LONDON – A British spy whose naked corpse was found locked in a bag in his London home was probably killed unlawfully by another person but the full truth may never be known, a coroner said yesterday.
Gareth Williams (31) was found curled in the foetal position inside a zipped and padlocked red hold-all in his bathtub in August 2010.
An unnamed spy who spoke from behind a screen, and a yoga expert who tried and failed 100 times to lock himself into an identical bag to see if it was possible, were among witnesses who testified during a seven-day inquest into his death.
“I am sure that a third party placed the bag into the bath and on the balance of probabilities locked the bag . . . The cause of his death was unnatural and likely to have been criminally mediated,” said coroner Fiona Wilcox, delivering her verdict.
She said there was no evidence that any fellow spy had been involved, but it remained a legitimate line of inquiry.
The case has exposed failings at MI6, Britain’s external intelligence agency, which did not report Mr Williams missing for days after he did not show up at work even though its protocol required the alert to be raised within two to four hours.
“Our grief is exacerbated by the failure of his employers at MI6 to take even the most basic inquiries as to his whereabouts and welfare which any reasonable employer would have taken,” Mr Williams’ family said in a statement.
MI6 has apologised for its failings and for causing distress to the Williams family, while police said after the coroner’s verdict that they would continue their investigations. “The inquest has raised several new lines of inquiry and the investigation will now refocus and actively pursue all the evidence heard,” said Jackie Sebire, who led the investigation.
The unusual details of the case fuelled intense media speculation about what might have happened, ranging from murder by foreign spies to a sexual experiment gone wrong.
Police found make-up, a long-haired wig and unworn women’s clothes and shoes worth about £20,000 (€24,600) in Mr Williams’ flat. They also found images of transvestites, a picture of Mr Williams wearing only boots and evidence on his computer of visits to sexual bondage websites.
But Ms Wilcox rejected the idea that the death was linked to unusual sexual practices, noting that there was no evidence that Mr Williams, a keen hill-runner and cyclist, was interested in claustrophilia, and that no semen was found in the red hold-all.
“I therefore wonder what was the motive for such information to have been released out to the media? I wonder if this was an attempt by some third party to manipulate perception of the evidence,” she said.
Under British law, a coroner’s court does not apportion blame but rather seeks to understand the circumstances of a death.
But Ms Wilcox said that countless questions remained unanswered in this case. “There has been endless speculation but little real evidence. It is unlikely this death will ever be satisfactorily explained.” Investigations were complicated by the fact his body was badly decomposed after remaining in the bag in the August heat for a week until he was found. – (Reuters)