Sun : ‘Spy in bag' would need 'to be Houdini' to lock himself in holdall

‘Spy in bag' would need 'to be Houdini' to lock himself in holdall

By ALEX WEST | May 1, 2012

'SPY in the bag' Gareth Williams would have needed the skill of Harry Houdini to lock himself into the holdall in his flat, an inquest heard today.

The MI6 agent was either dead or unconscious when he was placed inside, experts believe.

Ex-para Peter Faulding said even world famous escapologist Houdini "would have struggled" to squeeze into the bag.

Cops discovered the naked decomposing body of the 31-year-old spy padlocked inside a red North Face holdall in the bath of his flat in Pimlico, London, on August 23, 2010.

Mr Faulding, a former Parachute Regiment reservist who specialises in rescuing people from confined spaces, made 300 unsuccessful attempts to lock himself inside an identical 81cm x 48cm bag.

He said: "I couldn't say it's impossible, but I think even Houdini would have struggled with this one."

The expert added: "My conclusion is that Mr Williams was either placed in the bag unconscious, or he was dead before he was in the bag."

He suggested it would have been "very easy" to fold the dead spy's arms and place him in the holdall as long as rigor mortis had not set in.

The inquest was shown a video of Mr Faulding trying to squeeze himself into the bag while it was in a bath of the same size as the one in Mr Williams' flat.

He flayed around, starting with his torso, then tucking his head in, and finally pulling his legs in one by one.

He said: "The only way I could get myself into the bag was to lie on my back, put my shoulders and head in first, and bending my body at my stomach, pulling my knees up and pulling the bag over my body."

Mr Faulding told the hearing it would have been "extremely hot" in the holdall and Mr Williams would only have been able to survive for a maximum of 30 minutes once he was inside.

He added: "I am used to confined spaces, and once I'm in that bag, it is a very unpleasant place to be."

But a second expert refused to rule out Mr Williams could not lock himself in the bag.

William MacKay and a yoga expert assistant tried more than 100 times to recreate the feat without success.

But he said it was possible that Mr Williams, a fitness-loving maths genius, died without a third party being present.

He told Westminster Coroner's Court: "I would not like to say that it could not be done.

"There are people around who can do amazing things and Mr Williams may well have been one of those persons."

Mr MacKay, who has previously worked with the military, suggested the spy would have needed extensive training to have pulled off the act in the middle of summer and in pitch darkness.

He said: "I think you could continue to work on this for a long period of time."

Video reconstructions played to the hearing showed Mr MacKay's assistant, of similar height and build to Mr Williams, curling his body inside the bag but then struggling to pull the zip shut.

Mr Williams' mountaineering experience would have given him an advantage as it would have strengthened his fingers, the inquest heard.

But Mr MacKay said: "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."

The expert said it was possible for someone locked inside the bag who wanted to get out to poke a small hole through the zip with their fingers.

This would give them more oxygen and allow them to unlock the padlock as long as they had the key.

He said: "There was an option of saving oneself."

Mr MacKay said the holdall was not airtight, and as long as the person inside did not panic they would be able to breathe for some time.

He said: "If the person was in the bag willingly, then I am tending more towards the heat side being a problem than the oxygen side.

"It depends on how calm you are in terms of oxygen intake."

The inquest heard that one way of getting into the holdall would be to use the "baggage handler's technique" employed by thieves to steal from locked luggage.

This involves breaking the zip apart with a pen, opening it as wide as possible, and then crawling inside and closing it again.

But in tests the zip did not close neatly, leaving a gap between the two ends, and became damaged.

Mr MacKay said it was "probably unlikely" that Mr Williams would have been able to do this successfully on his first attempt.

He said: "There are so many intricate things to do.

"If he hadn't been trained, he wouldn't have had lots of knowledge, it probably wouldn't have happened."

The inquest also heard today that video recovered from Mr Williams’ flat appears to show him dressed in nothing but black leather boots.

He “wiggles and gyrates” with his back to the camera in the footage found on a mobile phone by detectives.

The spy also kept pictures of drag queens on his computer and browsed self-bondage websites on his computers and phone.

He spent 50 per cent of his time online looking at “couture” women’s fashion and was looking at fetish websites days before his death.

Detective Constable Robert Burrows said some images showed “a model enclosed in plastic and using a vacuum cleaner to suck the air out”.

Det Con Burrows said film also “appears to show him being filmed from the back naked apart from a pair of leather boots”.

Describing the footage, Det Con Burrows said: “He walks up to the chair and stands directly behind the back of the chair.”

He appears to reach down and touch his boots before he “wiggles and gyrates his posture”.

He then turns towards the camera before walking out of view.

Web records also showed he once searched for bondage sites and watched a YouTube video after typing “dress bondage training”.

Pages from 2008 showed he may have looked at sites relating to “hogtie”, a bondage method of tying the limbs together.

Detective Constable Simon Warren said: “I would say that Gareth was keenly interested in ladies’ fashion but the very high end couture fashion.”

He said the bondage footage on his computer was “an isolated (incident) among a sea of other data”.

NZ Herald : Body in a bag: Doubts over spy's state of mind

Body in a bag: Doubts over spy's state of mind

April 30, 2012

The handlers of body in the bag spy Gareth Williams raised concerns about his state of mind on the day he was found dead inside his flat.

The inquest into Mr Williams' death heard that a senior executive at GCHQ, the Government's secret listening post, told police that the MI6 spy may have reacted badly after being removed from a covert operation.

A transcript of the call revealed that the executive added: We are not sure how he's taken that.

The warning was passed on to officers searching for Mr Williams, who had been missing from work for more than a week.

He was expected at MI6's headquarters at Vauxhall Cross, South London, on Monday August 16, 2010.

But his bosses did not raise the alarm until Friday and waited until after the weekend before deciding to call the police.

Mr Williams' naked body was discovered in a padlocked holdall in the bath of his flat in Pimlico, Central London, on the evening of August 23.

The GCHQ warning has been seized on by Mr Williams' parents as possible evidence of a cover-up about the truth of what happened to their son. The intelligence services have always claimed the spy's death had nothing to do with his secret work.

But the warning message appears to contradict this, as it suggests they were concerned about him after they had told him to withdraw from a secret operation.

Gareth's parents, Ian and Ellen Williams, and sister Ceri, from Anglesey, North Wales, believe the dark arts of an unnamed secret agency may have been involved in his death.

Evidence submitted to Westminster Coroner's Court confirms that Mr Williams, who was on secondment to MI6 from GCHQ in Cheltenham, had been involved in covert operations in the months before he died.

The spy worked in a four-man team as an expert code breaker and shortly before his death had been in contact with two secret agents working in the field in the UK.

On August 11 he returned to London following a six-week visit to the US, where he had been part of a contingent of UK spies sent to a computer intelligence conference, known as the Black Hat.

The coroner, Dr Fiona Wilcox, said on Friday that the Las Vegas conference attracted criminal hackers who attend the briefings to keep up with the latest developments in computer technology.

But it is also used by security agencies from Britain and America to target hackers. The FBI has been reported to have sent teams of undercover agents to the conference to break up hacking cells, and al so to mount clandestine operations to recruit criminal hackers as informants.

If Mr Williams had gone to Las Vegas as part of an active intelligence operation he could have been exposed to dangers from criminal hacking gangs.

But GCHQ insists that its officers in the US faced no greater risk than they did in the UK.

His bosses also say Mr Williams, who was due to end his secondment with MI6 in September 2010, had not been working on an undercover operation at the time he went missing.

The eight-day delay in GCHQ and MI6 telling police he was officially missing has provoked accusations from his family that they knew something horrible had happened to him.

The inquest heard of a transcript of the call, made at 4.41pm on the 23rd by senior GCHQ officer Helen Yelland, in which she said: He was last spoken to on Friday 13th. He was expected into work all of last week and did not appear. Both the landline and mobile phones are not picked up. The mobile is switched off. His sister was expecting to stay with him on Wednesday this week and she has not been able to contact him.

The Metropolitan Police operator asked if there were any concerns, to which Ms Yelland replies: He is going to be coming back to Cheltenham because he's just been pulled back from a job he's supposed to do and we are not sure how he's taken that.

Police suspect another person was involved in Mr Williams' death and experts believe he was likely to have been unconscious or dead when he was placed in the bag.

Forensic experts are still examining Mr Williams' mobile phone after it emerged on Friday that all the data on it had been wiped.

Detective Constable Robert Burrows told the inquest that he was unable to say when the iPhone, which was found in the living room of the flat, had been wiped before or after the spy's death.

The inquest has also heard how traces of the date-rape drug GHB were found in Mr Williams' body.

Forensic scientist Denise Stanworth said the traces were probably naturally occurring, which is common after death, but admitted she could not rule out that it had been taken.

MI6 has apologised for failing to raise the alarm about his disappearance, conceding the error may have hampered police inquiries. The inquest will tomorrow be told the results of an investigation into a second post-mortem examination ordered by the coroner's office in the days after Mr Williams' death.

The spy's family want to know why the police were not informed of this post-mortem examination, as they would have been in an ordinary murder inquiry.

During the inquest, spies from MI6 and GCHQ have given evidence behind screens to protect their identities and Foreign Secretary William Hague has signed an order prohibiting the disclosure of details of Mr Williams' work. The family's barrister, Anthony O'Toole, told the inquest that since MI6 performed such an important job it was even more vital that Mr Williams' team leader known as Witness G should have done more to raise the alarm about the spy's absence from work.

It took Witness G five days before he visited Mr Williams' flat. The team leader has told the inquest he had been preparing to go into the field on a secret operation in the week the Welsh spy went missing.

The coroner has heard the dead spy was considered a world-class intelligence officer by GCHQ. Stephen Gale, Mr Williams' boss in Cheltenham, said the maths prodigy had won two awards for his code-breaking work.

Dr Wilcox has intimated that she is prepared to consider a verdict of unlawful killing if she believes another person was involved in the death.

The family want the coroner to explore the possibility that Mr Williams' flat may have been wiped of other people's DNA and the spy's office computers tampered with.

The electronic equipment was handed to Scotland Yard's counter-terrorism command, SO15, on August 27, four days after the death came to light, the inquest heard.

Mr O'Toole noted there was not any statement from any person at GCHQ to say that equipment was not tampered with in the interim period.

But Superintendent Michael Broster, who was responsible for SO15's involvement in the investigation, insisted Mr Williams' workplace had been sealed and taped.

- Daily Mail

Daily Mail : Warning call by GCHQ boss to police about Gareth aborting secret mission may hold key to his death

Warning call by GCHQ boss to police about Gareth aborting secret mission may hold key to his death

* Gareth Williams's spy bosses expressed concerns about his state of mind
* He'd been pulled from a case and missing from work for a week

By Robert Verkaik and Stephanie Condron | April 28. 2012

The handlers of ‘body in the bag’ spy Gareth Williams raised concerns about his state of mind on the day he was found dead inside his flat.

The inquest into Mr Williams’s death heard that a senior executive at GCHQ, the Government’s secret listening post, told police that the MI6 spy may have reacted badly after being removed from a covert operation.

A transcript of the call revealed that the executive added: ‘We are not sure how he’s taken that.’

The warning was passed on to officers searching for Mr Williams, who had been missing from work for more than a week.

He was expected at MI6’s headquarters at Vauxhall Cross, South London, on Monday August 16, 2010.

But his bosses did not raise the alarm until Friday and waited until after the weekend before deciding to call the police.

Mr Williams’s naked body was discovered in a padlocked holdall in the bath of his flat in Pimlico, Central London, on the evening of August 23.

The GCHQ warning has been seized on by Mr Williams’s parents as possible evidence of a cover-up about the truth of what happened to their son.

The intelligence services have always claimed the spy’s death had nothing to do with his secret work.

But the warning message appears to contradict this, as it suggests they were concerned about him after they had told him to withdraw from a secret operation.

Gareth’s parents, Ian and Ellen Williams, and sister Ceri, from Anglesey, North Wales, believe the ‘dark arts’ of an unnamed secret agency may have been involved in his death.

Evidence submitted to Westminster Coroner’s Court confirms that Mr Williams, who was on secondment to MI6 from GCHQ in Cheltenham, had been involved in covert operations in the months before he died.

The spy worked in a four-man team as an expert code breaker and shortly before his death had been in contact with two secret agents working in the field in the UK.

On August 11 he returned to London following a six-week visit to the US, where he had been part of a contingent of UK spies sent to a computer intelligence conference, known as the Black Hat.

The coroner, Dr Fiona Wilcox, said on Friday that the Las Vegas conference attracted criminal hackers who attend the briefings to keep up with the latest developments in computer technology.

But it is also used by security agencies from Britain and America to target hackers.

The FBI has been reported to have sent teams of undercover agents to the conference to break up hacking cells, and also to mount clandestine operations to recruit criminal hackers as informants.

If Mr Williams had gone to Las Vegas as part of an active intelligence operation he could have been exposed to dangers from criminal hacking gangs.

But GCHQ insists that its officers in the US faced no greater risk than they did in the UK.

His bosses also say Mr Williams, who was due to end his secondment with MI6 in September 2010, had not been working on an undercover operation at the time he went missing.

The eight-day delay in GCHQ and MI6 telling police he was officially missing has provoked accusations from his family that they knew something ‘horrible’ had happened to him.

The inquest heard of a transcript of the call, made at 4.41pm on the 23rd by senior GCHQ officer Helen Yelland, in which she said: ‘He was last spoken to on Friday 13th. He was expected into work all of last week and did not appear.

Both the landline and mobile phones are not picked up. The mobile is switched off. His sister was expecting to stay with him on Wednesday this week and she has not been able to contact him.’

The Metropolitan Police operator asked if there were any concerns, to which Ms Yelland replies: ‘He is going to be coming back to Cheltenham because he’s just been pulled back from a job he’s supposed to do and we are not sure how he’s taken that.’

Police suspect another person was involved in Mr Williams’s death and experts believe he was likely to have been unconscious or dead when he was placed in the bag.

Forensic experts are still examining Mr Williams’s mobile phone after it emerged on Friday that all the data on it had been wiped.

Detective Constable Robert Burrows told the inquest that he was unable to say when the iPhone, which was found in the living room of the flat, had been wiped before or after the spy’s death.

The inquest has also heard how traces of the date-rape drug GHB were found in Mr Williams’s body.

Forensic scientist Denise Stanworth said the traces were ‘probably’ naturally occurring, which is common after death, but admitted she could not rule out that it had been taken.

MI6 has apologised for failing to raise the alarm about his disappearance, conceding the error may have hampered police inquiries.

The inquest will tomorrow be told the results of an investigation into a second post-mortem examination ordered by the coroner’s office in the days after Mr Williams’s death.

The spy’s family want to know why the police were not informed of this post-mortem examination, as they would have been in an ordinary murder inquiry.

During the inquest, spies from MI6 and GCHQ have given evidence behind screens to protect their identities and Foreign Secretary William Hague has signed an order prohibiting the disclosure of details of Mr Williams’s work.

The family’s barrister, Anthony O’Toole, told the inquest that since MI6 performed such an ‘important job’ it was even more vital that Mr Williams’s team leader – known as Witness G – should have done more to raise the alarm about the spy’s absence from work.

It took Witness G five days before he visited Mr Williams’s flat.

The team leader has told the inquest he had been preparing to go into the field on a secret operation in the week the Welsh spy went missing.

The coroner has heard the dead spy was considered a ‘world-class’ intelligence officer by GCHQ. Stephen Gale, Mr Williams’s boss in Cheltenham, said the maths prodigy had won two awards for his code-breaking work.

Dr Wilcox has intimated that she is prepared to consider a verdict of unlawful killing if she believes another person was involved in the death.

The family want the coroner to explore the possibility that Mr Williams’s flat may have been wiped of other people’s DNA and the spy’s office computers tampered with.

The electronic equipment was handed to Scotland Yard’s counter-terrorism command, SO15, on August 27, four days after the death came to light, the inquest heard.

Mr O’Toole noted there was not ‘any statement from any person at GCHQ to say that equipment was not tampered with’ in the interim period.

But Superintendent Michael Broster, who was responsible for SO15’s involvement in the investigation, insisted Mr Williams’s workplace had been ‘sealed and taped’.

BBC : MI6 officer inquest hears claim of third party role

MI6 officer inquest hears claim of third party role

April 27, 2012

A third party must have been involved in putting MI6 officer Gareth Williams in the padlocked bag in which his body was found, an expert witness believes.

Peter Faulding told Mr Williams's inquest he would have been dead within 30 minutes of being put in the holdall.

The body of Mr Williams, from Anglesey, was found in his London flat in 2010.

The inquest was shown footage of two experts' attempts in which they struggled to lock themselves in a bag - but neither ruled it out completely.

These tests have addressed the crucial question of whether Mr Williams, 31, could have locked himself in the holdall in his bath or if another person must have been involved.

Footage played at Westminster Coroner's Court showed Mr Faulding trying to get into the bag in an empty bath.

Mr Faulding 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.

"My conclusion is that Mr Williams was either placed in the bag unconscious, or he was dead before he was in the bag."

Mr Faulding added that he had really struggled to get himself in the bag in the first place, and had had his feet resting on the bath and tiles, and his hands on the side.

He told the court that Mr Williams could not have got into the bag unaided without leaving marks and footprints, none of which were found at the scene in the flat in Pimlico.

But William MacKay, who said his military career made him adept at working in confined spaces, told the inquest that locking the bag was a skill that would have required training but that once a person had done it, they could not get out.

Mr MacKay and an assistant failed in 100 attempts to lock the bag from inside, and caused damage to the zip.

But he would not rule out that it was possible, adding: "There are people around who can do amazing things and Mr Williams may well have been one of those persons."

BBC security correspondent Gorden Corera, at the inquest, said: "This leaves the likelihood, which the police say they have believed since the beginning, that someone else was involved."

Computers examined

Later on Friday the inquest heard from Det Con Simon Warren, the police officer who had examined Mr Williams's laptop computers, memory sticks, CDs and DVDs.

He said that no security-sensitive information had been found, and also that there was no evidence files had been amended since Mr Williams's death.

Det Con Warren went on to say that about half of the internet use on the computers had been in the area of women's high fashion, including handbags, cosmetics, belts and gloves.

In December 2010, police revealed that they had found £15,000-worth of unworn women's designer clothing in six boxes at Mr Williams's flat.

Officers also revealed at that time that Mr Williams had visited a drag cabaret in east London four days before his death and had tickets to two more.

Det Con Warren told the inquest that the computers had been used to visit bondage websites, but he said this browsing was isolated and did not suggest an ongoing, active interest.

Det Con Robert Burrows said that Mr Williams's phones also had bondage websites in their browsing history, while a smartphone found on a table contained no data because the factory settings had been restored.

Following the conclusion of evidence for the day, coroner Dr Fiona Wilcox indicated that she might deliver her verdict next Wednesday.

Mr Williams has previously been described as a "world class intelligence officer" by his former boss at the government listening agency GCHQ.

At the time he was found dead he had been on a three-year secondment with MI6 in London and wanted to return to his role at GCHQ, the inquest has heard.

UKPA : Video shows spy wearing only boots

Video shows spy wearing only boots

April 27, 2012

A video recovered from Gareth Williams's flat appears to show him dressed in nothing but black leather boots, the inquest into his death has heard.

He "wiggles and gyrates" with his back to the camera in the footage found on a mobile phone by detectives.

The MI6 spy also kept pictures of drag queens on his computer and browsed self-bondage websites on his computers and phone. He spent 50% of his time online looking at "couture" women's fashion and was looking at fetish websites days before his death.

In one record of him viewing self-bondage websites, images showed "a model enclosed in plastic and using a vacuum cleaner to suck the air out", Detective Constable Robert Burrows said.

Det Con Burrows said film also "appears to show him being filmed from the back naked apart from a pair of leather boots".

Describing the footage, Dec Con Burrows said: "He walks up to the chair and stands directly behind the back of the chair."

He appears to reach down and touch his boots before he "wiggles and gyrates his posture". He then turns towards the camera before walking out of view.

Web records also showed he once searched for bondage sites and watched a YouTube video after typing "dress bondage training". Pages from 2008 showed he may have looked at sites relating to "hogtie", a bondage method of tying the limbs together.

Drag queen images saved on his computer include those of Jay Clarke and Jeffrey Star.

Detective Constable Simon Warren said: "I would say that Gareth was keenly interested in ladies' fashion but the very high end couture fashion." He said the bondage footage on his computer was "an isolated (incident) among a sea of other data".

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