Irish Independent : MI6 spy Gareth Williams: An enigma, in life and death

MI6 spy Gareth Williams: An enigma, in life and death

By Michael Burleigh | May 3, 2012

THE south bank district of Vauxhall, London, is famous for two principal reasons. After long spells at 54 Broadway in Victoria and Century House across Westminster Bridge, SIS (or MI6) took possession of its new headquarters at 85 Vauxhall Cross in 1995.

Staff dubbed Sir Terry Farrell’s vast cream and green-coloured ziggurat “Legoland”. It is also known as Babylon-on-Thames, for there are 60 terraces, as well as cameras surveying spiked railings from every angle. Staff enter and leave as inconspicuously as possible through electronic gates.

These look on to an establishment across the road called Roman Chariots Spa. For Vauxhall is also well known as “VoHo”, because of its dense concentration of gay clubs.

Some of these – The Hoist and The Spike, within the cavernous railway arches – cater to a specialist clientele which may well include adventurous heterosexuals. Their names indicate what happens within. A cottage craft industry has also sprung up in the area, including a black-painted Master of Leather shop offering bespoke harnesses and studded belts, when it opens after dark.

By some terrible coincidence, elements of these two worlds appear to have met in the macabre case of Gareth Williams. His decomposing body was found in a red North Face bag in the bath of his flat in Alderney Street, Pimlico on August 23 2010 – circumstances which have given rise to speculation that he died as a result of a bondage-related sex game.

The last evidence that he was alive was a week earlier, on August 16, when he logged on to a cycling time-trial website. The top floor flat was registered to New Rodina, a front for the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, for it was used by people visiting Vauxhall Cross, half a mile across the Thames. At the time, Williams was seconded from the Cheltenham-based communications intelligence agency GCHQ to SIS in Vauxhall Cross. It is mooted that he was involved in securing the computer systems of the Bank of England from hostile cyber-raiders. He was certainly well qualified. Having passed his GCSEs aged 10, Williams graduated with a First in maths from Bangor aged 17. Four years later, with a PhD under his belt, he was recruited by GCHQ. They sent him on an advanced maths course at Cambridge.

In many respects, the 31 year-old had a healthy extracurricular life. Raised on Anglesey, he adored the rugged outdoors. He loved cycling, climbing and fell-running and was extremely fit, lithe and strong. But he would appear to have had idiosyncratic sexual interests, though these have been downplayed by the coroner Dr Fiona Wilcox, in her narrative account of his unexplained death.

Although his friends and family have put a favourable construction on the evidence, claiming that he was generous to his small coterie of girlfriends, Williams’s possessions included a woman’s wig and £20,000 of carefully stored designer clothes, though not necessarily in sizes that would have fitted him. A few days before his death he attended a show by the “Trannie Superstar” Jonny Woo, who blends fashion with transvestism for a variety of clubs and corporate clients. Police investigating Williams’s death also discovered a short film in which he “gyrated” for the camera, wearing nothing but leather boots; the coroner accepted that he derived a sexual thrill from women’s footwear, while noting that this might not be uncommon.

Several years before Williams’s death, his Cheltenham landlord and landlady had to cut through knots to free him when his cries for help led them to discover him tied up in his boxers on his bed. “Gareth, we cannot have you doing this,” exclaimed a perplexed Brian Elliot. The Elliots and Williamses never mentioned the incident again, though the Elliots decided that it did not involve escapology related to Williams’s secret work.

These snapshots from his private life suggest why a man in touch with his feminine side may have been unhappy at Vauxhall Cross, with its strong quotient of hard-drinking public schoolboys and ex-military types telling tales of derring-do in foreign parts. He had been granted a transfer back to GCHQ shortly before his death, and evidently felt ill at ease in London and alienated by SIS’s culture of red tape.

Certainly, Williams seems to have slipped through the net of modern human resources scrutiny. Although he was as punctual “as a Swiss clock”, Williams’s absence – including from a meeting he was supposed to chair – does not seem to have alarmed his SIS managers, an oversight for which Sir John Sawers, the head of SIS, apologised yesterday. But just as seriously, an organisation that positively vets its staff seems to have been surprised by Williams’s on-off interest in bondage and transvestism. In the past, SIS officers were supposed to report to their superiors anything which might be useful to blackmailers.

It is plausible that with SIS having to process a workforce that doubled after 9/11, no such attention was paid to a man who came in through the back door of GCHQ. How very modern, too, of his SIS line manager to claim that lifestyle and sexual preferences “would not in themselves pose a problem”. One is only surprised that they do not make available leaflets on safer autoerotic sex. Of course, people able to conduct double lives – like Guy Burgess, Anthony Blunt or Kim Philby in earlier times – are as ideal for the secret services as those with unmemorable faces. But while homosexuality is unexceptional nowadays (and anyway there is no suggestion that Williams was gay), would an interest in bondage be a problem if the person sought to conceal it?

Then there is the investigation. Det Chief Insp Jackie Sebire is the detective charged with clearing up Williams’s death. Although a highly experienced homicide detective, she lacked security clearance to even enter SIS’s Vauxhall Cross headquarters; evidence, if one needs it, of the absurd levels of secrecy practised by Britain’s deep state. This meant that Sebire’s investigation relied upon the “mediation” of Det Supt Michael Broster, of SO15, the counter-terrorism branch, which works closely with the security services.

Imagine Sebire’s surprise that no verbatim notes were taken of interviews with Williams’s colleagues; and that the existence of nine memory sticks, and a black holdall, in or under his SIS desk, was revealed only in the final stages of the coroner’s inquest. Not that other agencies are entirely blameless, since the DNA evidence seems to have been contaminated by a scientific incompetent who put his palm on the bag in which Williams was found.

In addition to clumsy obstructions in the path of the police investigation, there are several disturbing aspects of this case. The coroner was rightly mystified by how the bag containing Williams got into the bath without his leaving foot or handprints on it. Getting into the bag would have been hard enough; it would have been incredibly difficult to fit a heavy and rigid body into it. So Williams was alive when he went in.

It could be that to focus on Williams’s alleged sexual proclivities exaggerates what were merely the tentative inclinations of a fundamentally private man. That is certainly how Williams’s friends and family feel. After all, in 1990 the young defence expert and former RAF helicopter pilot, Jonathan Moyle, was said to have died while engaged in autoerotic strangulation in a cupboard of his hotel room in Santiago, Chile. The fact that he was wearing a nappy indicates he fully intended to live, if you think about it. Details like the orange segment in his mouth were given prominence, as if he had died in a sex game that went wrong.

But Moyle appears to have uncovered illicit helicopter sales by the Chilean arms dealer Carlos Cardoen to Saddam’s Iraq. Like Neil Heywood, the Briton poisoned recently in China, he seems to have poked his nose into some very murky business with undue self-confidence. A reconvened British inquest in 1998 found that Moyle had been unlawfully killed, probably by the needle mark in his leg that was missed by the initial police investigation.

As with the death of the government weapons expert David Kelly, speculation about another party’s involvement in Gareth Williams’s death will run and run. Suicide has been explicitly ruled out. After imagining that it could out-manoeuvre “Plod”, meaning highly competent detectives, MI6 needs to think about how it lost track of its “vital” employee – for tracking people is what it allegedly does on a global stage – and how it can allay the understandable distress of the Williams family while helping DCI Sebire, who has every right to feel short-changed. SIS director Sawers’s apology is a start, for otherwise we would be hearing much more speculation about whatever happened in Alderney Street. Does anyone remember the new dawn of greater transparency?

- Michael Burleigh

BBC : MI6 officer Gareth Williams and the 'missing hours' before his death

MI6 officer Gareth Williams and the 'missing hours' before his death

By Danny Shaw | Home affairs correspondent, BBC News | May 2, 2012

Just after 15:00 BST on Sunday 15 August 2010, a young man strolled into Alderney Street in Pimlico clutching two carrier bags.

CCTV shows the slim, wiry figure, in chinos and a red T-shirt, heading towards a block of flats at number 36.

It was the last time Gareth Williams was seen alive.

What happened in the next 19 hours, before the time Gareth was expected at his desk at the headquarters of MI6, holds the key to his death.

But there is little that is known with any certainty about those mysterious, missing hours.

Evidence heard at the inquest suggests that during the evening, Gareth cooked one of the two peppered grill-steaks he had bought from Waitrose that day, and had it for his supper.

There are also indications that at 23:30 BST he backed up data to a laptop from one of his phones, before viewing a cycling website at about 01:00 BST.

However, even these details cannot be confirmed - as it is possible someone else may have been using his phone and computer.

Like much of the case, speculation fills the void of those missing hours. In a way it is entirely in keeping with the strange and secretive life that Gareth Williams led.

'Somewhat naive'

To his friends, colleagues and family Gareth was an exceptionally gifted and hard-working young man whose spare time was spent on outdoor pursuits - rock-climbing, fell-running and cycling.

He also loved art, fashion, good food and shopping - Harvey Nichols and Harrods were just two of the stores he had visited that weekend.

But Gareth did not get close to many people. His former landlady in Cheltenham, Jennifer Elliot, described him as a "private person" who "kept himself to himself" and rarely had visitors.

Cheryl Eastap, who ran a 10-week fashion course at Central St Martin's College, in London, said that Gareth attended without his friends knowing, and that he was a "loner" who was very nervous and kept apologising.

"I considered him to be naive somewhat", she said in a statement read to the inquest, "not worldly or streetwise."

'Scruprulous risk assessor'

It is an interesting description that perhaps should have received closer scrutiny at the hearing than it did.

Did Gareth get himself into a situation in his private life where he was out of his depth? If so, what could it have been?

Although Gareth's sister, Ceri Subbe, said he was the "most scrupulous risk assessor" she had ever known, he had interests that his sister - to whom he was arguably closer than anyone else - did not know about, and which may have posed considerable risks.

One of his interests was in bondage. It may have been no more than curiosity that drew Gareth to view bondage websites, but the evidence is, that on one occasion at least, he took his interests to another level.

In 2007, Jennifer Elliot was woken in the middle of the night by Gareth's cries for help. The Cheltenham landlady and her husband found him in his boxer shorts, lying on his bed, his hands tied to the knobs of the headboard.

"He just said 'I just wanted to see if I could get myself free'," said Mrs Elliot in a statement.

She and her husband thought the escapade was a sexual act rather than an attempt at escapology, and Gareth promised his landlady it would not happen again.

But within two years he was in London, which would have afforded him greater opportunities to experiment if he had wanted.

Nothing has been discovered so far to suggest that Gareth did meet anyone in the capital who shared such interests, let alone invite them back to his flat.

But secrecy was the MI6 officer's trade. If he had wanted to keep something hidden in his private life, he would have surely found a way.

London certainly did provide Gareth Williams with the chance to indulge his love of women's fashion.

It might even be called an obsession. He had accumulated a collection of designer clothes and footwear worth around £20,000.

Identity crisis

Neither his closest friend, Sian Jones, a fashion stylist, nor Elizabeth Guthrie, with whom he was planning to attend a fancy dress ball, knew about the dresses and shoes.

That is perhaps more significant than the collection itself. It is another illustration of Gareth's secretive nature and suggests a hinterland of which no-one else was aware.

What else was hidden away? Gareth surely never intended that a video of him naked but for a pair of boots, bending down and wiggling his hips in front of a camera, would be found by a policeman and referred to in a courtroom. So who was it intended for?

Police investigators have tried to find out.

Almost 18 months ago, they appealed for information to confirm sightings of Gareth Williams at a gay bar in the Vauxhall area.

He had tickets for drag shows in the area and had previously gone to see Jonny Woo - a drag cabaret act - in east London.

But detectives appear to have made little progress tracking down anyone he met or with whom he was romantically involved.

What does appear clear, however, is that Gareth was to some extent struggling with his identity.

The wigs found in his flat, as well as the female clothing and shoes, may well be one sign. Another clue is provided by a newspaper clipping, found under a book on his living room table.

The cutting, from an Observer article, listed the "Top five regrets of the dying". Among them was having the courage to "live a life true to myself", "express my feelings" and "let myself be happier".

Those last unexplained hours of Gareth Williams' life were probably not happy ones. But the details of what went on remain as puzzling as the man himself.

Gareth Williams: What the evidence tells us

INJURIES: Nine days passed between the death of Gareth Williams and his post-mortem examination. His body had become badly decomposed, making the work of pathologists and toxicologists difficult. Dr Benjamin Swift only found small injuries on Mr Williams, which could have been the result of accidents. He noted that poison or asphyxiation were the most likely causes of death. Toxicologists said some substances, such as cyanide, chloroform and anaesthetic agents, would not have been detectible.

THE LOCKED BAG RIDDLE: One key question before the inquest was whether Mr Williams had locked himself in the bag. Expert witness Peter Faulding, shown above, said that he had tried and failed to lock the bag from inside 300 times. "I couldn't say it's impossible, but I think even Houdini would have struggled with this one," he said. William MacKay, another expert witness, said that he and an assistant had failed in more than 100 attempts to lock the bag from inside - but couldn’t rule out that Mr Williams had been able to.

INSIDE THE BAG: Did Mr Williams die inside the bag? Pathologist Dr Richard Shepherd said: "The balance of probability is that Gareth was alive when he got in the bag.” He added: "I think there could have been a period of awareness that he needed to get out. The length of time might have been short." But Mr Faulding said he believed that Mr Williams was dead or unconscious before being placed in the bag. He suggested it would have been possible to shut Mr Williams in the holdall as long as rigor mortis had not set in.

WEBSITES AND SMARTPHONES: As part of the inquest, Mr Williams's computers and phones were examined. Detectives said the computers had been used to visit bondage websites. But, the inquest heard, this did not necessarily suggest an ongoing interest in such sites. Mr Williams's phones also had bondage websites in their browser history, while a smartphone found on a table contained no data because its factory settings had been restored.

WOMEN'S CLOTHES: Shoes and women’s designer clothing valued at £20,000 were found in the flat. Detectives also said that about half of the internet use on Mr Williams's computers had been in the area of women's high fashion, including handbags, cosmetics, belts and gloves. Friends and family members said they did not believe the clothes were for Mr Williams, but were probably intended as gifts. Friend Elizabeth Guthrie told the inquest Mr Williams had no interest in cross-dressing and she believed he was "straight".

Daily Mail : Lady's orange wig, lipstick and 'five regrets of the dying' newspaper cutting found alongside body of spy in the bag, and SOMEONE ELSE locked him inside

Lady's orange wig, lipstick and 'five regrets of the dying' newspaper cutting found alongside body of spy in the bag, and SOMEONE ELSE locked him inside

* Fragments of mystery DNA were found on bag holding body but were inconclusive and did not lead detectives anywhere, inquest hears
* Footage of Gareth Williams' body padlocked in a sports holdall in the bath
* Police release pictures of Mr Williams' flat as they found it
* Mr Williams' fingerprints were found in the flat, none were dusted on the bath's edge
* Court shown CCTV of his final days when he went shopping at Harrods

By Matt Blake and Chris Greenwood | April 24, 2012

DNA from a mystery third party was found on the padlocked bag in which the body of MI6 spy Gareth Williams was discovered, police said yesterday.

A Scotland Yard officer revealed that fragments of unidentifiable DNA were found on the zip toggle and small brass travel padlock alongside traces of the code-breaker’s blood.

Detective Chief Inspector Jackie Sebire said it showed that a third party must have padlocked Mr Williams, 31, in the bag and put it in the bath.

But she added that the riddle of how he died remains unsolved despite an exhaustive 21-month investigation.

Under questioning from a barrister representing his family, she admitted there was a surprising lack of forensic evidence in his flat. Anthony O’Toole said: ‘There is not one single scientific item in the flat that could lead to the identification of a third party, is there?’

Mrs Sebire replied: ‘I would not put it as strongly as that. There are unidentified components on the toggle.

‘There is further work to be done. I would not say forensic processing is at an end, although we have done the vast majority.

‘I have always been open-minded but it is my opinion that a third party was involved in that padlock being locked and Gareth being placed in the bath.’

The exchange took place during a dramatic second day of evidence at the inquest into the death of the intelligence service agent in August 2010.

His parents Ian and Ellen, from Anglesey, North Wales, walked out as a disturbing video of the interior of his immaculate flat in Pimlico, Central London, was screened.

It showed how his naked and decomposing body was found curled in a foetal position in a large red North Face holdall in the plain white bathroom.

Mr Williams was uninjured, the heavy duty bag was undamaged and his body position appeared 'calm' with his legs pulled up and arms folded over his chest.

Mrs Sebire told Westminster Coroner’s Court that if Mr Williams had got in the bag voluntarily she would have expected to find his fingerprints on the tiles. She would also have expected to find the fingerprints of whoever hoisted the bag into the bath.

But she added that there was no sign that the flat or the bag had been cleaned to destroy forensic evidence.

Asked if Mr Williams had tried to escape, Mrs Sebire said: ‘He was very muscular, he trained regularly. It is only my opinion but I would at least expect some tearing to the netting inside.’

There was no sign of a break-in at the two-storey flat, cash was left in a cupboard, a mobile phone on the living room table and a laptop on the floor.

Mrs Sebire said there was little mess, with books, CDs and clothes stacked neatly, although a dressing gown and quilt were discarded on the floor near the bathroom. ‘I found this difficult to explain because of his general tidiness,’ she said.

The inquest heard how a £20,000 collection of women’s clothing, including 26 pairs of shoes, some worth up to £1,000, were discovered in the flat. They included labels such as Christian Louboutin, Stella McCartney, Christian Dior and Chloe as well as wigs wrapped in net packaging which appeared unused.

Most of the items were boxed or wrapped in tissue paper and the only used items appeared to be four pairs of the size 6 and 6.5 shoes – Mr Williams’s size. A blonde and red woman’s party wig was left hanging from a chair. Lipstick, foundation and make-up were also found.

Mr Williams had kept a cutting from The Observer newspaper headlined ‘top five regrets of the dying’. The regrets detailed in the article – published on the last day he was seen alive – included failing ‘to live a life true to myself’.

Sian Jones, Mr Williams’s closest friend since they went to primary school, said she did not believe he was a transvestite. ‘I feel like he would have been able to confide in me... and I would not have judged him,’ she added.

She was asked if the spy was in love with her. Miss Jones said Mr Williams was very ‘fond’ of her and showered her with gifts of expensive clothes but they remained ‘just friends’.

The professional stylist said he had confided in her that he was unhappy in London and found it lonely because the MI6 office culture was ‘very cliquey’.

On Monday the inquest heard that Mr Williams, a keen cyclist, had applied to end his secondment to MI6 early and return to the GCHQ listening station in Cheltenham, where he was a code-breaker.

The maths genius had been on secondment to SIS from GCHQ where he had worked since 2001.

But despite being available for operational deployment five months before his bizarre death he was desperate to leave London and had been due to return to Cheltenham a week after his body was found.

The newspaper cutting found near Gareth Williams' body was taken from an article printed in the Observer.

It was based on a book by a Australian palliative nurse Bronnie Ware who recorded the most common dying epiphanies of her patients.

They were:

1. I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not what others expected.

2. I wish I hadn't worked so hard.

3. I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings.

4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

His sister Ceri Subbe raised the alarm when she had not spoken to him for 10 days.

On August 23 an officer went to the top floor flat in Alderney Street, less than a mile to the agency headquarters, and found the decomposing body locked in a red North Face holdall.

Today the court saw footage of the large holdall, with Mr Williams inside, bulging in the spotless bathroom with a 15mm Yale brass padlock placed through the two zips where they eyelets matched where they closed at the top of the bag.

The other three North Face bags in the flat were locked with similar locks.

DCI Sebire confirmed that the call from Mrs Subbe was the first the police had heard of his disappearance despite the spook not showing for a meeting on August 16.

She took the family through his last days after he returned from a conference which he extended into a holiday in America on August 11 2010.

That day he shopped at Selfridge before being spotted on CCTV the next day at Harvey Nichols, Waitrose, and Harrods.

On August 13 he popped into the MI6 office before speaking to his sister then going on to watch 'tranny superstar' Jonny Woo at the Bistrotheque in Bethnal Green alone.

Over the next two days he was spotted shopping in Fortnum and Masons, Benetton and Harrods before eventually being seen returning to his flat at 3.05pm with bags of shopping. He was not seen again.

Despite the fears of the family that an agent of the 'dark arts' of the secret service had got rid of any evidence of what happened to him DCI Sebire today reassured the court that she had secured the crime scene and her team has 'primacy' in the investigation and no-one had entered the flat without her permission.

Earlier, his mother, Ellen, walked out on inquest proceedings amid family distress at delays in evidence.

Ellen Williams left the courtroom frustrated about legal submissions holding up the hearing into her son’s death, her lawyer said.

Proceedings were delayed by more than 30 minutes for a second day as a coroner denied media applications to allow a court artist to take notes.

The court has heard how the spy, whose body was discovered in a padlocked bag, was desperate to leave his intelligence post and complained about ‘friction’ at MI6 headquarters.

His family revealed that the 31-year-old was a ‘scrupulous risk assessor’ and a meticulous genius who colleagues compared to a Swiss clock.

But he had become disenchanted with a heavy drinking ‘office culture’, the London ‘rat race’ and work politics at the spy agency’s central Thames-side HQ.

He applied to end his secondment early and return to the GCHQ Government listening station in Cheltenham, where he worked as a highly prized code-breaker.

But just one week before he was due to leave, his naked and decomposing body was found in a large sports holdall in the bath of his home, sparking a huge police investigation.

On Monday, his grieving family attended the first day of a long-awaited inquest into his mysterious death.

Coroner Dr Fiona Wilcox pledged to hold a ‘full and fearless’ inquiry as she heard how Mr Williams wanted to escape the ‘rat race’ of the capital and was frustrated that MI6 had been dragging its feet over the move.

The court heard how the spy was extremely conscientious and his family said he would never let anyone into his flat apart from them.

Meanwhile, MI6 was accused of failing to raise the alarm when he missed a key meeting one week before his body was found.

Revelations about his personal life and claims that no third-party fingerprints or DNA were found in his home fuelled speculation around the circumstances of his death.

The spy's sister, Ceri Subbe, told the inquest her brother was excited when he began what was supposed to be a three-year secondment to MI6 from GCHQ, the Government listening station based in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire.

But he missed the countryside and became disillusioned with the atmosphere at MI6's Vauxhall Cross headquarters in London.

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

She added: 'The job was not quite what he expected. He encountered more red tape than he was comfortable with.'

The inquest, in Westminster, heard details of the spy’s life, including how he went to university aged just 16, joining the University of Bangor’s computer science department.

It was also told how the successful cyclist and fell runner followed the arts and fashion and had a £20,000 collection of women’s designer clothing in his wardrobe.

Mrs Subbe said her brother was ‘the most scrupulous risk-assessor’ she had ever known. She said he would meticulously check his equipment before rock climbing, cycling and fell running.

The inquest, which is expected to last eight days, 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.

Mirror : Body-in-a-bag DNA riddle: Traces of stranger's DNA found on zip and padlock on holdall... but nowhere else in MI6 spy's flat

Body-in-a-bag DNA riddle: Traces of stranger's DNA found on zip and padlock on holdall... but nowhere else in MI6 spy's flat

Traces of unidentified DNA were found on the lock and zip toggle of the sports holdall left in the MI6 officer’s bath

By Tom Pettifor | April 24, 2012

Spy Gareth Williams was placed inside his own bag by a mystery person who may also have killed him, his inquest heard today.

Traces of unidentified DNA were found on the lock and zip toggle of the sports holdall left in the MI6 officer’s bath.

Det Ch Insp Jackie Sebire – leading the inquiry into the bizarre death of the MI6 codebreaker – dismissed claims that the spy had locked himself into his bag.

She told his inquest today: “My thought since I went into the scene is that a third party had been involved in the death or putting the bag in the bath, so my primary focus was to identify anyone who had been in the bathroom.”

However, no traces of any stranger was found anywhere else in the flat.

The spy’s parents both left the inquest today before graphic images of their son’s death scene were shown.

Details also emerged of £20,000 worth of women’s designer clothing which were found in his flat, along with several women’s wigs and 26 pairs of women’s shoes.

The inquest was also told how MI6 failed to inform police when the meticulous timekeeper went missing after a working trip to the States.

His body was eventually found in his flat a week later by police only after his sister Ceri Subbe raised the alarm.

Footage of the red holdall bulging with his curled-up body was played to the inquest today.

Computer-generated images were also shown of Mr Williams lying inside on his back with his knees, hands and chin pressed into his chest.

DCI Sebire said: “In my opinion he was very calm, his face was calm, his hands were lying on his chest.

“It would have been very hot and uncomfortable within the bag.”

The inquest heard that there were two keys which fitted the padlock found inside the bag under his right buttock.

DCI Sebire also confirmed there were “two minor components of another person’s DNA” on the zip toggle and a “small component of another contributor’s DNA” on the padlock.

But she said the traces were very small and no match could be made.

Mr Williams’ grief-stricken parents, Ellen and Ian, walked out of before video footage of his flat was played.

Images showed a Sunday newspaper cutting found on a table, headlined: “Top five regrets of the dying.”

The wish list included: “I wish I had the courage to live life true to myself and not what others expected of me”, “I wish I had the courage to express my feelings” and “I wish I had let myself be happy.”

The video took the inquest on a walking tour of Mr Williams’ immaculately kept flat in Pimlico, Central London.

Around £20,000 worth of designer women’s clothing were found, along with several women’s wigs and 26 pairs of women’s shoes, including pairs by Stella McCartney and Christian Louboutin.

The shoes were all in a size six or a six-and-a-half, which would have fitted the cycling enthusiast, Westminster coroner’s court was told.

Four pairs appeared to have been worn. There was also make-up, including nail vanish, concealer and eye shadow.

But Sian Jones – a friend of Mr Williams from school in Wales – told the hearing she didn’t believe he was a transvestite.

She said: “I feel like he’d have been able to confide in me... and I wouldn’t have judged him.”

Ms Jones said she would see him every couple of days and he would shower her with gifts.

“He did say he was not happy in London,” she said. “He said that he found it quite lonely and within work it was very cliquey.

"I would say that we were childhood sweethearts when we were in school and I’d say Gareth was very fond of me.

“He was a very kind-hearted person, very lovely, very inspiring to be around and very down to earth.”

The hearing heard how Mr Williams had travelled to the US to meet intelligence agents before flying back to Gatwick on August 11, 2010.

Various receipts and CCTV footage showed that he spent some of the following four days shopping in London.

On August 13 he went on his own to see “tranny superstar” Jonny Woo performing in Bethnal Green, East London.

His final known journey was captured by a string of cameras on August 15 as he shopped in Harrods before walking home via Victoria bus station.

DCI Sebire said that the brilliant mathematician – seconded to MI6 from GCHQ – looked relaxed and did not appear to be followed.

The last known time he is believed to have been alive was 1.03am on August 16 when his computer was used to log on to a cycling website.

Four intelligence agents are due to give evidence at the hearing from behind a screen later this week.

The inquest continues.

Express: BAG SPY VISITED DRAG SHOW JUST BEFORE HE DIED

BAG SPY VISITED DRAG SHOW JUST BEFORE HE DIED

By James Murray | January 2, 2011

POLICE piecing together the last hours of spy Gareth Williams’s life have revealed he visited a drag cabaret show just days before his bizarre death.

Scotland Yard murder detectives said the 31-year-old MI6 codebreaker visited the Bistrotheque in London’s Bethnal Green on August 13 last year, a few days after flying back from a holiday in the US.

He vanished two days later and his naked body was discovered in a holdall in his bath on August 23.

The club he visited has an upstairs restaurant and bar and a downstairs cabaret stage.

The Sunday Express has established that Cambridge-educated Mr Williams booked the ticket for the cabaret before going there and decided not to eat at the restaurant or hang around in the bar when he arrived in the evening.

Instead, he went straight to the downstairs cabaret room and sat to watch the one-hour show featuring Jonny Woo, pictured above left, often described as the queen of the ­capital’s drag scene.

Woo, a popular entertainer at the venue, performed a short skit from Les Miserables and dressed in several outrageous costumes during the show. As soon as it ended, Mr Williams got up and left.

His family and friends vehemently deny accusations he was living a secret life as a gay man in central London. The club’s co-owner, Pablo Flack, said Mr Williams was not known to staff and no one could recall seeing him before.

Despite the drag cabaret, he said the venue was popular with straight couples and none of the regular gay customers could recall speaking to him.

Mr Flack, a flamboyant figure in the fashion world, said: “I think the public may have got the wrong impression from the reports about this man.

“He did not spend long here and he is not someone people remember.

“We think he just came along to see the show. Jonny Woo does have a good reputation as an entertainer, especially in the fashion and artistic world.”

Mr Williams obviously enjoyed the performance because he bought tickets to see two other shows but there is no suggestion he knew Mr Woo.

Detectives have revealed that Mr ­Williams had £15,000-worth of women’s designer clothes, including dresses, shoes and wigs, at his flat in Alderney Street, ­Pimlico, London.

Shortly before Christmas they also revealed he was studying fashion for beginners at the Central St Martins ­College in Clerkenwell and had visited bondage websites.

One theory that police are ­considering now is that he had visited the Bistrotheque as part of his interest in fashion. Shortly after his body was found in his flat in a zipped-up and padlocked ­holdall, detectives went to Bistrotheque when they discovered he had bought the drag cabaret tickets. Mr Flack said: “They asked to see some CCTV on the relevant date and we burned off a disc for them but the footage was only showing the outside.

“It is pretty dark in the cabaret area so if there were pictures you wouldn’t be able to see much anyway.”

Detectives are trying to discover if Mr ­Williams went to the venue to meet a mysterious Mediterranean-looking man and woman who had called at his home in the ­summer but there is nothing to suggest at this stage that they were there.

Last week Sian Lloyd-Jones, 33, a ­childhood friend of Mr Williams, said he showed no inclinations of being gay and thought he would have given his designer clothes to her and his ­sister, Ceri, because he was so generous with gifts. However, questions remain about why Mr Williams would spend so much of his ­salary on women’s clothes.

Ms Lloyd-Jones, who was given £760 Stella McCartney PVC ­trousers from Mr Williams, claimed he was learning a new identity for an assignment with the intelligence service before his death but did not know what his ­undercover ­operation would be.

This Is London : Hidden pursuits of MI6 man Gareth Williams’s private life

Hidden pursuits of MI6 man Gareth Williams’s private life

Justin Davenport, Crime Editor | December 22, 2010

The new details of Gareth Williams's life reveal an intensely private individual who had a life unknown to his friends, family or spy bosses.

He was a respected technician who had an occasional drink with colleagues and was an avid and competitive cyclist.

He enjoyed outdoor sports such as rock climbing as well as trips to the theatre and cinema, and his iPod showed a varied taste.

Yet today detectives revealed that the 30-year-old also had an interest in bondage websites, and visited a cabaret act featuring drag artist Jonny Woo at restaurant and theatre venue Bistrotheque in Mile End just before his death.

He went alone, but others who were at the event said Mr Williams chatted amicably with audience members.

He also held two tickets for drag shows in Vauxhall which took place after his death, and a witness has said he saw Mr Williams at Barcode, a gay bar in the area, in May.

Police revealed he had an interest in fashion, having attended two beginner's design courses at Central St Martins. Could this explain his collection of women's designer clothes and wigs worth £15,000? Intriguingly, there is no evidence that Mr Williams was gay, nor any evidence that he had ever had a girlfriend or a boyfriend.

He visited five bondage websites, including hogtie.com, artofconstriction.com and boundanna.com, browsing for between 30 minutes and an hour at a time. The sites feature women and give instruction on how to carry out bondage techniques.

But again there was no evidence that he was “obsessed” with bondage, and no pornography or bondage gear was found in his flat.

Guardian : Couple sought as police say bondage websites could hold key to spy's death

Couple sought as police say bondage websites could hold key to spy's death

• Gareth Williams's death not linked to job say detectives
• Women's designer clothes found in dead man's flat

Vikram Dodd, crime correspondent | December 22, 2010

Senior detectives believe the mystery death of the spy Gareth Williams will be solved by getting an insight into his private life after they revealed he had visited bondage websites and a drag club and had £15,000-worth of unworn designer womenswear in his wardrobe.

Williams's decomposed body was discovered in a padlocked holdall in his flat, less than a mile from MI6 headquarters in London where he was a senior analyst.

Police believe he died a week earlier, in the early hours of 16 August, and that someone else was present. For months they have struggled to answer basic questions about the death. Tests have shown no signs of a struggle or forced entry into the flat, and no sign that he was drugged.

Yesterday, Scotland Yard's detectives gave their best account of Williams's death. They revealed:

• He used his iPhone to visit websites on bondage and escape from bondage in the months before his death.

• He must have been padlocked into the red North Face holdall by someone else as it was impossible for him to have locked himself inside.

• Once padlocked in the bag, with the keys inside, he could only have survived for 30 minutes before suffocating.

• Police are desperate to talk to a couple of Mediterranean appearance who visited his block and claimed to have a key to his flat weeks before Williams's death.

• Four days before his death, he went to a club called Bistrotheque in Bethnal Green, east London, to see an act called Jonny Woo, and had tickets for two similar performances at a pub in Vauxhall, close to MI6 headquarters.

• A witness told police that Williams had been seen at a well-known gay bar in Vauxhall months before his death.

When Williams's decomposing body was found by police on 23 August, they also discovered £15,000 of unworn women's clothing, wigs and shoes in his wardrobe. The labels included Stella McCartney, Christopher Kane, and Louboutin and were in their original boxes or wrapping paper. Williams had enrolled in two fashion design courses at Central Saint Martins College, in Clerkenwell, London, in 2009 and 2010.

Speculation has been rife that Williams' highly secretive work might explain his death. He worked as an expert on codes at the government's GCHQ eavesdropping centre in Cheltenham before moving to MI6 on a secondment.

But Detective Chief Superintendent Hamish Campbell, head of Scotland Yard's homicide command, said: "This is not linked to his work – it's his private life."

He said police had been reluctant to make public details of Williams's private life, knowing it could prove distressing to his family, but were doing so now because his lifestyle could be key to solving whether his death was a sex game gone wrong, manslaughter or murder.

Police needed information from "a small subset of people" who were into alternative lifestyles and pursuits. "We want to speak to individuals who use these websites about bondage, tying up, linking into the drag world."

Police called in an expert in surviving in confined spaces, who concluded there was no way Williams could have padlocked himself into the bag. That means that someone must have been present to lock him in. The keys to the ordinary Yale padlock were found inside the holdall.

Campbell said: "Somebody must have been there to secure him in the bag on a voluntary or involuntary basis. If someone was there and it was a voluntary activity gone wrong, why not cut him free or call an ambulance?

"The alternative scenario is there is maybe something more sinister to it. We just don't know."

The dead man's body showed only two small bruises on his elbows, probably from him struggling and rubbing against the inside of the bag as he began to run out of oxygen.

Toxicology tests show no signs of drugs, although Campbell said it remained possible he had been stunned by something like a karate chop, which could have left no visible trace by the time the corpse was found. Otherwise any blow heavy enough to render Williams unconscious would have been picked up by tests.

"There is no sign of a struggle, no outward signs of anyone inflicting physical violence, no poisoning," said Campbell, who added: "The absence of violence to the body suggests he placed himself in the bag, unless he was stunned or unconscious. If that was done, it was not through drugs or super-secret injections."

The official cause of death is still inconclusive, but Campbell said: "It is most likely suffocation, but we can't be certain."

He said that Williams was a deeply private man and neither his employers nor his family knew he had enrolled into a course at a fashion college. There was no evidence that he was gay.

Police yesterday released efit images of a man and woman who visited the flats where Williams lived weeks before his death. The Mediterranean couple, who were in their 20s and dressed casually, were buzzed through the communal entrance at the flats in Alderney Street by another resident in late June or July. They said they had been given a key and were on their way to flat four, the property Williams lived in.

Williams, from Anglesey, north Wales, was last seen alive on 15 August, eight days before he was found dead.

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

• This article was amended on 23 December 2010. The original referred to Jimmy Woo, and Bistrotheque as a drag club. This has been corrected.