UK UK - Gareth Williams, 31, Pimlico, London, 16 Aug 2010
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trendsetter
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BBC podcast series about the case is 'coming soon':
www.bbc.co.uk
BBC Radio Wales - Death of a Codebreaker, Death of a Codebreaker…. Coming soon
The story of the Welsh codebreaker whose body was found inside a bag in his bath in 2010.
WestLondoner
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I shall look forward to this one. It is obvious he was murdered and put into the bag, but less obvious by whom.
Has the mystery of the 'spy in the bag' finally been solved? Scotland Yard finds MI6 agent Gareth Williams who was found in a holdall with zips padlocked together in his bathtub 'was likely alone when he died'
Scotland Yard finds MI6 agent 'was likely alone when he died'
Gareth Williams was 31 when he was found dead, naked and decomposing in his flat in Pimlico in 2010. The code breaker and exceptional mathematician had been working for MI6.
WestLondoner
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Hilarious
Reminds me of the Roberto Calvi case where he tied his own hands behind his back, filled his pockets with bricks and hanged himself under a Thames bridge. Nothing suspicious about that at all - clearly suicide. Move along. Nothing to see here.
Reminds me of the Roberto Calvi case where he tied his own hands behind his back, filled his pockets with bricks and hanged himself under a Thames bridge. Nothing suspicious about that at all - clearly suicide. Move along. Nothing to see here.
Review of MI6 worker Gareth Williams’ death finds no new DNA evidence
Code-breaker was found dead inside a padlocked holdall at his London flat in 2010A forensic review of the death of the MI6 worker Gareth Williams, whose body was found inside a zipped holdall at his London flat, has not uncovered fresh evidence to suggest he was with someone else when he died, the Metropolitan police have said.
Review of MI6 worker Gareth Williams’ death finds no new DNA evidence
Code-breaker was found dead inside a padlocked holdall at his London flat in 2010
Al Ka
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(edit to add: I see quoted link no longer works, but it stated that Ex-MP claims that spy was killed by Kremlin)
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Any MP would say that, woul not they? Because if they pointed at other direction, British MI6, it would be end of their political career or whatever is left of it. Let's not forget MI6 is UK government institution working with and for government interests ... hence MI6 reputation and image is quite important and can't be/should not be blemished also for national security reasons.
The same goes for UK police. Even if by some miracle they found evidence and wanted to publicly state that MI6 is in any way involved in a murder there would not be ever allowed by powers to be. Head of UK police, who is appointed by Home Secretary (government) would be replaced in a heartbeat. Can you imagine regular police even trying to investigate anything within Secret Intelligence Service MI6? 90% of answers to police would be reducted or marked as classified.
For reasons above, I personally do not think this case will be ever solved or at least not in near future.
What made me chuckle in documentary is that MI6, org with smartest intelligence people in the country called regular 999, police, to investigate their own spy, with highest clearance in the country, to go missing. Breaking their own MI6 security protocols just to divert attention. How dumb and "not suspicious" at all.
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WestLondoner
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...a police investigation found he had probably died accidentally on his own. “Since 2010 the Met has carried out extensive inquiries into Gareth’s death...No new DNA evidence was found and no further lines of inquiry were identified"
LOL, the Met do make me chuckle at times.
The fact that there is no evidence is the evidence. You can't padlock
yourself into a holdall in a bath and leave no fingerprints on the padlock or the bath. You could wear gloves but then where are the gloves? You don't do this with the clear head to which the absence of drugs or alcohol in his blood points. You don't put the heating on in warm weather. All this tells you IMO that this was a crime scene managed ex post by the killers to destroy all evidence.
The nonchalant response by his employers is also puzzling. If one of my people did not turn up for work on a Monday morning and we'd heard nothing, we'd call them to see if they were OK, or having transport issues, or what. If we couldn't reach them, we'd try recorded next of kin (from HR), and we'd text and email. We're just a commercial firm, and we wouldn't ignore an absence - but that's exactly what SIS did for a whole week!! He was concluded to have died on Monday 16 August, and nobody entered the flat until Monday 23rd!
LOL, the Met do make me chuckle at times.
The fact that there is no evidence is the evidence. You can't padlock
yourself into a holdall in a bath and leave no fingerprints on the padlock or the bath. You could wear gloves but then where are the gloves? You don't do this with the clear head to which the absence of drugs or alcohol in his blood points. You don't put the heating on in warm weather. All this tells you IMO that this was a crime scene managed ex post by the killers to destroy all evidence.
The nonchalant response by his employers is also puzzling. If one of my people did not turn up for work on a Monday morning and we'd heard nothing, we'd call them to see if they were OK, or having transport issues, or what. If we couldn't reach them, we'd try recorded next of kin (from HR), and we'd text and email. We're just a commercial firm, and we wouldn't ignore an absence - but that's exactly what SIS did for a whole week!! He was concluded to have died on Monday 16 August, and nobody entered the flat until Monday 23rd!
supernothing
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I feel for this man's poor family.
I agree with you WestLondoner. How is no DNA)sprints evidence that this was self inflicted?! His own prints and DNA would be on the zip. The bath. The bag..
He couldn't have had any gloves on.
To me no DNA and prints shows me that the killer was, as you'd expect, forensically aware. Gloved up. cleaned up everything and didn't leave a trace. Heating left high...A complete cover up!
I agree with you WestLondoner. How is no DNA)sprints evidence that this was self inflicted?! His own prints and DNA would be on the zip. The bath. The bag..
He couldn't have had any gloves on.
To me no DNA and prints shows me that the killer was, as you'd expect, forensically aware. Gloved up. cleaned up everything and didn't leave a trace. Heating left high...A complete cover up!
owlcatz
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Not sure how I ever missed this story, but it all screams of a Russian or govt motivated/secret hit job. Perhaps kompromat on the women's clothing and tying himself up did not work? I am not sure anyone will ever know, but I doubt he has anything to do much with Bitcoin - Craig Wright aka Faketoshi, has been lying and falsifying docs for years, so for him it's just a convenient story IMO.
WestLondoner
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If one were steelmanning the case that this was genuinely an accident arising from some sexual oddity, I think there are a few things one would point to in support.
First, he had apparently looked at BDSM websites.
Second, there is the episode in his previous flat where he had to be rescued by his landlady after he tied himself up.
Third, there is the collection of women's clothing, although I don't know whether e.g. credit card payments for these by him were ever surfaced to prove the garments were not just planted.
Fourth, he does not appear to have had any sort of relationship history with anybody.
Fifth, despite this being an MI6 property that you'd expect to be covered by CCTV, there does not seem to be any evidence of unidentified visitors to his flat.
The challenge to this line of thinking is twofold. One angle is that it's incomplete - it does not at all explain details such as the absence of an evidence trail leading to the holdall, or the heating being on during August. The other is that it could all be entirely irrelevant and used against him either for control or, later, to muddy the waters around how he died. Someone finds out about it and it conveniently suggests the plausible false trail to lay that points to a long-established pattern of behaviour. By analogy, if he had been a classic car enthusiast, he might have been found crushed underneath the vintage MG he was working on when its axle stands collapsed.
There was apparently no sign of poisons in GW's blood, but then, the samples were not taken for a week. Some drugs and toxins have short half-lives and can evaporate or degrade to undetectable levels in that time, or may undergo metabolic processes in the body post-mortem, so that they break down or transform into other substances by the time samples are collected for toxicology testing. Anyone who killed with poison would want the body to remain unfound as long as possible to give these processes time to happen. This would hide what type of poison was used, usefully so because that in turn might reveal when and how he was poisoned.
No killer would have any way to ensure he was not found short of taking him away and hiding him, which was not done. In this context, the complete failure of an intelligence agency to react to or even notice the disappearance of an employee is very troubling. I have a great deal of difficulty believing that was just an oversight, especially given the central heating detail. It's almost as though his employers wanted to make sure nothing showed up in any toxicology report and assisted this end by doing nothing to find him. Indeed, he wasn't found because of anything they did; he was found because his family became worried and alerted the police. If they had not done so, he would presumably have remained undiscovered for longer still.
First, he had apparently looked at BDSM websites.
Second, there is the episode in his previous flat where he had to be rescued by his landlady after he tied himself up.
Third, there is the collection of women's clothing, although I don't know whether e.g. credit card payments for these by him were ever surfaced to prove the garments were not just planted.
Fourth, he does not appear to have had any sort of relationship history with anybody.
Fifth, despite this being an MI6 property that you'd expect to be covered by CCTV, there does not seem to be any evidence of unidentified visitors to his flat.
The challenge to this line of thinking is twofold. One angle is that it's incomplete - it does not at all explain details such as the absence of an evidence trail leading to the holdall, or the heating being on during August. The other is that it could all be entirely irrelevant and used against him either for control or, later, to muddy the waters around how he died. Someone finds out about it and it conveniently suggests the plausible false trail to lay that points to a long-established pattern of behaviour. By analogy, if he had been a classic car enthusiast, he might have been found crushed underneath the vintage MG he was working on when its axle stands collapsed.
There was apparently no sign of poisons in GW's blood, but then, the samples were not taken for a week. Some drugs and toxins have short half-lives and can evaporate or degrade to undetectable levels in that time, or may undergo metabolic processes in the body post-mortem, so that they break down or transform into other substances by the time samples are collected for toxicology testing. Anyone who killed with poison would want the body to remain unfound as long as possible to give these processes time to happen. This would hide what type of poison was used, usefully so because that in turn might reveal when and how he was poisoned.
No killer would have any way to ensure he was not found short of taking him away and hiding him, which was not done. In this context, the complete failure of an intelligence agency to react to or even notice the disappearance of an employee is very troubling. I have a great deal of difficulty believing that was just an oversight, especially given the central heating detail. It's almost as though his employers wanted to make sure nothing showed up in any toxicology report and assisted this end by doing nothing to find him. Indeed, he wasn't found because of anything they did; he was found because his family became worried and alerted the police. If they had not done so, he would presumably have remained undiscovered for longer still.
I’ve just started listening to the podcast Death Of A Codebreaker which led me to Googling Gareth Williams and then to here.
I’m actually finding it quite a hard listen, I’m usually able to switch off thinking about something when I literally switch off the podcast / video. For some reason I keep thinking about this case, and this horrible image of how this poor guy died. I feel so sorry for the family left behind and with no answers. I doubt they’ll ever get any…
I bet even if one day a tiny fragment of DNA could be identified, that the official answer would still be that Gareth Williams locked himself in the hold-all for whatever reason, and that there was no evidence found of anyone else being present found. It all smacks of a cover up imo sadly. Even if it wasn’t MI5 themselves, they’d have so many reasons to let a cover up by another country (Russia or whoever) play out.
I’m actually finding it quite a hard listen, I’m usually able to switch off thinking about something when I literally switch off the podcast / video. For some reason I keep thinking about this case, and this horrible image of how this poor guy died. I feel so sorry for the family left behind and with no answers. I doubt they’ll ever get any…
I bet even if one day a tiny fragment of DNA could be identified, that the official answer would still be that Gareth Williams locked himself in the hold-all for whatever reason, and that there was no evidence found of anyone else being present found. It all smacks of a cover up imo sadly. Even if it wasn’t MI5 themselves, they’d have so many reasons to let a cover up by another country (Russia or whoever) play out.
Agree with you. I think other than his family, no one else wants to solve this.