The Spy in the Bag

Hello everybody welcome back to another episode of decoding the unknown this one written by Kevin thank you Kevin this is a British one Gareth Williams the spy in the bag I remember Kevin pitching this to me and I was like that that's the guy who the government were like definitely not a spy but he was like found in like his body was found inside a bag in his apartment and there were like SIM cards from like mobile phones lited around the place which feels like the most spyy [ __ ] ever so uh yeah well we'll draw our own conclusions won't be let's jump into it for of the sh if you're new here Kevin rights is I read it never read it before we're going to explore it [Music] together skare can some place feel like navigating through a galaxy of options but fear not because this is the latest edition to the UFO collection from forio Sweden it's the UFO 3 this is a deep facial hydration device that fits right into the palm of your hand plus with a foro for youu app you can customize your skincare routine with just a few Taps simply select your preferred treatment and let the UFO 3 work its magic and you might be thinking Simon you're not a beauty influencer what are you doing with this and to that I say well having nice skin is just an important part of life isn't it and this is a device that will help you have that nice skin it's like a personal spar right at home it combines thermotherapy LED light therapy and t-sonic massage to give you the ultimate pampering experience so whether you're looking to boost hydration reduce the appearance of wrinkles or simply indulge in some self-care the ufo3 has got you covered whether it's a gift for you or your significant other I got my wife one of these after she saw me using it it's a great thing to buy so what are you waiting for join me and experiencing the wonders of skincare with the UFO 3 by foro Sweden just click the link below and get 30% off on the UFO 3 plus for the first 50 people who will use the code decoding 10 you'll get an extra 10% off thanks to fario for sponsoring and now back to today's video there's just something special about spy stories people can't help but find the drama the Thrills and often times moral ambiguity compelling it's why everybody loves James Bond except course for bartenders who are sick of people ordering vodka martinis shake and not stirred yeah it is weird like a vodka martini is definitely a drink that should be stirred um but James Bond has it shaken cuz he's a weirdo I'm pretty sure bartenders don't hate bonds nearly as much as they hate Don Draper for bringing back the old fashioned and needless pain in the ass of an order it's not needless I only know old Fashions because of Don Draper bringing them back but they're a fantastic drink of course real secret intelligence work in the Modern Age Bears very little resemblance to bond story while undercover agents obviously still exist there has been a dramatic shift in recruitment thanks to technology revolutionizing the way that Nations conduct operations these days you're probably more likely to get a job in secret intelligence because of your skills as an underground Dojo keyboard cage fighter than because of anything we associate with spy Thrillers yeah I think that's it like that's the whole spy thing in general it's like books and movies make it sound really exciting but in reality like most things it's really probably quite dull one of my good friends from high school got recruited from the Air Force to work for the NSA for this very reason he was a smart guy but James Bond he was not I think he actually might still work for the NSA but I'm not sure that's exactly what he wants you to think I also have no idea what he did there other than probably some nerdy [ __ ] when I found out that he was working for them I thought it was the coolest thing in the world and I had so many questions but they all went unanswered yeah it's like he's so he's not like the super highest level of spy where it's like you have some cover they provide you with some cover job but it's like so you just work at the NSA and you just be like cool what do you do there can't talk about it like do you work with computers can't talk talk about it like do you work on like terrorist can't talk about it and that's it that's it they just can't talk about it all my friends told me that he couldn't say anything about his work and that he was contractually obliged to report anyone who asked too many questions about it so come to think of it I may have been on a government watch list long before writing for this Channel and Casual criminalist I recognize that saying my friend has a cool job that I know nothing about may feel like an incomplete and disappointing anecdote but it's meant to illustrate a point there have been other episodes of decoding the unknown that dealt with suspected spies like the isor woman or Jennifer fergate the lack of evidence and unusual circumstances LED people to believe that they were spies though we just don't know for sure yeah if you want an incomplete anecdote from me we have something called the official Secrets act in the UK which isn't something you have to sign it's not like a contract it's just the law like so you do certain things or you go certain places and they're like just a reminder that this is subject to the official Secrets act and you have to sign like not always but there's a there's a thing you can sign and I've had to sign it twice in my life and that's where the anecdote ends cuz I can't tell you more about it fun times it wasn't anything particularly exciting believe me or was [Music] it but Gareth Williams is a bit different we know for a fact that he was working for MI6 which means there's a lot of information that would be useful for this case that we simply don't know you'll probably have a lot of questions this episode that I simply can't answer Chief among them being exactly how long MI6 was planning to let gareth's body decompose before they bothered to go looking for their missing employee the discovery of the body it began on the morning of Monday August 23rd 2010 but it should have happened a lot sooner Gareth Williams's sister Kerrie hadn't heard from her brother in over a week which she considered abnormal worried that something might have happened she decided to call his work and see if he'd been there hello is that MI6 yeah yeah yeah I'm asking about my brother you're like MI6 here and from the moment she placed the phone call this whole situation was already extremely suspicious if Gareth had no call no showed to his job at a local retail store for even a day you'd best believe that HR would be calling his ass to find out where he was and yet when kri placed her phone call to MI6 to ask about her brother she discovered that he hadn't shown up to work since the previous Monday technically car's phone call might have been placed to government Communications Headquarters or GC chq rather than MI6 directly but that's not entirely clear regardless the government actually hadn't done anything about gareth's unexcused absence not only should they have called him but they could have easily just popped by to check on him in case he was somehow too sick to use the phone the apartment where Gareth was staying and MI6 owned safe house was just a 5minute walk from his office I didn't know that he was living in a safe house and they're like he's not a spy like oh my God he lives in a safe house at least it used to be an MI6 safe house since I can tell you that Gareth was living in the top floor apartment of 36 alony Street I feel confident in saying that there is nothing safe about that location anymore that wonder who lives there now it's got to be like cursed not any weird way but like the Spy was killed there there's probably all sorts of like listening devices inside the walls anyway Kerri made her phone call at 1:30 a.m. and MI6 acted with all the expediency that you'd expect from government bureaucracy it wasn't until 5 hours later that anything actually happens with a phone call being placed to 999 at 4:30 p.m. this was also a seemingly unusual decision ignoring the fact that the apartment was so close that could have checked on the missing officer themselves calling 999 shouldn't have been necessary according to experts gchq and MI6 would both have their own more efficient channels for communicating with the police but that's the decision that they made the door was locked when police arrived on the scene so they had to get a spare key from a lettings agent who was asked to wait downstairs wait they had to get a spare key from a letting agent didn't we just say that MI6 owned this as a safe house ah sorry just it's an MI6 safe house doesn't necessarily mean that it was owned by by them so it could be let to them which has got to be weird although I guess it just you rent it to some random government body right not exactly it's not mi6's name on the lease or maybe it is who knows inside the apartment everything looked tidy which wasn't a big surprise to the officers as far as they knew they were just doing a standard wellness check on somebody who had missed work aside from a couple of iPhones and multiple SIM cards on a table everything seemed to be in order the only unusual thing about the apartment was the temperature yeah the SIM cards on the table and stuff I think if I was the police and you see like multiple SIM cards around the place you'd be like either this guy travels a lot or is a drug dealer despite the fact that it was a typical August in London with temperatures in the70s the heat for the apartment was turned all the way up continuing their cursory search of the apartment officers noticed a large hold all inside the bathtub for Americans This is what we'd refer to as a particularly large duffel bag or gym bag the bag was padlocked shut and there was red liquid leaking out of the bottom that looked like blood and while the police weren't sure at this point you obviously know that it looked a lot like blood because it was blood yeah at this point the police got to call in like foric and stuff right they can't just be like let's unzip the bag and see if there's someone alive in there cuz they're not alive oh no after removing the padlog police discovered that there were exactly two things inside the bag one was a key for the lock and the other was gareth's naked and decomposing body it was so badly decomposed and contorted that the police initially thought the limbs had been severed and stuffed into the bag but this wasn't actually the case later investigation showed that he had almost certainly been alive when his body was placed in the bag oh my [ __ ] God I didn't know that detail that's Grim oh my God there were no signs of struggle anywhere in the apartment and the initial assessment was that this was a neat job meaning that Gareth had likely been killed by a professional and that certainly would make sense not only could his work at MI6 have made him a Target but there were two very noticeable details about the state of the body itself because the heat had been cracked up so high the body was in an advanced state of decomposition which would interfere with evidence collection and make it difficult to determine a time of death then there was the location of the body itself you'd expect the smell of a heavily decomposing body to attract the attention of other people that live in the building this is often the only way elderly loners who die in their homes are ever discovered um the body in the bathtub right the smell is going to like sink is that a thing like the smell will largely sink and go out the bottom of the bathtub or like it's trapped inside the bag and stuff so the scent is going to be much reduced cuz otherwise if that body was just open in there like with the heat cranked up the police are going to walk in and be like I know I was here here in here I've smelled this smell before however because the body was sealed in a bag and placed in a bathtub this wasn't going to happen much of the scent would have been trapped in the bag there we go and the blood and other smelly decomposing bits that oozed out of the bag went straight down the drain okay there we go now exactly the smell going down the drain but close enough either the killer had made a lucky decision placing the bag in the tub or they knew exactly what they were doing going to go ahead and say they knew exactly what they wereing doing Dr Fiona Wilcox conducted the coroner's inquest into gareth's death which lasted for two years Dr WILX after all of this is like yeah it's natural causes not being leaned on my MI6 at all I met that's not what happens but it'd be funny if that's exactly what happens it's like he shot himself in the back of the head twice there was not enough evidence for an inquest to return a verdict of murder so she instead returns a narrative verdict we don't really use that term here in the States but basically it means that Dr Wilcox gave a summary of what she believed to have happened without stating an official cause of death according to a verdict gareth's death was unnatural and likely to have been criminally mediated she was satisfied that on the balance of probabilities that Gareth was killed unlawfully but the police felt different ly bruh they put him they put him inside a bag put the key inside locked it and put it in a bathtub and left him to die and turned up the heat knowing what was going to happen what were you thinking police the Metropolitan Police finished their investigation a year after the coroner's inquest and they did not believe there was anybody else involved well he zipped himself up in the bag did he according to detective assistant commissioner Martin hwit Gareth placed the bag in the bathtub climbed inside then sealed and locked the bag by accident from the outside this is almost as ridiculous as him shooting himself in the back of the head twice okay the police weren't actually claiming that the actions themselves were an accident okay good just that Gareth hadn't planned on killing himself when he definitely locked himself inside the bag without assistance what what no what are the odds of this hu defended his conclusion by stating the coroner Drew an inference I am now drawing a different inference and that's certainly true he did draw a completely different inference than the coroner the media and OD argue every single sane person in the world of course the media's conclusion was also pretty insane but we'll get to that when we Circle back to the investigation and theories first let's take a look at Gareth himself I get the feeling like wait what's the media going to say what's the media's conclusion surely the conclusion is he was up to some spy [ __ ] someone wanted him dead someone professionally killed him and will never get caught because they're a professional Hitman probably for another government somewhere so they're very competent and well compensated the smartest kid in school Gareth Williams was born on September the 26th 1978 in the small town of Valley Angus in Wales he had about as normal childhood as would be possible for a freak mathematical genius which is to say that he had a loving and supportive family and roughly zero friends rather than playing outside with kids his own age Gareth was happier being indoors at the library learning everything he possibly could he was absolutely obsessed with maths and computers and was seen as a bit of a proy but that's not saying that Gareth was your stereotypical nerd he was actually quite athletic his father got him into cycling which gave them the opportunity to bond and spend time together that's nice I often used to go cycling with my dad it was the way that we bonded me and Gareth same page except hopefully I won't end up zipped inside a bag at a bathtub I mean maybe I make this episode there's a KN on the door you you know too much and the two would talk for hours while riding together of course his father also admitted that Gareth wasn't much of a conversationalist it's been heavily speculated by experts that he was autistic though he was never diagnosed as such it certainly would make sense but his social awkwardness could have been the result of the lack of friends growing up at first this was because Gareth was so much smarter than his peers and he preferred learning to anything else but his mathematical aptitude was only going to serve to alienate him further I mean yes but then you leave school with really good grades and you go to a really good University where there's also other people who are as bright as you and you're like cool peers Gareth passed the GCSE in maths while he was still impr Primary School God damn possibly in the first year the GCS even existed just for some reference there Americans a GCSE is a test you take at 16 primary school is something you finish at 11 so he took this 5 or six years early that's amazing he then began studying maths at bangal University while attending Secondary School what by the time he was 17 Gareth had already graduated from bangal with a first class degree in maths Simon might need to clarify this but as far as I can tell a first class degree is basically the same thing as graduating Magnum LA from an American University I've no idea what Magna caml is but um first class is the top level of degree that you can get it's not the level of degree that I got I was very close I missed it by like 2% so [ __ ] anyway from there he immediately began working towards a PhD in maths from the University of Manchester as impressive as all of that is it's also rather detrimental to Social Development so much so that in the United States at least it is becoming exceedingly rare for a child to skip a grade college students who spend all weekend getting drunk taking ecstasy and having sex probably aren't going to want to socialize with their classmate whose balls haven't even dropped yet yeah this is one of those things where it's like if they wanted my kid to move the head a a grade because they got such a giant wrinkly brain I'd be pretty tempted to say no because I don't think that year that you get to extra pursue your career or whatever is worth not socializing with people your age because I think the socialization thing and being good at talking to people and all of that is prettying valuable Gareth was a bit shy and awkward and his classmates noted that he was particularly naive as well believing pretty much anything he was told by someone older than him which was everybody this n resulted in classmates occasionally pranking him though I get the impression it wasn't anything particularly malicious again this is unfortunately an expected side effect of people who Skip multiple grades before ever learning how to socialize with peers though did have a few friends as an adult this awkwardness with socializing never stopped being an issue however while getting his PhD Gareth remained active in athletic Pursuits with his father they were members of a Cycling Club and would compete in races and time trials and gareth's father got him into rock climbing as well but Gareth wasn't the type to go out at the pub and hang out with club members after a race even when engaged with others in a shared passion he was simply too shy to make friends after earning his PhD Gareth began taking postgraduate courses at St Katherine's College in Cambridge but he dropped out after deciding that there was nothing left for him there to learn besides he had a new job offer on the table in 2000 when Gareth was just 21 he was approached by British secret services to come and work for gchq gchq is like our version of the NSA Americans so sort of exactly the place where someone who's really good at maths would end up like code breaking he began the job in 2001 after his background check was complete I don't know how long that was cuz it could be like a month or a year but let's assume it was a year it's pretty pretty [ __ ] extensive background check I can imagine even though he's like 20 what's he possibly done in his life like background checking his childhood for the next eight years Gareth worked at gchq and chelham while renting a room in prestbury gler Shere and he was the perfect tenant he didn't have a TV or stereo he didn't drink he almost never had friends or family visit him at his apartment he never made a sound or caused a problem except maybe that one time but we'll get back to that oo exciting Gareth is described as working as a code breaker though obviously there's not a lot of specific details about his work we know he worked for gchq and this work often entailed traveling to the United States to Aid the NSA with thinks yeah there you go so gchq NSA buddy buddy former co-workers said that Gareth was extremely capable but was a middle ranking technician that might have just been because he didn't have the seniority required to get promotions or because he wasn't interested in one honestly it doesn't sound like he would have been particularly great at managing subordinate so he was probably happier in the position that he had but whatever it was that Gareth was working on he was clearly quite skilled so much so that in 2009 he wased to MI6 to help them work on other vague tasks they probably weren't very vague they just vague to us and for my fellow Americans seed essentially means that it was temporarily assigned to work there oh I didn't realize that was a specific American word it's quite common in the UK you do a sment kind of like if you were a store manager at a large retail chain and corporate sent you for a few months to help put a new location you know except with way more spy going on Carrie was the person that Gareth was closest to in the world he had taken her and her husband to tea at the Ritz in London for their second wedding anniversary in June 2010 oh that's nice and the two spoke on the phone regularly Gareth was very meticulous and she described the phone calls as arriving like clockwork hence her concern after not hearing from him for over a week and it's from car's testimony at the inquest that we know Gareth wasn't happy with his new job at MI6 she explained he disliked office culture postwork drinks flash car competitions and the rat race what's a flash car competition oh like having a flashy car ah I understand well you work at MI6 I'm assuming that everyone's driving BMWs and Aston Martin's just like James he even spoke of friction at the office she went on to explain how Gareth was uncomfortable with all of the bureaucratic red tape slowing down his work though I'm somewhat surprised that that hadn't been the case at gchq as well technically well I imagine like gchq is a much more maths suited environment where there's lots of really big brain maths people whereas at MI6 it's more like it's less maths and codebreaking and more like human intelligence I would imagine technically we would have known that Gareth was UN happy even without this testimony he had been assigned to MI6 for a three-year contract but had already requested a transfer back to gchq less than a year in he was set to return to cheltonham on September the 3rd little more than a week after his body was found but it's thanks to Kerry that we have some idea of exactly why he wanted to return to his old position and really that's most of what would have been known about Gareth up until his untimely death at the age of 31 he basically went straight from diapers to college and from college to government intelligence unfortunately since pretty much the entirety of gareth's adult life is classified there's only so much information available but that doesn't make for sexy headlines and it would take 2 years for the Cora's verdict to come in with the police's official report taking an additional year taking an additional year with a dead MI6 officer and no concrete details to go on the media's left with only one choice make up a bunch of slanderous lies to distract people oh that's disappointing why would the media make up slanderous lies I've never seen that before especially not to sell papers especially not with the trash and newspapers after all according to British law you can't defame a dead person so what other choice did a reputable Publications like the Sun have isn't that an American law as well pretty sure you can't defame a dead person in America don't take that as legal advice I'm not sure the investigation and media confusion I mentioned earlier that gareth's apartment looked tidy because that's just the way he lived there was no clutter and not a lot of personal items he had his laptop and phones and SIM cards it's like he had his laptop sure phones and SIM cards are not usually something in the plural but the shelves weren't covered in little bobles or chies however the apartment wasn't just neat and orderly it was entirely too clean especially the barro where Gareth was found there was simply no forensic evidence to be found the bathtub the bag and the padlock were all completely free of prints and DNA it's like he zipped himself up in the bag after scrubbing the [ __ ] out of his bathroom making sure not to touch anything and somehow put the padlock on the bag without getting his fingerprints on it wiped it clean from inside the bag and then just died like what the you thinking police if we're to believe as the police eventually determined that Gareth got into the bag of his own accord surely there should be some evidence of this while touching an object does not guarantee that your fingerprints or DNA will be transferred to it Gareth would have to do a lot of maneuvering to get inside the bag he also had to do this on a hot summer's day while the heat was on full blast meaning he should have been sweating that would only increased the chances that this stunt would have left forensic evidence technically I should also mention that a couple of small samples of DNA were found on the padlock but they were eventually found to be contamination resulting from the investigation rather than actual evidence it was highly suspicious but it wasn't conclusive as unlikely as it may seem that someone could lower themselves into the bag and Tor their way inside and close the padlock without leaving DNA or sweaty footprints on the bathtub the lack of forensics meant that there was a lack of definitive proof of another person's involvement Dr Wilcox made the inference that someone must have cleaned up the crime scene while the police believed that since there was no evidence of another person there must not have been another person there what that makes no sense what you know because if a body is found to have bled out from what looks like a stab wound but there's no knife next to the body well obviously they couldn't have been stabed with a knife could they it's absurd to draw that conclusion belce of course at this point I should probably mention that any information about the police investigation that's been released to the public isn't necessarily the most reliable after much debate about how to handle the situation the investigation was officially led by the Metropolitan Police Homicide and serious crime commands but they weren't the only ones involved s so5 the police's counterterrorism organization had an active role investigating within MI6 and they are known to have withheld information from the homicide detectives which we'll get back to but there was also serious pressure on the police from both British secret intelligence and the US state department given the top secret nature of gareth's work no details about what he did could be revealed at the inquest this makes sense since it could be a matter of national security for both the UK and the us but it does make the job more difficult the police didn't have all the information to begin with and much of what they knew wouldn't have been revealed at the inquest or in public statements but anyway let's get back to the very minimal evidence found in gareth's apartment returning to his body the coroner found no signs of injury he hadn't been stabbed and there were no defensive wounds found on his body the interior of the bag also lacked defensive wounds so to speak there was nothing to indicate Gareth was struggling to free himself from the bag and the few minor scratches inside the bag were believed to have been made from the padlock key rather than gareth's Nails okay this is something somewhat of a relief because I imagine them put him in that bag at like gunpoint and then just leaving them there to kind of struggle his way out of fail and eventually die whereas maybe they sedated him somehow or gassed him you know whatever gave him a gave him a drug so at least he didn't have that horror to deal with if he accidentally locked himself in the bag and was just trying to escape a lot more damage to the bag's interior would have been expected this would suggest that if he got into the bag intentionally he wasn't actually trying to get out which doesn't make a lot of of sense it also doesn't make sense that the door to gareth's apartment was locked from the outside police how could you possibly conclude that there was no one else there just because it's like oh they cleaned up really well it's like I I like Kevin's example but I feel like if I cook a meal in my kitchen and then eat it and then clear up afterwards the police would come around and be like meal's never been cooked in this kitchen what the [ __ ] admittedly I'm a bit unclear on this detail there are definitely certain locks that can only be done from the inside but I'm not familiar with any traditional locks that would work from the outside rather than the inside ah Kevin but this is a Us versus UK thing because we absolutely have doors that you can double lock from the outside which you can't do from the inside it's very common and very possible it's an important detail as it raises even more questions about how Gareth could have acted alone and the reporting on this is extremely consistent if Simon also doesn't know how this would be determined someone feel free to explain it in the comments because I can't find any explanation oh it's just a simple UK thing like it's super weird someone double locked his door from the outside you can't double lock a door from the inside without a key um and generally there's no keyhole on the inside it's a weird British thing but trust me it's Mega suspicious any British person is like something you don't need to explain this so much but I realized I recently talked to an American about this and they were like what are you talking about so just just believe me okay all right back to the body a toxicology screen was done to see if perhaps Gareth had been drugged but it was ruled inconclusive after coming back negative for everything they tested for the accelerated decomposition was going to make all sorts of forensic analysis difficult and there are substances that wouldn't have shown up for example if Gareth had been drugged with either cyanide or chloroform those would no longer be detectable yeah chloroform seems like an extremely likely thing to use on someone in this situation to get them into a bag and of course it's hard to test for poison if you don't know what you're looking for there are a lot of different poisons out there and you can't test for everything according to a forensic scientist from a different case it's standard to test for the 50 most common poisons and 50 rare ones so note there if you're going to kill someone with poison choose the 101st one but that's far from inclusive it's hard to get any sort of definitive number but conservatively there are thousands of different poisons and realistically it's at least tens of thousands since we're dealing with someone in secret intelligence if poison is on the table then we're probably just looking at countless different options with no clues as to what specifically to test for the chances that a standard to screen would find anything are effectively zero if there wasn't physical evidence well what about digital evidence I already mentioned there was a laptop and a couple of phones and London is one of the most heavily surveilled cities in the world recent estimates put the number of CCTV cameras in London at just shy of a million whoa that's like one camera for every 10 people God damn granted a reasonable percentage of those are privately owned cameras for businesses and the like but it's still a lot of cameras surely Gareth must have been caught on a CCTV camera doing something right well yes but not anything particularly interesting Gareth returned to London from the us on August the 11th and went shopping at Shel selfridge's department store the next day he went shopping at a couple more department stores as well as the supermarket he briefly stopped by the office that day to drop off some documents but that seems to be all he did there on Friday August 13th Gareth went to work as normal this time for a full day that night he went to the beastro tech to see drag queen Johnny Woo perform okay then further investigation showed that Gareth occasionally went to see drag performances and had tickets for a couple more shows in the future it's something that I don't get there certain like forms of entertainment that I just don't understand like I I don't see the appeal in like drag aesque shows um what's the other one uh what's it called the the super campy like Christmas uh performances that we have in the UK ah the name's totally escaping me ah what is it called where you've got like he's behind you no he's not yes he is oh it's so cringe whatever Gareth have been looking for at those other department stores he must not have found it because on Saturday he went to a luxury department store fortam and Mason of course all of these places have been described as department stores but for Mason seems to be best known as a high-end grocery store so maybe he was just buying food yeah it's it's very gifty though like fortam and Mason it's very nice is a it is kind of a department store it's more than a supermarket like or a grocery store but either way self brides fortam and Mason these are very expensive places and like government salary I mean you spend your money on what you want I guess but it's like that's a pretty pretty pretty pricey locations as far as I know the details of those purchases were never revealed assuming he bought anything and wasn't just browsing on Sunday Gareth again went out shopping this time he bought some cakes at harro's and a couple of grilled pepper steaks from waitrose one of which would be his dinner later that night this again hars is like up there with selfes of some of the most expensive places you can shop he returned to his apartment at 3:05 p.m. that afternoon which was the last time he was caught on any CCTV cameras so basically in the week leading up to his death Gareth went to the US for some combination of a work conference a vacation and maybe some spy [ __ ] and then came home and engaged in a few days of retail therapy if I was investigating this I'd be like let's look into his finances although surely you work for MI6 you can't just be like they would have looked into his finances they would constantly be looking into his finances to be like oh you got £5,000 from a foreign bank account who's like who are you selling secrets to Gareth no I don't think he's doing that obviously can't defame the dead but I this guy's probably the good guy in our story so I don't think he's doing that but it is an interesting choice of shopping locations in the hours leading up to his death Gareth backed up one of his phones to his computer the other phone had been completely wiped as for the SIM cards on the table I don't think their contents have ever been publicly revealed at around 11:00 p.m. he visited a cycling time trial website which is the last indication of anything he did while alive since the time of death could not be determined from the body itself the digital Trail LED investigators to believe that Gareth was killed in the early morning hours of Monday August 16th 2 days after his body was discovered police made an official announcement that a gchq officer had been found dead in his apartment the next day they identified him as Gareth Williams and said they believed that he may have been killed by a jealous lover right who also just happens to be a professional assassin also he we we know he doesn't have much of a social life so where did that conclusion come from well who the [ __ ] knows but immediately the media was full of speculation rumors and outright lies thanks to that statement the fact that Gareth occasionally attended drag performances and one other detail that the police decided to disclose stored in a few boxes in the apartment's spare bedroom was about $25,000 worth of designer women's clothing gentlemen you had my curiosity but now you have my attention Okay so I'm vibing that Gareth might be uh might be crossdressing that's fine not that there's anything wrong with that no of course not I mean it's fine if that's who you are absolutely more concerning is where he got $25,000 worth of money to spend on designer clothes and did we know anything about his backgrounds did we talk about his parents do does he have family money I mean that's a lot of money this left news outlets with a dilemma their first option was to just run with the story intelligence officer found dead in MI6 safe house just 500 yards from MI6 office demonstrates possible threat to National Security I'm sure they would have come up with a pitcher headline but examining the story from that angle while accurate would be scary and sure thear is definitely a way to move newspapers but you know what sells even better than fear sex why focus on accurate reporting a potentially serious issue when they could instead run the headline gay transvesti MI6 spy killed by jealous lover police say um is that did they say he was a gay transvesti did they I think they just said he was killed by a jealous lover but media you do you I guess or don't because it's kind of shitty it's true that the police said it may have been a jealous lover but the rest was a total fabrication supported by even more Fabrications according to the initial reporting Gareth was a known member of the gay community who performed in drag had an apartment full of bondage gear and frequented male sex workers not that there's anything wrong with that not at all it was suggested that his love of bondage also included claustrophilia which as you might guess is the exact opposite of claustrophobia aside from potentially being straight up murder from a jealous lover it was theorized that g death may have been a sex act gone wrong and then someone like perfectly cleaned the apartment and turned up the heat it's it's so suspicious almost all of these stories were based on rumors and stories from Anonymous sources which led many intelligence experts to believe it was a coordinated effort to distract the public and it definitely worked these details were originally reported as facts and have been repeated so many times now that it can make it difficult to find accurate information about the case however there is almost no actual evidence to support any of this to start all of gareth's friends and family were convinced that he was straight not that there's anything wrong with that no not at all now that doesn't necessarily mean anything because people lie about that all the time but he and krie were extremely close she was absolutely convinced that if he were gay he would have just told her after all this was 10 not 1910 so to most people that's not a big deal anymore yeah exact like if they they're close and it's like you get the like I get the feeling there are people out there whose parents would like not be pleased with that or like family or whatever so you'd be like okay just keep it quiet but if you come from a like my family if I was kid they'd just be like cool okay good who gives a [ __ ] like that would be it and so I'd never have a problem with telling them but I guess there are other families like where that's more of an issue but K's from this family it doesn't seem like she's concerned about that at all so that seems really unlikely S Lloyd Jones a primary school classmate with whom Gareth reconnected in 2006 was also sure he was straight the two had become close friends and son said he cherished the time he had with his sister and with me and he wanted that with other girls but he didn't have that with other girls because you know he's a socially Aid guy who was rarely anywhere besides work or home alone or apparently department stores like most of you I don't give a sh whether Gareth was gay and again this was 2010 so gchq and MI6 wouldn't have cared either not that there's anything wrong with that J uh uh I think they would have cared to a certain degree if he wasn't out of the closet because that's potential blackmail material and that's something that they would definitely be interested in like black Mount material I mean they might wanted to have known just to know but it wouldn't have disqualified him from any work or clearances it could have mattered to the NSA but only if he went out of his way to tell them since the US was still operating under the don't ask don't tell policy until 2011 however the whole thing being a lie is relevant when in concert with the other more provable lies as it gives Credence to the idea that all of this false reporting was a deliberate distraction to keep people's attention from what really happened and speaking of more provable lies there was absolutely no evidence that Gareth ever hired a sex worker male or otherwise or that he was known in the gay community police wasted time chasing down that lead but nobody interviewed recognized him or remembered seeing him in any gay bars or events while he did enjoy viewing the occasional drag show there was also no evidence that he ever performed in one or that he ever wore women's clothing wait so was the was the cloth in the spare room a fabrication also the fact he has a spare room in London that's kind of gangster like maybe he did have family money but was that was that made up by the press or not so why then was this spare bedroom full of tens of thousands of dollars worth of women's designer clothing oh okay well so that seems to be a fact there are a couple of possible answers for that San believed that the clothes were intended as gifts she commented how generous Gareth was stating he bought me a high-end Balenciaga top a Gucci bag a mbery bag and Armani fur good Lord we're talking many thousands of dollars for an armoney fur where's that money coming from he did the same for his sister I truly believe that Jerry and I were going to receive the clothing we received so many things from him that wouldn't have been strange this is very strange though this is extremely large amounts of money if this was something he was known to do that would make sense and maybe there's so much of it because the shopping was better in London than in chelum so it was just stocking up on presents before moving back in a couple of weeks but another possibility was not only that g was transferring back to gchq he might have been thinking about quitting intelligence altogether Gareth enjoyed art and fashion and he had even attended a 10we fashion course at Central St Martin's College his family and friends were unaware that had taken the course which many have claimed as evidence that he was lying about all sorts of aspects of his life any reason I could give as to why he never told Carrie or anyone else about this course would purely be speculation but it showed that he had a genuine interest in fashion as an art form and if the speculation from mental health experts that Gareth was autistic is correct cor then having $25,000 worth of women's clothing certainly tracks the purchases seem to all have been well within his means and it's the sort of behavior that I'd expect from someone with a kind of obsessive hyperfixation or an on an interest that is common among people with Autism the purchasers all seem to have well within his means am I underestimating how much people who work for gchq get paid 25 thou that's like £20,000 or something worth of clothing and let's say just another 20 or 30 on top of that you're talking like 50 Grand like what really or maybe he just thought that if it was good enough that David dut how do you say that name the guy Fox Moulder dutan Dy doovy ladies and gentlemen David [Music] duy hey what's up and the DEA it was good enough for him either would certainly make more sense than the claims being made in news Outlet especially since none of the women's clothing found in his apartment had ever been worn in fact most of this reporting indicates that the clothes wouldn't even have fit him in the first place a couple of sources said they were his size but they but that may have been a hold over from all the misinformation being spread although the presence of these women's clothes was noteworthy there are multiple nons salacious explanations for why he had them that are completely plausible there were a couple of wigs among the clothes as well but it's believed these were intended for a costume party he was attending with a friend in October where he would be dressing as an anime character all in all the clothes were likely a red herring s felt that the police did Gareth the grave disservice by stating the clothes were there without mentioning that he also had about $112,000 worth of mountaineering equipment in his apartment for me to go rock climbing with his father money money decisions like that from the police only made it easier for the media to put forth a narrative that Gareth was some secret degenerate whose only interests were cracking codes and sucking shs oh Kevin no okay but what about the whole bondage angle it would be hard to come up with such a mundane excuse for why there was so much bondage gear in his apartment right well yes that would be true but luckily I don't need to explain it because well that was just a lie there wasn't any bondage equipment paraphernalia in G's apartment of course like most lies it was based on a colel of truth though an investigation into G's browser history revealed that he occasionally visited bondage websites I think there's anything wrong with that wait gareth's the Spy he works for gchq and he's not heard of incognito occasionally isn't ever properly defined although he only ever spent 30 to 60 minutes looking at stuff it's also never fully explained exactly what types of website they were if they were instructional websites then sure he might have had a passing interest or curiosity about bondage but if the sites were more pornographic in nature that could have just meant that every few months he got tired of the glut of Step family offerings on traditional porn sites and decided he wanted to watch something different for a change but that's all getting back to speculation territory especially since no other porn was found on his computer what is in speculation is that Dr Wilcox was aware of the browser history during her inquest based on her interviews with experts she concluded that gareth's visits to these sites were far too short and infrequent to suggest that he had an active interest in bondage she also dismissed the idea that getting into the bag was some sort of autoerotic activity like claustrophilia Dr Wilcox had both an escapologist and yoga expert attempt to lock themselves in an identical hold door to the one Gareth was found in after reach had tried 3 to 400 times without success she deemed that the Act was impossible the escapologist repeatedly was quoting Ed as saying even Houdini would struggle to lock himself inside that bag that's not to say that he couldn't have gotten himself into the bag that part was actually pretty trivial but actually zipping it closed and padlocking the bag was deemed n impossible however a week after Dr Wilcox released her verdict another expert came forward with one simple trick bag manufacturers don't want you to know well he was less of an expert as he was a 49-year-old military reservist but he was aware of a trick commonly used by baggage thieves to reach into locked bags by pinching the sides of the bag together the extra slack given to the zipper creates an opening that can be easily reached through when two zippers are padlocked together what I don't wait so somehow you can get past the lock how I'll just take H this dude's word on it okay the man was too large to fit inside the bag himself but his daughter was 55 which allowed her to demonstrate the technique this was also roughly the same size as Gareth though though his exact height is unclear various reports list him as anywhere from 55 to 5'8 but the extra 3 in wasn't going to make a difference in terms of maneuverability and size the bag after a few minutes of struggling the daughter was successfully able to lock herself in the bag she repeated the demonstration so many times that she was eventually able to pull it off in under 3 minutes this technique was even repeated by a journalist who was able to lock herself inside the bag of course these demonstrations faced some amount of criticism people argued that the two women who had demonstrated this were much smaller than Gareth which isn't really true getting into the bag required curling up into the fetal position hence a couple of inches of height is not really going to matter and while Gareth was athletic and very fit he was a cyclist not a powerlifter his body was rather slender not dissimilar to the women that had shown this feet was possible however the other more pertinent criticism was that in all of the successful demonstrations the bag was placed on the floor of a room with no nearby obstructions this was very different from being inside a bathtub which it is argue would severely restrict just how much the person could move around I know it doesn't seem like there'd be a lot of movement once the person was already in the bag but it did still require a surprising amount of maneuvering whether or not this would be possible inside a bathtub I can't say for sure I can't find any demonstrations with the bag inside a tub and I'm too tall to test it for myself and even if I wasn't that I'm not locking myself in a bag yes yes don't do that it's weird I would not do this and I'm also far too tall so it was theoretically possible for Gareth to lock himself in the bag but how would he then lock his apartment door from the outside there's no good answer to that but there is an easy alternative somebody else could have a key to the apartment follow-up interviews with neighbors revealed that in late June or early July a tenant on the ground floor had let in a Mediterranean looking couple who appeared to be in their 20s or early 30s police released an EIT of the couple essentially a police sketch made with computers but nothing seems to have come of this lead which is weird because it's more than a little suspicious Gareth rarely had any visitors but the couple told his neighbors they were going to visit their friends who lived in the top floor apartment and they had their own key they went upstairs and were never seen Again by the neighbor most interestingly the name they gave for their friends was Pierre Paulo rather than Gareth okay well I'm sure other people lived on the top floor there is some speculation that Gareth had started taking a role as a field operative as an act an actual spy rather than just doing code breaking and other computer stuff since he was a fan of Fine Art and the like some people believe that Gareth took the name Pierre Paulo after Italian poet and filmmaker Pierre Paulo pelino um no if you're going to go and be a spy they're not going to let you choose your own name they're going to give you a super M you know James Bond the reason the character is called James Bond is because Ian Fleming thought it was the most boring name that he could think of he'd seen some book written by like a ornithologist or something and the dude's name was James Bond and he was like that is the most boring name that I know so that's why he called the character and that's exactly how it would be in real life they wouldn't let you choose a cool nickname uh spy name personally I don't buy that at all it's my understanding that spies don't get to pick their own names like that and even if they do it wouldn't be they wouldn't be allowed to pick something so obvious it would be almost as bad as James Bond masquerading under the name Hercules Rockefeller or rembrand Q Einstein exactly what's Stranger than this whole situation is that it seems to have died off completely perhaps it was just another piece of misinformation that was being planted to throw detectives off the center of the real culprit but most coverage of the case never even mentions this detail everyone talks about his former landlord's claim that she once found him calling for help from inside his bed wearing nothing but his boxes after having tied himself to the bed and being unable to escape but this couple and never brought up at all as for the landlord story I'm not sure what to make of it she claimed that she believed the Act was sexual in nature rather than being an attempt at escapology but I'm not convinced she's qualified to make that assessment I'm also Unsure how much credibility I give this statement she said that Gareth was the perfect tenant who never made a sound and she was happy to rent to him again when he called after requesting his transfer back to gchq yeah it's kind of like wait the guy that had to untie naked after he tied his over to the bed and good to get out H I don't really believe that I suppose since this was allegedly an isolated incident in his 8 years renting from her that it'd be understandable to let it slide but something about the story feels off to me if it's the narrative the police settled on a little too well for my liking since nothing else does but you're welcome to disagree with me on that I don't disagree with you on that I don't the only other major piece of evidence it was something the police didn't even know existed until the last day of the hearing inside gareth's Locker at work have been discovered nine memory sticks belonging to Gareth for any una aware that's a huge fing deal you can't just walk into a secret intelligence building with a flash drive and stick it into a computer I'd be very surprised if they even have ports that you can stick things into not only are they strictly forbidden but they have advanced SC screening Technologies to detect the presence of such devices hell you don't even need anything that advanced dogs can be trained to sniff out electronic devices with shocking levels of accuracy godamn either Gare someone managed to sneak all those memory sticks into MI6 and then foolishly left them in his locker where they would be discovered instead of taking them home or he had been granted special permission to have them we don't know which is the case because we have no idea what was on them like I said the police didn't even know they existed until the hearing was basically over and it wasn't specifically brought to their attention by their s so5 Liaisons the only reason the police found out the flash drive existed was because they were listed on an inventory of electronics presented in the last day of the hearing this all highlights another major issue with the case there has been intense criticism of Metropolitan Police and what is seen as their bungling of the case I wonder why maybe because it's so horrifically bungled allegedly in my opinion because of the sensitive nature of G's work homicide detectives weren't actually allowed direct access to a lot of witnesses evidence or experts instead s so5 acted as a goet for detectives and Intelligence Officers s so5 asked the questions detectives wanted asked on their behalf and then provided detectives with Anonymous notes of whatever was deemed pertinent information there were no transcripts or anything nearly that helpful and like I said the homicide investigators didn't have direct access to a lot of the evidence there are even claims that a high-ranking police officer was intentionally sabotaging the investig ation that's all the evidence we have access to and it certainly leaves a bit to be desired but hey that's why we're covering this story here instead of on casual criminalist the less proof of what happened there is the more wild the theories tend to be and it's high time that we jump right into those theories Theory number one suicide this is going to be a quick one because I don't take this Theory particularly seriously it seems to be a misunderstanding of the details of the case and the conclusions of the police more than anything else even though no police believed that Gareth got into the bag of his own accord they also believed that his death was accidental there is nothing to suggest that Gareth wanted to end his own life and plenty to suggest that he didn't it was just two weeks before Gareth was leaving a job he wasn't in love with to go back to the one that he enjoyed much more he had made arrangements for his move and by all accounts fully intended to go through with it there were even tickets that he had purchased for upcoming drag shows indicating that he planned to be around at least long enough to see those of course that last one doesn't necessarily mean anything because it's exactly the sort of kid I would do if I ever decided to end my own life for some reason I'd want police to walk in to discover my room completely empty except for 500 tickets to an advanced screening of the Emoji Movie 2 and a copy of Everybody Poops with random letters circled throughout the book just to confuse them as much as possible it's kind of Genius but that's me not Gareth who also had the upcoming costume party with his friends I can't find anything indicating that Gareth may have been depressed or wanting to end his life and like I said the theory seems to stem from a misunderstanding after all locking yourself inside a duffel bag certainly seems like it would end in death so if police believed that the action was intentional what else could have been the motivation number two Gareth got in the bag willingly because reasons there are two variations to this Theory the first is that Gareth did this while acting alone the other is that there was somebody else involved with regards to the first Theory we know it's possible for Gareth to have gotten into the bag himself he would have definitely fited it's possible to get in and probably zip the bag shut as for pad lucking it shut that's a different story entirely I'm not going to claim that it's imp possible since we know it can be done when the bag is unrestricted but I'd say that whether or not it could be locked while in the confines of the bathtub is thus far inconclusive but let's assume it was possible this was the police's Theory because there was no evidence of a struggle or of another person having been there yep like my kitchen never having cooked a meal in it before that's all well and good but there wasn't really evidence of Gareth having been in the bathroom either it's hard to ignore the lack of any prints or DNA on the bag or bathtub as it was demonstrated to be impossible to get into the bag without needing to place feet or hands all over the tub at some point and obviously onto the lock and zipper and such as well it also leaves the question of how the door was locked from the outside and why the heat was turned up if we were to suppose this was some sort of sexual act rather than an attempt at escapology it raises additional questions for the heat to make sense Gareth would have likely needed to be both into claustrophilia and autoerotic asphixiation not that there's anything wrong with it if that were the case then maybe the stifling heat making it difficult to breathe could make it more sexy or I guess but this is really stretching the bounds of believability at this point yeah entirely it he was murdered dudes like really do we have to like make all these crazy excuses it seems like he was definitely murdered by a professional killer come on this isn't a conspiracy theory of course this obviously would have been a dangerous thing for somebody to do on their own and what exactly would gareth's Escape Plan have been although demonstrations showed that it was possible to lock a bag from the inside nobody then let themselves out there was always another person with the key that released them that doesn't mean it's impossible but the risk is exceptionally high and honestly having seen the manner in which these locks were closed from the inside i' wager it's impossible to unlock the bag while inside it at the very least it would have been damn near impossible not to mention that there's no evidence of him trying to escape so what he locks himself in the bag realizes he does can't get out and then he doesn't attempt to struggle at all he just sits there until he's dead come on attempting this oh while taking nothing into the bag with him besides the key doesn't make any sense Kerrie said that Gareth was meticulous about assessing risk and other intelligence operatives agreed that there was no way Gareth would ever do something like this without bringing a knife or something to cut himself free if it went wrong doing it in the bathtub also doesn't particularly make sense as it would add another needless impediment to his already restricted movement and look I get it we've all done really stupid and sometimes risky things that we otherwise wouldn't have when we get horny or at least most of us have though I suspect Simon disagreed with my statement but regardless there are limits to that yeah no I don't like I don't know like risky I've never locked myself in a [ __ ] back Jesus but I mean also just from boredom maybe this did like just being bored off your ass at home like you don't have any friends there's nothing good on TV you're like I'm just going to see if I could fit in that bag like uh like just you just [ __ ] argument is right I don't I think for me it's much more likely that I do it for that reason than any sort of erotic reason I I guess I'm just not into claustrophilia so what if there was another person involved could this have been a consensual act gone wrong well certainly a theory but I think that makes less sense than it being a solo sexual act like at what point would the other person who all realized the key was in the bag with Gareth rather than with them and why wouldn't they get a knife or something and cut it to get him out yes exactly he's just a bag you just go get a kitchen knife and be like y Gareth Gareth anything important here while poking the outside of the bag he's like no no no there's a space there and then you just cut him out boom you'd also expect there to be extensive damage to the bag from Gareth struggling to break free yeah that's the big one that's speaks to me it also seems strange that another person would be involved and just leave locking the door behind them while calling the police would obviously result in an extremely uncomfortable interview it seems much better than running away and hoping nobody ever caught them yeah also scrubbing down the place to be pristine if the other person involved happened to know that Gareth worked in secret intelligence trying to flee the scene seems even more risky there's also one other piece of evidence found that I haven't mentioned yet which likely destroys any narrative about this being a sex act gone wrong with or without another person involved there was a bit of seen found on the bathroom floor that matched gareth's DNA and which was determined to have been deposited there shortly before his death no specific time frame is given besides just shortly but that seems to have been interpreted as being so close to his death that he wouldn't have been ready to go again yet okay it's a bit too much information but I guess it's important but if putting himself in the bag was a sexual act then this doesn't make any sense if the act of being confined was arousing to Gareth he had expect to find seen in the bag not outside of it or if it was found outside that would have logically been drippage after having escaped if he had already gotten off there wouldn't have been a reason to get inside the bag afterwards as some sort of Kink again maybe it's was just bought wonder if I can fit in the bag I know that Gareth locking himself in the bag alone is what the Metropolitan Police officially believe definitely happens but I ain't buying it though I recognize that homicide detectives are used to dealing with sloppier Crimes of Passion with lots of evidence the fact that there was a suspicious lack of evidence in the death of an MI6 officer probably should have rung alarm Bells it's especially bizarre that initially they wanted to tie it to a jealous lover publicly stating that they did not believe gareth's work in secret intelligence was related to his death whatever you say boys but hey that brings us to the final Theory yeah I am 100% with Kevin he did not do this this is like some Jeffrey Epstein except even crazier more suspicious Theory three it was murder once again we have multiple variations of this Theory the first is that it was indeed a jealous lover the second is that he was killed by MI6 I struggle with that one he worked for MI6 and the third is that he was killed by a foreign spy the idea that Gareth was killed by a jealous lover doesn't seem to have much basis in reality as far as I can tell this theory is only popular because it was part of the initial ston from police and because enough people find sex scandals more exciting than International Espionage no I find like I don't know maybe I'm in the minority but International Espionage way more interesting to me of course there should be an obvious problem with this Theory thanks to gareth's social awkwardness having a jealous lover typically requires having multiple lovers at the same time based on my research I'm not fully convinced that he even had one ever there's nothing anywhere about Gareth having any sort of sexual history tyan said that he wanted a girlfriend but there's no indication that he ever had one or a boyfriend for that matter don't get me wrong Gareth was a young successful guy in great shape and by all accounts he was a really kind and generous person but his accelerated education [ __ ] up his Social Development and then it was straight to working very long days for secret intelligence and as I said before he almost never had any visitors at his Apartments unless it was a lover that was jealous about how much time he spent at work the idea that he could have been juggling Partners doesn't make a lot of sense I can't find any reference to K mentioning him ever dating anybody either and I suspect she would have been quite vocal about that to help dispel the gay crossdressing rumors besides if it was a jealous lover then this would have been the type of crime of passion that Scotland Yard was more familiar with there would have been stab wounds and blood everywhere and all that good stuff for a jealous lover to sedate Gareth and lock him in a bag as a form of murder the person would have had to have possessed such an incredible level of psychopathy that it might actually qualify as a superpower yeah it does and it made them a superpower assassin which is what killed him Christ police the whole thing doesn't fit your typical jealous lover scenario and it's unlikely that he would have ever been in such a situation anyway so what about about the idea that Gareth was killed by MI6 I bet that through for a loop when I first said it since nothing so far really points in that being a logical possibility exactly well almost nothing but it's still a pretty wild Theory there's only two pieces of evidence that point to MI6 having been involved in gareth's death the first is the flash drives found in his locker that were hidden from the police it's speculated that Gareth may have been accessing the MI6 service to perform illegal searches for a friends the results of which were on the memory sticks it could also explain the money cuz he had a lot of money that doesn't make a whole lot of sense though as I already said it would be Beyond difficult to bring unauthorized Electronics into the office and Incredibly stupid to leave them in his locker instead of taking them home realistically their presents and contents weren't shared with homicide detectives because it was a bunch of classified sh that they decided they didn't need to know but the more concerning piece of evidence is that gareth's absence from work didn't prompt any action on the part of MI6 oh right of course I forgot about that he's been described as being meticulous hardworking running like clockwork and so on an unexpected absence from work should have been highly suspicious beyond that he was scheduled to take part in two office meetings in the week after it died even if someone wanted to argue that it was a busy office with lots of people and it was possible for nobody to notice the quiet mostly solitary Gareth wasn't at his desk failing to show up the meetings would have been impossible to meet while I don't personally think MI6 was involved in his death that one detail does really bother me I can't figure out a good explanation for it I don't really believe that secret intelligence organizations would have a LZ Fair attitude towards attendance nor that they would fail to take The Disappearance of someone with access to lots of highly sensitive projects seriously but I guess that's the world we're living in it does sound very strange and that just leaves the final option and by far the most plausible in my opinion Gareth was murdered by a foreign spy based on all the details we've gone over I find it impossible to believe this was anything but murder specifically Murder by a professional 100% agree Kevin whoever killed Gareth must have had enough knowledge of forensics to eliminate any evidence showing that another person was in the apartment the placement of the bag in the bathtub to reduce odor turning up the heat to accelerate decomposition they also point to someone that really knew what they were doing surely these were done to hinder the investigation by providing the maximum time possible for gareth's body and any potential evidence contained within to decompose as much as possible even though we don't know a lot of specifics we know that Gareth was a codebreaker and did work involving cyber security protecting London's Banks from International money launderers and such colleagues may not have given details about his work but they did say he worked on a lot of top secret projects any one of which could have resulted in someone wanting to kill him employees May generally be seen as replaceable but since Gareth was exceptionally talented and only 31 at the time of his death he posed a very real threat of being a major pain in the AR adversarial intelligence agencies for decades to come whoever would take his place if he was eliminated may not have been as skilled and sometimes it's just about sending a message anyway but there's also the chance that it was something more specific than that according to to Boris kacho former KGB spy living in London under witness protection after defecting it was the Russian foreign intelligence service or svr that killed Gareth and in case there's any doubt that Boris is the real deal he is currently engaged in a lawsuit against Britain's National Crime agency revealing his new secret identity while responding to an extradition request from lvia Boris is definitely a former KGB spy and thanks to this data breach he may be a former person by the time this episode airs wow that's [ __ ] up government you put him in with defection after he turned on his home country and you F this up good God give him a new identity ASAP and hide him somewhere in a small village according to boris's sources in Russia Gareth was killed by the svr after they failed to turn him into a double agent the svr tried blackmailing Gareth into working with them but it didn't work it's possible that it could have ended there but Gareth may have overplayed his hand boris's sources claimed that Gareth responded to sv's threats by saying that he knew the identity of a double agent working at gchq he may have thought they gave him leverage to get them off his back but all it did would have put an even bigger Target on him allegedly the svr killed Gareth by untraceable poison introduced in his ear this sounds totally possible but killing a British intelligence officer on a British Soul would surely have been a dangerous game are we to believe that Russia would have actually done something so bold well yes of course they [ __ ] would and allegedly they did so at least 14 other times in the span of 10 years Alexander Lano yeah but he was Russian killing a Russian on British soil even if he's you know in protection or whatever is different from killing a Brit spy on British soil it just is I was a former member of the Russian Federal Security Service who fled to London in 2000 on the 1st of November 2006 liin Yenko met with two former Russian agents in London later that day he was admitted to hospital after having been poisoned with ponum 210 he died of radiation poisoning within a few weeks Matthew puncher was a r a scientist who worked on the case calculating the amount of polonium inside feno's body in 2006 he was found dead in his home in Oxfordshire having suffered numerous stab wounds from two different kitchen knives no [ __ ] way brah there was no evidence of a struggle or anyone else in the home so police ruled that he had used two knives to repeatedly stab himself the death also happened shortly after puncher took a work trip to Russia what the [ __ ] what the [ __ ] this is crazy Alexander perini was a Russian businessman and whistleblower who tried to reveal massive corruption from the kremin before fleeing to London on November the 10th 2012 pereni suddenly collapsed and died while going for a jog through his gay community of St George's Hill he was only 44 with no health issues test from one of his life insurance companies found chases of a Chinese Plant gamium elegans in his stomach this plant is known as heartbreak grass because it triggers Cardiac Arrest when ingested despite this Sor police maintain there were no toxins bound this is literally unbelievable this is if this this if this was in happening if this was happening in some crazy corrupt like developing world country where the police are like easy to bribe and [ __ ] I'd be like yeah well that's what happens but this is the UK maybe I hold the UK in too much esteem but this is crazy then there was Boris baravkar a Russian billionaire oligarch and politician who sought asylum in the UK following Vladimir Putin's election in 200 barzowski funded International opposition to Putin and was found hanging dead in his home in barkshire in 2013 he was also a close friend of lipin Yenko so in short yeah the svr would absolutely kill people on British soil including British born citizens okay I take it back [ __ ] it yeah they would in fact they seem to be big fans of doing so especially since the police refused to rule any of the insanely suspicious deaths as murders all that said I can't speak to the veracity of boris's specific Claim about why Gareth was killed it makes sense and on the balance of probability I'm certainly inclined believe it but there isn't any specific proof of course if there was then the killer wouldn't be very good at their job would they wrap up it has been 14 years since Garrett's death and while the answer seems obvious it officially remains an open mystery however anyone who followed this story may have noticed that there was a recent development oo in early 2024 British newspapers began running headlines saying that the death of Gareth Williams was finally solved but those were Publications like the sun more reputable news papers correctly reported that the police's re-examination of the case had concluded and the police found no new evidence in the mysterious death as such they chose to stick to the official story that Gareth was alone in his apartment when he died I mean he probably was alone in his apartment when he died after he' been G after he' been chloroformed put in a bag had the heat turned up and locked in there and then he died alone in his apartment after being murdered I'm guessing you don't believe that any more than I do Simon and not just because I wrote this under the assumption that it was murder to write this episode taking the stance that Gareth was really alone when he died would be a Monumental challenge requiring me to leave out every key detail of the case besides this happened just one year after David carine's death by autoerotic asphixiation made International headlines anyone interested in such acts of autoerotic Adventure would undoubtedly have taken heed of the caution tale that said even if we agree it was murder who was responsible Still Remains a mystery while Boris certainly seems like a credible source and there are plenty of contemporary examples of what appear to be Russian Assassins on British soil oh he can't prove it's true since Boris is a known Defector it's possible he was being fed false information after all it's not like Gareth would have had any shortage of enemies based on the work he was doing in the end we'll probably never know with absolute certainty the full story behinds gareth's death but it was definitely murder oh my God Kevin I 100% agree with you this dude was murdered in my opinion allegedly thanks for watching [Music]

Channel: Decoding the Unknown

Views: 171,100

Keywords: spy in bag, real csi, gareth williams spy

Id: zXz1K6QOHMM

Length: 65min 56sec (3956 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 26 2024