag — he was our nephew, a wonderful young man.” At a pre-inquest review, the family’s barrister told how they believe that he was murdered by a member of “some agency specialising in the dark arts of the secret services”.

Another uncle, William Hughes, 62, a councillor from Bodedern, said the family were keen to see the end of the five-day hearing at Westminster coroner’s court.

He said: “We just want all of this over and done with now.” The coroner, Dr Fiona Wilcox, is considering ordering a live demonstration at the inquest.

This may involve a police expert getting into an identical bag to see whether Mr Williams could have climbed into the holdall by himself.

Foreign Secretary William Hague this month ordered that key evidence must be heard in secret. He signed an order to prevent the disclosure of details about the spy’s work with both British and US secret services. The Foreign Office said: “It was right to seek a public interest immunity certificate. We would always seek to protect the identities of intelligence personnel and details of their operational work.”

Mr Williams is reported to have been sent to the National Security Agency — the Pentagon’s listening post — to work on encryption programmes that filter millions of communications every day.

This Is London : Heartbreak and conspiracy theories in home village of the spy-in-the bag

Heartbreak and conspiracy theories in home village of the spy-in-the bag

‘This is David Kelly all over again — a cover-up. There was no evidence... It doesn’t add up’ -- Schoolfriend David Jones

Kiran Randhawa | April 20, 2012

The inhabitants of Holyhead and surrounding villages are well-versed in the various theories about Gareth Williams’s mysterious death.

One thing they — as well as those closer to him — are resigned to, however, is never knowing the truth.

Friends of the MI6 spy, who grew up in the remote Welsh outpost, said they fear he will become “another victim” of a “cover-up” by British authorities, likening his death to that of weapons expert David Kelly.

They are less than optimistic that next week’s inquest, or any other exhaustive inquiry, will yield answers to bring his family some sense of peace.

Since their son’s body was found crammed into a sports bag, Ian and Ellen Williams have withdrawn from the local community. Mr Williams, a keen runner who was often out jogging prior to the tragedy, is rarely seen. But it appears that the electrical engineer, who works at the local Wylfa nuclear power station, is coping better than his wife.

Mrs Williams rarely leaves the modest family bungalow in the village of Valley and has not worked since her son’s death.

Gareth Williams’s elder sister Ceri Subbe, a married physiotherapist who lives in Chester, was described by friends as “sensitive” and “badly damaged” by his death. She is among 30 witnesses, including MI6 officers, due to give evidence at the inquest.

Mr Williams’s grandfather John Owen, who lives locally and recently had heart surgery, was “traumatised” by the tragedy. Trefor Lloyd Hughes, 64, a councillor and close friend of the family said: “They are such kind people. This has shocked them to the core. They really are suffering.”

Building company boss Keith Thompson, 64, a cycling friend of Gareth Williams from Trearddur Bay, said: “We would like to hear the truth next week but we won’t get it. This will be another David Kelly. It’s a cover-up and I believe it is possible our secret services were involved.”

Mr Thompson used to run Holyhead Cycling Club and had known the GCHQ codebreaker since he was 14, when he joined. Mr Williams, from a “very athletic” family, excelled at the sport. “The family is devastated,” said Mr Thompson. “His mother in particular has taken it badly. Her life is ruined. It has hit her the hardest. They were all very close. They tell you that they are just living and coping day by day. I don’t think the family will ever get justice or peace.”

He said he last saw Mr Williams in May 2010, three months before his death, when he returned home for a cycle race.

David Jones, 31, who went to school with Mr Williams, said: “This is David Kelly all over again. A cover-up. There was no evidence at the scene, it just doesn’t add up.”

Mr Williams was considered a child prodigy by the locals. He did his A-levels at 14 and went to study maths at Bangor University at 15. After graduating with a first at 17, he studied for a PhD in computer science at the University of Manchester, going on to Cambridge for a postgraduate certificate in advanced maths before GCHQ approached him in 2001. He was on secondment to MI6 when police found him dead at his Pimlico flat in August 2010.

At a pre-inquest hearing last month, the family’s lawyer Anthony O’Toole said there was a “high probability” a third person was in the flat when Mr Williams died. “The unknown third party was a member of some agency specialising in the dark arts of the secret services, and perhaps evidence was removed from the scene post mortem by an expert in those dark arts.”

Toronto Star : How U.K. spy’s body ended up inside sports bag mystifies experts at inquest

How U.K. spy’s body ended up inside sports bag mystifies experts at inquest

David Stringer | Associated Press | April 30, 2012

LONDON—Traces of at least two unknown people were discovered at the London apartment of a British spy whose naked body was found locked inside a sports bag, a forensic expert told a hearing Monday.

Ros Hammond said DNA from two as yet unidentified people had been found inside the home, and that tests still being conducted could provide a breakthrough in the case, which has so far baffled investigators.

Gareth Williams, 31, worked for Britain's secret eavesdropping service GCHQ but was attached to the MI6 overseas spy agency when his remains were found in August 2010 at his London apartment inside the bag, and placed in a bathtub.

A London inquest hearing has been told that Williams rarely invited guests into his government-provided apartment, but Hammond said scientists had uncovered possible evidence of visitors.

“There's certainly evidence of at least two people other than Mr. Williams on the samples tested,” Hammond told Westminster Coroner's Court.

She said DNA evidence on a towel was still being examined and could provide a clue to explain Williams' puzzling death. “There's hope,” she said. “The tests are still in progress and there may be some promising results.”

Police say they are not certain exactly how Williams died and have so far made no arrests, although a senior detective has told the inquest she believes that at least one other person must have been involved.

Officers have suggested Williams' death may have had links to his private life and an apparent interest in sadomasochism — possibly during a sexual encounter gone awry. His relatives, however, insist his demise must be related to his highly secret work.

Pathologists told the hearing that poisoning or asphyxiation may have killed Williams, but acknowledged they can't be certain of the exact cause of his death because his cadaver badly decomposed as it lay undiscovered for several days.

MI6 colleagues failed to report Williams as missing for a week, meaning that police and pathologists lost vital chances to gather evidence.

Pathologist Benjamin Swift told the inquest that radiators had been turned on inside Williams' apartment — even though it was summer — accelerating the decomposition of his body.

Asked whether Williams may have been poisoned or suffocated, Swift said the options “were certainly two of the more prominent” explanations for the cryptology expert's death.

“I would never say never but those are the foremost contenders,” he told the hearing.

Pathologist Richard Shepherd, who carried out the third of three autopsies on Williams, said it appeared certain the spy climbed into the bag voluntarily.

It was more likely that Williams “was alive when he entered the bag than that he was dead,” the told the hearing.

Shepherd said it would have been very difficult to place Williams' dead body inside the duffel bag in the position it was found in. He was discovered in the fetal position with his arms folded across his chest.

There were also no signs that the spy had struggled to free himself.

“Were he to be alive and struggling I would anticipate there to have been injuries,” Shepherd said.

A verdict from the inquest is expected Wednesday.

[video] ITV: Wales This Week: Death Of A Spy

Wales This Week: Death Of A Spy

ITV panel including Miles Goslett and Gordon Thomas | April 17, 2012

Daily Mail : Hague orders 'body in a bag' spy evidence to be heard in secret so MI6 agent's work in U.S cannot be reported

Hague orders 'body in a bag' spy evidence to be heard in secret so MI6 agent's work in U.S cannot be reported

By Robert Verkaik | April 7, 2012

William Hague has ruled that key evidence in the ‘body-in-the-bag’ inquest into the death of an MI6 officer be heard in secret.

The Foreign Secretary signed an order prohibiting disclosure about details of the agent’s work with the British and US secret services.

The case has reignited the debate over secret justice and Government attempts to hold some inquests behind closed doors.

Gareth Williams, 31, who worked for the Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, was found dead in a sports bag in the bath of his flat 18 months ago amid claims he had been murdered by another country’s spies.

But Mr Hague, who has departmental responsibility for MI6, has signed a public interest immunity certificate authorising the withholding of details about his secret work, including joint operations with the American secret services.

A source close to the case said that the coroner, Dr Fiona Wilcox, has backed Mr Hague’s decision and the Government’s bid to keep the evidence secret. ‘The coroner was favourable to the arguments raised by the Government lawyers,’ the source said.

At a secret hearing nine days ago, lawyers for MI6 – which is headed by Sir John Sawers – told Dr Wilcox that the disclosure of details about Mr Williams’s work could harm Britain’s national interest.

Mr Williams, who is believed to have worked closely with the American security services, had flown to the National Security Agency (NSA) – the Pentagon’s listening post – on several occasions and returned from his last trip to the US only weeks before his death in Pimlico, Central London.

At the secret hearing, MI6 lawyers cited the case of Binyam Mohamed, the former Guantanamo Bay detainee paid £1million compensation by the last Labour Government. It settled that case rather than publish secret material the US government had given in confidence to the Security Service, MI5.

But the case raised questions about whether Britain was using its intelligence relationship with the US to keep secret details about UK involvement in the American torture programme.

Last night, Geoffrey Robertson QC, who acted for the New York Times and Washington Post in the Binyam Mohamed case, compared the legal situation in the Williams inquest with Mohamed’s. He called for the Williams case to be opened up to greater public scrutiny, adding: ‘These documents [about Williams’s work] may be necessary to show how and why this man died.

‘The open justice principle in British law is based on [legal reformer] Jeremy Bentham’s insight that publicity is very good for justice as it “keeps the judges, while trying, under trial”.

‘Coroners are not judges and sometimes their decisions can be dreadful. It is essential that this coroner’s ruling be made public so that we can decide whether she is applying the proper principles and so the public can be confident she is taking the correct approach to this case – and is not being overawed by the over-suppressive Government arguments.’

Mr Williams, one of GCHQ’s codebreakers, is reported to have been sent to the NSA to work on encryption programmes that filter millions of communications every day. In 2010, the FBI was called in to investigate Mr Williams’s death as a possible NSA security compromise.

A source in the Williams case said the coroner’s ruling has been communicated to the Government, but suggested it might not be made fully public. A spokesman for the coroner declined to say whether the judgment would be made fully public but said: ‘The coroner is yet to make a full ruling on any anonymity and public interest immunity.’

The Foreign Office said: ‘It was absolutely right and appropriate to seek a public interest immunity certificate. We would always seek to protect the identities of intelligence personnel and details of their operational work.’

Police have confirmed that the investigation is continuing and have not ruled out murder.

Daily Mail : Did MI6 'dry clean' this flat to cover up the spy in a bag murder? Not one fingerprint and five missing hours before police called

Did MI6 'dry clean' this flat to cover up the spy in a bag murder? Not one fingerprint and five missing hours before police called

By Paul Bracchi and Chris Greenwood | April 6, 2012

The secret service slang for having removed or destroyed incriminating evidence such as fingerprints from the scene of a crime is ‘dry-cleaned.’

It is a phrase now being used frequently in connection with the case of MI6 spy Gareth Williams, whose body was found locked in a sports bag at his home 20 months ago. The question being asked in law enforcement circles is, was the flat where he lived ‘dry-cleaned’ before police even arrived?

Detectives working on the case — one of the most mysterious and baffling of recent times — are convinced it was, in order to cover up the truth: that a colleague was involved in his death.

The chain of events that led to this sinister conclusion, we have been told, began on the evening of Sunday August 22, 2010, when Mr Williams had arranged to meet up with his sister Ceri.

They had planned to go to a comedy club in the capital. Mr Williams didn’t turn up. Ceri rang her brother’s mobile. He didn’t answer. She tried him at home. He didn’t pick up the phone there, either.

Had he been a banker, say, or in advertising, she might not have alerted his ‘employers’.

But for the past year, he had been working for the secret service — recently qualifying for operational deployment — on secondment from GCHQ, the Government’s listening post in Cheltenham.

So the next morning, she rang mi6. She informed the human resources department of Gareth’s non-appearance the previous evening, adding that his behaviour was totally out of character.

The call was made at 11am. At 4pm, MI6 got in touch with Scotland Yard and officers were dispatched to check on Mr Williams at his flat in Alderney Street in Pimlico.

He was too late. Gareth Williams, 31, was dead, curled up naked in the foetal position inside a red North Face holdall, which had been padlocked from the outside and placed in his bath. The bathroom itself, as you can see from the first photographs taken inside the apartment, is windowless. It adjoins the master bedroom.

Why had it taken MI6 five hours to contact Scotland Yard? Detectives are in little doubt. ‘The suspicion is that MI6 went round, found him dead and did a pretty damn good “dry-cleaning” job before we even knew about it,’ an impeccable source with full knowledge of the 20-month police investigation told the Mail this week.

The forensic team found no trace of any fingerprints, apart from those belonging to Mr Williams. No DNA, apart from his. Nothing to suggest anyone had ever been inside the apartment, apart from him. It was as if he had been living in an hermetically-sealed bubble.

MI6 would have had no difficulty gaining access to the flat. They had a key to the front door. It was a secret service ‘safe house’, after all, just a mile from MI6 headquarters on the other side of the River Thames (barely five minutes away by car) and was registered to a company in the British Virgin Islands.

The controversy surrounding the death of Gareth Williams was ignited at a pre-inquest hearing last week, when his family claimed there had been a cover-up involving the ‘dark arts’ of the ‘secret services’. The Mail has been told that the police share that view. It is an opinion, no doubt, that will be forcefully expressed at the full inquest next month.

Among the few facts that seem to be beyond dispute is that whatever may have occurred at 36 Alderney Street, Mr Williams was not alone when he died. Someone else must have been present, because the bag in which he was found could not have been locked from the inside.

This was the verdict of an expert in rescuing people from confined spaces — hired by the police — who got into a similar bag to test whether it was possible. He found that it wasn’t.

The question is: was the ‘third party’ taking part in a sex game with Mr Williams which ended in tragedy? Or was he murdered because of his espionage work?

Mr Williams — a Welsh speaker raised in Anglesey, North Wales, by father Ian, who worked at a nuclear power plant, and mother, Ellen — has been described as ‘quiet and unassuming’ by everyone who knew him. Until he was ‘loaned’ to MI6, he lived, without a TV, in the annexe of an elderly couple’s home in Cheltenham, where he had been a code-breaker at GCHQ for the past decade. His only interest seemed to be cycling.

A more complex picture of his private life emerged after his death. Most relevant in the circumstances, perhaps, was evidence he had visited bondage websites on his computer.

Much has been made of the fact that these possible sexual tastes may have led to his death, but do they deflect suspicion from the secret service?

Where would a man with limited social contacts have met someone to share these interests, if not at work? Where else can a spy look for safe company, if not among other spies? Police believe this is the most likely scenario: that Gareth Williams and a colleague (maybe even a senior colleague) were engaged in a bizarre sexual game that went terribly wrong.

It was covered up, so this theory goes, to prevent an even bigger scandal in MI6, one that might have left a fellow agent facing possible manslaughter charges.

The exact cause of Mr William’s death is still unknown. The heat generated inside the holdall meant his body was in a heavily decayed state when it was discovered.

He may have died from asphyxiation or hypercapnia, a catastrophic build-up of carbon dioxide in the blood. He might have climbed into the synthetic rubber sports bag voluntarily or he could have been unconscious when placed there.

Gareth Williams, like all members of the security services, would have undergone strict vetting before being recruited. For MI5, MI6 and GCHQ, officers are required to have the highest clearance of all. Developed Vetting, it is called, a nine-month process of interviews and background checks into his family history and personal circumstances.

A prediliction for sexual peccadillos would have almost certainly been picked up. The process is not foolproof, but it is highly effective.

Mr Williams’s family and friends insist he has been smeared to deflect attention from the real story. Contrary to early claims, no bondage equipment was ever found in Alderney Street and the only evidence of his interest in bondage is contained on his computer.

Is it possible that his laptop might have been tampered with when his flat was ‘dry-cleaned?’ Police believe that whoever cleaned up the flat deliberately left the laptop on the dining room table for them to find, along with his mobile phones and SIM cards, all neatly laid out.

‘It was just too easy for us to find these things,’ said the source.

There is at least one notorious precedent (that we know of) for a secret-service-inspired smear campaign against one of its own agents. It is the case of Jonathan Moyle, another British intelligence agent, who was found hanging by his shirt from the rail in a walk-in wardrobe, with a pillow case over his head, in the Chilean capital Santiago in 1990.

MI6 planted the suggestion he had died while engaged in an auto-erotic act. In fact, Moyle had probably been drugged, suffocated, injected with a lethal substance, then strung up — a view supported by the British coroner, who returned a verdict of unlawful killing at his inquest eight years later, following a campaign by Mr Moyle’s father, Tony.

His son was investigating the arms trade with Iraq, which was then the subject of an arms embargo which prevented Britain from selling weapons to the country. ‘British companies were arming Saddam Hussein and British ministers were well aware they were doing so,’ Mr Moyle said at the time.

Those responsible for the death have never been brought to justice.

The parallels with Gareth Williams are chilling. If he was murdered, the reason almost certainly lies somewhere in his professional life. Many workers at GCHQ spend their time trawling through emails, text messages and telephone calls, looking for that one communication that might prove crucial. They seek intelligence on a wide range of targets, including terrorists, organised criminals and hostile foreign governments.

Gareth Williams, it seems, was no ordinary GCHQ operative. Hence his deployment to MI6. He was working on equipment, it has been claimed, that tracked the flow of money from Russia to Europe.

The Russian secret services have shown themselves willing to act without restraint and strike at the heart of Britain. Relations with Moscow sunk to their lowest point since the Cold War in the wake of the murder of former agent Alexander Litvinenko in 2006. He was poisoned with radioactive plutonium, prompting a murder inquiry that implicated Russia.

The following year, a gunman from Russia was arrested at the Park Lane Hilton on a mission to murder oligarch Boris Berezovsky. He and Litvinenko were outspoken critics of the Russian government. In other words, they were seen as a threat.

Might Gareth Williams also have been viewed as a threat, albeit for very different reasons?

Crispin Black, a former intelligence officer and adviser to the Government and the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), is convinced Mr Williams was murdered by foreign agents.

‘It has always looked like a professional affair: people with experience in “wet jobs’’ [KGB slang for murder and assassination] either working for a foreign intelligence agency or a criminal enterprise,’ he says.

‘Go with the facts. The body is in the bag because it is 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.’

Why would MI6 cover up Mr Williams’s murder? Maybe it wants to conceal the identity of a country or group that killed him to serve some diplomatic end, like in the case of Jonathan Moyle.

Or was it to spare them the embarrassment of having one of its agents killed in a ‘safe house’, in the shadow of the secret service headquarters?

Officers on the case still prefer the ‘sex game’ theory. Meanwhile, at their bungalow in the village of Valley, on the west coast of Anglesey, the parents of Gareth Williams are keeping a dignified silence.

‘It has been a very distressing time for us,’ is all his mother Ellen would say when contacted this week.

Indeed, the past few days couldn’t have been more distressing with the countless unanswered questions still surrounding the death of her son.

‘The family have deep concerns as to whether the inquest will ever get to the bottom of what happened,’ said Anthony O’Toole, the barrister who represents the Williams family.

‘We know that there was somebody in the flat — that is beyond dispute.’

Independent : Scotland Yard apologises over spy 'errors'

Scotland Yard apologises over spy 'errors'

Tom Morgan | April 3, 2012

Scotland Yard apologised today for "administrative errors" during investigations into the mysterious death of an MI6 spy found in a holdall.

The force said it was responsible for giving a coroner three names for the same witness ahead of the inquest into the death of Gareth Williams.

Elizabeth Guthrie is expected to be questioned about her contact with Mr Williams in the months before his death when the hearing gets under way later this month.

But Coroner Dr Fiona Wilcox told a pre-inquest review last week that "there has been some confusion" over her identity.

The Metropolitan Police Service moved to clarify the situation in a statement.

It said: "For the avoidance of doubt, the MPS would like to make it clear that Miss Guthrie has assisted the police investigation at every stage.

"Regarding the issue of the spelling of her name, the MPS would also like to clarify that this was not caused by Miss Guthrie but was a result of administrative errors when her statements were taken.

"Furthermore, at no point did Miss Guthrie ask the MPS to represent her views in this matter to the media.

"The MPS would like to apologise to Miss Guthrie, her family, and HM Coroner for any confusion that has been caused."

Miss Guthrie had been listed as Miss Gunther, Misa Guseiri and Elizabeth Guthrie in separate statements sent to Westminster Coroner's Court.

News of the error comes after the force also revealed a key line of its inquiries had been an 18-month DNA mix-up.

Forensic teams mistakenly flagged up a spot of DNA on Mr Williams's hand in 2010 - before realising just two weeks ago that it matched a scientist on the crime scene, the force told the review.

Family members of Mr Williams believe secret agents specialising in the "dark arts" hold the key to solving the death riddle.

Relatives believe a third party was either present when Gareth Williams died or broke into his home afterwards to destroy evidence, lawyer Anthony O'Toole last week's pre-inquest review.

Mr O'Toole said: "The impression of the family is that the unknown third party was a member of some agency specialising in the dark arts of the secret services - or evidence has been removed post-mortem by experts in the dark arts."

The inquest is due to begin on April 23.

The Week : Death of a GCHQ code-breaker: no wonder his family smell a rat

Death of a GCHQ code-breaker: no wonder his family smell a rat

Gareth Williams's family are right – this has always looked like the work of a meticulous professional killer

Crispin Black | April 2, 2012

THE pre-inquest review held in London last week into the mysterious death of the GCHQ code-breaker Gareth Williams, whose body was found in a locked holdall in his Pimlico flat in August 2010, has thrown up a number of new and surprising twists.

The most startling is that the single unexplained DNA sample recovered from Williams's hand and which the police felt was a significant lead for nearly 18 months turns out to come from one of the forensic scientists who attended the scene – a labelling cock-up by the forensic laboratory, apparently.

The lawyer representing Williams's family, Anthony O'Toole, also suggested that there were no signs of covert entry into the flat but an expert despatched to examine the door discovered that it had already been removed from its frame, complete with locks.

No wonder the family are smelling a rat. They like just about everyone else reject the Houdiniesque theory that Williams somehow locked himself into the small holdall and are convinced that a third party must have been present in the flat even though no unexplained DNA or fingerprints have been discovered.

O'Toole put it this way on the family's behalf: "The impression of the family is that the unknown third party was a member of some agency specialising in the dark arts of the secret services – or evidence has been removed post-mortem by experts in the dark arts."

The Williams family's instincts look spot on. It has always looked like a professional affair: people with experience in "wet jobs" - the KGB slang for murder and assassination - either working for a foreign intelligence agency or a criminal enterprise.

Getting into someone's house to have a look around and then getting out again without leaving any trace is much more difficult than the Bond films would have us believe. It requires long training and then meticulous attention to detail, invariably against the clock.

Unless the individual or team is very skilled they will usually leave some small sign of their presence – a book placed back on a shelf out of order or some tiny forensic trace like a hair or a piece of dried skin. Killing someone without leaving any tracks is even more difficult. That forensic and other evidence may eventually lead the police nowhere is a fact of life. That there is no forensic evidence at the scene at all suggests a high level of skill and coolness of mind by the perpetrators.

In the Williams case, truth seems stranger than fiction. But we can glean some clues from the world of fiction - in particular the locked room or impossible-crime detective story. Out of fashion these days, it was once all the rage. Conan Doyle's only specimen, The Adventure of the Speckled Band, is consistently voted the best of all the Sherlock Holmes stories and Agatha Christie's And Then there Were None is the best-selling detective novel ever.

The key to both tales and indeed all impossible-crime cases in a locked room is that however complicated, bizarre and unlikely the circumstances, the explanation is always simple. In some way the room was not locked at all. The most popular tricks are secret passages or sliding panels or a poison administered earlier. A less common device but one found in a number of golden age novels and short stories is the "unhinging and rehinging of a door or windows". Quite.

We may never know how Gareth Williams died. But we do know about the leisurely pace and Janet and John blunders of the investigation so far. More energy is required – perhaps the full inquest which starts on 23 April will kick-start the process.

Independent : 'Spy in a bag' may have been executed by secret agents, coroner hears

'Spy in a bag' may have been executed by secret agents, coroner hears

Dirty tricks may mean killers will never face justice

Kim Sengupta | March 31, 2012

An MI6 officer whose body was found in a holdall may have been executed by secret agents specialising in the "dark arts", with a cover-up subsequently organised to ensure that his killers did not face justice, a court heard yesterday.

The highly charged allegations came at a coroner's hearing which was also told it was virtually impossible for Gareth Williams to have locked himself inside the bag, but that the hunt for those who may have killed him was sidetracked by a major forensic blunder.

The mix-up, over DNA found on the body, was discovered only two weeks ago – while the investigation into one of the most high-profile spy cases of recent times has been going up a blind alley for the best part of a year.

Westminster Coroner's Court in London was also told that MI6 (the Secret Intelligence Service) had not checked on Mr Williams's whereabouts for more than a week, even though he had failed to turn up for work. As a result, his remains were so decomposed and contaminated that scientists had been unable to ascertain the cause of death.

Anthony O'Toole, representing Mr Williams's relations, told the court: "The impression of the family is that the unknown third party was a member of some agency specialising in the dark arts of the secret services – or evidence has been removed post mortem by experts in the dark arts."

Mr O'Toole said Mr Williams "could have been actively deployed" as an agent up to five months before his death. There was a "bland statement" from MI6 "that the death was nothing to do with his work", said the lawyer. "To properly explore the circumstances of the death, we need to establish the deceased's work," he added.

Mr Williams worked as a cipher and codes expert for GCHQ, the Government listening station, but had been on secondment with MI6 since March 2010. His body was found at his flat in Pimlico, south-west London, in August 2010 in a North Face holdall sealed by a padlock.

Detective Chief Inspector Jackie Sebire told the court that traces of DNA found on one of Mr Williams's hands were previously been regarded as a "key line of inquiry". But it subsequently emerged that "actually the DNA evidence was contamination by a scientist at the scene".

The laboratory responsible, LGC Forensics, last night apologised to Mr Williams's family. "LGC identified the partial profile as matching that of a Metropolitan Police scientist who was involved in the original investigation," a spokeswoman for the company said.

The coroner, Dr Fiona Wilcox, said: "What I am concerned about is that there is a system in placed to detect the error. Human errors will always occur.

"There has been so much public speculation and so much public anxiety that this is the reason the court has to act to address it."

Mr Williams's family, said Mr O'Toole, was concerned a third party who may have been present at his death has still not been traced. There was the DNA evidence which turned out to be contaminated and also, supposedly, a footprint. But both leads had come to "dead ends".

Examination of a door knob which may have provided incriminating material could not be carried out because the expert tasked with doing so found the door had been removed and the knob taken out, said the lawyer.

The inquest into Mr Williams's death, expected to begin in April, will hear from his colleagues at MI6 (who will give evidence anonymously) and GCHQ, toxicology experts, bag experts, as well as from his sister. It will also hear that he may have died after breathing too much carbon dioxide.

Dr Wilcox said she wanted the circumstances of Mr Williams's death to be re-enacted in court. "I want it demonstrated in court how somebody could have got into the bag, done it up and locked it from outside when confined inside. It's the fundamental issue in this case: whether Gareth Williams was able to lock the bag when he was inside."

But Vincent Williams, representing Scotland Yard, held there was no need for such a demonstration. A panel of experts had concluded it "would have been very difficult, if not impossible" for him to lock the bag from the inside.

Timeline: The mysterious death of Gareth Williams

15 Aug 2010

31-year-old Gareth Williams, a cipher and codes expert who worked at the GCHQ listening post in Cheltenham, is seen alive for the last time.

23 Aug 2010

A colleague at GCHQ reports Williams missing. His body is found later that day at his flat in Pimlico, London.

30 Aug 2010

Detectives say they are looking at whether Williams may have been killed by a foreign intelligence agency.

1 Sept 2010

An inquest hears that Williams's remains were discovered padlocked into a sports bag, which was in an empty bath at his flat.

6 Sept 2010

Police appeal for help in tracing a couple of Mediterranean appearance, pictured left, who were seen entering Williams's flat earlier in the summer.

22 Dec 2010

Police reveal that Williams had accessed bondage websites and visited a drag show, amid suggestions that the death could have been the result of a sex game gone wrong.

March 2012

After 18 months of investigation, police discover that a trace of DNA found on Williams's hand came from a crime scene scientist. They also find that the couple they were tracing were irrelevant to the inquiry.

Daily Mail : The woman with THREE identities who could hold key to death of the body-in-the-bag spy

The woman with THREE identities who could hold key to death of the body-in-the-bag spy [or here]

American Missa Elizabeth Guthrie claims to be an international businesswoman linked to a wealthy American family

By Robert Verkaik, George Arbuthnott and Sharon Churcher | March 31, 2012

The Mail on Sunday can today identify a mysterious new witness who could hold the key to the death of the body-in-a-bag MI6 spy Gareth Williams.

The woman used three different names in statements provided to police for a pre-inquest hearing into the death of code-breaker Mr Williams.

This provoked Dr Fiona Wilcox, the coroner investigating the case, to declare: ‘There has been some confusion as to who this witness is and I need to know her identity.

‘I expect witnesses to identify who they are, not who they think they are.’

Our investigation has revealed the woman to be 27-year-old American Missa Elizabeth Guthrie, who claims to be an international businesswoman linked to a wealthy American family worth £35 billion.

The full inquest into Mr Williams’s death is due to be held later this month and Westminster coroner Dr Wilcox is now expected to quiz Ms Guthrie about the time she spent with Mr Williams in 2010.

Dr Wilcox said on Friday: ‘She [Ms Guthrie] will be asked to explain who she is and called to give evidence.’

The coroner said that there were a number of questions she wanted to ask Ms Guthrie about her identities, which were previously given as Missa Gunther, Misa Guseiri and Elizabeth Guthrie.

The confusion surrounding Ms Guthrie deepened further on Friday when a senior Scotland Yard press officer contacted The Mail on Sunday on her behalf to say that she had not told her family that she was a close friend of Gareth Williams.

Mr Williams was discovered naked inside a red North Face holdall, which was padlocked on the outside and placed inside his bath

The official said that the family was well known in America, and that it could embarrass them if Ms Guthrie’s previously unknown connection was made public.

However, it is no secret among Ms Guthrie’s friends that she was close to Mr Williams before he died.

A source involved in the case said: ‘She first met Gareth when she shared a flat in Knightsbridge where Gareth frequently came to meet friends from Wales. They struck up a close friendship because they were both interested in politics and history.

‘But in 2009 she moved out and found a top floor-flat in Pimlico which was close to Gareth’s address.’

In the months before he died, Ms Guthrie’s friendship with Mr Williams blossomed. The source said: ‘On election night in May 2010 the two of them stayed up late with another person to see in the new Coalition Government.’

Mr Williams, a maths genius from Anglesey, North Wales, had worked for the Government listening post GCHQ in Cheltenham since leaving university and was on secondment to MI6 when his body was found by police at his top-floor flat in Pimlico, Central London, on August 23, 2010.

He was discovered naked inside a red North Face holdall, which was padlocked on the outside and placed inside his bath.

The Government has refused to disclose what secret operations Mr Williams was working on during the weeks before his death.

Fresh evidence about his state of mind before his death is expected to be aired at the full inquest – adding to speculation that the spy may have been murdered by a foreign agency or a criminal gang.

The source said: ‘Ms Guthrie said Gareth told her he was being followed in the days before his death.

‘She didn’t know who it was, only that she and Gareth were so concerned that they sometimes varied the route they took home.’

Ms Guthrie also told friends after Mr Williams’s body was found that he was planning to leave the Secret Service so that he could set up his own business with her and another MI6 officer.

‘She was very vague about what this would be, only that it would be with another MI6 officer,’ said the source.

Our investigations in the United States have revealed that Missa Elizabeth Guthrie is the daughter of George Gordon Guthrie, a wealthy New York stockbroker.

The 69-year-old, who is known as Jerry, worked for various Wall Street investment firms, including a securities unit of the French bank Caisse des Depots et Consignations, where he was managing director of options trading.

His brother, Randolph Hobson Guthrie, a retired plastic surgeon, is married to a great-granddaughter of the steel magnate Henry Phipps. Phipps was the son of an English shoemaker who went to America in the early part of the 19th Century.

Phipps became the business partner of Scottish immigrant Andrew Carnegie who founded the Carnegie Steel Company and built Carnegie Hall in 1891.

Phipps also founded the Bessemer Trust to manage the family fortune. It now manages funds for more than 2,000 families and has £35 billion in assets. There are about 300 of Phipps’ descendants who benefit from the Trust.

Ms Guthrie’s father was previously married to Laura McCord, who is now the wife of Peter Grauer, the chairman of Bloomberg, the multi-billion business news and analysis corporation.

According to US securities records, Ms Guthrie and her mother Donnell, 57, are shareholders in a business and technology consulting firm called Answerthink.

Ms Guthrie grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut, a town is known its for great estates and links to famous families such as the Kennedys.

Her childhood homes included a six-bedroom, nine-bathroom mansion. The property is currently valued at £5 million.

Ms Guthrie, who it is claimed has given different names to friends and uses pseudonyms on her Facebook site, is described by friends as a flamboyant character who lived a secretive life working for a Middle Eastern oil and minerals trading company.

'She was very secretive about her work'

In New York she is understood to have also worked as an actress, appearing in a low-budget production called In Search Of Myster Ey, taking the part of a ‘mystery-seeking lady’.

The film is an eccentric investigation into the meaning of the ego.

Ms Guthrie is believed to have left New York for London in 2008.

A source told The Mail on Sunday that she studied at the Regent’s Business School in Central London.

The source added: ‘She had two names, calling herself both Phipps and Guthrie, and claimed to come from a famous American family – but she never really explained who they were.’ Ms Guthrie told her friends that she had travelled widely, visiting the Middle East, China and South America on what she described as business trips.

The source said: ‘The funny thing was that she never explained exactly what she did and was very secretive about her work.

‘She even used the code-name Shark when talking about her business partner.’

In 2008 Ms Guthrie’s parents retired to a four-bedroom, five-bathroom villa for which they paid £2 million on Sea Island, an exclusive resort on a barrier reef on the coast of Georgia. Reached by a dramatic causeway that swoops for miles over marshland and shaded by moss-draped oak trees, Sea Island was once one of the favourite winter resorts for socially ambitious Americans who were drawn to its five miles of private beaches.

The £2 million the Guthries paid was about the average for a home on the island at the time. The island is privately owned by a development company.

But shortly after Ms Guthrie’s parents bought their villa, it was revealed that the company was in financial trouble.

Property values have since plunged and the Guthries’ sprawling home is now valued by one online site at about £1 million.

There was no sign of Ms Guthrie’s parents at the family home yesterday.

The Metropolitan Police have confirmed that the investigation into Mr Williams’s death is ongoing and officers have not ruled out murder.

The coroner’s court heard on Friday that a series of blunders, including a mix-up over DNA found at the scene, had hampered the inquiry. The inquest was also told that a man and a woman of ‘Mediterranean appearance’ who had visited the flat in the weeks before the death, and who were the subject of a police witness appeal, had now been identified and ruled out as a ‘red herring’.

Mr Williams’s family have said they believe that he was murdered by those ‘specialising in the dark arts of the secret services’.

They also suspect a cover-up, suggesting evidence has been removed or tampered with.

Daily Mail : Did MI6 agents 'specialising in dark arts' kill spy in bag? New evidence emerges sparking fresh questions from the victim's family

Did MI6 agents 'specialising in dark arts' kill spy in bag? New evidence emerges sparking fresh questions from the victim's family

* Gareth Williams's family believe a third party was either present when he died or broke into his home afterwards to destroy evidence
* Crime scene forensic scientist’s OWN DNA was found on Mr Williams’s hand
* Relatives wanted to know why the alarm was not raised when Mr Williams failed to turn up at work - by then his body was badly decomposed for analysis
* It also emerged that a Mediterranean couple police wanted to speak to were irrelevant to Mr Williams’s death

By Chris Greenwood | March 31, 2012

The MI6 spy whose body was found locked in a sports bag may have been killed by a secret agent, his family said yesterday.

Their barrister suggested a sinister cover-up had left them with no way of knowing how and why Gareth Williams died.

One theory is that he died at the hands of a colleague. Another is that a foreign agent killed him because of his espionage work.

The discovery of the body in his flat near the Secret Service headquarters in London sparked a 20-month police inquiry that has drawn a blank.

At a public hearing yesterday, it emerged that the flat may have been swept clean of evidence, with no fingerprints or DNA anywhere.

It was also revealed that – far from being a back-office worker – Mr Williams had just completed training for deployment on operations.

Other revelations included:

* An expert seeking signs of forced entry said he was hampered because the front door had been taken from its hinges and locks removed;
* Pathologists still cannot agree on how Mr Williams died. The 31-year-old suffered no visible injuries and could not have locked himself in the bag according to police;
* DNA found on his hand that police rated as highly significant was in fact left by a bungling forensic scientist.

The unclothed body of the super-fit maths prodigy was found in a large padlocked North Face bag in the bath of his Government-owned Pimlico flat in August 2010.

The codebreaker from Anglesey, North Wales, had links to London's bondage and gay scene and it had already been suggested a sex game, possibly with a colleague, may have had a tragic end.

But Westminster Coroner Dr Fiona Wilcox was told yesterday his grieving family fear whoever is responsible expertly covered up the evidence.

Their barrister Anthony O'Toole rejected the conclusion of an internal MI6 inquiry that Mr Williams's death 'had nothing to do with his work'.

He said: 'There is a high probability that some third party was in the flat when Gareth was placed in the bag. Evidentially there seems to be no trace of an unknown party in the flat.

'Our impression is that the unknown third party was a member of some agency specialising in the dark arts or secret services.

'Or perhaps evidence has been removed from the scene post-mortem by experts in those arts.'

Mr Williams was nearing the end of a one-year secondment from the GCHQ listening station to the headquarters of the Secret Intelligence Service, or MI6, in Vauxhall, London.

Dr Wilcox was told a wide-ranging and highly sensitive police inquiry has left many questions unanswered over the circumstances of his death.

Experts believe it would have been 'difficult, if not impossible' for Mr Williams to lock himself in the bag but can find no evidence of anyone else being present.

His body was found curled in the foetal position in the 140-litre black and red holdall with the keys to the Yale travel padlock beneath him. Pathologists found no evidence of injuries or that he attempted to fight his way out. It remains possible that his dead body was put inside the bag.

Dr Wilcox said that whether Mr Williams was alive inside the bag and locked it himself 'was at the very heart of this inquiry'. She may order officials to recreate how he could have got inside it at the full inquest which is due to take place next month.

Experts have been unable to agree on exactly how Mr Williams died, favouring asphyxiation or hypercapnia, a catastrophic build-up of carbon dioxide in the blood.

Their work was hampered by the heavily decayed state of his body and his MI6 colleagues face questions over why they did not raise the alarm earlier.

It also emerged yesterday that Scotland Yard detectives spent almost 20 months pursuing a DNA trace on his body that was left by a clumsy forensic scientist.

The chief executive of LGC Forensics will be hauled before the inquest to explain the astonishing blunder which was discovered only two weeks ago.

The inquest also heard that a Mediterranean couple who called at Mr Williams's block had nothing to do with the case. Detectives released e-fits of the couple and have now traced them. They were looking for a friend's house.

The inquest heard that Mr Williams's family were unhappy about several aspects of the inquiry, including the role of counter-terrorism officers who dealt with MI6 and GCHQ staff. They have raised questions about who ordered a second post-mortem examination and what happened to Mr Williams's possessions held in a work locker.

The family also want to hear more details about the nature of his work but MI6 representatives said disclosing the information could endanger national security.

Dr Wilcox attacked police for delaying the handover of evidence and questioned why the names of some witnesses had been withheld. She said some sensitive letters had gone missing. MI6 has applied for several of Mr Williams's colleagues to give evidence anonymously and from behind screens.

Irish Independent : 'Dark arts' link in MI6 spy's death

'Dark arts' link in MI6 spy's death

By Gordon Rayner in London | March 31, 2012

Gareth Williams, an MI6 spy found dead inside a locked holdall could have been killed by someone who specialised in "the dark arts of the secret services", a coroner has been told.

Mr Williams could not have locked the bag from the inside, meaning a "third party" must have done it, according to a lawyer representing his family.

Relatives believe his death in 2010 may have been linked to his work at MI6, where he had recently qualified for "operational deployment", and that fingerprints, DNA and other evidence was wiped from the scene in a deliberate cover up.

Police have always said they were keeping an open mind on whether the 31-year-old codebreaker was murdered or died as a result of an accident, possibly during a bizarre sex game.

But at an interim hearing ahead of the full inquest, Westminster Coroner's Court in London was told that a delay by MI6 in notifying police of his disappearance meant a post-mortem examination had been "ineffective".

A series of blunders, including a mix-up over DNA found at the scene, had also hampered the inquiry, Dr Fiona Wilcox, the coroner, was told.

Padlocked

Mr Williams, a maths genius who had worked for the government listening post GCHQ in Cheltenham since leaving university, was on secondment to MI6 when his body was found by police in a flat in Pimlico, west London, on August 23, 2010. He was discovered naked inside a red North Face holdall, which was padlocked on the outside and was in his bath.

Dr Wilcox said there were no injuries on the body to suggest he had been in a struggle.

She said it was possible he had got into the bag himself, and was considering ordering a demonstration at the full inquest involving a police expert getting into an identical bag.

Police have released two e-fits of a couple who said they were visiting Mr Williams's home.

Anthony O'Toole, representing the Williams family, said there was "a high probability that there was a third party present in the flat" at the time.

"The unknown third party was a member of some agency specialising in the dark arts of the secret services, and perhaps evidence was removed from the scene post-mortem by an expert in those dark arts," he said.

The coroner said she would "follow the evidence" wherever it led.

(© Daily Telegraph, London)

Independent : Calls for inquiry into 'astonishing' DNA error

Calls for inquiry into 'astonishing' DNA error

Paul Peachey | March 31, 2012

The major blunder that sent detectives on the Gareth Williams inquiry down a blind alley for more than a year is the second embarrassment admitted this month by Britain's biggest private forensic science laboratory.

The latest error – described as "astonishing" and which led to a public apology from the company to the Williams family – has raised questions over systems and practices at LGC, which handles half a million samples a year.

Critics called for a public inquiry to try to discover if private providers were fit for purpose following the final closure today of the state-run Forensic Science Service. "This simply should not happen," said Professor Peter Gill, a founding father of DNA profiling in the 1980s. "Surely there is sufficient evidence to open a public inquiry because we are now getting regular reports of widespread system failure."

The mistake followed the discovery of a partial trace of a second person's DNA on the hand of Mr Williams. To rule out possible contamination from any of the investigators at the scene, those details were loaded manually onto a database.

But that entry was never checked and a simple typographic error meant no match showed up. It was only last week, when the files were checked, that scientists realised the correct trace matched the DNA of a Metropolitan Police scientist.

"We are sorry for any pain this error may have caused Mr Williams' family," said LGC in a statement.

The man who recorded the sample faces an internal inquiry but the ramifications for the company could be more serious. It said yesterday that it had checked back on four years of samples to rule out other errors.

Westminster Coroner Fiona Wilcox said: "There are wider concerns about whether LGC can be trusted to provide a proper level of forensic back-up to all investigations, remembering they are providing forensic DNA and analytical background to a lot of criminal cases."

The failure comes amid a continuing investigation by the forensic science regulator, Andrew Rennison, into another problem at an LGC laboratory in Teddington, southwest London. A contaminated sample led to a man being charged with rape in a city that he claimed he had never visited.

Adam Scott, from Exeter, Devon, was not considered a suspect but was charged after tests on a sample retrieved from the crime scene in Manchester revealed a match. The charge was dropped after LGC accepted that the samples were mixed.

The initial inquiry by Mr Rennison blamed human error and said 26,000 other samples had been checked and no further cases had been identified. Mr Scott's solicitor, Philippa Jefferies, said the latest case reinforced her calls for a public inquiry. "I'm concerned that two basic errors have happened now," she said.

The Home Office said it was "inappropriate" to comment because of the inquest and Met police inquiry.

Daily Mail : Did MI6 agents 'specialising in dark arts' kill spy in bag? New evidence emerges sparking fresh questions from the victim's family

Did MI6 agents 'specialising in dark arts' kill spy in bag? New evidence emerges sparking fresh questions from the victim's family

Gareth Williams's family believe a third party was either present when he died or broke into his home afterwards to destroy evidence
Crime scene forensic scientist’s OWN DNA was found on Mr Williams’s hand
Relatives wanted to know why the alarm was not raised when Mr Williams failed to turn up at work - by then his body was badly decomposed for analysis
It also emerged that a Mediterranean couple police wanted to speak to were irrelevant to Mr Williams’s death

By Chris Greenwood | March 30, 2012

The MI6 spy whose body was found locked in a sports bag may have been killed by a secret agent, his family said yesterday.

Their barrister suggested a sinister cover-up had left them with no way of knowing how and why Gareth Williams died.

One theory is that he died at the hands of a colleague. Another is that a foreign agent killed him because of his espionage work.

The discovery of the body in his flat near the Secret Service headquarters in London sparked a 20-month police inquiry that has drawn a blank.

At a public hearing yesterday, it emerged that the flat may have been swept clean of evidence, with no fingerprints or DNA anywhere.

It was also revealed that – far from being a back-office worker – Mr Williams had just completed training for deployment on operations.

Other revelations included:

An expert seeking signs of forced entry said he was hampered because the front door had been taken from its hinges and locks removed;
Pathologists still cannot agree on how Mr Williams died. The 31-year-old suffered no visible injuries and could not have locked himself in the bag according to police;
DNA found on his hand that police rated as highly significant was in fact left by a bungling forensic scientist.

The unclothed body of the super-fit maths prodigy was found in a large padlocked North Face bag in the bath of his Government-owned Pimlico flat in August 2010.

The codebreaker from Anglesey, North Wales, had links to London's bondage and gay scene and it had already been suggested a sex game, possibly with a colleague, may have had a tragic end.

But Westminster Coroner Dr Fiona Wilcox was told yesterday his grieving family fear whoever is responsible expertly covered up the evidence.

Their barrister Anthony O'Toole rejected the conclusion of an internal MI6 inquiry that Mr Williams's death 'had nothing to do with his work'.

He said: 'There is a high probability that some third party was in the flat when Gareth was placed in the bag. Evidentially there seems to be no trace of an unknown party in the flat.

'Our impression is that the unknown third party was a member of some agency specialising in the dark arts or secret services.

'Or perhaps evidence has been removed from the scene post-mortem by experts in those arts.'

Mr Williams was nearing the end of a one-year secondment from the GCHQ listening station to the headquarters of the Secret Intelligence Service, or MI6, in Vauxhall, London.

Dr Wilcox was told a wide-ranging and highly sensitive police inquiry has left many questions unanswered over the circumstances of his death.

Experts believe it would have been 'difficult, if not impossible' for Mr Williams to lock himself in the bag but can find no evidence of anyone else being present.

His body was found curled in the foetal position in the 140-litre black and red holdall with the keys to the Yale travel padlock beneath him. Pathologists found no evidence of injuries or that he attempted to fight his way out. It remains possible that his dead body was put inside the bag.

Dr Wilcox said that whether Mr Williams was alive inside the bag and locked it himself 'was at the very heart of this inquiry'. She may order officials to recreate how he could have got inside it at the full inquest which is due to take place next month.

Experts have been unable to agree on exactly how Mr Williams died, favouring asphyxiation or hypercapnia, a catastrophic build-up of carbon dioxide in the blood.

Their work was hampered by the heavily decayed state of his body and his MI6 colleagues face questions over why they did not raise the alarm earlier.

It also emerged yesterday that Scotland Yard detectives spent almost 20 months pursuing a DNA trace on his body that was left by a clumsy forensic scientist.

The chief executive of LGC Forensics will be hauled before the inquest to explain the astonishing blunder which was discovered only two weeks ago.

The inquest also heard that a Mediterranean couple who called at Mr Williams's block had nothing to do with the case. Detectives released e-fits of the couple and have now traced them. They were looking for a friend's house.

The inquest heard that Mr Williams's family were unhappy about several aspects of the inquiry, including the role of counter-terrorism officers who dealt with MI6 and GCHQ staff. They have raised questions about who ordered a second post-mortem examination and what happened to Mr Williams's possessions held in a work locker.

The family also want to hear more details about the nature of his work but MI6 representatives said disclosing the information could endanger national security.

Dr Wilcox attacked police for delaying the handover of evidence and questioned why the names of some witnesses had been withheld. She said some sensitive letters had gone missing. MI6 has applied for several of Mr Williams's colleagues to give evidence anonymously and from behind screens.

~~~~~

The Unanswered Questions

THE death of MI6 spy Gareth Williams has left Scotland Yard's most experienced detectives searching for answers. These are some of the key questions they face:

Was somebody else present in Mr Williams's immaculate top floor Alderney Street home when he died?

Could the 31-year-old get inside the North Face holdall and padlock it from the inside without the assistance of a third party?

Why were Britain's best forensic experts unable to find a single trace of anyone else -- whether by DNA, fingerprints or other traces -- in the flat?

Is it significant that an expert brought in to search for evidence of forced entry was hampered because the front door had been taken from its hinges and locks removed?

How did the victim actually die? He suffered no injuries and forensic tests have revealed nothing unusual in his blood.

What exactly did Mr Williams do for the GCHQ listening station and MI6 that made him such a highly-prized employee?

Why did it take the victim's MI6 colleagues eight days to raise the alarm and send police to his home?

Does MI6 hold material that could shed light on Mr Williams's death that officials refuse to reveal because they fear jeopardizintg secret operations?

Is Mr Williams's bizarre and secretive private life, in which he visited gay bars, amassed women's clothing and viewed bondage websites, linked to his death?

Why did the secret agent fail to tell his employer that he was undertaking a series of part-time fashion courses at Central St Martins College?

Who ordered the second post-mortem examination and why have letters between the coroner and police gone missing?

What happened to Mr Williams's possessions that he kept in a shared locker at MI6 headquarters?