Camden New Journal : Feature: A spook story that’s stranger than fiction

Feature: A spook story that’s stranger than fiction

by JOSH LOEB | May 10, 2012

The death of MI6 agent Gareth Williams was not the result of a sex game.

He was not a transvestite.

And aspects of his personality suggest he may have had Asperger’s syndrome or something similar.

These are my personal views, but having attended all seven days of evidence at the inquest into his death, which concluded last week, I have more of an insight than most.

The inquest was like no other. Stairwells at Westminster Coroner’s  Court were bristling with guards wearing high-visibility vests, who eyed reporters suspiciously; and members of the public – shifty old ladies who looked like they’d read too many spy thrillers scuttled in and out.

No one knows what Gareth did for MI6; because of concerns about national security, details of his work were not divulged in court.

What everyone knows is that the 31-year-old was found dead inside a padlocked holdall in a bath at his Alderney Street flat in Pimlico on August 23, 2010.

He was naked and was lying on his back, curled up in the partial foetal position.

There were no signs of a break-in or struggle, and there was no evidence of his footprints or fingerprints on the bathroom tiles or sides of the bath.

Coroner Dr Fiona Wilcox said Gareth’s death – his family asked for him to be referred to by his first name throughout the proceedings – was “unnatural and is likely to have been criminally mediated”.

In other words, an unknown person or persons had a hand in it, though Dr Wilcox said she believed Gareth had been complicit to some extent.

She accepted evidence from a pathologist that, given the position in which Gareth’s body was found and the lack of marks or bruising, it was virtually impossible someone could have manhandled him into the bag either after he was deceased or if he were still alive and resisting.

The evidence suggests he got into that holdall either willingly or having been coerced, and died within it. Someone else placed the lock and lifted the bag into the bath.

Gareth apparently only ever let vetted people inside his flat, so the third party was either someone he knew or someone who had entered uninvited.

So, what of the theory that he died during a sex game?

Prior to the inquest, stories appeared in the tabloids suggesting Gareth had an interest in claustrophilia, the love of confined spaces, but this was not borne out in evidence.

He had a collection of female clothing – surely an indication he liked to dress up as a woman?

Well, more likely not, actually.

From the evidence it seems pos­sible that Gareth was a high-functioning autistic, which may have made him easy to manipulate.

He had virtually no friends and was a prodigious whiz with maths and computers.

An intellectually brilliant oddball, when a subject gripped his attention, it consumed his every thought.

Such was the case with fashion. He had enrolled on a fashion course, and experts who analysed his computers said 50 per cent of his internet browsing time consisted of him looking at websites about women’s clothes.

Compare this with 0.1 per cent of the time he spent looking at sites about bondage and you hardly walk away with an image of a slavering pervert.

Tellingly, Gareth appears never to have looked at material of an outright pornographic nature. One acquaintance said: “I did not think of him as being sexual at all.”

Prior to Gareth’s latest, all-consuming interest, he had been obsessed with maps, and he was mad on cycling, of which he had an encyclopedic knowledge down to the lowest sprocket.

He also exhibited a preoccupation with cleanliness sometimes associated with obsessive compulsive disorder.

None of the women’s fashion items Gareth owned showed much evidence of having been worn.

Most were found in their packaging.

He owned no female undergarments, nor a realistic wig – the wig found at his flat was florescent orange.

All this suggests he was not a transvestite.

The annexe of Marylebone Council House, the building that hosted the inquest, is located just steps from Sherlock Holmes’s fictional home in Baker Street, but perhaps even someone of the calibre of Arthur Conan Doyle’s legendary detective might lack the ability to unravel what has already become known as The Alderney Street Mystery.

However, what if important clues were hidden in moments that have gone unreported?

On the third day of evidence, Dr Wilcox asked “F” – one of the secret service spooks giving evidence anonymously and behind a screen – whether, if Gareth had been in contact with anyone from the central Asian country of Kyrgyzstan, he should have reported this to service’s vetting team. ­“F” said she could not answer for security reasons.

Cryptically, the coroner asked another witness whether Gareth had been in touch with someone by the name of Ibragimov.

And it emerged Gareth had told this witness that he would produce a fake degree certificate for a friend of hers as part of a prank.

I don’t know if these moments are of any relevance. They went unreported because they seemed to lead nowhere.

But who knows?

They might provide the army of amateur detectives now speculating about this most haunting case with another piece of the puzzle.

Daily Record : Intelligence expert Crispin Black on why sex games feature in so many spy deaths

Intelligence expert Crispin Black on why sex games feature in so many spy deaths

By Crispin Black | former government intelligence adviser | May 5, 2012

SITTING at the Gareth Williams inquest this week, listening to the more lurid details of the case, it occurred to me the death of spooks in bizarre circumstances involving sex games or women’s clothing is hardly an unusual event.

Disposing of an enemy and making it look like a perverted fantasy gone wrong is in the training manuals of every spy agency from MI6 to Mossad.

Codebreaker Gareth, from Anglesey, north Wales, was found dead in a locked bag, in a flat full of women’s clothing and wigs and with his internet browsing history conveniently featuring bondage sites, sparking a flurry of allegations which horrified his parents.

But the fact the 31-year-old’s death scene was organised in such a way as to suggest a sex game gone wrong should make us more suspicious, not less.

The sex game cover is a very useful mechanism in a murder. Not only does it provide a disguise for the actual means and method of death, it trashes the reputation of the victim and blunts the energy of any subsequent investigation.

And it appears to explain the astonishing number of spies, and other people who step into their murky world, who turn up dead in circumstances similar to Gareth.

Take GCHQ personnel for instance, those that work at the vast electronic doughnut in Cheltenham that is responsible for intercepting and decoding secret electronic traffic of interest to Her Majesty’s Government. And Gareth’s ultimate employer.

In 1983, 25-year-old Stephen Drinkwater, who worked as a clerk at GCHQ, was found dead at his home with a plastic bag over his head. In 1997 another worker, Nicholas Husband, 46, was found dead at home dressed in a bra and panties – with a plastic bag over his head.

Two years later, Kevin Allen, 31, a language expert at GCHQ, was found dead in his bed with a plastic bag over his head and a dust mask over his mouth. One wonders what the Gloucestershire Constabulary make of it all.

To be fair, the kind of higher mathematical ability that many GCHQ codebreakers have is rare and it sometimes comes with some personal eccentricities attached.

Alan Turing, the Cambridge academic and founder of modern computer science who became the greatest of the wartime Bletchley Park codebreakers was a distinctly odd fish – a loner with sexual hang-ups who seemed to spend most of his waking hours dreaming of obscure mathematical theorems.

The point was amusingly made in 60s film The Italian Job in which Charlie Croker, played by Michael Caine, recruits computer genius Professor Simon Peach – Benny Hill – to pull off a daring bullion robbery.

But the whole scheme nearly comes unstuck as Prof Peach is unable to control his powerful urges towards large women. MI6, who recruit a more worldly-wise type than the boffins of GCHQ, have not been immune.

In 1994 ex-MI6 man turned journalist James Rusbridger, 65, was found hanged at his house in Cornwall – in a green chemical protection suit including rubber gloves, gas mask and black plastic mackintosh. Bondage pictures completed the tableau.

And of course, according to the pathologist, it turned out he probably did it himself as part of a sex game.

The same year Stephen Milligan, the Tory MP for Eastleigh, was found dead with electrical flex tied round his neck, a black bin liner over his head and wearing stockings and suspenders.

The 45-year-old was also tied to a chair and had a satsuma stuffed into his mouth.

His boss at the time, then junior defence minister Jonathan Aitken, has since denied suggestions Milligan had links to MI6.

Even if you are not a spook you need to be careful. In 1990, ex-RAF helicopter pilot and editor of Defence Helicopter World Jonathan Moyle, 28, was found hanged in the wardrobe of his hotel in Chile with a pillow case over his head.

At the time his demise was widely thought to be an auto-erotic accident. He was in fact almost certainly murdered after uncovering links between Chilean arms dealers and Saddam Hussein.

The last person to give evidence at the Gareth Williams inquest was Detective Chief Inspector Jackie Sebire – the senior investigating officer in the case.

She stated confidently that she was sure she and her team would be able to unlock the mystery in the end. But she also felt that this, her final appearance in court, was an appropriate time to remind the assembled audience of Williams’s internet browsing habits.

The last website he accessed probably just a few hours before his death was connected to cycling – a photo of him competing in a cross-country cycling race has been seen frequently in the national newspapers.

But then she went on to deal with the browsing information that had been made much of in the media over the last 20 months. Williams had accessed bondage websites on four days over a two-year period.

He had never accessed so-called “claustrophilia” sites which cater for people who get a thrill out of being confined in small spaces.

There we have it – the view of the woman in charge of the probe. Williams may have had a passing interest in bondage but no more than that. Even this passing interest may have a perfectly innocent explanation.

All MI6 officers get extensive training before they are allowed out on to the streets. Much of this takes place at Fort Monckton near Gosport in Hampshire – a Napoleonic era fortress surrounded by barbed wire and accessible only by a drawbridge.

It includes instruction in basic entry and exit procedures – buildings and cars mainly. If you ever get locked out of your flat and know a friendly spook from school or university give them a ring.

They should be able to get you back inside and could save you a fortune on locksmith’s fees. The instruction also includes some counter-surveillance techniques – how to make sure you are not followed.

And instruction on what to do if you fall into the wrong hands – resistance to interrogation and crucially, what to do if you are restrained – tied or chained up.

It is possible Williams had some of this training and it might well account for the episode when he was discovered tied up in his room by his landlady.

That the sex game angle was a simple smear is a view certainly not ruled out by the Westminster coroner who said, “it is still a legitimate line of inquiry” Gareth died at the hands of MI6.

In her narrative verdict, Dr Fiona Wilcox said: “I am sure a third party placed the bag into the bath and on the balance of probabilities locked the bag.

The cause of death was unnatural and likely to have been criminally mediated. I am therefore satisfied that on the balance of probabilities Gareth was killed unlawfully.”

I was impressed by Dr Wilcox. She had good judgment and wisdom as can be seen from her verdict in the case. She played down the bondage question and the interest in female fashion – Williams had an expensive collection of women’s clothing nearly all of it unworn and most of it not in his size.

She seemed to accept the view of Williams’s sister that these were a store of presents for his female acquaintances. Dr Wilcox pretty much dismissed the idea of any sexual component in his death.

Sadly that is the aspect many people will remember. Well, these kinky games with yourself or other people go wrong – what can you expect – becomes the prevailing attitude.

Occasionally the dark arts of postmortem reputation trashing are employed in a good cause and based on hard facts rather than a set-up.

The strange and squalid habits of Osama bin Laden before his death have been used to great effect by the US to make him a laughing stock.

Crispin Black’s espionage thriller The Falklands Intercept is published by Gibson Square on June 19.

The Australian : Elusive truth of MI6 code-breaker Gareth Williams

Elusive truth of MI6 code-breaker Gareth Williams

by: Fay Schlesinger and Fiona Hamilton | from: The Times | May 4, 2012

FOR a man whose private life rivalled the machinations of his employer in its layers of secrecy, it was a hard task for investigators to piece together the real Gareth Williams.

Each nugget of evidence uncovered by forensic scientists, computer analysts and escapology experts seemed to deepen the mystery, raising many questions that, the coroner said on Wednesday, may never be answered.

The women's clothes and wigs, the bondage websites and an episode in which his landlady found him tied to his bed - all were red herrings, the inquest concluded.

There was no suggestion that details were either planted to smear, or part of a blackmail plot, or even linked to a lover or another acquaintance. They were just elements of a life that Williams, a child maths prodigy and fitness enthusiast, lived happily - aside from frustrations with the "red tape" of MI6 and the "rat race" existence of London life.

His tutor at Central Saint Martins college where, unknown to his family, Williams completed two courses in fashion design less than a year before his death, described him as guarded about his private life but open and loquacious in his manner. It is a paradox also reflected in the spy's understated love of expensive and luxurious things.

Asked whether Williams dreamt of moving into the fashion industry, Celia Wain-Heapy told The Times: "A lot of people are quite guarded, they don't want to put their hopes and aspirations out there. They tell you they enjoy it but no more. Gareth was quite private.

"He ended up being painted as a bit of a loner, but that wasn't how I saw him at all. He didn't lack social skills. He was milder-mannered and quiet ... [but] he seemed quite guileless."

Half of all Williams's internet activity concerned women's fashion, the inquest was told, and he had a £20,000 collection of unworn women's clothes, many bought from the couture store Dover Street Market, supposedly for a "tall, slim girlfriend", though Williams was single. There were also 26 pairs of designer shoes, four of them worn, a lot of unused make-up and several wigs, though no women's underwear.

The coroner, Fiona Wilcox, said there was no evidence that he was a transvestite. If the wigs were for himself, she said, they would have been quality specimens rather than the garish orange one found in his flat. A video on a work iPhone, which was deleted but retrieved by police, showed him gyrating naked but for a pair of leather boots, and suggested that he might have derived sexual pleasure from shoes, Dr Wilcox said.

He was not alone in that view, the coroner suggested, and she ruled that this had nothing to do with his death. "Gareth was naked in a bag when he was found, not cross-dressed, not in high-heeled shoes," she said. By contrast with fashion browsing, a "tiny, tiny, tiny" percentage of Mr Williams's web searches were on the subject of bondage or claustrophilia. Four searches in two years was a negligible number, the coroner said, and certainly not enough to suggest that bondage played any part in his death.

His family's lawyer has pointed out that such searches coincided with training courses or potential moves within the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), though police could find no explanation that would put them down to research.

Witness reports that Mr Williams visited gay bars around Vauxhall Bridge, near the MI6 headquarters where he was based, could not be verified by police. Only two friends were identified as being close to Williams. Sian Jones, a former teenage sweetheart who grew up with him in Anglesey, North Wales, said: "I feel he would have been able to confide in me ... and I would not have judged him."

The other friend, Elizabeth Guthrie, 27, seemed a more complex character, who gave different names in a police statement. The name "Misa Guseiri" was dismissed by officers as an administrative error, and they confirmed that she had co-operated with the investigation. Ms Guthrie did not respond to attempts to contact her.

His closest friend was his sister, who described him as the perfect brother and a "scrupulous risk-assessor" on whom no one would wish harm.

Williams was "exceedingly intelligent", the coroner said. He passed a maths GCSE while still at primary school and graduated from university at 17, before joining the government listening post, GCHQ, at the age of 21. As well as cycling, fell running and mountaineering, he loved collecting: maps, CDs, climbing equipment and women's clothes, all stored neatly in his flat, in a trait that matched his "Swiss clock" precision. A bathrobe and duvet, discarded on the floor when Mr Williams was found dead, stood out like a sore thumb, it was said.

So the manner of his death: the lurid speculation, the destruction of privacy and the unknowns, must exacerbate the pain felt by Williams's family. The waste of life seemed to be summed up by his brother-in-law, Chris Subbe, at his funeral in Holyhead. Describing how Williams took his sister and him for tea at the Ritz Hotel in London to celebrate their wedding anniversary, he said they sat listening to a Welsh harpist as the sun set. He said: "It seemed as though the world was there for the taking and yet here we are, trying to describe your rich life with our poor words."

The Australian : More questions than answers after the inquest into MI6 spy Gareth Williams' death

More questions than answers after the inquest into MI6 spy Gareth Williams' death

Fay Schlesinger and Fiona Hamilton | From: The Times | May 3, 2012

THE death of the MI6 spy Gareth Williams is likely to have been "criminally mediated" by another person who locked him a sports holdall and placed it in a bath, a coroner has ruled.

The ruling came as MI6 and the police were accused by the coroner, Fiona Wilcox, of serious failings in the investigation.

The chief of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), Sir John Sawers, apologised for adding to the "anguish and suffering" of the code-breaker's family, after his managers did not report him missing for more than a week, potentially allowing evidence to be lost.

Scotland Yard began a review of the 21-month inquiry last night, after the coroner and family levelled criticism at the relationship between the police counter-terrorism command, SO15, and the secret services.

The coroner found that Mr Williams died in the early hours of August 16, 2010, at the MI6-owned flat in Pimlico, Central London, where he lived.

He was probably alive when he entered the bag but succumbed either to poison or suffocation inside the holdall, Dr Fiona Wilcox said after a seven-day inquest.

She said: "I am satisfied ... that a third party placed the bag into the bath and on the balance of probabilities locked the bag.

"The cause of death was unnatural and likely to have been criminally mediated. I am therefore satisfied on the balance of probabilities that Gareth was killed unlawfully."

The inquest had focused on whether Mr Williams would have been able to lock himself inside the 81cm by 48cm bag.

After seeing footage of confinement experts trying to manoeuvre their bodies inside, Dr Wilcox said the the absence of foot and finger prints on the bath and tiles made her certain someone else put the bag in the bath.

The toggles were arranged with peculiar neatness, while someone may have tried to speed up the body's decomposition by turning on the heating despite the warm August weather, and disguised the smell using the bag itself, a screen across the bath and the closed ensuite bathroom door.

There was no evidence pointing to a culprit, and it was unlikely the death would ever be satisfactorily explained, the coroner said, though police said that they were following new leads that had emerged during the inquest.

During a two-hour narrative verdict, Dr Wilcox debunked a string of theories, many of which had some basis in evidence but had been embellished through lurid speculation in the media. There was no evidence that Mr Williams was a transvestite; the $A30,000 of unworn women's clothes in his wardrobe reflected an interest in high fashion, the coroner said. Some may have been gifts for his sister and friends.

Visits to bondage websites represented a tiny proportion of his online browsing and could not be seen as indicative of an active interest or having any link to his death, the Coroner said.

Dr Wilcox said it remained a "legitimate line of inquiry" that the secret services were involved in Mr Williams's death, because he socialised with very few people and would only allow those he knew to enter his flat. But she said "there was no evidence to support that he died at the hands of" spies.

Evidence of Mr Williams's death being linked to his work were also rejected by the coroner, as he was considered a "low-risk" employee. He was on a three-year secondment to MI6 from the Government's listening post in Cheltenham, GCHQ. He had not enjoyed the "rat race" in London, but was buoyant about a return to Cheltenham scheduled for a week after his death.

The coroner ruled out suicide and said: "I find that if he had got into the bag and locked himself in, he would have taken a knife in with him. He was a risk assessor." Speaking of the lack of prints in the bath, she added: "In relation to the prints found within the bathroom, in my view what was more significant was what was not found."

She said that "many agencies fell short", including the LGC Forensics, a contractor that chased a false lead for months after an administrative error. The Met's SO15 officers failed to take formal statements from Mr Williams's colleagues, some of whom later showed a remarkably poor memory of events. The coroner cast aspersions on evidence from Detective Superintendent Michael Broster, who acted as a conduit between MI6 and the Met, after hearing that he seized an iPhone from Mr Williams's office containing a video of him naked but for a pair of boots, and kept it until the next day.

Dr Wilcox said: "I find this is either not what occurred - in which case how did he acquire this phone? - or it demonstrates disregard for the rules governing continuity of evidence."

Mr Broster had also faced censure for allowing MI6 to analyse and assess the relevance of evidence, including nine memory sticks whose existence was only revealed to the investigation's senior officer this week.

On MI6's failure to report the code-breaker's absence from work for a week, Dr Wilcox said she could "only speculate as to what effect this had" on the investigation. She said that evidence given anonymously by Mr Williams's MI6 line manager, Witness G, had "stretched bounds of credibility". Referring to the manager's recollection of attempting to contact Mr Williams on the day after the "punctual" worker failed to arrive at the office, the coroner said "there was no phone call".

Speaking through their solicitor, Mr Williams's family called on the Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, to review the investigation. They said they were "extremely disappointed" at the secret services' "reluctance and failure" to make relevant information available. They also attacked the "total inadequacies" of the inquiry by SO15 into MI6.

The SIS said that Sir John Sawers "recognises that the Service's failure to act more swiftly when Mr Williams was first became absent has contributed to the anguish of his family. Gareth Williams was a man of remarkable talents which he devoted to public service. The work that Gareth undertook during his career ... made a real contribution to the security of this country."

An MI6 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."

Martin Hewitt, Deputy Assistant Commissioner of the Met, said that investigations into Mr Williams's death were continuing.

Daily Mail : 50 agents face DNA tests over spy-in-the-bag killing as coroner brands death 'unlawful' and puts MI6 in the frame

50 agents face DNA tests over spy-in-the-bag killing as coroner brands death 'unlawful' and puts MI6 in the frame

* 15 colleagues of Gareth Williams have already given DNA evidence
* Coroner: 'It is unlikely the spy's death will ever be satisfactorily explained'
* Dr Fiona Wilcox says lack of compelling evidence removes possibility of unlawful killing verdict but says it is probable his death was 'illegal'
* 'It would appear that many agencies fell short' during the investigation
* Coroner: British Secret Service's involvement 'still a legitimate line of inquiry'
* MI6 chief apologises 'unreservedly' to Mr Williams' family over the way the police inquiry was hampered by his colleagues
* Family pay emotional tribute to their 'special and adored son and brother' and blast MI6's 'reluctance and failure' in helping detectives

By Stephen Wright and Chris Greenwood | May 3, 2012

Police are taking DNA samples from up to 50 colleagues of body-in-the-bag spy Gareth Williams.

Officers strongly suspect a member of the security services, working for either MI6 or GCHQ, was in the 31-year-old's flat on the night he died.

Fifteen of his colleagues have already given their DNA to police and officers plan to take swabs from dozens more.

Investigators hope detailed analysis of a scruffy green hand-towel recovered from a shelf in his kitchen could soon result in a forensic breakthrough.

Details of the extraordinary DNA sweep emerged as a coroner ruled that Mr Williams, whose naked body was found in a locked red North Face bag in the bath of his central London apartment, was probably 'unlawfully killed'.

In a dramatic narrative verdict, Dr Fiona Wilcox told Westminster coroner's court it was a 'legitimate line of inquiry' that the codebreaker was killed by a colleague, as he would only have let someone he trusted into his home.

'The cause of his death was unnatural and likely to have been criminally mediated,' she said. 'I am therefore satisfied that on the balance of probabilities Gareth was killed unlawfully.'

Dr Wilcox said serious questions remain over an iPhone of Mr Williams's that was mysteriously wiped of all data just hours before he died in August 2010.

She added that the forgetfulness of some employees at MI6, where Mr Williams had been on secondment from GCHQ, the Government's listening post, 'stretched probability'.

She refused to rule out that a colleague in the shadowy world of intelligence was involved.

Yesterday Mr Williams's family accused MI6 of withholding vital clues and failing to make 'basic inquiries' into his whereabouts until a week after his disappearance.

And they called on the head of Scotland Yard, Bernard Hogan-Howe, to review the 21-month investigation personally.

Mr Williams's sister Ceri and their parents Ian and Ellen attacked the 'total inadequacies' of the inquiry.

In a statement released by their lawyer, they said: 'Our grief is exacerbated by the failure of his employers at MI6 to make even the most basic inquiries as to his whereabouts and welfare that any reasonable employer would have taken.

'We are also extremely disappointed over the reluctance and failure of MI6 to make available relevant information.'

Last night Sir John Sawers, the head of MI6, apologised 'unreservedly' for the failure of Mr Williams's colleagues to raise the alarm promptly, which meant the body was left to decompose for a week in the sweltering top-floor flat in Pimlico.

Mr Williams was a maths prodigy who graduated with first-class honours in computer science aged 17 and completed a PhD four years later. As well as being a cycling fanatic and successful fell runner, he had a wide-ranging passion for the arts and high-end fashion.

He also hoarded a £20,000 collection of designer women's clothing, browsed fetish websites and filmed himself dancing naked except for a pair of cowboy boots.

But in a painstaking two-hour examination of the evidence, Dr Wilcox rejected theories that the reclusive prodigy's eccentric private life had any link to his death.

She also said he probably did not die in a solo sex game that went catastrophically wrong, because he was not a risk-taker.

Dr Wilcox said she was 'sure that a third party placed the bag into the bath and on the balance of probabilities locked the bag'.

She told Mr Williams's family that she hoped the inquest would give them some comfort, adding that 'it would appear that many agencies fell short' during the investigation into his death, leaving 'most of the fundamental questions unanswered'.

Dr Wilcox concluded Mr Williams was alive when he got into the North Face holdall where his body was found.

She said she was certain someone else put it in the bath of his windowless ensuite bathroom, probably to contain bodily fluids, before closing the door behind them.

The coroner said the spy would have died quickly, either from hypercapnia, the fatal accumulation of carbon dioxide in the blood, or from a mystery poison.

A range of poisons, including cyanide, insulin, chloroform and amyl nitrate could not be detected if they were used because of the advanced state of decomposition.

Detectives were last night already preparing to interview and take DNA samples from dozens of staff at MI6's London headquarters and GCHQ in Cheltenham.

Officers said human traces have been found on the hand towel recovered from Mr Williams's kitchen and the 'very promising' results of highly sensitive DNA testing could be ready within weeks.

After the inquest, Detective Chief Inspector Jackie Sebire said there were several 'new lines of inquiry'.

She said: 'It is highly likely that a third party was involved in Gareth's death and I urge anyone who had contact with him to search their conscience and come forward.'

Last night Deputy Assistant Commissioner Martin Hewitt announced an urgent review of the new evidence and police blunders as a result of the inquest.

ninemsn (Au) : MI6 codebreaker 'probably killed'

MI6 codebreaker 'probably killed'

May 3, 2012

MI6 code breaker Gareth Williams was probably killed but the "spy in the bag" case might never be solved after mistakes by investigators, an inquest has heard.

Mr Williams's relatives attacked failures by secret services and police after a coroner ruled "many agencies fell short" in their investigation of the holdall death riddle.

Fiona Wilcox said she was sure a third party locked the 31-year-old mathematics prodigy inside the red holdall, probably while he was still alive.

She criticised the 21-month investigation, saying it was unlikely the mystery "will ever be satisfactorily explained".

"The cause of his death was unnatural and likely to have been criminally mediated," she said during a two-hour narrative verdict at Mr Williams's inquest.

"I am therefore satisfied that on the balance of probabilities that Gareth was killed unlawfully."

As the eight-day hearing ended, relatives spoke out for the first time about their grief being "exacerbated" by MI6's "reluctance and failure" to assist the police inquiry.

In a statement read out by their solicitor, they said they were "extremely disappointed" at "total inadequacies" in the inquiry.

Scotland Yard vowed to explore new evidence that has come to light, while Sir John Sawers, chief of the Secret Intelligence Service, apologised "unreservedly" for delays in raising the alarm about the death.

Mr Williams, a fitness enthusiast originally from Anglesey, North Wales, was found naked, curled up in the padlocked holdall in the bath of his flat in Pimlico, central London, on August 23 2010.

Pathologists said he would have suffocated within three minutes if he was alive when he got inside the 80 centimetres by 48 centimetres bag.

The coroner agreed that Mr Williams was suffocated by carbon dioxide, possibly as an onset of a short-acting poison.

She dismissed speculation that Mr 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.

His sister, Ceri Subbe, looked on as Dr Wilcox told a packed Westminster Coroner's Court that it "remained a legitimate line of inquiry" that the secret services may have been involved in the death.

But she said "there was no evidence to support" that he died at the hands of spies.

Despite a 21-month police inquiry and seven days of evidence, "most of the fundamental questions in relation to how Gareth died remain unanswered", she said.

Dr Wilcox said several factors hampered inquiries, including breakdowns in communication by her own coroner's office, a DNA mix-up by forensics and the late submission of evidence by MI6 to police.

She went on to question why details of Mr Williams's private life were leaked to the press.

The coroner ruled out Mr Williams's interest in bondage and drag queens as having any bearing on the death, before adding: "I wonder if this was an attempt by some third party to manipulate the evidence."

The lack of hand and footprints in the bathroom was "significant", Dr Wilcox said, telling the court: "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."

Dr Wilcox found it "highly unlikely" that Mr Williams died alone, saying: "If Gareth had been carrying out some kind of peculiar experiment, he wouldn't care if he left any foot or fingerprints."

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

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".

Revelations that MI6 failed to raise the alarm about his disappearance for more than a week prompted elaborate conspiracy theories about his job and private life.

Several years before his death, Mr Williams tied himself to his bed and had to be cut free by his landlord and landlady.

It also emerged that the bachelor stored STG20,000 ($A31,500)-worth of women's clothes in his immaculate flat and was fascinated by drag queens.

But Dr Wilcox said there was no evidence to suggest the spy was a transvestite "or interested in any such thing".

The make-up found in his flat was more likely to reflect his interest in fashion, she argued.

And the wigs that were found there were "far more consistent with dress-up such as attendance at a manga conference", she added.

There was some suggestion that his interest in female footwear could have been of a sexual nature, but this was not unusual, Dr Wilcox observed.

"Gareth was naked in a bag when he was found, not cross-dressed, not in high-heeled shoes," she said.

Mr Williams would have been unlikely to invite a third party who was not a family member into his home, Dr Wilcox said, adding: "If a third party was present at the time of his death, in my view that third party would have to have been someone he knew or someone who was there without an invitation."

If someone else was there without having been invited, "that raises the possibility of an illegitimate purpose on the third party's part", she said.

"Gareth may have worked out a technique how to get into the bag and lock it from inside, but I find it extremely unlikely that he did so."

Detective Chief Inspector Jackie Sebire, who is leading the investigation, said the inquest had raised "several new lines of inquiry and the investigation will now refocus and actively pursue all the evidence heard and all the new lines of inquiry".

Scotsman : Gareth Williams profile: Maths genius with a solitary lifestyle

Gareth Williams profile: Maths genius with a solitary lifestyle

May 3, 2012

Gareth Williams crammed his life with secrets – in and out of work.

The 31-year-old excelled as a spy, producing “world-class” code-breaking intelligence for MI6 and the eavesdropping station GCHQ.

Colleagues, friends, family and police queued up to pay tribute to his extraordinary ability, which saw him land a first-class mathematics degree aged 17.

But the teetotal fitness enthusiast lived a solitary personal life that was dramatically removed from the world of espionage.

Police, who painstakingly pieced together his unlikely interests, discovered a fiercely private bachelor fascinated by women’s clothes and drag-queen culture.

He enrolled on a fashion course and collected £20,000 of unworn designer women’s clothing at his pristine flat, including 26 pairs of designer women’s shoes. Small and medium-sized dresses were hung up in his wardrobes, along with women’s wigs, including one Mr Williams had bought on a recent trip to Las Vegas.

Internet searches by Mr Williams and a video taken on his Apple iPhone suggested he wore the shoes.

The flamboyant interests were a far cry from the rigid discipline of work, where he was fast-tracked through the ranks at GCHQ before arriving at MI6 on secondment.

Stephen Gale, his boss at GCHQ’s Cheltenham base, said Mr Williams stunned fellow intelligence specialists with his code-breaking talents when he landed his first job at 21.

He cycled around the Gloucestershire hills “like a red bullet” but won the respect of his colleagues for his “warm smile” and sense of humour under pressure, Mr Gale said. Bosses were so impressed that they paid for him to gain further qualifications in advanced mathematics at Cambridge University.

Mr Williams had won two awards at GCHQ, one for a “Herculean effort” in his top-secret work, Mr Gale added.

But the keen cyclist and fell runner missed the countryside after arriving in London.

Sister Ceri Subbe said: “He disliked office culture, post-work drinks, flash car competitions and the rat race. He even spoke of friction in the office.”

Ms Subbe said her brother was immensely close with his family, from Anglesey.

“In terms of a big brother figure, Gareth was perfect,” she said.

“It’s impossible to do justice to Gareth’s impressive character without meeting him.”

Mr Williams and Ms Subbe “had a truly magical time” during their last meeting for “dainty finger sandwiches” at the Ritz hotel, she said.

SMH : MI6 codebreaker 'probably killed'

MI6 codebreaker 'probably killed'

May 3, 2012

MI6 code breaker Gareth Williams was probably killed but the "spy in the bag" case might never be solved after mistakes by investigators, an inquest has heard.

Mr Williams's relatives attacked failures by secret services and police after a coroner ruled "many agencies fell short" in their investigation of the holdall death riddle.

Fiona Wilcox said she was sure a third party locked the 31-year-old mathematics prodigy inside the red holdall, probably while he was still alive.

She criticised the 21-month investigation, saying it was unlikely the mystery "will ever be satisfactorily explained".

"The cause of his death was unnatural and likely to have been criminally mediated," she said during a two-hour narrative verdict at Mr Williams's inquest.

"I am therefore satisfied that on the balance of probabilities that Gareth was killed unlawfully."

As the eight-day hearing ended, relatives spoke out for the first time about their grief being "exacerbated" by MI6's "reluctance and failure" to assist the police inquiry.

In a statement read out by their solicitor, they said they were "extremely disappointed" at "total inadequacies" in the inquiry.

Scotland Yard vowed to explore new evidence that has come to light, while Sir John Sawers, chief of the Secret Intelligence Service, apologised "unreservedly" for delays in raising the alarm about the death.

Mr Williams, a fitness enthusiast originally from Anglesey, North Wales, was found naked, curled up in the padlocked holdall in the bath of his flat in Pimlico, central London, on August 23 2010.

Pathologists said he would have suffocated within three minutes if he was alive when he got inside the 80 centimetres by 48 centimetres bag.

The coroner agreed that Mr Williams was suffocated by carbon dioxide, possibly as an onset of a short-acting poison.

She dismissed speculation that Mr 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.

His sister, Ceri Subbe, looked on as Dr Wilcox told a packed Westminster Coroner's Court that it "remained a legitimate line of inquiry" that the secret services may have been involved in the death.

But she said "there was no evidence to support" that he died at the hands of spies.

Despite a 21-month police inquiry and seven days of evidence, "most of the fundamental questions in relation to how Gareth died remain unanswered", she said.

Dr Wilcox said several factors hampered inquiries, including breakdowns in communication by her own coroner's office, a DNA mix-up by forensics and the late submission of evidence by MI6 to police.

She went on to question why details of Mr Williams's private life were leaked to the press.

The coroner ruled out Mr Williams's interest in bondage and drag queens as having any bearing on the death, before adding: "I wonder if this was an attempt by some third party to manipulate the evidence."

The lack of hand and footprints in the bathroom was "significant", Dr Wilcox said, telling the court: "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."

Dr Wilcox found it "highly unlikely" that Mr Williams died alone, saying: "If Gareth had been carrying out some kind of peculiar experiment, he wouldn't care if he left any foot or fingerprints."

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

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".

Revelations that MI6 failed to raise the alarm about his disappearance for more than a week prompted elaborate conspiracy theories about his job and private life.

Several years before his death, Mr Williams tied himself to his bed and had to be cut free by his landlord and landlady.

It also emerged that the bachelor stored STG20,000 ($A31,500)-worth of women's clothes in his immaculate flat and was fascinated by drag queens.

But Dr Wilcox said there was no evidence to suggest the spy was a transvestite "or interested in any such thing".

The make-up found in his flat was more likely to reflect his interest in fashion, she argued.

And the wigs that were found there were "far more consistent with dress-up such as attendance at a manga conference", she added.

There was some suggestion that his interest in female footwear could have been of a sexual nature, but this was not unusual, Dr Wilcox observed.

"Gareth was naked in a bag when he was found, not cross-dressed, not in high-heeled shoes," she said.

Mr Williams would have been unlikely to invite a third party who was not a family member into his home, Dr Wilcox said, adding: "If a third party was present at the time of his death, in my view that third party would have to have been someone he knew or someone who was there without an invitation."

If someone else was there without having been invited, "that raises the possibility of an illegitimate purpose on the third party's part", she said.

"Gareth may have worked out a technique how to get into the bag and lock it from inside, but I find it extremely unlikely that he did so."

Detective Chief Inspector Jackie Sebire, who is leading the investigation, said the inquest had raised "several new lines of inquiry and the investigation will now refocus and actively pursue all the evidence heard and all the new lines of inquiry".

© 2012 AAP

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

This Is London : Spy in bag Gareth Williams was killed 'by a third party', coroner rules

Spy in bag Gareth Williams was killed 'by a third party', coroner rules

Paul Cheston | May 2, 2012

The MI6 spy found dead inside a padlocked holdall was killed “by a third party” but the mystery of what happened may never be solved, a coroner ruled this afternoon.

The naked body of codebreaker Gareth Williams, 31, was discovered in a red North Face bag in the bath of his Pimlico flat in August 2010. His family claim he was a victim of the “dark arts” of the secret services. Dr Fiona Wilcox said she believed he was alive when he was put inside the bag and suffocated as a result of a quick-acting poison. “A third party placed the bag in the bath and on the balance of probabilities locked the bag”, she said: adding: “The cause of death was unnatural and likely to have been criminally mediated. Therefore I am satisfied ... that Gareth was killed unlawfully.”

Mr Williams’s parents and sister looked on as Dr Wilcox told Westminster coroner’s court there was not enough proof to record an official verdict of unlawful killing. She suggested that he had unwittingly arranged to meet his killer by phone.

In a narrative verdict, the coroner said it was “unlikely” the circumstances “will ever be satisfactorily explained” despite a 21-month police inquiry and a seven-day inquest. Dr Wilcox added: “Most of the fundamental questions in relation to how Gareth died remain unanswered.

She appeared to rule out that Mr 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. I find on the balance of probabilities that, if he had got into the bag and locked himself in, he would have taken a knife in with him,” she said. “He was a risk assessor.”

There was no evidence to suggest the spy was a transvestite “or interested in any such thing”, she said. The make-up found in his flat was more likely to reflect his interest in fashion, she argued.

There was some suggestion that his interest in female footwear could have been of a sexual nature, but this was not unusual, Dr Wilcox observed.

“Gareth was naked in a bag when he was found, not cross-dressed, not in high-heeled shoes,” she said.

A cause of death has not been established. Pathologists said he would have suffocated within three minutes if he was alive when he got inside the 32ins by 19ins e bag.

Poisoning and asphyxiation were the “foremost contenders” in solving the death riddle, they said.

Efforts appear to have been made to clean up the death scene. The lack of hand and footprints in the bathroom was “significant”, Dr Wilcox said, telling the court: “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.”

The coroner ruled out Mr Williams’s interest in bondage and drag queens in having any bearing on his death as she questioned leaks about his private life to the press. She said: “I wonder if this was an attempt by some third party to manipulate the evidence.” Lead detective Jackie Sebire told the inquest she remained convinced that Mr Williams’s death was suspicious. Ms Sebire said: “My strongest belief is that a third party was involved and I would ask people to search their consciences and come to us to find some resolutions to this case and some peace for his family.”

Dr Wilcox said it remained a “legitimate line of inquiry” that the secret services were involved in Mr Williams’s death and criticised “shortfalls” by MI6 in passing on evidence to Scotland Yard. But she said “there was no evidence to support that he died at the hands of” spies.

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".

Isle of Wight Radio : Coroner To Announce Spy Death Verdict

Coroner To Announce Spy Death Verdict

May 2, 2012

Dr Fiona Wilcox has spent seven days listening to evidence from 39 witnesses.

She has questioned all of those who appeared in person and listened as lawyers for Gareth Williams family, as well as lawyers representing both the Metropolitan Police and MI6 cross examined the witnesses.

Tuesday's evidence included some surprising revelations, including the disclosure that MI6 had failed to pass over some of Mr Williams belongings from his office at MI6.

The officer in charge of the investigation into his death only found out about the existence of some of the items on Tuesday.

"Had I known about their existence, I would have expected them to be disclosed and any relevant information to be sent to my team. I would have expected to have been told," DCI Jackie Sebire told the court.

A senior Metropolitan Police officer also admitted that he had relied on MI6 to decide which of Mr Williams belongings were relevent to the investigation into the death.

Detective Superintendent Michael Broster said that he trusted MI6 to give him all the information he needed.

Responding to that admission, the coroner said: "Shouldn't the investigators be examining the items, not the people providing them?

"I would suggest that you are not being an impartial investigator in this case. An impartial investigator would have seized the items themselves."

The lawyer for Mr Williams family, Anthony O'Toole, put it more directly to Supt Broster.

"If the person who killed Gareth was a member of the Secret Intelligence Service, you did nothing to investigate because you believed that the organisation was trustworthy?"

The wide range of witnesses in this inquest began with Mr Williams sister Ceri Subbe who talked fondly of her brother.

She described him as "a country boy" who had expressed frustration with his secondment from GCHQ in Gloucestershire to MI6 in London.

Friends of Mr Williams also gave evidence. Among them was Sian Jones, a fashion consultant.

"We were childhood sweethearts and I would just say we were very very close." she told the court last week.

She, and other witnesses were asked how they could explain the fact that £20,000 of women's clothes and shoes were found in the flat where Mr Williams body was discovered.

Ms Jones and Ms Subbe both told the inquest that Mr Williams was a very generous man and that the clothes were likely to be gifts. Ms Jones said that he had frequently bought her clothes and handbags.

"He was a truly generous person. It wouldn't surprise me if they were gifts." she said.

His family listened as other uncomfortable details about his private life were discussed. He had visited bondage websites, the court was told, but only on 4 occasions in two years.

The inquest was also told that he had once tied himself to a bed and and had to rely on his landlord to free him.

Mr Williams' professional life was examined in minute detail as well. He was described as a brilliant man, highly intelligent and part of a team whose "Herculean efforts" in cryptology had won departmental awards at GCHQ.

Staff at MI6 gave evidence anonymously from behind a screen. They were pressed on why it took them eight days to report Mr Williams missing.

One MI6 officer, identified only as witness G said he first thought Mr Williams was stuck on a train, then thought perhaps there had been a mix up with holiday.

"In hindsight, knowing what I know now, should I have taken action? Absolutely." witness G said.

Another witness, SIS-F, apologised for Witness G's lack of action.

"SIS are profoundly sorry about what happened. It shouldn't have happened. We recognise the delay [of a week] in finding Gareth's body has made it harder to come to terms with his death." SIS-F said.

The delay in reporting him missing made the pathologists work very hard, the court heard. When Mr Williams' body was eventually discovered it was badly decomposed.

The three post mortem examinations could not establish the cause of death. Three pathologists told the inquest that the decomposition hindered their work.

Benjamin Swift, a Home Office pathologist, said that although the cause of death was "unascertained", he believed that poisoning or asphyxiation such as suffocation were "probably rather than possibly" to blame.

The police officer in charge of the investigation said at the start of the inquest that she believed the crux of the case surrounded the bag Mr Williams was found in.

The police still do not know how Mr Williams came to be in that bag. If he was alone, they do not know how he locked it from the outside.

If he was not alone, then who else was there and what motive did they have to kill him?

The police investigation had drawn a succession of blanks.

New evidence heard in this inquest for the first time might help them draw new leads in the coming months.

The police have repeatedly said there is still a chance of the breakthrough they need.

But now it is the turn of coroner Dr Wilcox to deliver her verdict on a case that remains, for now, a mystery.

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: 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.

Independent : Gareth Williams 'was probably killed unlawfully'

Gareth Williams 'was probably killed unlawfully'

John Hall | May 2, 2012

A spy found dead inside a locked holdall, was probably killed unlawfully and it is unlikely his death “will ever be satisfactorily explained” a coroner said today.

Dr Fiona Wilcox said she was sure a third party padlocked MI6 codebreaker Gareth Williams in the red holdall, and that "on the balance of evidence" he was probably alive when he was put in the bag.

She suggested that Mr Williams was suffocated by carbon dioxide, possibly as an onset of a short-acting poison adding "the cause of his death was unnatural and likely to have been criminally mediated”.

She dismissed speculation that Mr 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.

"I find on the balance of probabilities that if he had got into the bag and locked himself in, he would have taken a knife in with him… He was a risk assessor," she said.

Dr Wilcox said it remained a "legitimate line of inquiry" that the secret services were involved in Mr Williams' death, but added there was no actual evidence to support that he died at the hands of spies.

The coroner was highly critical of the 21-month investigation into Mr Williams’ death, saying it would appear that many agencies fell short" during the inquiries.

Dr Wilcox said "most of the fundamental questions in relation to how Gareth died remain unanswered", and questioned why details of Mr Williams' private life were leaked to the press.

MI6 apologised for waiting a week before raising the alarm about Mr Williams’ disappearance, something Dr Wilcox said hampered the investigation into his death.

Breakdowns in communication by her own office in ordering a second post-mortem examination, a DNA mix-up by forensics, and the late submission of evidence by MI6 were singled out for blame.

Referring to the suggestion Mr Williams has climbed into the bag himself, Dr Wilcox said she found the it "highly unlikely", adding "If Gareth had been carrying out some kind of peculiar experiment; he wouldn't care if he left any foot or fingerprints."

On claims Mr Williams was interested in bondage, the coroner added: "I would have expected much more internet activity to have been recovered."

The coroner ruled out Mr Williams's interest in bondage and drag queens as having any bearing, before adding: "I wonder if this was an attempt by some third party to manipulate the evidence."

Dr Wilcox said today there was no evidence to suggest the spy was a transvestite "or interested in any such thing".

The make-up found in his flat was more likely to reflect his interest in fashion, she argued and the wigs that were found there were "far more consistent with dress-up such as attendance at a manga conference".

There was some suggestion that his interest in female footwear could have been of a sexual nature, but this was not unusual, Dr Wilcox observed. "Gareth was naked in a bag when he was found, not cross-dressed, not in high-heeled shoes," she added.

Speaking outside court after the end of the inquest, Detective Chief Inspector Jackie Sebire, in charge of the investigation, said: "I've always been satisfied a third party may have been involved in his death and the coroner has confirmed that in her finding today.

"The inquest has raised several new lines of inquiry and the investigation will now refocus and actively pursue all the evidence heard and all the new lines of inquiry."

Scotland Yard said it will review new lines of inquiry, with fresh attention on Mr Williams’ colleagues.

Sky : Spy Death: Unlawful Killing Verdict Ruled Out

Spy Death: Unlawful Killing Verdict Ruled Out

Mark Stone, Sky reporter | May 2, 2012

A coroner investigating the death of MI6 spy Gareth Williams has said there is insufficient evidence to consider a verdict of unlawful killing.

Dr Fiona Wilcox said a narrative verdict was the most appropriate option available to her as an open verdict "would not do justice" to her findings.

Mr Williams' body was found curled up naked in a padlocked holdall in the bath of his flat in Pimlico, central London, in August 2010.

Dr Wilcox, who has spent seven days listening to evidence from 39 witnesses, is due to deliver her verdict later today over his mysterious death.

A narrative verdict is an option open to a coroner when other verdict options do not fit the case. It is a short factual statement outlining the facts.

It does leave open the option to include any failures by any party relevant to the circumstances of a death.

The lawyer for Mr Williams' family, Anthony O'Toole, believes that in the balance of probability, to use his words, the codebreaker's death was unlawful killing.

However, he accepts there is perhaps insufficient evidence to come categorically to that conclusion.

The very fact that Mr Williams' body was found locked in a bag would lead some to believe that perhaps there was a third party involved.

Indeed, the police have said all along that it is their belief that a third party was involved.

Dr Wilcox has questioned all of those who appeared in person and listened as lawyers for Mr Williams' family, as well as lawyers representing both the Metropolitan Police and MI6 cross-examined the witnesses.

Evidence included some surprising revelations, including the disclosure that MI6 had failed to pass over some of Mr Williams' belongings from his office at MI6.

The officer in charge of the investigation into his death only found out about the existence of some of the items on Tuesday.

"Had I known about their existence, I would have expected them to be disclosed and any relevant information to be sent to my team. I would have expected to have been told," DCI Jackie Sebire told the court.

A senior Metropolitan Police officer also admitted that he had relied on MI6 to decide which of Mr Williams' belongings was relevent to the investigation into the death.

Detective Superintendent Michael Broster said that he trusted MI6 to give him all the information he needed.

Responding to that admission, the coroner said: "Shouldn't the investigators be examining the items, not the people providing them?

"I would suggest that you are not being an impartial investigator in this case. An impartial investigator would have seized the items themselves."

Mr O'Toole put it more directly to Supt Broster.

"If the person who killed Gareth was a member of the Secret Intelligence Service, you did nothing to investigate because you believed that the organisation was trustworthy?"

The wide range of witnesses in this inquest began with Mr Williams' sister Ceri Subbe who talked fondly of her brother.

She described him as "a country boy" who had expressed frustration with his secondment from GCHQ in Gloucestershire to MI6 in London.

Friends of Mr Williams also gave evidence. Among them was Sian Jones, a fashion consultant.

"We were childhood sweethearts and I would just say we were very, very close," she told the court last week.

She, and other witnesses were asked how they could explain the fact that £20,000 of women's clothes and shoes were found in the flat where Mr Williams' body was discovered.

Ms Jones and Ms Subbe both told the inquest that Mr Williams was a very generous man and that the clothes were likely to be gifts. Ms Jones said he had frequently bought her clothes and handbags.

"He was a truly generous person. It wouldn't surprise me if they were gifts," she said.

His family listened as other uncomfortable details about his private life were discussed. He had visited bondage websites, the court was told, but only on four occasions in two years.

The inquest was also told he had once tied himself to a bed and had to rely on his landlord to free him.

Mr Williams' professional life was examined in minute detail as well. He was described as a brilliant man, highly intelligent and part of a team whose "Herculean efforts" in cryptology had won departmental awards at GCHQ.

Staff at MI6 gave evidence anonymously from behind a screen. They were pressed on why it took them eight days to report Mr Williams missing.

One MI6 officer, identified only as witness G said he first thought Mr Williams was stuck on a train, then thought perhaps there had been a mix up with holiday.

"In hindsight, knowing what I know now, should I have taken action? Absolutely," witness G said.

Another witness, SIS-F, apologised for Witness G's lack of action.

"SIS are profoundly sorry about what happened. It shouldn't have happened. We recognise the delay (of a week) in finding Gareth's body has made it harder to come to terms with his death," SIS-F said.

The delay in reporting him missing made the pathologists work very hard, the court heard. When Mr Williams' body was eventually discovered it was badly decomposed.

The three post-mortem examinations could not establish the cause of death. Three pathologists told the inquest that the decomposition hindered their work.

Benjamin Swift, a Home Office pathologist, said that although the cause of death was "unascertained", he believed that poisoning or asphyxiation such as suffocation were "probably rather than possibly" to blame.

The police officer in charge of the investigation said at the start of the inquest that she believed the crux of the case surrounded the bag Mr Williams was found in.

The police still do not know how Mr Williams came to be in that bag. If he was alone, they do not know how he locked it from the outside.

If he was not alone, then who else was there and what motive did they have for killing him?

The police investigation had drawn a succession of blanks.

New evidence heard in this inquest for the first time might help them draw new leads in the coming months.

The police have repeatedly said there is still a chance of the breakthrough they need.