The "Spy in a Bag" Case - Murder? Assassination? Cover-Up? Accident? - We Saw the Devil: A True Crime Podcast

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Sunny spaces, smiling faces, happy places. But every sunny space
holds a shadow. Behind every smile, our sharp teeth, and
every happy place has something sinister lurking just below the surface.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
Welcome to We Saw the Devil, the podcast diving deep
into the chilling realms of true crime. Join your host
Robin as she unravels mysteries that have left investigators baffled
and armchair sleuths obsessed. Be forewarned, dear listener, We Saw
the Devil is not for the faint of heart. Our
unflinching exploration will take you to the darkest corners of

(00:41):
the psyche, and through the unimaginable depths of human darkness,
to unearthed stark secrets, to the harsh light of day.
Nothing will be left untouched. Are you ready? Are you sure?
We Saw the Devil?

Speaker 3 (00:59):
Hello everyone, you are listening to We Saw the Devil.
This is Robyn and as promised, I am here with
a true crime episode. I know the feed has been
you know, it's kind of the trifecta of it being October,
a lot of stuff happening, and I'm kicking off a
new series and then other items as well. This is
still true crime. We saw the Devil is still true crime.

(01:20):
I know that the Red, White, and Brus series has
been dropping on the channel, but that is going to
be moved on to its own separate show, so if
you're following this shortly here, you will no longer see
those updates. I actually saw this story a while back
and was kind of fascinated by it at the time
and interested, but didn't really read much more into it.
It's very bizarre, and what I think is specifically bizarre

(01:41):
about this one is that it's now fourteen years later
and we still have absolutely no idea what happened. So
for this episode, a little preview. Imagine that you hate
your job and you're leaving. You decide to leave, You
give them your notice, You tell them that you're done,
You're out. You're going back to the gun. You want
to be left alone. You're ready to be a hermit.

(02:04):
You put your two weeks in and then you wait.
Except you end up dead, naked, folded into a gem
bag padlocked from the outside in your own bathroom. That's
what happened to Gareth Williams, six codebreaker genius mathematician, and
depending on who you ask, he either accidentally killed himself

(02:24):
in the most improbable way imaginable, or someone made very
sure that he never made it to his last day
of work and did that for him. The British government
says one thing, his family says another, and a former
KGB agent while he has a whole different story involving
Russian assassins and unpraceable poison. No one can agree on

(02:45):
how this man died, but they all agree on one thing.
He wanted out in six and two weeks before he
could leave, something happened to him. So that is what
we are going to be covering today. And before we
get into that, let's just get the quick housekeeping out
of the way. As I said earlier, you are listening
to We Saw the Devil. This is Robin. If you're
not followed the show on Instagram that We Saw the
Devil podcast, you can follow on Facebook and Twitter at

(03:08):
We Saw the Devil. And that being said, I did
mention earlier that it is October. So every October, if
you know, I invite Iris, who I've known her since
I've known her for fifteen years now. When I have
my horror podcast back in the day, Iris always comes
on and we talk about horror movies. We just pick
some and then just randomly talk about them. It's very niche,

(03:28):
I know, but I love talking about movies. So we
do have one more episode coming of that where we're
doing Weapons and Barbarian that's actually going to be dropping
on Tuesday, and then back on the True Crime and
Red White and Bruce, but separately. I guess that's all
the housekeeping. How are you guys doing. I am finally
taking this weekend to relax. This morning I watched Beast

(03:50):
of War, which is a New Shark movie. I think
if you guys have been listening to me long enough,
you know that that is my guilty pleasure subgenre. Pretty decent.
I would give it maybe a five out of ten,
which I think in the world of horror is like
sifting through a dung heap to find a diamond. So
that's all that I have, guys, Let's just go ahead
and get into it. August twenty third, twenty ten, Pemlico, London.

(04:14):
Two Metropolitan Police officers stand outside a top floor flat
at thirty six Alderney Street. It's a routine welfare check.
A government employee hasn't shown up to work in over
a week. Colleagues are becoming worried. The officers knock, no answer,
They call out and receive silence. The officers knock, no answer,

(04:36):
They call out and receive silence. So they force entry
at four forty eight pm, and what they discover in
the bathroom will haunt them forever. In the bathtub of
the on sweet bathroom sits a red north face hold
all bag. It's padlocked shut from the outside, and inside
that bag is the naked, decomposing body of a brilliant mathematician,

(04:57):
a Welsh codebreaker and spy. His name was Gareth Williams,
and fourteen years later we still have absolutely no idea
how he died. Before we get to the scene in
the bathroom, we need to understand who Gareth Williams was,
because this wasn't just any death. This was the death
of someone who knew secrets. Gareth Wynn Williams was born

(05:20):
on September twenty sixth, nineteen seventy eight in Wales. Welsh
was his first language, and from an early age it
was clear that he was different, exceptional. At age ten,
he was already attending Bangor University part time, while still
in the secondary school focus mathematics. Think about that for
a moment, a ten year old taking university level math courses.

(05:43):
By seventeen, he graduated with a first class degree in mathematics.
At in age when most kids are just finishing high school,
Gareth had already conquered university. He went on to earn
a PhD from the University of Manchester. Though he later
dropped out of a postgraduate course at Cambridge, this wasn't
a failure. It was the beginning of something even bigger.
In two thousand and one, at just twenty three years old,

(06:05):
Gareth Williams joined the GCHQ. That's the Government Communications Headquarters,
Britain's Intelligence, Security and Cyber Agency. Think of it basically
as the UK's NSSA. For nearly a decade, Williams lived
a quiet life in Presbury, Gloucestershire, renting a room from
a local landlady. He was intensely private, a keen cyclist

(06:27):
and a man who preferred solitude to socializing. Those who
knew him described him as brilliant, but withdrawn, someone more
comfortable with equations than people. In spring two thousand and nine,
Williams was seconded to six the Secret Intelligence Service. He
moved to London, living in a government safe house in Pimlico.
His work was classified top secret, but we know some things.

(06:51):
Sources say. He was working on projects involving Russia. He
was helping the US National Security Agency trace international money
laundering routes used by organized crime, including Moscow based mafia cells.
He had recently qualified for operational deployment. He'd attended major
hacking conferences, including the twenty ten Black Hat Briefings and
Defcon in Las Vegas. Returning from that trip on August eleventh,

(07:15):
twenty ten, he was involved in penetrating US and UK
hacking networks. This was sensitive work, the kind that makes enemies.
But here's the thing. Gareth Williams hated London. He hated
MI six. His sister Carrie Stubbs would later testify at
his inquest about the friction he experienced. In her own

(07:36):
words quote, he disliked office culture, post work, drinks, flash
car competitions, and the rat race. He even spoke of
friction in the office. Williams told his family that the
job was not quite what he expected. He encountered more
red tape than he was comfortable with. This wasn't just
mild dissatisfaction. A few months before his death, Williams formally

(07:58):
requested to return into GHQ. He wanted out of six.
As a keen cyclist in Walker, he desperately wanted to
go back to the country, to the quieter life where
he'd spent nearly a decade. He was scheduled to return
to Cheltenham on September third, twenty ten, right after his
annual leave, just two weeks away from escaping London for good,

(08:20):
but he never made it. Was his imminent departure relevant
to his death. Did someone not want him to leave
or was it simply tragic timing? But let's go back
to that welfare check. Williams had last been seen alive
on August fifteenth, twenty ten. He'd attended a private drag
event at an LGBT venue with a friend. Nothing seemed unusual,

(08:40):
but then silence. He didn't show up to work. He
didn't respond to calls or emails for a full seven days.
His colleagues at six heard nothing. Think about that this
is a spy agency. Someone who works on classified operations
involving hostile nations just disappears and it takes them a

(09:00):
to check on him. Williams was supposed to be moving
back to the country. Another GCHQ employee was actually trying
to contact him during that week to view his London flat,
and no one thought it was odd that he'd gone silent.
When police finally entered the flat on August twenty third,
they found the lights on throughout the apartment, the heating
was cranked up to full blast on a warm August

(09:21):
day in London, and in the bathroom that holdall bag.
The bag was padlocked from the outside. Inside was Gareth
Williams's naked body, curled in a fetal position. He'd been
dead for about a week, decomposing in that sealed bag
in the overheated bathroom. But here's where it gets stranger.

(09:42):
The key to the padlock was inside the bag, underneath
his body. There were no injuries on William's body, no
signs of a struggle, no alcohol or recreational drugs in
his system whatsoever, and no fingerprints on the padlock, the
rim of the bath or anywhere else in the bathroom room.
The crime scene was declared immediately, but was it actually

(10:04):
a crime? The investigation into Gareth Williams's death was complicated,
To put it mildly. Shortly after it began, the heads
of MI six and the Metropolitan Police had a secret meeting.
They needed to discuss how to handle the investigation. Given
the top secret nature of Williams's work, the US State
Department specifically requested that details of Williams's work not emerge

(10:28):
at inquest. Foreign Secretary William Haig assigned a public interest
immunity certificate to withhold information about Williams's operations and joint
projects with the US, so the investigation proceeded with one
hand tied behind its back. Police released some details in
December twenty ten. They revealed that Williams had occasionally visited

(10:50):
bondage websites, spending between thirty minutes to an hour on them.
His wardrobe included twenty five thousand euros worth of high
end women's clothing. The media went wild with these details.
Headlines screamed about sex games gone wrong, about bondage and
cross dressing. Williams's family was devastated. They felt that this

(11:12):
was character assassination or an attempt to paint their son
as someone he wasn't. And then there was also something else,
something His landlady back in Sheeltenham had remembered three years
before his death, she and her husband had found Williams
in his room shouting for help, with his hands tied
to his bedposts. He told them he was testing whether

(11:33):
he could escape. They cut him free, believing it was
sexual in nature rather than just simple escapology. So there
was precedent for Williams putting himself in restraints, but could
he have locked himself in the bag? Police brought an
expert to test the theory. Two specialists attempted to lock
themselves into a similar holdall bag. They tried this four

(11:57):
hundred times, and they failed every single time. One expert
said there might be a tiny theoretical possibility that Williams
could have managed it, but the evidence suggested that this
was virtually impossible. A pathologist stated that if Williams was
alive when he entered the bag, he would have been
overcome by hypercapnia elevated carbon dioxide levels within just two

(12:21):
to three minutes. No gloves were found in the bag,
no fingerprints on the padlocker bag, and Williams's own fingerprints
weren't on the rim of the bath. In May twenty twelve,
Corner Fiona Wilcox delivered her verdict. She found that Williams's
death was unnatural and likely to have been criminally mediated.

(12:42):
She concluded that, on the balance of probabilities, Gareth Williams
was killed unlawfully. She believed another party had placed Williams
in the bag and locked it. She thought he was
probably alive when put in the bag and died shortly
after from carbon monoxide poisoning or possibly from a short
acting poison. She condemned the leaks about cross dressing as

(13:03):
possible media manipulation. She rejected suicide, bondage, interest, or autoerotic
activity as causes of death, and she was highly critical
of the I six. They had taken seven full days
to report William's missing, causing quote extra anguish and suffering
for his family and leading to the loss of crucial
forensic evidence. Williams's sister, Carrie Stubbs, painted a picture of

(13:27):
her brother at the inquest. She described him as the
most scrupulous risk assessor she had ever known. I cannot
emphasize enough his conscientiousness. She told the court she didn't
believe her brother would have let a potential killer into
his upmarket London flat. He was too careful, too aware
of danger. She also emphasized something the media seemed to ignore.

(13:50):
Gareth was intensely private, but exceptionally tidy. Everything was always
in order. He was organized, meticulous controlled. Does that sound
unlike someone who would die in an accident involving a
locked bag. Williams's family believed that a member of some
agency specializing in the dark arts of the secret services

(14:10):
was involved in his death. They alleged that crucial DNA
had been interfered with, and that fingerprints at the scene
were removed as part of a cover up. The family's solicitor,
Robin Williams, was particularly critical in the My six's response
quote his employers failed to make even the most basic
inquiries about his whereabouts and welfare. Why would a man

(14:30):
who was leaving MI six, who won and out, who
had complained of friction and was counting down the days
to return to his home in the countryside, why would
that man suddenly engage in risky behavior that would kill him?
But then came the plot twist. The Metropolitan Police conducted
a reinvestigation lasting another twelve months. In November twenty thirteen,

(14:52):
they announced their conclusion. Deputy Assistant Commissioner Martin Hewitt stated
that quote, the most probable scenario was that william Sims
had died alone in his flat as the result of
accidentally locking himself inside the bag. An accident. The coroner said, murder,
the police said accident. Two completely opposite conclusions from the

(15:14):
same evidence. But there is another theory, one that involves
international espionage and assassination. In September and October twenty fifteen,
a former KGB agent named Boris Karpatchov came forward. He
had defected from Russia and was living in Britain. Karbachkov
claimed that sources in Russia told him that the Russian

(15:35):
Foreign Intelligence Service the SVR, was responsible for Williams's murder.
According to him, the SVR tried to blackmail Williams into
becoming a double agent. When Williams refused, he made a
fatal mistake. He claimed he knew the identity of a
Russian spy inside GCHQ. Karbaschkov said that Williams's threat left

(15:56):
the SVR with no other choice. They had to eliminate
him to protec to their agent inside British intelligence and
the method. Karpbachkov claimed that the SVR killed Williams with
an untraceable poison introduced through his ear. Now we need
to take this with a grain of salt. Karpatchhkov's claims
have never been verified. No evidence has ever been the

(16:17):
produced to support them. But they fit a pattern, don't they.
Russia has a history of sophisticated assassinations on British soil.
Kagareth Williams have been another victim. The official answer is no,
But officially he also died alone by accident in a
bag he couldn't have locked himself inside of. Fast forward
to twenty twenty four, fourteen years after Williams's death, Scotland

(16:42):
Yard ordered a forensic review, using modern techniques that weren't
available in twenty ten. They retested key items from the flat,
the holdall bag, the zip toggle, the padlock, the key.
The breakthrough came from a green towel found in a
kitchen cupboard. It had been described at the time as
a significant find because of the DNA discovered on it.

(17:05):
Using new technology, they finally identified whose DNA it was.
It belonged to Gareth Williams himself. The Metropolitan Police announced
their conclusion Williams must have acted alone. Case closed but
was it? Detective Chief Inspector Neil John stated. This resulted
in a resubmission of exhibits to the forensic laboratory and

(17:27):
additional examinations being sought. No new DNA was found from
a third party. Therefore, the official position is that Williams
died alone. But those close to the case aren't satisfied
because the new evidence doesn't actually answer the fundamental questions.
It just tells us what wasn't found. Here's what we

(17:47):
still don't know, if Williams decided to take his own life,
or if this was a sex game gone wrong. How
did he get into that bag in the bath without
leaving a single fingerprint? Not on the bag, not on
the padlock, not on the rim of the bath. Two experts,
absolute experts, couldn't lock themselves in that bag in four
hundred attempts. So how did he Why did he leave

(18:12):
the lights on in his flat? Why on a warm
Midsummer's day in August did he turn his heating up
to full blast? Was it to speed up decomposition? And
if so, why would someone planning a private accident do that?
Then here's the big one. Why was Gareth Williams a man?
Who had formally requested to leave six, who had complained

(18:32):
about friction at work, who was just two weeks away
from returning to the country in the quieter life that
he wanted. Why was that man suddenly found dead in
bizarre circumstances. Was his desire to leave six connected to
his death? Did he know something, see something? Was he
a liability because he wanted out? His sister testified that

(18:53):
he was the most scrupulous risk assessor that she had
ever known. She couldn't emphasize enough his conscientious business. This
was not a careless man. This was not someone who
took unnecessary risks. So how did he end up in
the bag? Why did m I six weight seven full
days to report him missing, seven days during which crucial

(19:15):
forensic evidence was lost. His family's lawyers said his employers
failed to make even the most basic inquiries into his
whereabouts and welfare. And remember another GCHQ employee was trying
to contact Williams to view his flat during that week.
Williams was expected to be preparing for his move back
to Cheltenham. His absence should have been immediately suspicious. Why

(19:37):
was his door and its locks removed before police forensic
experts became involved. What about the DNA from at least
two other individuals found on the bag, the DNA that
was never fully identified or explained. What about the e
fit photos police released of two people seen entering the
building in June or July twenty ten? Were they ever identified?

(20:00):
Why was one of his four phones reset of factory settings?
What about the nine memory sticks found in Williams's MI
six office, along with a north face bag similar to
the one that he died in. Why did counter Terrorism
Command fail to tell the lead murder detectives about any
of these items? Why were they told by intelligence agencies
that these items weren't relevant? And, perhaps most troubling, if

(20:24):
this was an accident, why all the secrecy, Why the
public interest immunity certificates? Why withhold details of his work?
The coroner believed that he was murdered, The police say
it was an accident. A former KGB agent says Russia
killed him, and his family believes it's a cover up.
Gareth Williams was buried in his hometown in Wales on

(20:45):
September twenty six, twenty ten. It would have been his
thirty second birthday. His funeral was attended by family, friends,
former colleagues, and the head of Six himself, Sir John Sawyer's.
The BBC even made a mini series loosely based on
the case called London Spy, but the real story remains unsolved.
With Gareth Williams the victim of a tragic accident involving

(21:08):
an interest in escapology or bondage fatally gone wrong. Was
he murdered by Russian intelligence agents for refusing to betray
his country? Was he killed by someone within the intelligence
services his death covered up for reasons we'll never know,
or is there another explanation entirely when that we haven't
even considered. What we know for certain is that a

(21:28):
brilliant mathematician, a codebreaker, and not only that, but one
who served his country, died alone in a bathroom in Pimlico.
His body was found in a locked bag in a
heated flat, a week after anyone had last seen him alive.
He died just days before he was supposed to start
the life that he actually wanted. The case file says

(21:48):
probably accidental death, and the final question that remains is
did he die trying to escape from something or was
someone making sure that he never escaped?

Speaker 1 (21:57):
At all

Speaker 3 (22:01):
Until next crime

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The "Spy in a Bag" Case - Murder? Assassination? Cover-Up? Accident?

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