UK UK - Gareth Williams, 31, Pimlico, London, 16 Aug 2010

wfgodot

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On 25 August, Ian and Ellen Williams touched down at Manchester airport and were met by police, who officially broke the news that two days earlier in London, a man believed to be their son had been found dead. The body had been found padlocked inside a sports bag in the flat where Gareth was staying.
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On 23 August, at 6.30 pm, a uniformed officer [had been] sent to Williams's top-floor flat in a Georgian townhouse in Alderney Street, Pimlico. It was only a few hundred yards from the MI6 headquarters at Vauxhall, and was used by the Secret Intelligence Service as a safe house.
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Given his clearances and access to classified material, Williams's death triggered alarm across Whitehall. MI5 agents swept through the Alderney Street flat, followed by detectives from the Homicide and Serious Crime Command, assisted by SO15, Scotland Yard's Counter Terrorism Command.
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"We do 50 obvious poisons. Fifty rare. We can do the isotopes. Litvinenko alerted us to that. But in the absence of a specific direction, the possibilities are as limitless as a killer's imagination… and we cannot test for that [pathologist Dr. Ben Swift said]"
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Or perhaps the body in the bag was evidence of a stage-managed "personal event", masterminded by a controlling individual. Was this a suicide (with Williams acting on his own)? Or a sadistic or masochistic sexual act gone wrong (with Williams engaging in some kind of auto-erotic asphyxiation?).
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Williams was brought into close proximity to US intelligence, Islamic radicals and Middle Eastern agents. He would rub shoulders with the Russians, too, according to a foreign intelligence analyst based in the UK, who described how technology and software honed by GCHQ was deployed in tracking a Moscow-backed sleeper cell to which Britain had been alerted as early as 2003. (....) He was now on secondment to MI6.
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Rogue individuals and nation states, Islamist terror groups and radical loners, extortionists and organised criminals – these were just some of those Williams had observed, investigated, disrupted and provoked. Any one of them was capable of reciprocating, lethally.
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Given the florid rumours that had circulated around his death, [the mourners] were surprised by the appearance there of Sir John Sawers, head of MI6. (....) After an investigation that had failed to turn up the smallest vice, Williams was no longer lampooned but celebrated as a very British spy: modest, capable and known well by no one.

A huge Guardian article, about his unsolved - and perhaps unsolvable - murder and the life
of Gareth Williams - of which the above is only a very small part - at
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/20/gareth-williams-spy-mi6
 
I should also probably have appended above definitions of MI5 and MI6:

"The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) is responsible for supplying the British Government with foreign intelligence. Alongside the internal Security Service (MI5), the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) and the Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS), it operates under the formal direction of the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC).

It is frequently referred to in the mass media and popular parlance by the name MI6, a name used as a flag of convenience during the Second World War when it was known by many names. The mere existence of MI6 was not officially acknowledged in public until 1994

[ame]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_Intelligence_Service[/ame]
 
I don't get the sex or suicide angle, if he was padlocked in but then I don't really get how a sports bag can be padlocked either ... (?)

gonna read up on this though - you've definately peaked my interest!
 
I don't get the sex or suicide angle, if he was padlocked in but then I don't really get how a sports bag can be padlocked either ... (?)

gonna read up on this though - you've definately peaked my interest!

It is a fascinating case. I should have started the thread earlier, as I've followed it since it happened. The articles in the tabloids suggesting he died because of his sexual orientation and preferences were over the top, though they were convincing for awhile. Then the tide turned to work-involved assassination, as the Guardian article suggests.

As with any good mystery, I really have no idea of what occurred. It's straight out of a Graham Greene or a John le Carré novel.
 
How was this dead person identified? Was it by fingerprints? If I were Gareths parents, I would question if it was even him in the bag. I read the story, but some of it doesn't make sense to me.

I also do not believe for one moment this 'safe house' did not have cameras. MI6 knows what went down, IMO.

JMO
 
How was this dead person identified? Was it by fingerprints? If I were Gareths parents, I would question if it was even him in the bag. I read the story, but some of it doesn't make sense to me.

I also do not believe for one moment this 'safe house' did not have cameras. MI6 knows what went down, IMO.

JMO

One of the tabloid articles suggests GW was identified by means of comparison with a family photo, but I'm certain he was or could have been identified via dental charts or DNA or fingerprints also (if available on the body post mortem). I'm sure enough it was Gareth Williams.

Of course, toss in the entire SIS angle, and one can conclude, with a shrug and a sigh, "God only knows." Which perhaps is the route the parents have taken as t'would, perhaps, be none too wise to question matters further, given the players and the circumstance.
 
Thanks, wfgodot!

I have just finished reading 30 chapters of 'Sherlock Holmes and the Alderney Street Mystery'! Very good reading and written as a piece of fact based fiction. I will be looking forward to the rest of the chapters.

I dunno. The family did not identify Gareth. There is no mention of fingerprints or DNA identification in any of the articles I read. It was that the medical examiner was able to identify Gareth by a recent picture provided by his family. As a matter of fact; it did not sound very professional at all.

Could he have defected to the 'other side' and a body resembling Gareth found? After having read everything I could find on this, I am not even convinced he is really dead. Stranger things have happened. Just color me crazy, LOL! This seems to be a case that will never be solved, IMO, because of MI6 being involved. They probably know exactly and we will never find out.

MOO
 
Here's one of the tabloid articles "explaining" what occurred:

Bag spook died in 'Houdini' sex game

''Links to other Sun articles on the case there as well, also a picture of a
North Face sport bag allegedly like the one in which Mr Williams perished.


An examination of his two laptops showed he visited websites on claustrophilia. ''

He also had links to a bondage and sado-masochism website



Read more: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepag...k-died-in-Houdini-sex-game.html#ixzz169juhExU

I would hate to read what LE said about my pc contents If something crazy went down. Really Websleuths should issue us waivers on sign up.
 
Spy whose body was found in holdall visited bondage websites, police say MI6
Codebreaker viewed sites that showed people bound and tied and included do-it-yourself guides, detectives reveal
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A detective said she was convinced, however, that someone else had been involved in putting Williams into the bag.

Detectives also found a £15,000 collection of unworn women's designer clothing, including tops, dresses and shoes, in his wardrobe.

They revealed that Williams had visited a drag cabaret in east London four days before his death, and had tickets to two more. One witness has also come forward to say he was at a popular gay bar in Vauxhall, south London, several months before his death.
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much more, at
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/22/spy-body-holdall-bondage-websites
 
Another report
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-12059910

Poor guy, humiliated in death, what a way to go

I would guess that those that... practice... such strange... obsessions... take that chance... of being humiliated in death, I mean...

Look at David Carradine... I'm sure he didn't want to be remembered by the way he died... but how much you want to bet that that'll be the first thing in people's minds when his name is mentioned?
 
I'm interested in the statement from the Guardian article linked above from the "casually dressed Mediterranean couple in their 20s":

They suggested they had been given a key by "Pierre Palo" and were on their way to flat four.

It could be clearly a soundalike reference to the late Italian film director Pier Paolo Pasolini, whose perhaps most-known and darkest work, Salò, is his rendition of the Marquis de Sade's The 120 Days of Sodom. Was this a code name chosen for that reason?
 
This story's just too good for the tabloids to leave alone for long; here's the Daily Mail's new take on the matter:

The secret double identity of murdered spy: Friend insists Gareth Williams was not gay - and was being trained by MI6 for undercover role

In an interview with The Mail on Sunday, ['confidante and childhood sweetheart' Sian Lloyd-Jones] said: ‘I find it difficult to see anything in his personal life which could lie behind this.’
She reveals:

He was training to take on a new identity eight months before he was found dead.
He often purchased designer women’s clothes, but she insists they were gifts for her and his sister.
The maths genius was found dead two days before he was due to visit Paris with his sister.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...dentity-gay-friend-insists.html#ixzz19AYcqxCP
 
All very fascinating! Thanks for bringing it to our attention, WFG!

I must say that I was very fascinated with the entire Alexander Litvinenko poisoning case (and even watched a documentary on it at the Toronto 'Hot Docs' Festival a couple of years ago). I was also intrigued by the possibility of Russian/Georgian spy/mafia involvement in the disappearance of the young recent Georgian immigrant, 17 year old Mariam Makhniashvili, on her way to high school in Toronto -- although I have since dismissed that likelihood).


Having said all that, I can't imagine that MI6 would allow the truth to come out. I think that all media articles are either planted or are wild guesses. Somehow I doubt they are close to the truth. I will admit though, that it would take an 'unusual' individual to be attracted to the spy game. So perhaps someone with unusual 'proclivities' isn't that farfetched??

Fascinating....although not so much for the dead person's family...whether Gareth Williams, or someone else.
 
The Daily Mail revives the tale:

Did Russian mafia kill the body-in-a-bag spy? MI6 man found dead in holdall
in London, was developing secret technology to track gangsters' laundered cash

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'He was involved in a very sensitive project with the highest security clearance. He was not an agent doing surveillance, but was very much part of the team, working on the technology side, devising stuff like software,’ said the source.

He added: ‘A knock-on effect of this technology would be that a number of criminal groups in Russia would be disrupted.'
more at link above
 
This is a a really unusual case; the key for the bag being found inside the bag, eye-holes in the handles, visits to bondage, claustrophillia and escort sites on his computer point towards self-infliction maybe a partner (or escort) that ignored his safe word and left him dead. But on the other hand, the unusual arrangement of SIM cards and mobile phones in his flat and the very nature of his employment point towards anothers involvement.
 

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