Spy in bag probably unlawfully killed says coroner

MI6 codebreaker Gareth Williams was probably killed unlawfully but the case might never be solved, a coroner said as the inquest into his death drew to a close.

Fiona Wilcox said she was sure a third party locked Mr Williams inside the red holdall in which he was found dead and criticised the 21-month investigation, saying it was unlikely the riddle “will ever be satisfactorily explained”.

“The cause of his death was unnatural and likely to have been criminally mediated,” she said in her two-hour narrative verdict at Mr Williams’s inquest.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

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

Mr Williams’s family criticised his employers at MI6 afterwards for their response to his death, saying “our grief was exacerbated” by it.

His sister looked on as Dr Wilcox told a packed Westminster Coroner’s Court that “on the balance of evidence” he was probably alive when he was put in the bag.

Dr Wilcox said it remained a “legitimate line of inquiry” that the secret services were involved in Mr Williams’s death but said “there was no evidence to support that he died at the hands of” spies.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

She ruled that “it would appear that many agencies fell short” during the inquiries into his death.

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 added.

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

Pathologists had earlier said he would have suffocated within three minutes if he was alive when he got inside the bag.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Dr Wilcox dismissed speculation 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,” she added.

MI6 apologised for failures in raising the alarm about his disappearance earlier as Dr Wilcox said several factors hampered inquiries. Breakdowns in communication by her own coroner’s office in ordering a second post-mortem examination, a DNA mix-up by forensics and the late submission of evidence by MI6 to police were singled out for blame.

Mr Williams, a 31-year-old 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.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Police recovered no evidence of a third party being present and have no suspects in their inquiry.

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.

In a statement read out by his family’s solicitor after the inquest, they said they were “extremely disappointed” at the secret services’ “reluctance and failure” to make relevant information available to the death inquiry.

They also attacked the “total inadequacies” of the inquiry by Metropolitan Police counter-terror branch SO15 into MI6 and called on Scotland Yard’s chief to look into how the investigation would proceed in light of this.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Deputy Assistant Commissioner Martin Hewitt said the force had launched a review “to understand in detail what occurred and to identify any evidential opportunities for the investigation into Gareth’s death.

“It is important for me to stress that this has be and remains a current investigation and we are 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,” he said.

Detective Chief Inspector Jackie Sebire, in charge of the investigation, said: “The inquest has raised several new lines of inquiry.”