Guardian : Gareth Williams: Met orders forensic review

Gareth Williams: Met orders forensic review

Met commissioner says new evidence will be examined and warns MI6 officers to co-operate with police

Vikram Dodd | May 8, 2012

Scotland Yard has ordered a review of forensic evidence as it renews its efforts to solve the death of MI6 officer Gareth Williams.

The Scotland Yard commissioner, Bernard Hogan-Howe, said MI6 employees would be expected to co-operate with police. "It's called the law," said Britain's top police officer.

An inquest last week found Williams, whose body was found stuffed in a holdall in a London flat, may have been killed. It also heard police were not told of evidence held by the spy agency, including memory sticks, until last week.

Hogan-Howe said the new material that has emerged would be examined. He also said detectives from the Met's homicide command will interview MI6 employees directly, without the need to go through counter-terrorism officers.

Hogan-Howe said it was possible MI6 employees may be asked to undergo fresh DNA tests.

The commissioner said a new private company would re-examine the forensics in the investigation. He did not name the company but said it implied no criticism of the firm that originally carried out the work.

Guardian : Gareth Williams and the prurience of the press

Gareth Williams and the prurience of the press

In coverage of the MI6 spy's death, the media persevered with an irresponsible approach to those who stray from sexual norms

Juliet Jacques | May 4, 2012

"On the balance of probability," said Fiona Wilcox, the Westminster coroner working on the inquest, MI6 officer Gareth Williams was "unlawfully killed". Stating that this could not be definitively established and that the case may never be satisfactorily explained, Wilcox also lamented that the "unusual circumstances" – Williams's body was found in a padlocked holdall in the bath of his London flat – had immediately generated "endless [media] speculation" about his personal life, to the dismay of his family.

Days before Wilcox delivered her verdict, newspapers carried stories about Williams's sexual practices, suggesting that they played a part in his death without waiting for Wilcox to assert her certainty that they did not. Here is the latest example of how the press can "monster" victims, or alleged perpetrators of crimes if they are thought to have diverged from conservative sexual or gender norms, sensationalising personal details (which they've often made considerable effort to root up) in search of saleable stories.

At its worst – during the hunt for Joanna Yeates's killer, for example – this can deny someone their reputation and right to a fair trial. In this case, as in many others, it perpetuates a victim-blaming culture, the implication that Williams's tastes caused his demise being intertwined with homophobia, biphobia and transphobia, and a curious mixture of fascination and contempt for BDSM and those who partake in it.

This prurience is as old as the mass media itself. In the Victorian era, the argument about whether or not details about sexual or gender variance should be published ostensibly concerned public morality. As Boulton and Park, two cross-dressers charged with "conspiring and inciting others to commit unnatural offences", awaited trial in 1870-71, the Society for the Suppression of Vice urged newspapers not to document the case. The Pall Mall Gazette refused, but long before Rupert Murdoch got near it, the Times covered everything, including the "medical examination" to which the Metropolitan police illegally subjected Boulton and Park in an attempt to prove that they'd had anal sex, arguing that "its novel and extraordinary features" made it sure to be "of interest to hundreds and thousands" (and, as such, hugely profitable).

Step forward into the 21st century and the terms have changed. It's no longer a matter of the press protecting the public from apparently unspeakable practices, but preventing the press from invading the public's privacy, especially if editors or journalists think aspects of their lives can be easily sold. This is a constant issue for Britain's transgender population: Trans Media Watch presented twice to the Leveson inquiry about how newspapers "out" trans people for solely exploitative reasons, often accompanying their articles with "before and after" photos, old names and anything else that will undermine their hard-fought identities, usually to their great distress.

The nastiest instance – one that parallels the coverage of Williams, rife with speculation about the women's clothing in his home – came when human rights lawyer David/Sonia Burgess was pushed on to the track at King's Cross tube station in October 2010. The tabloids revelled in their "man in a dress" headlines as their journalists trawled through transgender contacts sites for information on Burgess's private life, all published before an arrest was made. With so much made public about Burgess and the defendant, who was also trans, no trial could start from a neutral position, and besides dancing close to the legal line, this coverage served to intimidate anyone else trying to keep their gender variance out of the public eye, magnifying their fears that its revelation may harm their relationships or careers.

The staggeringly irresponsible behaviour of the media over recent decades, as the balance of power between parliament, the police and the press became untenably skewed, is finally being exposed, and the consequences remain to emerge. Will newspaper owners and editors realise that, with their power, comes responsibility not to prejudice investigations, or attack people of trans histories or alternative sexualities just because they can? Will they learn that just because the public may be interested in an angle, or a story, this does not mean that it is in the public interest? Will they ask themselves: whatever happened to "innocent until proven guilty" – or respect for the dead?

Guardian : Gareth Williams's death was 'criminally mediated', says coroner

Gareth Williams's death was 'criminally mediated', says coroner

Fiona Wilcox says there was not enough evidence for unlawful killing verdict, as MI6 officer's family urge Met police to review investigation

Caroline Davies, James Meikle and agencies | May 2, 2012

The death of Gareth Williams, the MI6 officer who was found naked in a padlocked holdall in the bath at his London flat, was "criminally mediated", a coroner has said.

On the balance of probability, Williams was "unlawfully killed", Fiona Wilcox concluded, although she had earlier said there was not enough evidence to deliver a formal unlawful killing verdict.

Wilcox's finding was delivered at the end of a narrative verdict that took her two hours to deliver and in which she criticised the behaviour of MI6 and SO15, the Metropolitan police counter-terrorism unit, whose officer operated as a conduit between the intelligence service and detectives investigating Williams's death.

The head of the intelligence service made an unreserved apology to Williams's family over the delay in reporting him missing and the subsequent anguish it caused.

Wilcox, the Westminster coroner, delivered the finding after starting her verdict by saying that it was unlikely Williams's death would ever be satisfactorily explained.

Most of the fundamental questions of how he died remained unanswered, Wilcox said on the eighth day of the inquest.

After the verdict Williams's family, in a statement read out by their solicitor Robyn Williams, said their grief at Gareth's death had "been exacerbated by the failure of his employers to make even the most basic inquiries into his whereabouts and welfare".

The statement continued: "We are extremely disappointed at the reluctance and failure of MI6 to make available relevant information."

The family would be asking the Metropolitan police commissioner, Bernard Hogan-Howe, to review how the investigation into Williams's death should proceed given the "inadequacy" of SO15's investigation as highlighted at the inquest.

DCI Jackie Sebire, from the Met's homicide and serious crime command, said officers were now following the many new lines of inquiry which had emerged during the inquest. Refusing to take questions about the criticism levelled at the role of the counter terrorist officers assigned to liaise with MI6, Sebire said: "We have heard seven days' worth of evidence of the life and death of Gareth this week. I have always been satisfied that a third party may have been involved in his death and the coroner has confirmed that."

The investigation would refocus and actively pursue all the evidence heard and all the new lines of inquiry. William's body was found "in the most suspicious circumstances", Sabire said.

"It is highly likely that a third party was involved and I urge anyone who knows Gareth who had contact with him to search their consciences and come foward with any information about what happened that night, 16 August 2010.

"We would also ask anyone with any information to please come forward … to give Gareth's family some peace and allow them to grieve and move on."

During her verdict, Wilcox rejected "suicidal intent", interest in bondage or cross-dressing, or "auto-erotic activity" being related to Williams's death.

Williams, 31, a codes and ciphers expert, was about to return to GCHQ in Cheltenham after secondment to MI6 in the capital when his body was found in the flat in Pimlico in August 2010.

It emerged on Tuesday, towards the end of seven days of evidence from 39 witnesses, that memory sticks found among his possessions were examined by the Secret Intelligence Service but never handed over to detectives investigating his murder.

Wilcox said it remained a "legitimate line of inquiry" that the secret services were involved in Williams's death as she criticised "shortfalls" in MI6 passing on evidence to Scotland Yard. But there was no evidence that he died at the hands of spies.

"It would appear that many agencies fell short" during the investigation, Wilcox said, identifying breakdowns in communication by her own office in ordering a second postmortem, a DNA mix-up by forensics and the late submission of evidence by MI6 to police.

But the coroner added that "taking all these shortfalls together, I am satisfied that the evidence is reliable and that we do not have to adjourn at this point".

Wilcox said the "highly unusual circumstances" of Williams's death had immediately raised the possibility of foul play, which had prompted "endless speculation".

Williams's colleagues were interviewed but no formal statements were taken, she noted.

"I find that this did affect the quality of the evidence that was heard before this court," she said. Wilcox had almost adjourned the inquest due to late evidence, the fault of the SO15 counter-terrorism officer who was the conduit between MI6 and the police. The officer should have passed on an inventory of items found at Williams's MI6 office, said Wilcox.

Evidence from the office was important because Williams "didn't socialise much" and was a reason DNA had been taken from some work colleagues.

Wilcox said she found it "highly unlikely" that Williams got inside the bag alone, saying a lack of hand and footprints in the bathroom was significant. "In relation to the prints found within the bathroom, in my view what was more significant was what was not found rather than what was found."

A lot of time and resources had been spent during the investigation looking into a swab taken from Williams's left hand that appeared to indicate third-party involvement.

But the sample "unfortunately" was later found to belong to a forensic scientist working on the case, she said. "If Gareth had been carrying out some kind of peculiar experiment, he wouldn't care if he left any foot or fingerprints."

Wilcox appeared to rule out that Williams died as a result of some kind of "auto-erotic activity", also denying there was any evidence to suggest claustrophilia – the love of enclosed spaces – was of any interest to him.

She also dismissed the idea that an interest in bondage had any link to his death. If it had, she would have expected "much more internet activity" on the web. Williams had only visited sites on four days, she said. He was a "scrupulous risk assessor" and would have had a knife to escape.

Rejecting speculation that he was a "transvestite" spy, Wilcox said leaks that William was a "cross-dresser" could have been an attempt "by some third party to manipulate a section of the evidence".

Makeup found in his flat was more likely to reflect his interest in fashion, she argued. Wigs found there were "far more consistent with dress-up such as attendance at a manga conference", she added.

Williams's interest in female footwear could have been of a sexual nature, but this was not unusual. "Gareth was naked in a bag when he was found, not cross-dressed, not in high-heeled shoes," she said.

Williams's body was not discovered until a week after he died. Wilcox said his line manager had done "nothing effective" to establish his whereabouts when he was missing. She said she could only speculate as to what effect not reporting him missing sooner had had on the investigation.

Despite '"lots of speculation", there was no evidence Williams's death was linked to his work, she said.

His death was of "unnatural cause", she said. It was possible, but unlikely, that Williams had died in the bag when it was outside the bathroom, but she believed he was alive when he entered the bag and accepted the pathologist's evidence that suffocation or poisoning was the probable cause of death.

She was satisfied "so I am sure" that a third party had moved the bag containing Williams into the bath. There were two possible explanations: that Williams entered the bag outside his bathroom, and the bag was carried in there by a third party, or that he was locked in the bag by a third party and that was lifted into the bath.

Wilcox had earlier ruled out a formal "unlawful killing" verdict because the evidence available was not of the criminal standard needed for such a verdict. She also said an open verdict would not do justice to the "positive findings" she could make.

John Sawers, chief of the Secret Intelligence Service, expressed the "deepest condolences" of MI6 and GCHQ for the death.

In a statement delivered by MI6 lawyer Andrew O'Connor, Sawers said the service should have acted more swiftly when Mr Williams failed to turn up to work in August 2010.

He said: "On behalf of the whole organisation, Sawers regrets this deeply and apologises unreservedly."

The MI6 chief added: "lessons have been learned, in particular the responsibility of all staff to report unaccounted staff absences".

Guardian : MI6 and Met condemned over Gareth Williams' death

MI6 and Met condemned over Gareth Williams' death

Coroner criticises intelligence agency for failing to report missing MI6 officer and rules he was probably killed unlawfully

Caroline Davies and Sandra Laville | May 2, 2012

The coroner in the Gareth Williams case delivered a damning verdict that was highly critical of the Metropolitan police's counter-terrorism branch and MI6 as she ruled that the officer had probably been killed unlawfully.

The cause of death of Williams, 31, who was found padlocked in a holdall in the bath at his flat in Pimlico, central London, was "unnatural and likely to have been criminally mediated", said Dr Fiona Wilcox.

Passing a narrative verdict, she said she was satisfied that "a third party placed the bag in the bath and on the balance of probabilities locked the bag".

She was, therefore, "satisfied that on the balance of probabilities that Gareth was killed unlawfully".

Wilcox levelled devastating criticism at Williams's employers at MI6 who failed to report him missing for seven days when he did not turn up for work. The explanation from his line manager lacked credibility, she said, and she could "only speculate as to what effect this [delay] had on the investigation".

The lawyer for the Secret Intelligence Service, Andrew O'Connor, delivered deep regrets and an unprecedented apology to the family from Sir John Sawers, chief of the SIS, who recognised that "failure to act more swiftly" when Williams was absent had contributed to their "anguish and suffering".

Officers in the Met's counter-terrorism branch, SO15, whose role was to interview SIS witnesses, were also strongly criticised. SO15 failed to inform DCI Jackie Sebire, senior investigating officer, of the existence of nine memory sticks and a black holdall found at Williams' MI6 office until two days before the inquest ended, the coroner said. On discovering this, Wilcox said she had seriously questioned whether she should adjourn the inquest at that point.

No formal statements were taken by S015 officers who interviewed Williams' colleagues, "and I find this did affect the quality of evidence heard in this court," she said.

She also criticised the handling of an iPhone belonging to Williams and found in his work locker, which contained deleted images of him naked in a pair of boots. The officer involved kept it in his possession before handing it to homicide detectives the following day, "demonstrating disregard for the rules governing continuity of evidence", she said.

Many agencies "fell short of the ideal", she said, including LGC Forensics in relation to DNA contamination, and the coroner's office for failing to inform police officers of a second postmortem.

Williams, a fitness fanatic from Anglesey, north Wales, was probably alive when put in the bag but probably suffocated very soon afterwards either from CO2 poisoning, hypercapnia, or the effects of a short-acting poison, she said.

Scotland Yard has always treated the death as suspicious and unexplained, but held back from describing it as murder or manslaughter. Recording her verdict, Wilcox stated her belief that a criminal hand was involved, although police said afterwards that there was no evidence of this. The Guardian understands police inquiries have focused on the theory that Williams died accidentally in a private sexual liaison that went wrong.

The coroner, however, ruled out bondage or auto-erotic activity as explanations.

The dead man's family said in a statement that their grief had been exacerbated by the failure of his employers at MI6 to make "even the most basic inquiries of his whereabouts and welfare" when he was absent from work for seven days.

They were "extremely disappointed at the failure and reluctance of MI6" to provide relevant information and called on the Metropolitan police commissioner, Bernard Hogan-Howe, to conduct a review of how the investigation would proceed "in the light of the total inadequacy of S015's investigations into MI6".

Wilcox said there was no evidence to suggest that any SIS colleague had been involved, but it remained a legitimate line of inquiry given Williams socialised with so few people, and never let anyone he didn't know into his flat. So any third party would be "someone he knew or someone there without invitation".

An SIS spokesman said: "We fully co-operated with the police and will continue to do so during the ongoing investigation. We gave all the evidence to the police when they wanted it; at no time did we withhold any evidence."

An iPhone found in his living room had recently been wiped and restored to factory settings, and it could not be ruled out that contact with a third party had been made via the internet on that phone, she said.

Wilcox was "sure that a third party moved the bag containing Gareth into the bath". There were two possibilities: either he entered the bag outside the bathroom and it was carried in by a third party, or he was locked in the bag by a third party and lifted into the bath.

She dismissed an interest in bondage, and female clothing, as being irrelevant, condemning leaks to the media about him cross-dressing as a possible attempt "by some third party to manipulate a section of the evidence".

She said: "Gareth was naked in a bag, not cross-dressed, not in high-heeled shoes." If his interest was bondage, she would have expected much more internet activity on such websites, when his visits made up a tiny percentage of his browsing. His interest was in fashion, she said. Dismissing any auto-erotic activity, she said he was a "scrupulous risk assessor" and if he had locked himself into the bag would have taken a knife in with him to escape.

She said that despite a 21-month police inquiry: "Most of the fundamental questions in relation to how Gareth died remained unanswered."

Detectives believe scientific tests on a crumpled green hand towel found in his flat may yet yield crucial DNA evidence, as the Metropolitan police launched a review into the case.

The towel was originally in the bathroom, and moved to the kitchen, police believe, by the "third party". More tests are being conducted on the bag. The memory sticks, which have now been examined by police, are said not to have produced any significant evidence, but will be examined more closely.

Martin Hewitt, deputy assistant commissioner of the Met, said the circumstances of the death were particularly complex and continued to be the subject of a thorough investigation.

He added: "We have listened to the detailed ruling by the coroner and the concerns raised by Gareth's family. We are giving both very careful consideration."

Detectives were "currently undertaking actions in order to develop existing DNA profiles, to trace unidentified individuals who may have information about Gareth's death, and to further develop analysis of telephone communications".

Guardian : Gareth Williams inquest exposes police difficulties when MI6 is involved

Gareth Williams inquest exposes police difficulties when MI6 is involved

Fears for national security mean police are forced to operate at arm's length in investigations linked to secret services

Caroline Davies | May 2, 2012

The difficulties homicide detectives face investigating any suspicious death of a secret intelligence service officer came under intense scrutiny during the Gareth Williams inquest.

Fears of risk to national security or individual witnesses force Scotland Yard to operate at arm's length when dealing with MI6 and GCHQ.

Once the body is identified as an operational Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) officer, different rules come into play.

Detective Chief Inspector Jackie Sebire, senior investigating officer in the Williams case, and her team were allowed no direct access to sensitive witnesses or evidence. Instead, security-cleared officers from SO15 – counter-terrorism – acted as go-betweens.

So, SO15 officers, not those from homicide command, interviewed SIS witnesses, in the presence of their line managers and legal representatives, and put the questions murder detectives would rather have put themselves.

Then instead of producing signed, sworn, verbatim statements, SO15 produced "anonymised" notes, drawn up after interview.

It is not "impossible" to get a homicide detective vetted and cleared to question SIS, but it would take time and is not the normal procedure adopted.

Sebire admitted homicide would have liked "primary access". She added: "That simply wasn't possible in those circumstances. "Given the circumstances, this was the best possible scenario". She had faith in the SO15 officers deployed to assist, the inquest heard.

Difficulties, however, were apparent.

Not until the penultimate day of the inquest was Sebire made aware that potential evidence, namely nine assorted memory sticks and a black holdall found at Williams's office at MI6 HQ in Vauxhall, central London, even existed.

She was not given an inventory of items and documents found in Williams's shared locker, or in a locked North Face bag under his desk, because none was drawn up due to the "sensitive nature" of some of the contents.

The MI6 offices had been searched by the SO15 forensic officer Detective Constable Colin Hall, under the leadership of SO15 Detective Superintendent Michael Broster, accompanied by two SIS officers.

Sebire said she would "have expected to have been told" about this potential evidence, "so we can review It and assess its value".

Throughout the inquest, the Williams family lawyer, Anthony O'Toole, was critical of the way the investigation was being handled. S015, he said, simply took assurances from SIS without questioning.

There were "errors" and "discrepancies" in the anonymised statements, which he described almost like "attendance notes", and no SIS officers had been given the notes to review or check for accuracy, he said.

"It was almost under the Old Boys' Act," he said to Broster of assurances given by SIS. "They told you that and you accepted it."

Guardian : Gareth Williams: the key unanswered questions

Gareth Williams: the key unanswered questions

The inquest into the MI6 officer's death left questions over his work, how he died and whether a third party was involved

Caroline Davies | May 2, 2012

Could Williams's death be linked to his work?

Few details were made public about Gareth Williams's work, except that he designed "practical applications for emerging technologies" and was deemed "low risk". Although he had passed the course to become "fully deployable" six months before his death, he was only operational in the UK and not overseas. He had contact with two "undercover" agents, but according to SIS that did not increase his risk. A witness identified only as SIS F said an internal review had confirmed: "There was no evidence of any specific threat to Gareth and we concluded there was no reason to think his death was anything to do with his work."

His flat, according to the letting agent he rented through, had been leased by the secretary of state since 2003. MI6 said it had not arranged the let. GCHQ said it was a private rental through an approved letting agency. Williams was due to move back to Cheltenham the week after his death, and another GCHQ employee was trying to contact him to view the flat in the week he was missing. No details were given of who previously rented it. SIS denied it was a safe house. But Anthony O'Toole, lawyer for the family, said: "We are concerned that if this had been in continuous occupation by a member of the services since 2003, then whilst it is not a 'safe house' it may be known to certain parties as being the residence of SIS."

Williams had carried out a small number of searches on the SIS database that were "unauthorised" and not apparently operationally linked, which, "theoretically" could have exposed him to pressure from "malign" persons unknown, but it was thought unlikely by his SIS bosses. His most recent assignment had been a "hackers" conference in Las Vegas, known to have been attended by criminal hackers, from which he returned on 11 August 2010.

He had requested a move back to GCHQ in Cheltenham from MI6. Among reasons he gave to his sister was "friction" at the MI6 London HQ.

Could his death be linked to his private life?

Williams's wardrobe included £20,000 of "high-end" women's clothing, size small to medium, and 26 pairs of women's shoes, size six and six-and-a-half. Female wigs and makeup were also found. He had accessed "bondage" websites. There was video footage on one phone of him posing naked apart from leather boots.

The landlady of the annex flat he had rented in Cheltenham for 10 years said she and her husband had found him shouting for help, with his hands tied to his bedposts, three years before his death. He said he was seeing if he could get free. They cut him free, believing it "sexual rather than escapology".

He had visited a transvestite act two days before he failed to turn up for work, and had accessed drag queen websites. He had taken two fashion design courses at Central St Martin's college without telling MI6. But, the inquest was told, the visits to the bondage websites were "sporadic and isolated", making up a tiny percentage of his time online. O'Toole suggested the bedpost incident coincided with his first, failed attempt to join MI6, and the website access coincided with his future successful application, and then preparation for training courses. Detective Chief Inspector Jackie Sebire agreed it was possible he was "preparing" for courses in "escaping from being tied", and has asked for information on the courses, "but no information has come back".

She confirmed he had not visited "sadomasochism" or "claustrophilia" sites. At 60kg (9.5st) and 1.72 metres (5ft 8in), Williams could "possibly" have fitted into the clothes and, she thought, the shoes too. Friends did not believe he bought them for himself, but as "gifts". The shoes would have also fitted his sister. There were unverifiable reports of him visiting gay bars. Police found no sexual partner.

Could a "third party" be involved, or was he alone?

Sebire said she had always believed a "third party" was involved, either in the death or in locking Williams in the bag. Inconclusive fragments of DNA components from at least two other contributors were found on the bag. Two experts tried, and failed, a total of 400 times to lock the holdall from inside. One would not rule it out. "There are people around who can do amazing things and Mr Williams may well have been one of those persons," said one expert, William MacKay. No prints were found on the tiled bathroom walls where police expected he would have steadied his balance if getting into the bag alone.

No other conclusive DNA has yet been found in the flat, with tests ongoing on a crumpled towel found in the kitchen. A bag expert, Peter Faulding, said Williams would have to be "dead or unconscious" when placed in the bag. The pathologist Richard Shepherd said it "more likely than not" he was alive because it was "not easy" to place a floppy, newly dead body in as neat a position as Williams was found in. If in the bag alive, he would have been overcome by CO2 toxicity within two to three minutes "at most", said another pathologist, Ian Calder. Keys to the padlock were found under Williams's right buttock.

There were no signs of a break in, but if the mortice lock on the front door was off, someone could open the other lock by reaching through the letterbox, the inquest heard. No data on his laptops or phones revealed contact with anyone suspicious. But an iPhone at his flat had been reset to factory settings just before his death. There were no signs of struggle on his body.

Was he drugged or poisoned?

The degree of decomposition made it impossible to rule out. The body had deteriorated due to heat. It was summer. For some unknown reason the heating was on in the flat.

Were "secret agents" specialising in the "dark arts" involved?

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 service, or evidence has been removed postmortem by experts in those dark arts." Each organisation was granted permission to withhold sensitive evidence from other parties and the public.

One iPhone found on the table in the flat had been wiped on or before the last day he was seen and it was impossible for tell if it was done manually or remotely. Police said the service provider had "no data history", which they took to mean no calls or website browsing had taken place.

Williams's belongings at MI6 were in a shared cabinet with a combination lock used by others, and only examined three days after his death. GCHQ equipment was examined shortly afterwards. SO15 officers said they had requested the items be secured prior to police examination and were assured they had been. Detective Constable Simon Warren, who examined Williams's laptops, memory sticks, CDs and DVDs said "any data even at the lowest levels can be changed or deleted". But he said there was no evidence files had been amended since his death.

By the time his line manager reported him missing, Williams had not been seen for eight days, and chances of retrieving viable forensic evidence were much reduced because of decomposition.

Guardian : Gareth Williams' evidence not shared

Gareth Williams' evidence not shared

Detective investigating death of MI6 officer was not made aware of existence of nine memory sticks found near victim's office

Caroline Davies | May 1, 2012

Memory sticks found among MI6 officer Gareth Williams's possessions were examined by the Secret Intelligence Service, but never handed over to detectives investigating his murder, it emerged on Tuesday.

The inquest into his death heard that the lead detective in the case, DCI Jackie Sebire, did not know until Tuesday that nine memory sticks and a holdall bag had been found at Williams's office in Vauxhall Cross, London.

The coroner hearing the inquest also accused a senior detective of not being completely impartial towards the SIS during the police investigation into the death of Williams.

Detective Superintendent Michael Broster, the SO15 counter-terrorism officer whose job was to liaise between Scotland Yard and the SIS, failed to tell Sebire about the memory sticks because he had been assured by SIS that the devices, found in a cabinet Williams shared with colleagues, were not relevant. He had agreed that the SIS should examine them.

The Westminster coroner, Fiona Wilcox, said: "You had plenty of resources at your disposal. This is a category A murder inquiry. You have access to a team who are capable of examining sticks? Looking back on that decision, remembering this is a murder inquiry, didn't you think that the team responsible for the inquiry should have investigated this evidence, and not the persons providing the evidence to you.

"It seems to me that this is a total non sequitur, and … if this had been information provided to you by any other type of agency, you would have seized it and it would have been examined by your officers, particularly given the public anxiety around this death, which by then was huge."

The naked body of Williams, 31, a codes and ciphers expert on secondment from GCHQ in Cheltenham to MI6 in London, was found in a padlocked bag in the bath at his flat in Pimlico, central London, on 23 August 2010.

Williams' relatives gasped as Broster maintained he was "comfortable with his decision".

Wilcox replied: "It suggests you are not impartial in this case. An impartial investigator would have taken these exhibits and examined them themselves."

Broster maintained that he was "completely impartial". Questioned by the family's lawyer, Anthony O'Toole, Broster said: "We are talking about the British security services. It's not like the Met Police can just walk into Vauxhall Cross," he said.

"I believe them to be witnesses of truth. They were very helpful throughout and continue to be."

He added: "I have seen no information or evidence that someone is involved. I am not saying a member of SIS is not involved. I don't know."

Earlier, the inquest heard that Detective Constable Colin Hall was the forensic officer responsible for seizing items from Williams's office at MI6. He had not produced an inventory of either items found in Williams's shared locker, or in his locked sports bag, "due to the sensitive nature" of some of the documents. O'Toole asked: "If this had not involved the SIS, but it was the Kray twins or someone else you were investigating, you would have gone into this in far more detail, wouldn't you?"

Sebire, the lead officer in the case, said she had no knowledge of the memory sticks or the bag. "I would have expected to have been told," she said.

As the last evidence was heard, Sebire, the lead detective, said it remained her belief that "a third party" was involved in the death, and she appealed for people who may know something to "search their consciences".

The hearing continues.

Guardian : Gareth Williams inquest: MI6 kept spy's possessions, court hears

Gareth Williams inquest: MI6 kept spy's possessions, court hears

Detectives were not told about memory sticks or holdall that was found at his workplace, says the officer leading the inquiry

Caroline Davies | May 1, 2012

Memory sticks found among MI6 officer Gareth Williams's possessions in his office were examined by the Secret Intelligence Service but never handed over to detectives investigating his murder, it emerged on Tuesday.

Detectives only discovered on Monday, as his inquest drew to a close, that nine assorted memory sticks were in his locker at MI6's Vauxhall Cross offices, where he worked. The SIS also examined "electronic media" found without telling police.

Detective Chief Inspector Jackie Sebire, leading the murder inquiry, only knew of the memory sticks when an inventory was produced for the inquest on Monday, she told Westminster coroner Fiona Wilcox. "I would have expected to have been told," she said.

"Has your team even been given possession of these?" asked Wilcox, "No" replied Sebire. "Had I known of their existence, I would have expected them to be at least reviewed or audited by SO15, [counter-terrorism] and if information was available, then sent to my team."

She added: "What I knew was that Gareth's email accounts had been checked, but I didn't know that other media had been checked".

The naked body of the 31-year-old codes and ciphers expert, on secondment from GCHQ in Cheltenham to MI6 in London, was found in a padlocked holdall in his Pimlico flat, central London, on 23 August 2010.

The inquest has heard that because of the sensitive nature of Williams's work, counter-terrorism officers from SO15 acted as a conduit between murder detectives and the SIS.

Detective Constable Colin Hall, from SO15, said he went to the MI6 offices where Williams worked three days after his death, and was shown a shared cabinet used by Williams.

No inventory was taken of the contents of the cabinet "due to the sensitive nature of the documents," said Hall.

Nor did police seize a black North Face holdall, containing personal and work-related items, found under Williams's desk, and similar to th bag in which his body was found.

The coroner asked Hall : "Don't you think this bag should have been seized?"

Hall replied: "Probably yes, ma'am." He added: "The contents of the bag were of a sensitive nature." He said he was instructed to leave it locked "in situ".

Anthony O'Toole, lawyer for the family, asked: "If this wasn't the SIS and it was the Kray twins or someone else, you were investigating, you would have gone into far more detail, wouldn't you?"

The hearing continues.

Guardian : MI6 and MI5 must be held to account

MI6 and MI5 must be held to account

The Gareth Williams case is just one in a series of failings – the security services need reform, for our sake and theirs

Richard Norton-Taylor | April 30, 2012

Britain's security and intelligence agencies, MI5 and MI6, have always been the targets of criticism, conspiracy theories, all sorts of allegations. And they are used to it.

But this time is different. They are mired in unprecedented controversy, desperately trying to withstand growing evidence – evidence, not just allegations – of unacceptable activities, specifically conniving with Gaddafi's secret police over the fate of Libyan dissidents.

The inquest into the death of Gareth Williams, the GCHQ computer expert, has revealed a side to MI6 management that raises serious questions about its duty of care to its own staff. Williams was missing for a week before MI6, to which he was seconded, notified the police and his family. The delay seriously hampered the investigation and caused distress to those close to the young man. Williams's naked body was discovered inside a locked hold-all in his flat more than a week after he failed to turn up to a scheduled meeting at Vauxhall Cross, the agency's headquarters on the Thames in August 2010.

A GCHQ witness told the inquest that action should have been taken on the first day of Williams's absence. A female MI6 officer, witness F, apologised saying "it clearly took too long" to do anything about it. She blamed Williams's line manager, identified only as witness G, and what she called a "breakdown in communications".

MI6's attitude seems even less explicable given that Williams had already made it clear he was unhappy working at Vauxhall Cross. "My understanding through conversations with Gareth at the time was that there was some frustration in that the job was not quite what he anticipated", G told the inquest. He was "frustrated by the amount of process risk mitigation".

Not for the first time, bureaucratic procedures designed to minimise risk in Britain's security and intelligence agencies had not taken into account an individual's sensitivities. The ethos in GCHQ is quite different to that prevailing in MI6.

MI6 and MI5, meanwhile, are facing legal action from opponents of Muammar Gaddafi who sought refuge in Britain. Two were rendered to Tripoli where they were brutally treated. Other dissidents say MI5 pressed them to spy on their fellow refugees in the UK. Salah al-Hashemi, a businessman, has told the Sunday Times he was threatened with detention if he did not accept MI5 demands to supply the Libyan authorities with details of fellow dissidents who had fled to London and Manchester.

According to a Libyan intelligence dossier, a named female MI5 agent wanted Hashemi to feel "pursued by both the British and the Libyan security services in order to make him feel worried enough to seek a friend's advice". The friend, who had been recruited by MI5, would then encourage him to co-operate.

According to the documents, MI5 advised that a dissident in Manchester be told that if he did not supply information, he should be warned that "British security services will arrest him and accuse him of working with Libyan intelligence … or he will face court and be deported to Libya".

MI5's job is to seek informants but only in the interests of protecting Britain's national security. And, according to MI5's own guidelines, such sources must never be coerced into providing information, nor should they be threatened with deportation, or being rendered, back to their own country.

These cases may be pursued in the courts but are unlikely to be resolved at least until the completion of police investigations into the role played by MI5 and MI6 officers and by Labour ministers to whom they were accountable at the time.

Just as well, perhaps. The security and intelligence agencies, MI5 in particular, are facing a huge challenge — namely, securing the Olympics. That is their priority now. After the Olympics, there will in any case be a shake-up with the election of police commissioners and the setting up of a National Crime Agency.

That should be the time for MI5 and MI6 to be subjected to a shake-up in the way they are held to account. They should be scrutinised by an independent inspector general (as security and intelligence agencies are in the US, Australia and Canada) and the parliamentary intelligence and security committee should be made much more robust and effective than the government, and its existing members, have suggested. This would help to restore confidence in them and boost their own morale. Reforms such as these are essential, for the sake of MI5 and MI6, as well as the public.

Guardian : Gareth Williams probably died by suffocation or poisoning, inquest told

Gareth Williams probably died by suffocation or poisoning, inquest told

MI6 officer could have lost consciousness within two to three minutes due to buildup of CO2 inside bag, says pathologist

Caroline Davies | April 30, 2012

The MI6 officer Gareth Williams probably suffocated to death in a locked sports holdall or died from an unknown poison, his inquest heard.

The 31-year-old codes and ciphers expert would have been overcome very rapidly by CO2, losing consciousness within two to three minutes, if the bag was sealed while he was alive.

Cause of death could not be ascertained because of the level of decomposition by the time his body was found, which meant certain poisons or volatile agents would not be detected, Dr Benjamin Swift, a consultant forensic pathologist, told the inquest. The "foremost contenders" were asphyxiation by suffocation or poisoning, he said.

The naked body of Williams was found in a padlocked holdall in his bath at his top-floor flat in Pimlico, central London, on 23 August 2010.

The Home Office pathologist Richard Shepherd said it was "more likely than not" that Williams was alive when he entered the bag, but it was "an extremely difficult call". Because of the "floppiness" of a newly dead body, it was not easy to place a body as neatly as Williams was found, he said.

Postmortem examinations revealed no evidence of "restraint, gripping or holding" marks inflicted before death. There was no evidence of strangulation or physical trauma. Williams could have entered the bag voluntarily or been coerced into it under threat, Shepherd agreed.

The independent pathologist Ian Calder, who carried out a second postmortem, said hypercapnia – carbon dioxide poisoning – would have caused a soporific effect with "gradual fading away with no pain and an increasing lack of awareness".

Asked by the coroner, Fiona Wilcox, how long that might have taken, Calder said: "Two to three minutes at best for the level to become toxic."

Small abrasions on the tips of Williams's elbows were discovered. The hearing was told these could be consistent with him moving his arms inside the bag, possibly in an attempt to escape. "Once the lock is placed on it there was no possibility of getting out of that bag," said Shepherd. "The question is: did he place the lock or did another?"

Williams would have had "a period of awareness" of being overcome by CO2, and the grazes could represent an attempt to get out, the inquest heard. "Death will come so fast, leaving little or no chance even in fit young people for there to be a response," said Shepherd. Hypercapnia was a "sign-free death", he added.

The inquest heard that the postmortem examinations were hampered by decomposition caused by heat. Despite it being summer, the radiators in the flat were on. The degree of decomposition suggested Williams had been dead for 10 days at the time of postmortem, consistent with the last time he was seen alive on CCTV on 15 August 2010.

Two hairs were recovered from the back of Williams's right thumb and his right little finger. The coroner said no forensic analysis of them had been submitted to the inquest, and she asked for any details to be disclosed.

DNA from another person was found on Williams's left hand. The inquest was told that details of the DNA were erroneously inputted into a database by LGC, the forensic company analysing samples, an error only discovered a year after Williams's death. The DNA sample was from one of the forensic scientists at the scene. Paul Allen, of LGC, expressed his "very deep regret" to Williams's family for the error.

Guardian : Gareth Williams inquest: MI6 spy could have shut himself in bag, says expert

Gareth Williams inquest: MI6 spy could have shut himself in bag, says expert

Despite trying and failing 100 times to mimic the act of locking himself in an identical bag, expert tells court it is not impossible

Press Association | April 27, 2010

Experts have refused to rule out the possibility that dead MI6 spy Gareth Williams locked himself in his sports holdall unaided.

Video reconstructions showed a yoga specialist repeatedly fail in the "frustrating, fiddly" task of pulling the zip from within the 81cm x 48cm space.

But William MacKay – who said he made more than 100 attempts without success – said it was not impossible that the fitness-loving maths prodigy died without a third party present.

"I would not like to say that it could not be done," he told Westminster coroner's court. "There are people around who can do amazing things and Mr Williams may well have been one of those persons."

Several reconstruction scenarios were played of a man of similar build to Williams getting inside an identical red North Face holdall.

While he had little problem curling his body inside the space, pulling the zip into position proved problematic.

MacKay, an expert who has worked with the Army, suggested Williams would have needed extensive training to have pulled off the act in pitch darkness.

"I think you could continue to work on this for a long period of time," MacKay said. He said "many problems arise" in trying to complete the task.

MacKay said his assistant was very flexible and "if the task could be done, he is the person that could do it".

Williams' mountain climbing experience would have given him an advantage as it would have strengthened his fingers.

But MacKay added: "It was very painful to do it. You tend to move the zip with your finger nails, straggling about. It was very frustrating, fiddly, you just can't get the thing together."

Williams was found curled up naked in the bag in the bath of his flat on 23 August 2010. The family believe he had been dead for nine days.

MacKay said he even tried to pull off the task in water and using chewing gum.

Guardian : MI6 offers 'profound apology' for delay in reporting Gareth Williams missing

MI6 offers 'profound apology' for delay in reporting Gareth Williams missing

Inquest told delay had 'horrendous' consequences for police investigation into MI6 officer's death

Caroline Davies | April 26, 2012

The Secret Intelligence Service has offered a "profound apology" over delays in reporting MI6 officer Gareth Williams missing, as his inquest heard decomposition meant tests could not establish whether certain drugs or poisons were in his system.

Relatives of the 31-year-old, found dead in a padlocked bag in his flat, broke down as their lawyer said the delay had had "horrendous" consequences for the police investigation leaving it "in essence, almost defeated".

His mother, Ellen, was led sobbing from the court as the inquest heard her son's MI6 line manager, who failed to report him missing from work for seven days, had not faced disciplinary action.

Westminster coroner's court heard decomposition meant any possible presence of a number of substances and anaesthetic agents – such as amyl and alkyl nitrates (or poppers), chloroform, helium, and others which "could have caused poisoning and death" – would not have been detected in the body when the postmortem examination was conducted.

Williams's top-floor flat in Pimlico was extremely hot when his body was finally found on 23 August 2010, seven days after failing to turn up for work. Toxicology tests were conducted two days later.

They revealed alcohol and traces of the "date-rape" drug GHB in his blood and urine, but a panel of experts said both, which occur naturally, were "more likely to be down to decomposition". Forensic scientist Denise Stanworth said that although ingestion could not be completely ruled out, it was "more likely to be due to postmortem production" .

She thought it unlikely poisons had been administered, because of the lack of side effects such as vomit, but told the hearing it could not be ruled out.

The expert panel, which examined the test results, said it could not be established "whether Gareth was alive or dead when he entered the bag".

An SIS internal review had found no link between his death and the intelligence work Williams carried out for MI6 or for GCHQ, from where he was on secondment.

Speaking from behind a screen, a senior MI6 officer known only as F, denied "dark arts" were behind his death, but did concede "theoretically" that a "malign or hostile party" could have put pressure on him.

She apologised to his family as their lawyer, Anthony O'Toole, accused SIS of showing "a total disregard for Gareth's whereabouts and safety".

"We are profoundly sorry about what happened. It shouldn't have happened. We recognise that the delay has made it even harder for the family to come to terms with Gareth's death."

"I also appreciate the delay had some impact on the police investigation," she said.

She was asked if aspects of Williams's private life – the inquest has heard of his £20,000 collection of women's clothes, and that he accessed websites about claustrophilia, bondage and sadomasochism – might have "rendered him unsuitable for SIS work".

She replied it was "a sensitive area" of questioning as it related to vetting issues, but in general lifestyle and sexual preferences would not in themselves have posed a problem.

Williams, whose job was "developing practical applications for emerging technologies" was described as a "fully deployable highly talented officer", said F.

There was no reason to think foreign intelligence services or security organisation represented a threat to him. His security assessment was that he was "low risk", said F. His work had never taken him to Russia or Afghanistan, contrary to media speculation, the inquest heard. He had been on operational deployment only in the UK.

Contrary to media reports, the flat he was living in was "not an SIS safe house", said F, who understood it had been rented through his employers at GCHQ.

SIS did not carry out an independent internal investigation into his death. But 12 months later, they conducted a "comprehensive internal review".

"It confirmed we had no evidence of any specific threat to Gareth arising out of his work for SIS," said F. It concluded there was no reason to think his death was in any way connected with his job.

His role was to "think up and design technology" to support other operators. "He had a highly skilled, very able technical brain," said F.

"Everyone in SIS found him a very pleasant individual, a good colleague, respected for his talents. An intensely private individual," said F. She added Williams did not socialise with colleagues out of work. "He liked to keep his work life very separate from the rest of his life."

The hearing continues.

Guardian : MI6 officer Gareth Williams found tied to bedposts by landlords, inquest told

MI6 officer Gareth Williams found tied to bedposts by landlords, inquest told

Officer shouted for help at 1.30am and told Cheltenham couple: 'I just wanted to see if I could get myself free'

Caroline Davies | April 25, 2012

The MI6 officer found dead in a padlocked bag in the bath at his flat once had to be rescued by his landlords after they found him tied to his bedposts, an inquest heard.

Jennifer Elliot, who rented a flat in Cheltenham to Gareth Williams while he worked at GCHQ, said she and her husband heard him shouting for help one night at 1.30am about three years ago.

When the couple went into the flat, they were shocked to find him in boxer shorts on his back on the bed "with both hands tied with material attached to the headboard".

"He said: 'I just wanted to see if I could get myself free,'" she said in a statement read to the court. "He was very embarrassed and panicky and apologising."

She said his hands were tied with some kind of material which was "tight enough to cut his wrists".

"My husband said: 'What the bloody hell are you doing?' He said he was just messing about to see if he could get free."

Her husband cut him free and said: "Gareth, we cannot have you doing this here," the statement went on. Williams apologised and said it would not happen again, said Elliot, and offered the couple more rent, which they declined.

The statement continued: "We never spoke to anyone about it." Elliot said Williams did not look aroused but the couple decided it "was more likely to be sexual rather than escapology". Her husband believed he had secured himself using a slip knot.

She added: "The main concern was what would have happened if we had been away."

Questions were raised over the police investigation into the death of the 31-year-old, as the inquest heard detectives found no connection with his work.

Police did not retrieve electronic equipment used by the codes and ciphers expert from GCHQ in Cheltenham until five days after his death. Equipment used by Williams at MI6 HQ in London took four days, Westminster coroners court heard.

Detectives relied on "assurances" from senior security intelligence services (SIS) staff that equipment had not been tampered with, Anthony O'Toole, a lawyer for Williams's family, told the inquest.

No formal witness statements were taken by police from intelligence staff. Instead detectives made a note or typed record afterwards, which was not later shown to the witnesses.

The body of Williams was found in a padlocked sports holdall in the bath in his top-floor flat in Pimlico, central London, on 23 August 2010.

The criticism of the investigation came as Superintendent Michael Broster, of the SO15 counter-terrorism command, whose job was to liaise between homicide command and the intelligence agencies, said all electronic equipment used by Williams had been examined.

The coroner, Fiona Wilcox, asked him: "You spent a lot of time trying to find a connection between Gareth's work and his death. Did you ever find a connection?"

"No, I did not," he replied.

O'Toole asked him why no signed witness statements had been produced from those interviewed at either MI6, where Williams was on secondment, or GCHQ, where he was due to return.

All three witnesses had complained that they had not had the opportunity to verify the contents of the "quasi-formal" statements produced and on at least two occasions the contents were inaccurate, said O'Toole.

He asked Broster how he could be sure the electronic equipment "had not been interfered or tampered with" before police retrieved it.

Broster said he had been assured by both GCHQ and SIS it had not.

"So almost under the old boys' act. They told you that and you accepted it?" said O'Toole.

Broster said the assurances were from senior staff. The equipment at MI6 had been sealed with tape. Elizabeth Guthrie, a friend of Williams in London, said of the designer female clothing found in his flat that "they certainly wouldn't have been for him".

Asked about her personal opinion of his sexuality, she said he was straight.

Guardian : MI6 code expert Gareth Williams 'previously found tied to bed'

MI6 code expert Gareth Williams 'previously found tied to bed'

Landlord tells inquest how she had to free cipher officer as boss admits taking seven days to report him missing

Caroline Davies | April 25, 2012

The MI6 cipher officer found dead in his flat in a padlocked bag had previously been rescued after tying himself to his bedstead, an inquest was told, as police said there was nothing to link his death to his intelligence services work.

Gareth Williams's decomposed body was found in the bag in the bath at his home in Pimlico on 23 August 2010, and 21 months later police remain baffled over the circumstances of his death.

But his former landlady, Jennifer Elliot, told the inquest that three years before his death, she and her husband had heard Williams call for help at 1.30am from the annex flat he was renting from them in Cheltenham, where he worked at GCHQ.

They let themselves in with the spare key and found the codes expert lying on his back on the bed, in boxer shorts, with his hands tied to the bed posts with material so tight it had cut his wrists.

In a statement read to the inquest, Elliot said she and her husband had both been in shock. Her husband asked Williams: "What the bloody hell are you doing?" Williams told them: "I just wanted to see if could get myself free."

The statement added that he did not appear sexually aroused, and was "very embarrassed, panicky and apologetic."

The couple, who never spoke to anyone about the incident, said they concluded it was "sexual rather than escapology".

The Westminster coroner, Fiona Wilcox, heard that Williams was only reported missing seven days after he failed to turn up for work, despite missing two meetings, and working in a small office of four people, two of whom were away.

He had been on secondment from GCHQ to MI6. His line manager, known only as Witness G, said that at first he believed Williams's absence was "a misunderstanding" and it was possible "he was engaged in other activities that I was unaware of". G said he had made attempts to contact Williams by telephone on day two of the unexplained absence. G was away from the office the following two days, but on Friday 20 August (day 5) he made more attempts to make contact through phones and email, then visited William's flat. He got no response on the intercom.

Only after the weekend did Witness G finally report him missing and contact William's sister, Ceri Subbe.

The coroner said she was struggling to understand why no action was taken sooner, and G was asked to explain the delay by the family's lawyer, Anthony O'Toole. "What concerns the family is that Gareth was in a profession in which there are risks. And they are concerned that such a long time took place, and four days were effectively left without any investigation."

G told the inquest "with hindsight I wish I had taken different steps over that week". He added there was nothing to indicate Williams was at risk at that time.

Evidence from Carol Kirton, an assistant at the upmarket west London fashion store Dover Street Market, stated testified that Williams regularly bought women's clothes.

In a statement, Kirton said he was shy and "on a mission to buy" and told her the clothing was for his girlfriend, who was "tall and slim". Police found £20,000 worth of designer women's clothing at his flat and 26 pairs of shoes and boots, many in pristine condition, still in tissue paper.

His friend Elizabeth Guthrie said Williams, who often used another name and had several phones, might have bought the clothing "as a support strategy" for somebody. "Certainly they would not have been for him," she said. Asked about his sexuality, she said: "I have a personal view that he was straight."

Questions were raised about the police investigation as A senior SO15 counter-terrorism officer, Supt Michael Broster, the conduit between homicide and the intelligence agencies, said there was "no link as far as we can tell, between his work and his death".

Williams's personal laptop was examined, and there was nothing work-related on it. The inquest heard that he had visited Claustrophillia, bondage and sado masochism websites, O'Toole asked if Broster could guarantee evidence was not tampered with during the several days before police retrieved William's electronic equipment from SIS (Security Intelligence Services) and GCHQ.

He said he had been assured it had not. "So, its almost an Old Boys act. They told you that and you accepted?" said O'Toole. "Certainly not, said Broster. They're a responsible organisation." The hearing was also told no formal signed statement were submitted by intelligence witnesses questioned. Instead police compiled "notes" after interviewing, which witnesses did not see and which, according to O'Toole, contained "inaccuracies".

The hearing continues

Guardian : Gareth Williams' inquest hears of mystery DNA at crime scene

Gareth Williams' inquest hears of mystery DNA at crime scene

MI6 officer's body was found padlocked in a sports bag in 2010, but court hears no injuries were found on body

Caroline Davies | April 24, 2012

Mysterious fragments of DNA were found on the padlocked sports bag in which the badly decomposed body of MI6 officer Gareth Williams was found, the inquest into his death has heard.

Detailed forensic examination found "two minor components of another contributor's DNA" on one cord toggle, as well as a small blood stain in the fabric belonging to Williams.

Tests on the padlock revealed weak stains believed to be Williams's blood, as well as "small components of another contributor's DNA". An invisible, weak blood stain on the outside of the bag belonged to the 31-year-old ciphers and codes expert.

The details were revealed as police video of the crime scene, with footage of the red North Face holdall containing the body of Williams, was shown to Westminster coroner's court.

Coroner Fiona Wilcox heard that the samples were the subject of continuing forensic testing.

Williams's sister Ceri Subbe, watched as a police graphic demonstrated how the bag had been padlocked. The bag's two zips were pulled together, the zip toggles taut, and the eyelets from one zip lined up neatly below the eyelet of the other, with the locking bar of a Yale padlock pushed through both and into the locking position.

The body of Williams, a keen cyclist and fell walker, was found on 23 August 2010, eight days after he was last seen shopping in the West End on a CCTV camera. His laptop had been used to access a cycling site in the early hours of 16 August.

A laser-scanned graphic showed his body in the foetal position.

Detective Chief Inspector Jackie Sebire, chief investigating officer, said his face and body were "very calm", with his arms lying on his chest, no injuries to his nails and fingers, and no "signs of stress or tearing" on the bag's inside netting.

Underneath his right buttock, there was a set of two Yale keys that matched the padlock that lockedon the bag, which would have been "incredibly difficult" to reach, given their position and the restrictions of the bag, the hearing was told.

Sebire said "at the heart of the investigation" was whether Williams, who was of slight but muscular build, could have locked himself inside the bag.

She said: "My thought or opinion was that a third party had been involved in the death, or getting the bag into the bath."

Forensic tests could find no prints on the tiled wall to indicate that Williams had balanced to lower himself into the bag in the bath, or that anyone else had balanced to position the bag. There was no evidence that the bathroom or bag had been bleached or cleaned.

A small spot of Williams's dried blood was found on the carpet near the stairs in the flat. Two shoeprints in the kitchen were too small to establish size or wearer, she said.

"No stone has been unturned. I've tried to do everything I can to understand what happened," said Sebire. She acknowledged there was "limited scope" for further forensic discoveries.

Anthony O'Toole, lawyer for the family, queried why police thought it necessary to fit "a brand new front door and brand new alarm" to the flat, when there was no sign of a break-in. Sebire said the door needed to be forensically examined, but the alarm was because of concerns over the press and other people trying to "talk their way in".

Police found a newspaper cutting from the Observer entitled "the top five regrets of the dying" under a book on the coffee table of the "immaculately tidy" top-floor flat in Pimlico. It was dated 15 August 2010, eight days before Williams's body was discovered. It was about research by nurses into what people regretted most on their deathbeds.

These included not having the "courage to live life true to myself", and the wish that people had "not worked so hard", "stayed in touch with friends" and "let myself be happier", the inquest heard.

Police video of the living room showed a bright orange and yellow woman's wig hanging on a chair, and a wig stocking cap bought in the US, where Williams had just been on a work assignment and holiday.

He was due to move back to Cheltenham the following week, and his bedroom was filled with packed boxes and four yellow holdalls similar to the red one his body was found in. Inside, police found "items of high-value female clothes" in small and medium sizes, as well as 26 pairs of shoes and boots, size 6-6½. It was unclear if they were Williams's size. Just four pairs appeared to have been used. One pair cost £1,000, the hearing was told.

Designer names included Stella McCartney, Chloe and Dior, Sebire said.The clothes were "immaculate, folded, buttoned, with quite a few in tissue paper". "They were very high value, so pristine, and obviously had been looked after well". Receipts found showed that the collection dated from 2008-09. Asked if they could fit Williams, Sebire replied "possibly".

There were wigs in net packaging, which appeared to be unused. Nail varnish, concealer, eye-shadow, Mac foundation and Jemma Kidd lipstick, all new, were found.

In his bedroom, a pair of chinos, some T-shirts and underpants were neatly folded on the bed. But the quilt was crumpled and trailing on the floor which, said Sebire, was at odds with the tidiness of the rest of the flat. "That was something that was not easily explainable," she said.

Traces of Williams's semen were found near the sink in the bathroom, and on his quilt.

Williams arrived back from a trip to the US on 11 August, the inquest heard.

CCTV footage showed him shopping at Selfridge's on 1th, and at Harvey Nichols on 12th. He popped into his office on 12th.

On 13 August he went alone to a comedy club in Bethnal Green to watch the transvestite show The Johnny Woo Experience. The next day, CCTV shows him shopping at Fortnum & Mason.

The last CCTV of him is of 15 August, when he is again seen shopping, buying cakes at Harrods, and buying peppered steaks at Waitrose, before returning home shortly after 3pm.

Sian Lloyd Jones, who described herself as "a childhood sweetheart" who had known Williams since primary school, said they were "close friends" but "just friends", and saw each other "every other day" during the year she spent living in London until she returned to north Wales in January 2010.

The fashion stylist was asked by the coroner if she knew whether Williams was a transvestite. "Strongly no, not at all," she replied.

Asked how to explain the clothing, she said Williams was "a very generous person" who had given her a lot of gifts in the past, expensive items such as a Mulberry bag. "It wouldn't surprise me if they [the clothes] were for gifts," she said. He had never bought her footwear, said Jones, who said her shoe size was a 3.

She said she thought Williams would have told her if her was a transvestite, because she had a lot of gay friends, and also because she believed he would have confided in her.

The inquest heard how an inputting error on the taking of forensic samples initially led police to believe that DNA from a third person had been found on Williams's body. It was only discovered in February that it was actually DNA from one of the forensic officers.

Sebire said the mistake had been both financially and emotionally costly. Around 60 people, friends and colleagues, were DNA tested to see if they matched, she said, while Williams's family had been given hope that a third party could be identified.

The hearing continues.

Global Post : Espionage: inquiry begins into death of Gareth Williams, British MI6 agent

Espionage: inquiry begins into death of Gareth Williams, British MI6 agent

Gareth Williams, the MI6 worker found dead inside a padlocked bag in the bath at his London apartment in 2010, had requested a transfer from the espionage agency and had complained about "friction" at work, a British inquest heard.

April 24, 2012

Gareth Williams, the MI6 worker found dead inside a padlocked bag in the bath at his London apartment in 2010, had requested a transfer from the espionage agency and had complained about "friction" at work, a British inquest heard.

Williams, 31, had become disenchanted with a heavy drinking "office culture" at the spy agency’s central Thames-side headquarters and London's "rat race," said his sister Ceri Subbe, according to the Daily Mail.

Subbe told Westminster coroner's court that her brother, a cycling enthusiast who was happiest "in the mountains," disliked "office culture, post-work drinks, flash car competitions and the rat race," and had wanted to return to the intelligence agency GCHQ in Cheltenham.

Williams, a cipher and codes expert, was only on a three-year secondment to MI6 when his decomposed naked body was found, his mobile telephone and sim cards carefully laid out on a table, the Guardian reported.

Underwear was reportedly found neatly folded on a bed and a woman’s wig was hanging on a chair, the inquiry has heard.

There were no signs of forced entry and his apartment was left in an "extremely tidy" state, according to a police officer also who gave evidence, John Gallagher.

According to Britain's Daily Telegraph, police believe Williams may have been killed by a "jealous lover," but they do not rule out the possibility his death was linked to his intelligence work.

The inquiry also heard that Williams was extremely conscientious and his family said he would never let anyone into his flat apart from them.

Guardian : MI6 spy inquest shown footage of holdall containing his body

MI6 spy inquest shown footage of holdall containing his body

Police video goes from room to room of Gareth Williams's Pimlico home, in which designer women's clothes were found

Press Association | April 24, 2012

Footage of a red holdall containing the curled-up body of MI6 spy Gareth Williams has been shown at the inquest into his death.

Video of the immaculately kept flat where Williams was found was played for the first time on Tuesday.

Police images also showed a cutting from the Observer headlined "Top five regrets of the dying". Forensic scene recordings were played after the detective in charge said she allowed a counter-terror officer into the crime scene.

But SO15 – the only command at Scotland Yard with regular contact with MI6 – was not in charge of the investigation, she said.

Williams's sister, Ceri Subbe, sat in the hearing as images showed the scene that greeted detectives as they arrived at his flat on 23 August 2010.

The video went from room to room of his Pimlico home – showing a woman's red wig, lipstick and makeup – in the condition that it was found.

Footage showed closeup images of the white bathroom suite where Williams's body was found.

The film zoomed in on the red North Face bag, showing bulges from his limbs inside, and a brass padlock locking two zips together from the outside.

The flat gave an insight into the codebreaker's private life, showing carefully arranged piles of books and an extensive CD collection.

Detectives found the Observer article in the living room near a book by Alan Warner and some of Williams's own paintings.

There was no sign of a break-in at the flat, with footage showing Williams had left cash in a cupboard and a mobile phone on the living room table.

Detective Chief Inspector Jackie Sebire said there was little clutter in the flat except for a dressing gown and quilt discarded on the bedroom floor.

Sebire said: "I also found it difficult to explain because of his general tidiness. In my opinion it was not something that was easily explainable."

As the court viewed images of Williams's flat, Sebire detailed the forensic evidence found there, including blood and semen.

The communal front door was secured by a mortice lock and union lock, and a spot of someone else's blood was found in the communal hallway, the inquest heard.

Inside the flat itself, an "old" and "very small" spot of Williams's blood, which could have been from a cut, was found on the carpet near the stairs, Sebire said.

She accepted the blood could have dried over the course of a week.

Two shoe prints detected in his kitchen were too "partial" for the size or wearer to be identified, she went on.

In the larger of his two bathrooms, the only "significant finding" was traces of semen staining on the floor by the sink, which was identified as belonging to Williams, the detective said.

Traces of his semen were also found in the main bedroom, including on his quilt, she added.

Sebire also described the "high value" items found in the flat's smaller bedroom, which included 26 shoes and boots, mainly bearing designer labels such as Christian Louboutin, Stella McCartney, Christian Dior and Chloe; wigs wrapped in net packaging, which "appear to be unused", including one Mr Williams had bought on a recent trip to the US; small and medium-sized female clothing worth an estimated £20,000, all "immaculate" and "in pristine condition" and often in tissue paper; and makeup items including nail varnish and eye shadow that were new and apparently unused.

The only used items appeared to be four pairs of the size six and 6.5 shoes, which was Williams's size, Sebire said.

Asked by the coroner, Fiona Wilcox, whether she thought the clothes would have fitted Williams, the detective replied: "Possibly."

The clothes were found in the holdall and on the bed, she said.

Receipts suggested they had been collected around 2008 and 2009.

Guardian : MI6 spy Gareth Williams complained of friction at work, inquest told

MI6 spy Gareth Williams complained of friction at work, inquest told

Sister says Williams disliked office culture and had been due to return to GCHQ one week after his body was found in holdall

Caroline Davies | April 23, 2012

Gareth Williams, the intelligence worker found dead in a padlocked holdall at his London flat, had requested a transfer from MI6 because he was unhappy and he had been due to move a week after his body was found, an inquest heard.

He had wanted to return to the intelligence agency GCHQ in Cheltenham after complaining of "friction" at work and his dislike of the "rat race", his sister, Ceri Subbe, told the Westminster coroner's court on the opening day of the inquest.

Williams, 31, a cipher and codes expert, was so secretive about his work that his parents and sister did not know the nature of his job. He was on a three-year secondment to MI6 when he was found in the locked bag in his bath on 25 August 2010.

Describing her brother as a cycling enthusiast and someone who was happiest "in the mountains" and engaged in outdoor pursuits, Subbe said: "He disliked office culture, post-work drinks, flash car competitions and the rat race. He even spoke of friction in the office."

PC John Gallagher was first on the scene at 5pm after Williams's family reported him missing. He said he searched the "extremely tidy" top-floor flat in Pimlico before noticing a red holdall in the bath in a bathroom that was devoid of toiletries.

"I noticed a bulge," he said, describing the bag as having the two zips padlocked together. He lifted the bag six or seven inches. "That's when I noticed some red fluid. It was seeping out of the bag," he said.

Williams's body was found in the bag, naked and decomposing.

Detective chief superintendent Hamish Campbell said he had been made aware later that evening of the nature of Williams's job with MI6, and that this had prompted senior level talks between homicide and counter-terrorism about the chain of the command in the investigation.

It was decided that homicide officers would conduct the investigation, with participation at senior level from the security intelligence services, and Campbell said Scotland Yard had full cooperation.

He added that he was not aware of MI5, MI6 or SO15 carrying out their own independent investigations into the death.

Inside Williams's rented flat, police found a woman's wig hanging on a chair, two sim cards, a mobile phone and a laptop. Designer women's clothing worth £20,000 was also discovered.

The flat was owned by a company called New Rodina, registered in the British Virgin Islands, but the tenancy had been taken over by the secretary of state in 2003, the inquest heard.

Williams had been in the process of packing up in preparation for his transfer.

The coroner, Fiona Wilcox, described Williams's death as highly controversial and said that four intelligence officers giving evidence would be given anonymity in the public interest. There would be "a real risk of harm to national security" and international relations, she said, if some of those giving evidence were identified.

Scotland Yard said it might have problems with allowing some exhibits to be released to the media.

A 21-month investigation into Williams's death has left detectives baffled, but Vincent Williams, a lawyer for the Metropolitan police, said the inquiry was ongoing and, though "not straightforward, it may at some stage result in criminal proceedings".

Asked whether she was surprised that £20,000 worth of women's clothing had been found at the flat, Williams's sister said she was not, as her brother had been generous and it was "possibly a gift".

In a statement, Subbe said: "In terms of a big brother figure, Gareth was perfect."

They were incredibly close as a family, she said, and he would visit his parents often. "It was impossible to do justice to Gareth's impressive character without meeting him."

The inquest heard that Williams had taken his O-levels aged 10 and had begun a degree course at Bangor University aged 16. He loved cycling and fell walking, said Subbe. "His passion was undoubtedly the mountains."

He was a scrupulous risk assessor, she said. He adored music, the theatre, the arts and fashion. He had undertaken two six-week design courses at Central St Martin's College in London.

His sister said he was secretive about his job. "Gareth didn't tell us what specifically he did as a job – of course we knew where he worked, but he didn't speak about it in any great detail," she said.

He was very strict about only allowing people who had been security vetted to visit his flat, she said, and would not have lent his keys to anyone.

Subbe said the family had not heard from Williams, who was originally from Anglesey, for 10 days before his body was found.

Subbe said her brother's job with MI6 had not been "not quite what he expected".

"He encountered more red tape than he was comfortable with," she said. In April 2010 he had applied to return to GCHQ earlier than had been planned, but MI6 "dragged their feet", eventually approving that he would return to the Cheltenham listening post on September 1 2010.

She said her brother had failed to turn up for a meeting he was supposed to chair on 16 August.

"He is very conscientious," she said, and MI6 had agreed he was like "a Swiss clock – very punctual, very efficient".

She added that the family wanted to know why the alarm was not raised when he initially failed to turn up at work. She also said her brother had never told her he was being followed, or felt threatened in any way.

"I cannot think as to why anybody would want to harm him," she said.

Williams's family urged the coroner not to release to the media video footage of a reconstruction – made for the purposes of the inquest – to establish if someone could lock themselves into a holdall.

Anthony O'Toole, a lawyer for Subbe and her parents, Ian and Ellen, who were at the inquest, said it would be "upsetting" for the family if the "speculative film were released".

At a pre-inquest hearing, the coroner heard that a battery of post-mortem tests had failed to determine how Williams died and that police had originally decided it would have been impossible for him to lock himself in the bag.

His family believe that by the time the officers arrived at his flat, his body was so decomposed that possible vital evidence was lost.

The hearing continues.

Guardian : MI6 agent Gareth Williams was not gay, says friend

MI6 agent Gareth Williams was not gay, says friend

Sian Lloyd-Jones tells Mail on Sunday that codebreaker was preparing to take on new identity before his death

Press Association | December 26, 2010

MI6 agent Gareth Williams was preparing to take on a new identity eight months before he was found dead, it was reported today.

A close friend insisted the Williams was a straight man after detectives suggested the 31-year-old may have died at the hands of a mystery bondage sex partner he met on London's gay scene.

Sian Lloyd-Jones, 33, told the Mail on Sunday that before he died, Williams was studying for a new identity as he visited her central London flat.

She said: "He said he was learning his new identity. It was all so relaxed. He often came round with his work. That night he came over with his box file and started going through it. He had two passports."

She said Williams had been looking for a girlfriend. "He was open with his family, and if he was gay and had any temptations he would have spoken about them, especially to his sister," she said. "Hand on heart, there were no innuendos about him."

She added: "He cherished the time he had with his sister and with me, and he wanted that with other girls."

Police have said it would have been impossible for the dead man to lock himself in the holdall where his naked body was found.

They also say forensic evidence indicates other people were in Williams's Pimlico flat, but they have been unable to trace them.

Scotland Yard said it was impossible to say whether Williams was already dead when he was put in the bag or suffocated once zipped inside.

The spy also hoarded unworn women's designer clothes worth £15,000 in his wardrobe alongside several wigs.

Lloyd-Jones, who went to primary school with Williams before renewing their friendship four years ago, said the outfits were probably gifts for her or his sister Ceri.

"He bought me a high-end Balenciaga top, a Gucci bag, a Mulberry bag, an Armani fur. He did the same for his sister. "I truly believe that Ceri and I were going to receive the clothing. We received so many things from him, that wouldn't have been strange," she said.

Lloyd-Jones added that the wigs could have been for a fancy dress party in October, which he planned to attend as a Japanese superhero.

Williams, of Anglesey, north Wales, was found by police at his top-floor flat in Alderney Street, Pimlico, on 23 August.

Investigators believe he died in the early hours of Monday 16 August; he was last seen the previous day returning from a shopping trip to Harrods.

His decomposing body was in a large North Face holdall sealed by a travel-style Yale padlock through the zip fasteners. The keys were inside, under his body.

The mathematician worked as a cipher and codes expert for GCHQ, the government listening station, but had been on secondment to MI6.

Postmortem tests and a police inquiry failed to determine how he died. A spokesman for Scotland Yard said it would not be making any further comment on the investigation.

An inquest will be held at Westminster coroner's court on 15 February.

Guardian : Who was Gareth Williams?

Who was Gareth Williams?

When the bagged body of an MI6 agent was found in a bathtub, speculation went into overdrive. Was it suicide? Murder? A professional hit, or a sexual game gone wrong?

Cathy Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy | November 20, 2010

Three months after his body was found in a holdall in the bath of his Pimlico flat, police still seem no closer to finding out what happened to Gareth Williams.

On Tuesday 24 August, a storm was brewing off the North Wales coast. As gusts reached 50mph in the village of Valley, on Anglesey, two sodden police officers stood at a front door on a close of modern bungalows above the beach. They knocked and knocked. Eventually someone ran out into the rain to tell them that Ellen and Ian Williams were away on holiday in the US. While detectives tried to locate the Williams abroad, someone found Ellen's father, John Hughes, who lived around the corner and broke the news: his 31-year-old grandson Gareth, a boy who had always been fit and healthy, was dead. Grandpa John was so distraught that he tripped, cut his head and had to be taken to hospital.

Then Gareth's uncle, William Hughes, who lived on a farm in nearby Trefor village, got the call. "Gareth couldn't be dead? Surely not?" Uncle William sat numbly with Gareth's 86-year-old great aunt before their open fire, staring at the porcelain figures on the mantelpiece. Gareth had been an exceptional boy, selected to work as some kind of analyst for GCHQ, the government's secret listening station in Cheltenham, but the family never talked about it. And neither did Gareth. He'd been home just three weeks earlier, recalled Hughes, cycling the lanes on his race bike before the whole family had got together. But his life was "now being lived a long way from the family in Anglesey," Hughes said, "so some things we couldn't know."

On 25 August, Ian and Ellen Williams touched down at Manchester airport and were met by police, who officially broke the news that two days earlier in London, a man believed to be their son had been found dead. The body had been found padlocked inside a sports bag in the flat where Gareth was staying. It could have been there for up to a fortnight. As they were escorted to the capital, to join their daughter Ceri, there were news reports everywhere: "British spy murdered." Apparently he had been "stabbed to death". According to stories, Gareth was a brain-box, a techie who "worked with codes", as far as they knew. Was he also a spy, they wondered?

For Ellen and Ian, Gareth's death was a horror story that "destroyed" them. For the rest of the world, it was a rare glimpse into the clandestine world of espionage. His death was compared to that of Georgi Markov, the Bulgarian dissident killed by a poison-tipped umbrella in London 32 years before, and the 2006 murder of Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko. Cold war details increased public fervour. The building in which the body was found was owned by a private company, registered offshore, called New Rodina. Rodina was Russian for "motherland". Did real spies read John Le Carré too?

In the midst of lurid speculation, Ian and Ellen Williams reached London. In normal circumstances, they would be required to make a physical identification. However, given the degree of decomposition, police would rely on family photos. Was Gareth murdered, his distraught family asked. Despite launching a major investigation – Operation Finlayson – Scotland Yard were finding it a hard question to answer. One major problem facing investigators was the length of time that the body had lain undiscovered. Another was that they were being blocked by the security services from probing too deeply into Williams's life. Detectives had no idea what Gareth Williams really did or who he was, and had been unable as yet to find anyone close to him. They needed the family's help.

Gareth's sister Ceri, a physiotherapist, and her husband Dr Chris Subbe, a senior registrar at Wrexham Maelor Hospital, told police they had seen Gareth in June, when he had taken them for tea at the Ritz in London to celebrate their second wedding anniversary. He'd been in the capital for more than six months, but couldn't say what he was doing.

The three spent that afternoon "laughing and joking", and afterwards continued to talk frequently by phone. Ceri last spoke to her brother on 11 August, after he returned from a short trip to the US. He now intended to "tidy things up", before returning to GCHQ in Cheltenham on 3 September.

Ceri's dates matched what police learned from Gareth's former landlady, Jenny Elliot, who had rented him a room in her house near Cheltenham for the 10 years he had worked for GCHQ, before transferring to London last year. Gareth had called her in August, asking if he could return. "Like we were going to say no," Elliot says. "He was about the best lodger you could ever have. I mean, you never heard a word from him. He had no TV, record player, or anything."

Ceri had called her brother again about a week later. No answer. She tried repeatedly, becoming worried. Gareth was like a Swiss watch. Now she contacted the police; the security services were already concerned, as Gareth had failed to show for work. On 23 August, at 6.30pm, a uniformed officer was sent to Williams's top-floor flat in a Georgian townhouse in Alderney Street, Pimlico. It was only a few hundred yards from the MI6 headquarters at Vauxhall, and was used by the Secret Intelligence Service as a safe house. A lettings agent who held a spare key showed the policeman in. He was asked to wait downstairs as the officer went up and entered the curtained rooms. The place was "spotless": two iPhones, some sim cards and an Apple notebook sat on a table. Then he entered the bathroom, and found a holdall in the bathtub. Red liquid seeped from it. Inside was a body, in such a contorted position that he thought its "legs and arms had been cut off". Radioing for assistance, the policeman noted that there were no signs a struggle. This was not a robbery or home invasion. It was a "neat job", a euphemism for a professional kill.

Given his clearances and access to classified material, Williams's death triggered alarm across Whitehall. MI5 agents swept through the Alderney Street flat, followed by detectives from the Homicide and Serious Crime Command, assisted by SO15, Scotland Yard's Counter Terrorism Command. Alderney Street was cordoned off as Home Office scientists began processing the scene. Once the spooks had departed, it was down to the murder squad to study the evidence. So far, they had a body in an "advanced state of decay". There was no weapon and no sign of forced entry or a struggle.

Concentrating on the holdall and its contents, detectives established that Williams had not been stabbed, shot or hacked to pieces. On August 25, Home Office pathologist Dr Ben Swift carried out a post-mortem that, together with the first batch of toxicological tests, came back "inconclusive". "If we don't know what to look for, and are not guided by what we see or smell on the body, we cannot find it," says a forensic scientist who worked on the Litvinenko case. "We do 50 obvious poisons. Fifty rare. We can do the isotopes. Litvinenko alerted us to that. But in the absence of a specific direction, the possibilities are as limitless as a killer's imagination… and we cannot test for that."

Detectives set out their theories. One reading of the crime scene pointed to a forensically aware hit man. Slender 5ft 7in Gareth had been stuffed inside the near-airtight red North Face sports bag and placed in the bath, containing any spillage and minimising odours, too. The heating was on, increasing the rate of decomposition, which significantly lessened the chances of retrieving evidence from the corpse.

Or perhaps the body in the bag was evidence of a stage-managed "personal event", masterminded by a controlling individual. Was this a suicide (with Williams acting on his own)? Or a sadistic or masochistic sexual act gone wrong (with Williams engaging in some kind of auto-erotic asphyxiation?). "If you can imagine it, then we are investigating it," a detective said in late August. But what would shape police inquiries was the dawning realisation that Gareth Williams had not been alone.

Returning to the holdall, studying the zips and lock, police became certain that he could not have locked himself inside. And there was further proof that someone else must have been in the flat with him: his front door had been locked from the outside.

Criminal psychologists studied the case. One, who spoke anonymously, thought his death might have been a masochistic ritual that had gone wrong: "For a retentive individual with an ever-green mind like Gareth Williams, always on duty and in control, the bag could have been a furtive release."

The Williams family was adamant that the Gareth they knew would not have behaved this way. And, for now, the family was all the police had, since they had found no close friends or lovers. Another pressing problem with their theories was that detectives had failed to turn up any other suspects or accomplices.

Police, pathologists and forensic investigators agreed on one thing only. They would have to focus on the 12 days between the last call Gareth made to Ceri and the discovery of his body on 23 August. Pulling mobile phone records and credit card transactions, scouring hours of CCTV footage, the Operation Finlayson team dug deep, as ever more lurid stories circulated.

"Murdered MI6 worker Gareth Williams was a secret transvestite who may have been killed by a gay lover, detectives said yesterday… Cops found women's clothing that would fit him at his Pimlico flat in central London." The Sun ran with this version of events, while other newspapers, quoting similar unnamed sources, reported that cocaine had been found, a cache of gay pornography, a small armoury of S&M paraphernalia. Williams was also said to have frequently paid for male escorts.

Senior detectives angrily rebutted the stories. Uncle William in Anglesey thought they read like a concerted smear, and wondered why anyone would want to destroy Gareth's reputation after he was dead.

Like most well-constructed character assassinations, however, this one was founded on a grain of fact that made it that much harder to quash. Detectives had been quietly investigating whether Gareth Williams was gay. They had canvassed witnesses in the Vauxhall Cross village of gay clubs and bars, a short walk from Alderney Street. They had also studied Williams's computers and reading matter, his journals, magazines and computer cache. Despite outright denials from his family, detectives were privately certain that Gareth was gay, although they had been unable to find trace of any sexual encounters. They had also come to believe that his sexual orientation was not central to the inquiry (although his sexual preferences might be). There was no evidence of Williams paying for escorts, buying S&M equipment, using porn or drugs of any kind. "This man didn't really even drink," one frustrated detective said.

The police felt they were being hurried along by other parties, keen for the scandal to go away. "Someone, somewhere, who has access to case material, is saying, 'He's queer and asked for it', rather than waiting for the outcome of the case," one veteran detective said.

In North Wales, the family lit their fires, closed their curtains and privately pondered if anyone had ever understood the real Gareth.

At Ysgol Gynradd Morswyn, Gareth's primary school, a short hop between Valley and Holyhead, head teacher Islwyn Williams remembers him as an exceptional pupil. At five, Gareth made a beeline for the school computer and never left it. While most of his classmates were still playing with Lego, Gareth had a GCSE in maths. At the age of 10, he went to secondary school, gaining A grades in A-level maths and computer science at 13. The school contacted Bangor University, which accepted him as a part-time student on a maths degree course. "He was the best logician… with the fastest brain I have ever met," said Geraint Williams, his maths teacher.

Fellow pupils remember Gareth as a loner. Dylan Parry, 34, thought him "isolated" by his intellect. His abilities shut him off from everyone else. He was naive. Parry believed someone "could easily take advantage of him". He recalled Gareth travelling by train each week to university, while still living at home with Ian and Ellen. Too clever for school. Too young for university.

The family downplay his isolation. They point to their closeness and his sporting prowess. By the time he was 17, Gareth had followed his father into competitive cycling. Keith Thompson, of Holyhead Cycling Club, with whom Ian and Gareth rode, says: "He was a really lovely young man, but wasn't a great conversationalist. Gareth wasn't the sort to go to the pub after a race."

In 1997, aged 18, Gareth left home to begin a PhD at Manchester University, acquiring an advanced level of learning that sat uneasily with his elementary life skills, although his academic mentor, professor Terry Hewitt, believed he could take it: "He was very private and worked well on his own. He was certainly not a 'geek' even if he was reserved." His dissertation focused on computer games. They had always been a private passion, with him achieving an online reputation as unbeatable. Three years on, aged 21, Gareth was approached by the British security services, who the university believes had spotted his precocious online gaming abilities. Hewitt recalled: "In 2000, Gareth came into my office and said, 'I'm going to GCHQ'. He had to tell me, as I was his referee for his vetting." Gareth left Manchester and Anglesey behind to sign the Official Secrets Act.

Williams began an advanced maths course at St Catharine's College, Cambridge, but withdrew the following year, torn between academia and the demands of his new employer. At GCHQ, he was seen as stable, reliable and potentially brilliant, according to a contractor who worked there at the time. Speaking on condition of anonymity, he recalled that GCHQ was a world in which Gareth fitted, working alone, or in small teams, waist-deep in mathematical problems, challenged by cutting-edge technology and real-time problems. Possibly for the first time, he was part of a community of similarly focused individuals who were taken on for their discretion as well as for their brains, intercepting, monitoring and analysing email and telephone calls from around the world. He did feel the pressure, constantly, according to the contractor, who noted that at GCHQ many technicians were as clever or cleverer than Williams.

Work became his life. There was little time for much outside it, something evidenced by how he chose to live, renting a modest room in the Prestbury area of the town. Inside was a single, child-sized bed, a small chest of drawers, three upright wooden chairs and a gas heater – all furnished by Jenny Elliot. Over the decade he spent there, Williams introduced no luxuries, accumulated no clutter. He brought no one back. He rarely even went out after work, excepting an occasional "drink with colleagues". He worked late into the night and rose early. There was something oppressively austere about him, those colleagues thought, something they used to call his "GDR sensibility". So serious and quiet was he that when he did become animated, he "alarmed people with his unusual laugh".

Due to the nature of his work, it is hard for those who met Gareth to describe what he did, and those who talked to us did so having already left GCHQ. But all agreed that, although very capable, Williams was "a middle-ranking" technician "asserting himself in a number of sensitive areas, any one of which could theoretically have brought him into contact with enemies of our state". While GCHQ gathers intelligence from Europe, Africa and Russia, its partners in the US National Security Agency (NSA) also had access to British and European signals traffic at Menwith Hill, a top-secret RAF base near Harrogate, in Yorkshire.

When Williams arrived at Menwith, shortly after the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, GCHQ and the NSA were increasingly focused on the threat of Islamist violence at home and abroad. "Between the UK and the US, we were deluged by the chatter from radicals here and over the Atlantic as they talked on landlines, satellite or mobile phones – with contacts in hot countries like Pakistan and Afghanistan, as well as with Saudi, and hubs like Dubai," one former GCHQ security consultant said. "A group around Williams worked on software to assemble, search and analyse the data, drawing out patterns and meanings."

Williams's elevation within GCHQ came with the "Liquid Bomb" plot, where a group of British radicals of Asian origin were found to be planning to detonate home-made explosives on board seven flights to major north American cities. Intercepting emails and phone calls between these plotters and their contacts abroad, Williams flew between the UK and the US, working at Fort Meade (the NSA HQ, in Baltimore).

Williams was brought into close proximity to US intelligence, Islamic radicals and Middle Eastern agents. He would rub shoulders with the Russians, too, according to a foreign intelligence analyst based in the UK, who described how technology and software honed by GCHQ was deployed in tracking a Moscow-backed sleeper cell to which Britain had been alerted as early as 2003. The case blew up in June 2010 when 10 people were arrested in the US and accused of being part of an espionage ring. One of them, a glamorous 28-year-old called Anna Chapman, had lived for five years in the UK. According to the former GCHQ contractor, "Williams had been obsessed by the case, its methodology and characters."

He was now on secondment to MI6, with its focus on foreign targets and intelligence-gathering, becoming more of a spy than a desk-bound technician, although Williams would shortly be called back to GCHQ to work on a new and ambitious project.

He had been liaising again with counterparts at the NSA, who were part of an effort to create an American cyber defence policy, to prevent the siphoning off of secret or commercially sensitive data or a military style assault on defence or civil systems. Its importance was alluded to last month in a speech by home secretary Theresa May, in which she identified cyber crime as among the pre-eminent future threats facing the UK. A cyber crimes specialist who knew Williams revealed that at the time of his death he was researching British vulnerability to Russian, Turkish and Chinese gangs: "He was already on top of it."

Rogue individuals and nation states, Islamist terror groups and radical loners, extortionists and organised criminals – these were just some of those Williams had observed, investigated, disrupted and provoked. Any one of them was capable of reciprocating, lethally.

Back at the Yard, Operation Finlayson detectives were looking at a vast range of potential threats, but still had few clues, no accomplices or even a plausible denouement for a man whose personal and professional inclinations were to camouflage everything he did.

By September, an exhaustive trawl had come up with some CCTV footage. In the frames released to the public, Gareth Williams saunters by Holland Park tube station in west London at 3pm on 14 August, three days after he had last spoken to his sister.

Staff at the nearby Valerie's Patisserie said that in the week before, a man fitting Gareth's description had spent several hours in the cafe on consecutive days, sitting at the rear with a laptop, receiving occasional visitors. One security source said that he believed Williams was "working" in west London – monitoring one of the many foreign embassies in the area – just as he had been "working" while on his recent "holiday" to the US.

Police released footage of Williams on 15 August, too. At 2pm, he was filmed at a cash machine, visiting Harrods, walking at 2.30pm via Hans Crescent in Knightsbridge towards Sloane Street. Soon after he vanished.

By the end of September, after a second barrage of toxicology tests proved inconclusive, Gareth Williams's body was released and laid to rest in North Wales. On 26 September, the extended Williams clan gathered outside the Bethel chapel in Holyhead to bid farewell. Given the florid rumours that had circulated around his death, they were surprised by the appearance there of Sir John Sawers, head of MI6. Williams had been with his service for less than a year, yet Sawyers told reporters, "I wanted to be here today as the only public face of the Secret Intelligence Service. My deepest sympathies go to the family. Gareth was a hugely talented person, and he was very modest and generous as well. He did really valuable work with us in the cause of national security."

What a difference 30 days make. After an investigation that had failed to turn up the smallest vice, Williams was no longer lampooned but celebrated as a very British spy: modest, capable and known well by no one.

As they buried Gareth, Dr Chris Subbe, speaking for his wife Ceri and the family, recalled how they had laughed and chatted with him at the Ritz, celebrating their marriage and his brilliant career. "The world was ours for the taking," he said. "Yet here I am three months later to the day, trying to describe your rich life with my poor words."