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On August 23, 2010, 31 year old Gareth Williams was found dead in his London apartment. An autopsy revealed he'd likely died a week earlier on August 16. Since then, he'd been locked in a red airtight sports bag in his bathtub. His employer, MI6, vowed to launch an internal review into the death. But as an intelligence agency, they couldn't perform a full scale murder investigation. That was the job of the London Police Scotland Yard. The problem was rank and file officers didn't have the security clearance to interrogate Gareth's co workers. If his death had something to do with his job at MI6, they would have no way of knowing unless the agency decided to tell them. Still, the London police were determined to get to the bottom of things, which meant collecting as much evidence as possible. Forensic experts determined Gareth was probably alive when he got into or was placed inside the bag. Otherwise, rigor mortis would have made it difficult to contort his body into the fetal position in which he was found. Once the zippers were closed, he could have suffocated after only a couple of minutes. But because his body had decomposed so much, it was impossible to say if that was really how he died. It seemed unlikely that Gareth had gotten in the bag and locked it all on his own, especially since the key to the padlock was found inside the bag underneath his body. Apparently, the apartment complex didn't have any security cameras, but there was almost no physical evidence to suggest that anyone else had been in the apartment with Gareth. Meaning there were no hairs, no fibers, no signs of a struggle or a break in. The only thing experts could find was a possible trace of someone else's DNA on his wrist and two fragments of DNA left on the bag. Police sent the samples off for testing and hoped they might shed some light on what had happened. In the meantime, detectives tried to construct a timeline of Gareth's final days. Despite the lack of security at Gareth's building. London is one of the most surveilled cities on earth, with tens of thousands of CCTV cameras scattered throughout its streets. Police took full advantage, pouring over hours of footage and comparing it with phone and credit card records to figure out what Gareth was up to. By September 2010, they had found a few hits. At 3pm on August 14, two days before his death, police found footage of Gareth walking by a subway station in West London. That was three days after his sister Kerry had last spoken to him. Authorities also heard from a cafe near his apartment. The restaurant confirmed that in the week before his death, a man matching Gareth's description showed up on multiple days. Each time, he brought a laptop and spent a few hours there. Witnesses said several people came to meet with him while he worked. Then, just one day before he died on August 15, Gareth was seen going to an ATM at 2pm from there, cameras showed him walking into a luxury apartment store, then strolling along Sloan Street, a popular shopping destination. After that, they lost track of him. Unfortunately, that's where the investigation stalled. Police wanted to speak to Gareth's coworkers at MI6, but they still didn't have the security clearance to do so. Instead, they had to rely on counterterrorism officers with SO15 teen to conduct interviews on their behalf. Notes from the talks were then anonymized and passed along to homicide detectives. This made it difficult to get a full sense of what Gareth was up to at his job. Not sure how to proceed, the police released Gareth's body to his relatives in late September 2010. On the 26th, the Williams family held a funeral for him in North Wales. The head of MI6, Sir John Sawyers, came to pay his respects. As a representative of the agency, he told reporters that Gareth was a huge talent who did valuable work defending the UK's national security. Not long afterward, MI6 completed an internal review of Gareth's death. The agency reportedly found no evidence that he had been threatened before he died or that he was in contact with any particularly dangerous parties. Apparently, he had been communicating with two undercover agents. These may have been the unnamed visitors who met with him in the cafe prior to his death. But MI6 didn't believe the agents put him at risk in any way. This brought detectives back to square one. They had no choice but to take MI6 at its word. So they focused the investigation on Gareth's personal life. To take stock of what they knew so far, they reexamined the evidence. Tests on the two DNA fragments from the sports bag were deemed inconclusive. The authorities had no idea who they belonged to. The third sample found on Gareth's wrist was also still a mystery. Some investigators felt that was the missing piece of the puzzle, the thing that might blow the case wide open. But until they came up with a positive match, it was useless. The laptop found on Gareth's kitchen table wasn't very helpful either. But authorities determined that one of the two iPhones next to it was reset to factory settings just before Gareth died. That was suspicious, but it offered more questions than answers. By December of 2010, nearly four months after Gareth died, the police were no closer to getting answers. They felt like they had no choice but to turn to the public for help. Hoping to spark some new tips, investigators released evidence they'd previously kept out of the media. When the case was first reported on, the press had a field day running salacious stories about the man they deemed the spy in a bag. Tabloids like the sun were especially vicious. They alleged that Gareth had a secret double life, one that had nothing to do with his actual work. They ran articles insinuating that Gareth was gay and liked to dress in women's clothing. Anonymous sources claimed he regularly solicited male sex workers, had a cocaine habit and was into bdsm These stories often suggested that one of Gareth's mysterious, unnamed lovers was responsible for his murder. The truth was, 99% of these articles were nothing but clickbait. Detectives fiercely contested the accusations, insisting there was no evidence that Gareth ever paid for sex or used drugs. He barely even drank alcohol. Gareth's relatives also came to his defense. They believed these wild claims were being spread on purpose by someone who was out to ruin his reputation. No one could say with any certainty who might want to do that or why. But months after these reports first surfaced, the police dropped a bombshell. Apparently, there might have actually been some truth to these rumors. It turned out that Gareth did own around £15,000 of women's designer clothing, worth more than $23,000 at the time. None of the clothes had been worn, and the shoes could have fit his sister Carrie. But Gareth had also apparently taken a couple of fashion design courses at a nearby college without telling MI6. He'd also attended a drag show a couple of days before his death. In addition, detectives reported that Gareth had sporadically accessed BDSM websites in the past. They were careful to clarify that the previously reported rumors about his sex life were unfounded. He had visited these websites only a few times for short periods. Unfortunately, none of these revelations led to the break investigators were hoping for. Instead, they only created more sensational tabloid stories. But the reports did prompt Gareth's former landlady to contact police about an incident she witnessed back in 2007. She said that one morning, about three years before Gareth's death, she heard him shouting for help from his bedroom. At 1:30am she entered his apartment to find him alone, tied to his bedposts. After she helped cut him loose, Gareth explained that he'd restrained himself on purpose, supposedly to challenge himself to get free. But the landlady didn't really buy the story. She told the cops she believed it was more of a sex thing. The tale confirmed some suspicions the detectives had had about Gareth's sexual preferences. But ultimately, it didn't move the investigation forward. By that point, police were close to hitting a dead end. They had one last lead to share, but it could be major. And the cops knew they had to play it carefully. A couple of months before Gareth died, witnesses reported seeing a young Mediterranean couple going into his apartment. That was unusual, since Gareth didn't get many visitors. There was no camera footage of the man and woman, but detectives were able to create a digital composite photo of them based on their physical descriptions. Media outlets circulated the pictures, encouraging the public to call in with tips. If they recognized the couple, this was their final Hail Mary, a last ditch attempt to find a solid lead. If it didn't work, police feared they would be forced to abandon the investigation for good. A few months later, police did manage to track down the Mediterranean couple. Apparently, they had nothing to do with Gareth's death. Since the authorities didn't go into detail about who the man and woman were, the public could only speculate. They may have been casual friends, lovers or something in between. For all anyone knew, they could have been intelligence officers like Gareth. With that, the investigation officially stalled. Police announced that while they still suspected foul play was involved, they had absolutely zero suspects. Unless new evidence came up, they wouldn't be actively looking into the case any longer. The decision frustrated Gareth's family, and many of his relatives felt like MI6 had derailed the investigation. Over the next two years, they pressured the authorities to pursue the case more aggressively. And in 2012, their advocacy finally paid off. That year, a coroner named Dr. Fiona Wilcox agreed to hold an official inquest into Gareth's death. And what she found changed everything. On April 23, 2012, Dr. Fiona Wilcox launched a coroner's inquest into the death of 31 year old Gareth Williams. For days on end, she listened as police officers, forensic experts and attorneys gave their opinions about the case. Before the proceedings even began, clear lines had already been drawn. Gareth's co workers at MI6 would not be testifying. The agency continued to publicly state that they found no evidence that he'd been assassinated. And they insisted that his death wasn't a sex game gone wrong or murder at the hands of an unidentified lover. Meanwhile, many police detectives sat on the fence. So far, their investigation had centered on Gareth's personal life. But that was only because they weren't allowed to investigate MI6. As for the Williams family, they made their position clear at the start of the inquest. A lawyer representing them argued there had to be another person with Gareth when he died, or at the very least, someone would have had to come by to clean up the crime scene afterward. Most of the people who investigated the case agreed. While there were no signs of a struggle or forced entry, Gareth's door had been locked from the outside when his body was found. Clearly, Gareth couldn't have locked the door after the fact. This suggested that his family was right and someone else had been there. But detectives weren't able to follow up on this lead. MI5 agents had been the first first ones to perform a thorough sweep of the apartment they came in before police forensic teams when they left, they removed Gareth's door from its hinges and took the locks with them, so police couldn't even check for prints or take a look at the locks themselves. The issue of the door wasn't the only thing that called MI6's involvement into question. During the inquest, it came out that so 15 counterterrorism officers didn't tell police about the full contents of Gareth's locker at work. Apparently, there were nine USB memory sticks that the Chief Investigating officer, Jackie Sabir, had never heard about. On top of that, Gareth kept a black sports bag in his locker, very similar to the one that his body was found inside. Finally, he also kept an iPhone there. An SO15 officer had found a deleted message on the device, which which featured Gareth posing nude except for a pair of leather boots. This piece of evidence was eventually given to the police, but the SO15 officer had kept it for a full day before turning it over, which was a violation of protocol. These revelations concerned the investigators who'd been working on the case. We don't know what was on the memory sticks. But Officer Sabir felt that having access to them apart 13 months earlier might have changed things considerably. However, the most explosive finding was yet to come. Ever since the investigation began, police had been hampered by a lack of forensic evidence. They had two samples from the bag which were deemed inconclusive. But there was also a DNA sample taken from Gareth's left wrist. For over a year, detectives have been conditioned, convinced that this piece of evidence was the key to nailing the potential murderer. Now experts revealed that the entire thing was a big misunderstanding. The mystery DNA sample actually belonged to one of the forensic scientists who examined Gareth's body. A data entry error caused it to be logged as evidence, but it was never actually relevant to the case. From Dr. Wilcox's point of view, almost everything she heard suggested the police had mishandled the investigation. It was concerning that so much had gone wrong in such a high profile case. It was exactly the kind of thing that encouraged conspiracy theories. And so far, the theories, like Gareth being targeted by foreign assassins, made the most sense. Otherwise, you'd have to believe Gareth locked himself in the bag and then suffocated. That said, there were people who supported this idea. Some argued that the bag could have been part of a sexual game, or that Gareth was doing some kind of MI6 training in escapology. To look into these explanations, Dr. Wilcox heard from several military specialists with similar expertise. These experts locked themselves inside the same brand of bag and tried to escape. They attempted this hundreds of times and couldn't manage to do it even once. It just didn't seem possible for one person to accomplish on their own. What's more, anyone trying this would have surely prepared some kind of backup plan. At minimum, Gareth should have carried a knife with him to cut his way out in case of an emergency. The guy was a mathematical genius and expert code breaker. It was hard to believe he could have overlooked something so simple. Then there was the fact that he didn't leave behind any fingerprints or footprints on the bathtub or the padlock. Military experts acknowledged that while they couldn't get out of the bag, there were other people out there who could do extraordinary things. Even so, to lock it without leaving behind a shred of forensic evidence would have been a stretch even for a master escapologist. In the end, Dr. Wilcox agreed with the experts. On May 2, 2012, she issued a shocking verdict. She determined that Gareth Williams had likely been murdered. In her opinion, they had probably locked him in the bag, then placed it in the bathtub. Gareth either suffocated within minutes or died from some kind of unique short acting poison. After everything is said and done, I have to agree with Dr. Wilcox. But I don't understand why he would be the target of murder. Murder? Or who would do this to him. But I'd love to know what you all think. Is she onto something? Or was this all one big misunderstanding? What do you think happened to Gareth? Leave your thoughts in the comments, wherever you listen. As for Dr. Wilcox, that wasn't the only bombshell she dropped when delivering her verdict. She took the opportunity to criticize the London Police so 5015 and MI6 for the way they handled the investigation. She pointed out that MI6 should have checked on Gareth much sooner. By the time his body was discovered, he'd already missed seven days of work. His sister called the GCHQ to share her concerns the morning he was found. And yet the agency waited a full five hours to actually call the police. Those missteps pointed to a. A pattern of breaking protocol. Even so, Dr. Wilcox was careful to add that none of this suggested MI6 was somehow involved in Gareth's death. But it did seem like the investigation afterward was totally inadequate. Once the inquest was over, public pressure led the London police to launch a second investigation. They started from scratch this time, examining the memory sticks and the other items in Gareth's work locker. For a full year, they painstakingly went over every aspect of the case. They even swept Gareth's apartment again. This time they found at least 10 more DNA samples, though none of them were located in the bathroom where his body was found. Detectives were even granted unprecedented access to MI6 agents and interviewed 27 of Gareth's colleagues over the next few months. But in the end, they were left just as baffled as before. In November 2013, the police officially determined that Gareth Williams died by accident, though they couldn't explain how. The authorities claimed that he likely locked himself in the sports bag and suffocated there. Critics of the investigation, including Gareth's family, were left totally unsatisfied. They continued to believe that his work at MI6 was connected to his death. They pointed to the fact that no one could prove how Gareth had locked himself in the bag. In their eyes, this showed how flimsy the official verdict really was. And even after the case was closed, it continued to attract international attention. In 2015, a Russian defector and former KGB officer named Martin Boris Kapichkov claimed to have insider knowledge of Gareth's death. He said Russian spies tried to turn Gareth into a double agent by threatening to tell his family that he liked to dress in women's clothing. When Gareth refused to flip, Boris claimed they killed him by squeezing poison into his ear, then stuffed him in the sports bag. It's a dramatic story worthy of a Bond movie, but there was no evidence that it was true. Even Boris admitted that it was based on hearsay. However, he did claim to have spotted Russian diplomatic vehicles outside of Gareth's apartment before he died. Since then, there haven't been many developments in the case. In 2024, London police conducted another review of the evidence and stuck by their previous conclusions. Apparently, nothing new has emerged over the past decade to fundamentally change their opinions. That said, public interest in the case remains high. It's safe to say the conspiracy theories are still alive and well and they're not likely to go away anytime soon. In the future, a public disclosure from MI6 about the full nature of Gareth's work may be the only thing that could shed more light on the case. Until then, Gareth's death will likely remain unsolved. It's a hard pill to swallow. Secrecy is part of being a spy. Gareth knew what he was signing up for, and he was great at what he did. But he was more than his job title. He was a human being. And he deserves more from the organization that he dedicated a decade of his life to. Thanks so much for listening. I'm Vanessa Richardson, and this is Conspiracy Theories, Cults and Crimes. Come back next week. We'll decode the episode together and hear another story about the real people at the center of the world's most notorious cults, conspiracies and criminal acts. Conspiracy Theories, Cults and Crimes is a Crime House original powered by Pave Studios. Here at Crime House, we want to thank each and every one of you for your support. If you like what you heard today, reach out on social media, Rimehouse on TikTok and Instagram. Don't forget to rate, review and follow Conspiracy Theories, Cults and Crimes wherever you get your podcasts. Your feedback truly makes a difference and to enhance your Conspiracy Theories, Cults and Crimes listening experience, subscribe to Crime House plus on Apple Podcasts. You'll get every episode ad free. We'll be back next Wednesday. Conspiracy Theories, Cults and Crimes is hosted by me, Vanessa Richardson and is a Crime House original powered by Pave Studios. This episode was brought to life by the Conspiracy Theories, Cults and Crimes team. Max Cutler, Ron Shapiro, Alex Benidon, Natalie Pertsovsky, Lori Marinelli, Sarah Camp, Terrell Wells, Hania Saeed and Carrie Murphy. Thank you for listening.
