Death of Gareth Williams
Gareth Williams (26 September 1978 – c. 16 August 2010) was a Welsh mathematician and employee of GCHQ seconded to the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS or MI6) who was found dead in suspicious circumstances at a Security Service safe house flat in Pimlico, London, on 23 August 2010.[1] The inquest found that his death was "unnatural and likely to have been criminally mediated." A subsequent Metropolitan Police re-investigation[2] concluded that Williams's death was "probably an accident".[3]
Background
Originally from Anglesey, Wales,[4] Williams, who spoke Welsh as a first language, began studying mathematics part-time at Bangor University, while still at Ysgol Uwchradd Bodedern school, and graduated with a first-class degree at age 17.[5] After gaining a PhD at the University of Manchester, he dropped out from a subsequent post-graduate course at St Catharine's College, Cambridge,[6] and took up employment with GCHQ in Cheltenham in 2001,[7] renting a room for a decade in Prestbury, Gloucestershire. Reportedly an intensely private man and a keen cyclist, Williams was due to return to Cheltenham at the beginning of September 2010 after his annual leave.[8]
Death
Police visited Williams's home during the afternoon of Monday 23 August 2010, as a "welfare check" after colleagues noted he had been out of contact for several days.[9] His decomposing naked remains were found in a red The North Face bag, padlocked from the outside, in the bath of the main bedroom's en-suite bathroom.[10][11] The police had gained entry into his top floor flat in Alderney Street, Pimlico at around 16:40.[12] His family believe that crucial DNA was interfered with and that fingerprints left at the scene were wiped off as part of a cover-up.[1] No fingerprints, palm-prints, footprints or traces of William's DNA were found on the rim of the bath, the bag zip or the bag padlock. The key to the padlock was inside the bag, underneath his body.[13]
Williams was buried at Ynys Wen cemetery in Valley, Anglesey, on 26 September 2010, following a private funeral service at Bethel Chapel in Holyhead attended by his family, friends, former colleagues in the intelligence services, and also by the head of SIS, Sir John Sawers.[14][15][16]
Investigation
Vincent Williams from the Metropolitan Police informed the Westminster Coroner's Court that experts were agreed that it was impossible for Gareth Williams to have locked himself in. Williams's date of death was estimated to have been in the early hours of 16 August, one week before he was found.[17]
Soon after the investigation started, the heads of the Secret Intelligence Service and Metropolitan Police met to discuss how the police would handle the investigation in light of the top secret nature of Williams's work, and who would lead the investigation. Williams had recently qualified for operational deployment, and had worked with U.S. National Security Agency and FBI agents. The U.S. State Department asked that no details of Williams's work should emerge at the inquest. The Foreign Secretary, William Hague, signed a public-interest immunity certificate authorising the withholding from the inquest of details of Williams's work and U.S. joint operations.[14]
After launching an investigation, the coroner Dr. Fiona Wilcox said that there were no injuries on his body and no signs that he had been involved in a struggle; his body was also free of alcohol and common recreational drugs.[18][19][20] The Metropolitan Police considered his death "suspicious and unexplained".[21] The FBI also conducted their own investigation into the case.[22]
In December 2010, police released further details, stating that Williams had visited a number of bondage websites although at the later inquest it was stated these visits were "sporadic and isolated" and accounted for only a small proportion of the time he spent online. It was also noted at the inquest that he never visited any website devoted to claustrophilia – a sexual interest in being confined in small spaces.[23]
An expert brought in to examine the bag in which Williams's body was found concluded that Williams could not have locked it. A police spokesperson stated that: "If he was alive, he got into it voluntarily or, if not, he was unconscious and placed in the bag."[24]
The heating in Williams's apartment was found to be turned on.[23] It has been suggested an elevated temperature inside the apartment would have sped up the decomposition of Williams's body.[25]
Subsequently, the police released an E-FIT photo of two people they were seeking, who were seen to enter the communal entrance of his home in June or July 2010.[24]
Coroner's inquest
The lawyer for the family, Anthony O'Toole, at the Coroner's inquest in March 2012, said that a second person was either present when Williams died, or someone broke in afterwards and stole items. There is no forensic evidence to support this view. No sign of forced entry could be found, but it was also noted that the door and locks had been removed by the time police experts had become involved.
DNA found on Williams's hand turned out to be contamination from one of the forensic scientists and the police determined that a Mediterranean couple they had been seeking had nothing to do with the inquiry.[26] LGC, the forensic company, apologised that the error had inflicted such pain on the family, caused by the incorrect data entry of a numerical code.[1]
Evidence at the inquest showed that it would have been virtually impossible for Williams to have locked himself in the bag.[27] Two experts were unable to lock themselves in a similar bag despite making 400 attempts to do so, although one stated there was a small chance Williams had managed the feat.[23] Pathologist Dr Richard Shepherd stated it was more likely that Williams was alive when he got into the bag, due to the difficulty of arranging a corpse in the position William's body was found in. Another pathologist stated that Williams would have been overcome by hypercapnia, elevated carbon dioxide levels, after only two or three minutes in the bag.[23]
Williams's family said they believed that a secret service agency was involved in his death.[28]
Dr Fiona Wilcox, the Coroner, said that she would "follow the evidence" wherever it led.[1]
Evidence given by Williams's former landlady in Cheltenham showed how one night he had awoken her and her husband, screaming for help. Apparently he had managed to tie himself to his bed, and required assistance in releasing himself. The testimony was that Williams had claimed at the time that he had done it just to see if he could free himself and that he promised not to try this again. Nothing further had been said about the incident since between Williams and his landlady.[29]
Evidence was given of £20,000 worth of women's clothing being found in the flat.[30]
The journalist Duncan Campbell reported that the inquest evidence indicated Williams was one of a team of intelligence officers sent to penetrate US and UK hacking networks. He had attended the 2010 Black Hat Briefings and DEF CON conferences. He had started with SIS in London in spring 2009, and after taking a number of training courses started on "active operational work".[7] A few months before his death, he asked to return to GCHQ as he disliked the "rat race, flash car competitions and post-work drinking culture" at SIS and as a keen cyclist and walker wanted to go back to the countryside, and was due to return in September.[31]
Inquest verdict
The coroner found in a narrative verdict that Williams's death was "unnatural and likely to have been criminally mediated". The coroner was "satisfied that on the balance of probabilities that Gareth was killed unlawfully". There was insufficient evidence to give a verdict of unlawful killing. The coroner concluded that another party placed the bag containing Williams into the bath, and on the balance of probabilities locked the bag. No fingerprints were found around the bath. The coroner was critical of SIS for failing to report Williams missing for seven days, which caused extra anguish and suffering for his family, and led to the loss of forensic evidence.[2][31][32]
The coroner rejected suicide, interest in bondage or cross-dressing, or "auto-erotic activity" being involved in Williams's death.[33] She said his visits to bondage websites only occurred intermittently and were not of a frequency to indicate an active interest.[31] The coroner condemned leaks about cross-dressing[34] as a possible attempt at media manipulation.[2]
The coroner was highly critical of the Metropolitan Police's Counter Terrorism Command (SO15), who failed to tell the senior investigating officer before the inquest began of the existence of nine memory sticks and other property in Williams's SIS office. SO15 failed to take formal statements when interviewing SIS officers. The coroner said the possible involvement of SIS staff in the death was a legitimate line of inquiry for the police.[2]
Metropolitan Police investigation
The finding by Westminster coroner Dr Fiona Wilcox prompted a reinvestigation by the Metropolitan Police lasting a further 12 months which officers said had been allowed unprecedented access to serving MI6 staff following strong criticism at the inquest of the spying agency's actions following the death of Mr Williams.
But a senior Scotland Yard officer announced that despite a re-examination of all evidence and the investigation of new leads no definitive answers had been obtained as to the cause of Mr Williams's death and the "most probable scenario" was that he had died alone in his flat in Pimlico, central London, as the result of accidentally locking himself inside the bag.[35]
In August 2015 the Daily Mail reported that before his death Williams had been conducting financial surveillance on illicit cash flows out of Russia, and that there had been a surreptitious entry into his flat in the days immediately following discovery of his body, presumably for the purpose of removing incriminating evidence. Questions as to the compromise of the personal identity of the surveillance technician, whether by mole, technical penetration, or intentional abandonment, remain unresolved.[36] In the same month, the Daily Mail reported that Williams had angered his bosses at SIS by accessing confidential data regarding former President of the United States Bill Clinton; he had provided a friend with the guest list for an event Clinton was due to attend.[37]
2015 Developments
In September and October 2015, Boris Karpichkov, a former KGB agent who defected from Russia and who now lives in Britain, stated during interviews that "sources in Russia" have claimed that the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, also known as the SVR, was responsible for Williams's murder. According to Karpichkov, the SVR tried and failed to blackmail Williams into becoming a double agent.[25]
In response to the SVR's attempts, Williams apparently claimed that he knew "the identity of a Russian spy inside the GCHQ." Karpichkov claimed that Williams's threat meant that "the SVR then had no alternative but to exterminate him in order to protect their agent inside GCHQ." Regarding the cause of death, Karpichkov claimed that the SVR killed Williams "by an untraceable poison introduced in his ear."[38][39]
See also
References
- 1 2 3 4 Gordon Rayner, Chief Reporter "Was MI6 spy-in-a-bag Gareth Williams killed by 'secret service dark arts'?", The Telegraph, 30 March 2012.
- 1 2 3 4 Caroline Davies; Sandra Laville (2 May 2012). "MI6 and Met condemned over Gareth Williams's death". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 3 May 2012.
- ↑ "MI6 spy Gareth Williams death 'probably an accident', police say", BBC News, 13 November 2013.
- ↑ "Dead MI6 worker is Welsh". ITV News. 25 August 2010. Archived from the original on 30 August 2010. Retrieved 24 February 2013.
- ↑ "MI6 worker Gareth Williams was an 'exceptional' pupil". BBC North West Wales. 26 August 2010. Retrieved 2 April 2013.
- ↑ Cathy Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy "Who was Gareth Williams?" The Guardian, 20 November 2010.
- 1 2 Duncan Campbell (3 May 2012). "GCHQ's spy death riddle shines light on UK hacker war". The Register. Retrieved 3 May 2012.
- ↑ Vikram Dodd, et al "MI6 worker murdered, stuffed in a bag and dumped in a bath", The Guardian, 25 August 2010.
- ↑ "Exclusive: new details on MI6 spy's death", Channel 4 News, 28 August 2010.
- ↑ "Spy last seen alive eight days before body was found in bag", The Guardian (Press Association), 28 August 2010.
- ↑ "Body of MI6 worker Gareth Williams 'locked in bag'". BBC News. 1 September 2010. Retrieved 1 September 2010.
- ↑ Helen Pidd "'British spy' found dead in bath", The Guardian, 25 August 2010.
- ↑ Clarke-Billings, Lucy (24 October 2015). "'Spy in bag' Gareth Williams was 'murdered by Russian hitmen after sexual photo blackmail plot'". The Daily Telegraph. London. Retrieved 25 October 2015.
- 1 2 Patrick Sawer; Gordon Thomas (22 April 2012). "Secret meeting between MI6 and police hours after discovery of spy Gareth Williams's death". Daily Telegraph. London. Retrieved 27 April 2012.
- ↑
- ↑ Tom Pettifor (10 March 2012). "Was body-in-the-bag spy Gareth Williams betrayed by a double agent? – Mirror Online". Mirror.co.uk. Retrieved 24 February 2013.
- ↑ "Profile: MI6 spy Gareth Williams", BBC News, 23 April 2012.
- ↑ Lutwyche, Jayne (24 September 2010). "Police appeal for information in MI6 worker, Gareth Williams, death inquiry". ITV. Retrieved 2 May 2012.
- ↑ Sam Jones and Matthew Taylor "Gareth Williams's parents identify body", The Guardian, 26 August 2010.
- ↑ Caroline Davies (6 September 2010). "Police issue CCTV footage of dead MI6 worker". London: Guardian. Retrieved 2 May 2012.
- ↑ "More tests due on body of MI6 worker Gareth Williams", BBC News, 26 August 2010.
- ↑ Thomas, Gordon; Sawer, Patrick (25 September 2010). "FBI joins investigation into MI6 spy's death". The Daily Telegraph. London.
- 1 2 3 4 Davis, Caroline (2 May 2012). "Gareth Williams: the key unanswered questions". The Guardian. Retrieved 24 October 2015.
- 1 2 "Dead MI6 spy Gareth Williams 'visited bondage websites'". BBC News. 22 December 2010. Retrieved 22 December 2010.
- 1 2 Malone, Andrew (23 October 2015). "After years of intrigue has this Kremlin defector solved the riddle of the spy in the bag? Former Russian major claims KGB was trying to recruit Gareth Williams". Daily Mail. Retrieved 24 October 2015.
- ↑ Press Association (23 April 2012). "Gareth Williams: coroner's inquest over spy found dead in bag". London: Guardian. Retrieved 2 May 2012.
- ↑ "MI6 officer inquest hears claim of third party role". BBC News. 27 April 2012. Retrieved 2 May 2012.
- ↑ Chris Greenwood (31 March 2012). "Secret agents specializing in dark arts may have covered up death of MI6 spy found in holdall". Daily Mail. London. Retrieved 2 May 2012.
- ↑ Paul Cheston "Spy Gareth Williams 'tied himself to bed and had to be freed by landlady'", Evening Standard, 25 April 2012. Retrieved 25 April 2012.
- ↑ Whitehead, Tom (26 April 2012). "Interest in women's clothing and sadomasochism would not have prevented Gareth Williams joining MI6, inquest hears". London: Telegraph. Retrieved 24 February 2013.
- 1 2 3 Tom Whitehead; Martin Evans (2 May 2012). "Coroner: MI6 spy's death was probably a crime". Daily Telegraph. London. Retrieved 4 May 2012.
- ↑ "MI6 death: Gareth Williams 'probably' killed unlawfully". BBC News. 2 May 2012. Retrieved 2 May 2012.
- ↑ Caroline Davies; James Meikle (2 May 2012). "Gareth Williams's death was 'criminally mediated', says coroner". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 3 May 2012.
- ↑ For example a leak reported in the 2011 news story: Anthony France; John Kay; Guy Patrick; Emily Nash (12 January 2011). "Murdered spook was a cross dresser". The Sun. London. Retrieved 4 May 2012.
MURDERED MI6 worker Gareth Williams was a secret transvestite who may have been killed by a gay lover, detectives said yesterday.
- ↑ Raphael Satter (13 November 2013). "Gareth Williams, British Spy, Likely Died in Bag By Accident , opposite of what the coroner had stated". Huffington Post. AP.
- ↑ Robert Verkaik, "Agents 'killed the body-in-bag spy... then got into his flat through skylight to destroy evidence'", The Daily Mail, 15 August 2015.
- ↑ Jenny Stanton (30 August 2015) Spy found dead in a bag, Gareth Williams, 'had infuriated his MI6 bosses' | Daily Mail Online. Dailymail.co.uk. Retrieved on 2015-10-26.
- ↑ Barbara Tasch (28 September 2015) KGB defector: Russia killed the British spy found in a duffel bag, Business Insider.
- ↑ Loulla-Mae Eleftheriou-Smith (28 September 2015) MI6 spy Gareth Williams was ‘killed by Russia for refusing to become double agent’, former KGB man claims, The Independent.
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