B (17:55)
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, well, 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 under 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, poring 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 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 Carrie was last spoke 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 department 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 co workers at MI6, but they still didn't have the security clearance to do so. Instead, they had to rely on counterterrorism officers with SO1.5 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 actually doing at work. 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 thought 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 weren't any closer to the truth. 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 hit back against 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 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 description. 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 worried they'd have to abandon the investigation for good. A few months later, the authorities did manage to track down the Mediterranean couple. Apparently, they had nothing to do with Gareth's death. Since the police 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 somewhere in between. For all anyone knew, they could have been intelligence officers like Gareth. And with that, the investigation officially stalled. Police announced that while they 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.
