The Most Disturbing CCTV Footage

Ambient Songs:
By CoAg
https://www.youtube.com/@co.agmusic1823

Intro Theme by Swift Junai:
https://www.instagram.com/swiftjunai/?hl=en
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6hf5nMJ8s6LJJfFR4OQ3lg
https://open.spotify.com/artist/1PoG2b18MHocWZA8zQgWjO

Writers and researchers: Jay Adams
https://instagram.com/jayadamsdigital?igshid=MzMyNGUyNmU2YQ==

Jordan Gottschick https://www.youtube.com/@DerpsWithWolves/playlists

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Take a look at this screenshot from a surveillance video.
At first glance, there's nothing immediately off about it. The
scene looks calm, almost routine. But take a closer look
or let the video play just a little bit longer,
and this becomes one of the most disturbing and confusing
pieces of surveillance footage ever captured. As always, view discretion
is strongly advised. The morning of April eighteenth, twenty sixteen,

(00:35):
was thunderstorming over mid Lothian, Texas, and while most people
were still in bed, a woman named Terry, also known
as Missy, was already awake and getting ready. At forty
five years old, Missy had a full plate and wore
a lot of hats. She was a wife, a mother
to three daughters, a former special education teacher, and now
a fitness instructor in the city where she lived with
her husband and their girls. Missy had become a fixture

(00:56):
in the local fitness scene her early morning boot camps
during locals going to get in a workout before work,
and the group had become a bunch of regulars who
enjoyed the motivation and consistency they each brought to the group.
Usually these classes took place outside in the parking lot
of a church, but with the forecast the night before,
Missy had sent a message to the group letting them
know they would be moving indoors. Somewhere around four am

(01:17):
that morning, Missy loaded her workout gear into her vehicle
and drove through the rain towards the church. What she
didn't know, however, was that someone was already inside. By
the time she arrived, it was getting close to four
fifteen and the church was dark and quiet except for
the storm outside. She then parked, grabbed her gear, and
headed inside to set up for her five am class.
As was captured by the church's surveillance cameras. Her movements

(01:39):
were routine and completely unremarkable. This footage would later become
some of the most disturbing in recent true crime history.
At exactly four eighteen am, Missy was seen entering the
building on camera, walking alone through the hallways. It was
fairly clear at this point that she had no idea
someone else was already there. The next recorded moment came
close to four thirty five, when one of Missy's students

(02:01):
arrived for class. They found the doors unlocked and stepped
into what they assumed would be another intense early morning session,
but instead they stumbled into a nightmare. Missy was lying
motionless inside after being brutally attacked, and the scene was horrific.
Emergency services were called immediately, but there was nothing they
could do, and Missy was pronounced at the scene. She

(02:22):
had multiple puncture wounds to the head and chest, and
her body was found in the same gear she had
just finished unloading. As investigators arrived and began processing the scene,
it quickly became clear that this wasn't random. Whoever did
this came with a plan, and when investigators began looking
at the church's surveillance footage, they weren't sure what they'd find,
if anything. In fact, the cameras outside had actually malfunctioned,

(02:44):
leaving a frustrating gap and potential evidence, but inside it
the footage was unbroken and extremely disturbing. At around three
point fifty am, roughly half an hour before Missy arrived,
footage captured a figure creeping through the dark halls of
the church. Was completely clad in what looked like tactical gear,
so a black helmet, black gloves, and a heavy vest

(03:05):
with the word police on it. Every inch of their
skin was covered, and most notably, the person's walk was off.
It was slow, methodical, and just strange. The person's right foot,
in particular, turned noticeably outward. The figure also sometimes steadied
themselves against walls, appearing almost off balance. But if this
was a person struggling physically, they weren't struggling in purpose. Instead,

(03:26):
they moved through the building like they knew it or
like they'd studied it. They smashed glass, jiggled door handles,
tested locked doors. With a pride bar uncarried would look
like a hammer and a gloved hand. They weren't rushing
or panicked, nor were they stealing anything. They were just there,
moving deliberately and calmly, as if waiting. Forensic analysis would
later suggest that the hammer or a similar object was

(03:47):
likely the attack weapon. The wounds on Missy's body matched
something like that. But despite the abundance of ear footage,
there was one thing police never released, which was the
moment Missy actually counted the suspect. Investigators have confirmed that
this dage exists, but whatever happened in those next few
moments has never been made public, and this is only
deep in the mystery. From the moment Missy's body was
found as well. Police knew they weren't dealing with your

(04:09):
typical early morning crime. The location alone a church before
dawn was already unusual. The method was also brutal, up
close and personal, and after the scene was secured, police
quickly determined that nothing at all had been taken. Missy's
purse was still there, as was her iPad, and the
same was true of the church itself. There were signs
of a forced entry, as the pride bar had been

(04:29):
used to get inside, but the telltale indicators of theft
weren't present. Investigators then began to suspect what now seemed obvious.
This was no robbery. It looked more like a setup.
Someone had broken into the church and staged the scene
to look like a burglary gone wrong, but the target
wasn't the building, it was Missy. This conclusion was also
backed by the timing. Whoever broken the church had arrived

(04:50):
before she did, waited inside for at least half an hour,
and attacked within minutes of her entering, and on top
of that, wearing swat style clothing. The suspect might have
looked legitimate to anyone who crossed their path, but the
footage made it clear that this was no law enforcement officer.
At first glance, the video might have given the impression
of a confused, bumbling burglar, but the more police viewed it,
the more reaked of premeditation and performance. Someone for some reason,

(05:13):
wanted Missy gone. In the days following the release of
the surveillance footage, the public and police elect became fixated
on one detail above all else. These suspects walk. It
was awkward and almost clumsy. The figure looked like they
were limping or maybe struggling with the heavy tactical gear
they wore. The outwardly pointed right foot gave them a
gait that was instantly memorable. Early on as well, law

(05:33):
enforcement were sure that the suspect was a man, but
the footage told a murcury story. Something about the way
the person moved, particularly their posture, seemed more feminine to
some observers. Investigators then brought on a specialist, doctor Michael Nurnberg,
a forensic pediatrist with a resume that include both convictions
and exonerations through the study of gait. He watched the
footage carefully over and over, even suiting up in similar

(05:55):
armour himself to analyze help might affect the way a
person walks. His conclusion was that the the suspect's walk
was certainly unusual, but it wasn't enough. The clunky walk
could have been the result of the heavy gear, a weapon,
or even a temporary injury. The way the right to
jutted out wasn't unique, he said, as many people walked
that same way, and most critically, Gate couldn't determine gender.
The doctor also warned that while Gaate analysis could be helpful,

(06:18):
it was far from definitive, as more than one person
could walk the same way. Still, the police had no
choice but to cling to the details they had. They
estimated the suspect's height to be about five foot eight,
but not much else could be discerned from the footage.
One thing was clear, though, whoever was beneath the helmet
was hiding everything from their face to their build, and
unfortunately this worked incredibly well. To this day, nobody can

(06:39):
say for certain whether the person was a man or
a woman, whether they were injured or faking, or whether
they were familiar with the church or simply good at pretending.
And as evidence inside the church continued to confound investigators,
they began to turn their attention to Missy's online presence.
Like so many people, she lived a portion of her
life online. She was active on social media, used Facebook
to communicate with her fitness groups, and made a presence

(07:00):
on LinkedIn. Police then uncovered that in the weeks leading
up to her death, Missy had received a series of
messages on LinkedIn from an unknown male. These were described
as creepy and strange, but the content of the messages
wasn't disclosed in full. However, it was apparently enough to
raise suspicions and cause police to wonder someone had been
stalking her. Police then eventually tracked down the person Missy

(07:20):
had been communicating with, but after questioning, authorities stated that
the conversation appeared to be innocuous, but even still, the
sense that someone had been circling her online never quite
went away. Even if it hadn't been that person, it
seemed that her online presence was enough for someone with
bad intentions to sort of track her. Investigators believed that
the suspect could have stalked her schedule of movements in
the days leading up, and there's a strong indication that

(07:42):
the person even recorded the crime. Itself on their phone,
and while this is a point still debated to this day,
to many of those close the case, this wasn't a
random act. To many, the person didn't show up hoping
to rob a church and get lucky. They should have
been the exact right time, in the exact right place,
and brought with them everything they needed to commit the
crime and leave almost nothing behind. So the question continues

(08:05):
to linger who would want Missy dead. She was beloved
by her students, she was active in the community, a
mother of three, and she didn't seem like the type
to make enemies. So as police continued to track down everyone,
from those close to Missy to those who had only
heard of her, they got nowhere. The list of those
who could potentially want her dead was maddeningly short. As
the case dragged on, there was only one final notable

(08:26):
piece of evidence discovered from the security cameras down the road.
Surveillance footage taken from a sporting goods store located near
the church showed a vehicle into the store's parking lot
at around two am the same morning of Missy's murder.
The vehicle is believed to be a twenty ten to
twenty twelve Nissan Ultima or Infinity G thirty seven. It
circled the sporting goods building and flashed its headlights sporadically

(08:47):
before parking in a secluded part of the lot for
a few moments. Then it pulled out and vanished onto
US Route two eighty seven. There was no immediate connection
to the murder, just a car behaving oddly near the
scene hours before the murder occurred. Still, it was enough
to make the police in public wary, so in May
twenty sixteen, law enforcement released a still image of that vehicle,
hoping someone recognize it. As of now, the driver of

(09:09):
the car has never been identified, and police remain noncommittal
about whether the vehicle is connected to what happened to
Missy at all. It might be crucial or it might
be nothing. So years have passed since the attack, and
while the case remains open, the trail has grown cold.
There have been no arrests and no suspects named. Despite
the police receiving an excess of three thousand tips, Police
have chased down every single one of them since the

(09:31):
morning of April eighteenth to twenty sixteen, and every one
of them has gotten them no closer. The surveillance footage
has been dissected framed by frame by law enforcement forensics
experts and a vast online community of amateur salutes. But
we still don't know who the person was or what
they were thinking as they paced the corridors, smashing class
with a hammer and waiting for mist to walk in.
We just don't know if it was personal or calculated,

(09:53):
or both. On Saturday August fourteenth, twenty ten, Gareth Williams,
a lean, wiry thirty one year old, was spotted on
CCTV entering the Holland Park Tube station around three pm.
He was dressed casually and walking alone and nothing but
the footage was notable. He was just a man going

(10:14):
but a weekend afternoon in London. The next day he
headed into the city, first to an atm, then to
a department store for little shopping. Around two thirty pm,
more CCTV footage captured him walking near the dull chain
Gabona store off Sloane Street. Again, he looked completely unmarkable.
Just after three pm, Gareth appeared once more on camera,
this time on Alderney Street. The footage showed him carrying

(10:38):
two shopping bags, walking toward a white stucco building on
a quiet block line with trees and brick walls. He
was dressed in chinos and a red T shirt, and
while the footage was unremarkable to glance, it would turn
out to be the last known sighting of Gareth alive.
Whatever happened to him after he walked to the door
of his apartment has never been definitively explained. By the
afternoon of Monday, August twenty third, Garat had been out

(11:00):
of contact for more than a week. When he missed
two work meetings and didn't respond to repeated messages, his
colleagues got uneasy and eventually called the police. A sign
to the welfare check was Constable John Gallagher, who arrived
at Gareth's apartment. From the outside, again, nothing seemed unusual. Inside, however,
the situation was entirely different. John made his way through
the apartment, checking for any signs of Gareth, but it

(11:22):
wasn't until he examined the master bedroom bathroom that he
found anything. There, he was met with a strange and
unsettling scene. In the bathtom was a large red devil
bag which was zip shut and padlocked. John reached out
to lift it and immediately realized it was too heavy
to pull out of the tub, and as he pulled
on the bag, a red fluid began leaking from the fabric,
and then there was the unmistakable smell of human decomposition.

(11:46):
Now there wasn't much about Gareth's appearance and demeanor that
screamed to international spy, but maybe that's part of what
made him a good one. He was apparently soft spoken,
reserved in private, and he was the kind of person
who could disappear into a crowd, and by all accounts,
that's the way he preferred things anyway. And yet by
the age of thirty one he had become one of
the most brilliant intelligence minds in the UK. He was
born in a coastal town in Wales, and by the

(12:08):
time most kids were still figuring out algebra, Gareth was
attending university part time while still in high school. He
graduated with a first class degree in mathematics at just
seventeen years old, and one of his teachers at school
called him one of the best logicians he'd ever met.
Cambridge came next, where he began a postgraduate certification in mathematics,
but after a year he left the program and began
pursuing a different kind of math. At twenty one, he

(12:30):
joined the Government Communication Headquarters or GCHQ, which is the
British government's ultra secretive code breaking agency, and even there
his colleagues would describe him as world class and someone
who saw patterns and solutions that others couldn't. By twenty ten,
he was on a three year assignment to MI six
in London, an assignment typically reserved for the very best,
but Gareth didn't fit in with the London spy crowd.

(12:53):
He apparently hated the office politics, the flashy car culture,
and the cocktail hour networking. He found the whole thing
exhausted and wanted to return to Cheltenham, where GHQ was based,
where the roads were quieter. Gareth was deeply introverted and
he rarely had visitors over it, and he didn't seem
to date at all. He also kept things to himself
and even as dearest friends didn't know what he really
did for living. And as you might imagine, the fact

(13:15):
that Gareth was found dead, particularly under mysterious circumstances, was
more than just another case to law enforcement. Although he
was seen as a low risk member of the intelligence community.
The very nature of his work alone created immediate concern
that his death could be a threat to national security.
Agencies across the board took a strong interest in Gareth's
case as soon as word began to spread. In fact,

(13:36):
before the investigation could really begin, a meeting was held
between the Six and the Metropolitan Police to decide how
much could actually be revealed and how much would need
to stay buried. But even with the red tape that
enveloped the case, investigators had to get down to business
determining how one of Britain's brightest minds ended up becoming
known as the Spy in the Bag, and the question
would ultimately become did Gareth get into the bag himself

(13:57):
for some reason or was he put inside the bag
by someone else? The coroner would later say that his
death was quote unnatural and likely to have been criminally mediated.
A second look at the case done by the Metropolitan Police, however,
concluded that Gareth most likely died alone after accidentally locking
himself in the bag. Neither explanation is really satisfied the public.
So let's take a closer look at each side, and

(14:18):
we'll start with the possibility that his death was criminal
in nature. At first glance, the theory that he was
killed by another person, possibly someone trained, isn't that much
of a stretch. In fact, it might be the only
snare that actually fits the known evidence. Start with the
scene itself. Gareth's five foot seven frame was found curled
up instead of bag, measuring thirty two by nineteen inches
or eighty one by forty eight centimeters. That's a tight fit,

(14:41):
to say the least. And on top of that, the
bag was padlocked from the outside. Then beyond that, the
key was located inside the bag beneath his body, and
maybe most strangely, there were no fingerprints found on or
in the bag itself, not even his own. Since no
gloves were also found inside the bag, it stands to
reason that if he he had locked himself inside the bag,

(15:01):
he would have left prints on the lock. That alone
makes the solo death theory hard to accept, and experts
also tested this theory and repeatedly failed. Two professional escapologists
attempted to recreate the snarrow, trying apparently more than three
hundred times to lock themselves into the same kind of
bag without assistance, and neither of them could do it.
According to them, getting into the bag wasn't the problem.

(15:22):
The problem was how the bag had been locked from
the outside without a second person. A pathologist also later
stated that Gareth was likely alive when he entered the bag,
since it's far easier to manipulate a living body into
that position than a dead one. Then, another pathologist supported
the view that he would have succumbed to carbon monoxide
poisoning within two or three minutes. According to his testimony,
that didn't seem like enough time to zip yourself in,

(15:44):
lock the bag from the outside, and leave no fingerprints.
In addition to all of that weirdness, when John entered
the apartment during the welfare check, he immediately noticed that
the heater had been turned on, drastically raising the temperature
inside the apartment. It was also August, the middle of summers.
There was no reason for the heat to be on
at all, let alone placed in full blast. As it
turns out, the heat would have accelerate decomposition, making the

(16:05):
time of death heart's pinpoint. And then there's also what
wasn't found in the bag. Gareth was known to be
a meticulous man and was described as one of the
quote most scrupulous risk assessors by his family, and yet
police found no tools inside the bag with him that
would have assisted him if things had gone wrong. Before
you make up your mind, though, it's important to examine
the other side of this, that Gareth entered the red

(16:26):
Duffel bag of his own. It's a theory that was
met with public skepticism of a cover up, and not
without reason, but it's actually one that investigators eventually leaned
toward after years of digging. So let's start with precedent.
As it also turns out this wouldn't have been his
first foray into self restraint. In two thousand and seven,
Gareth's landlady and her husband were woken up in the
middle of the night by his cries for help. When

(16:48):
they entered his apartment, they found him lying on the
bed in nothing but boxer shorts, with his wrist tied
to the headboard. He explained to them that he was
just seeing if he could free himself, but the couple
wasn't asking any questions anyway. They trup to either curiosity
as he said, or potentially a more carnal exploration, and
there is some evidence to support their thoughts about the
instant during the investigation. Police would later confirm that Gareth

(17:10):
that occasionally visited websites that involved tying people up, spending
thirty to sixty minutes of time browsing them. This didn't
seem to be an obsession or anything, but it was
enough to establish a pattern of interest. An evidence involving
the size of Gareth versus the bag he was found
and also seems to support the solo theory again. To
get inside, he would have had to contort himself into
an extreme fetal position, and yet there was no sign

(17:32):
of any struggle. He had no bruising, broken fingernails, or
anything else that might indicate difficulty getting into the bag.
If someone had tried to wrestle a body into the bag,
it's thought that it would have been far more difficult
and likely would have left behind some trace of evidence
or damage. And while the testimony of escapeologists was damning
to the solo theory, one expert did acknowledge there was

(17:52):
a small chance it could be theoretically done, even if difficult.
The Metropolitan Police's final report in twenty thirteen echoed this reasoning.
After re examining the evidence and talking to witnesses again,
they concluded that Gareth's death was apparently a tragic accident.
In their investigation, they found no evidence that the apartment
had been forensically cleaned, and while ten to fifteen unidentified

(18:12):
DNA traces were found, none of them yielded full profiles,
so none could be connected to suspicious activity. There were
also no signs of forced entry, and no one unexpected
appeared on any surveillance footage entering to the building after
Gareth was seen for the last time on CCTV, and
this theory was apparently further supported by the discovery of
his enrollment in a part time fashion design course at
a nearby college. Police reportedly explored the possibility that his

(18:36):
death was connected to a project he was working on
titled Living Spaces, where participants were encouraged to explore themes
of confinement and personal space. One idea floated was that
Gareth was attempting to test his limits with any limited space.
His fashion tutor later dismissed this as a crazy idea,
but it remains on the record as something police seriously considered,
so in the absence of more concrete conclusions, a number

(18:58):
of additional theories have been put forth. One of the
most chilling is that Gareth was killed by a foreign
intelligence service, was Russia being the prime suspect. In twenty fifteen,
former KGB agent Boris Karpichkov came forward cleming Gareth was
targeted by Russian operatives after refusing to become a double agent.
Boris alleged that Gareth had been drug during a night
out in the US, photographed in compromising positions, and then

(19:20):
later blackmailed, but then after he still refused to flip,
they supposedly gave him a lethal substance that would leave
behind no trace and stuffed him inside the red bag
in his apartment. Now Boris's story, well unverified, hasn't been
dismissed outright. Gareth had reportedly been working on technology used
to track illicit Russian financial flows through Europe, which could
have absolutely painted a target on his back. According to

(19:41):
some other unnamed security sources, he was engaged in a
very sensitive project involving cybersecurity and international crime networks. And
then there's the scene itself, with its absence of fingerprints
and complete DNA profiles. These are hallmarks, some argue if
a professional hit job. Then there's another theory that suggested
the threat didn't come from a broad and that it
came from within the UK. Gareth was known to be

(20:03):
happy at MY six. He told his family members that
he disliked the competitive office culture and had already requested
a transfer back to GHQ. However, he'd completed his operational
training and was in the cusp of entering more sensitive work.
So could he have learned something he wasn't supposed to,
or maybe he made himself a liability by one to
zero After his death as well, I six witted several
days before reporting him missing, despite the fact that he

(20:24):
was living in an agency owned apartment steps away from
the headquarters. This delay alone drew heavy criticism. Some wondered
whether the agents had used this time to clean the
scene and remove sensitive materials, and Gareth's family apparently stood
by this theory, claiming that he was limited by quote
a member of some agency specializing in the dark arts
of the secret Service. Several years later, in twenty twenty one,

(20:46):
the case was quietly reopened for another look, this time
with the benefit of modern forensic tools and a focus
on items deemed significant, including a tell found inside the apartment.
The hope was that a decade later, science might finally
shed new light on the case, but after yet another
round of testing and analysis, the police once again closed
the case in twenty twenty four, and their conclusion didn't
change at all. They said there was no evidence to

(21:07):
disprove the theory that held along that Gareth dot alone
as a victim of a tragic accident. The development was
again met with frustration and outrage that this was further
evidence of some kind of cover up. Peter Faulding, one
of the world's top experts in confined space rescue and
forensic search, was among the loudest voices pushing back. He
had worked with police on the original investigation back in
twenty ten and had been the one to personally attempt

(21:29):
to replicate Gareth's feet three hundred plus times. To Peter,
there's no mystery and no question about what happened. So
in the end, Gareth was a highly intelligent and private
man who worked at the highest levels of British intelligence.
Yet the way he died remains one of the most
puzzling cases in recent history. Almost fifteen years pass since
his body was found inside a lock Duffel bag in

(21:49):
the bathtub of his London apartment, and two police investigations,
a coroners in quest, and a later forensic review have
all failed to provide a satisfying explanation. The official position remains,
like Earth that alone accidentally locked himself in the bag,
but many, including experts in his own family, don't accept
that conclusion, and so unfortunately that's where things stand today,
and it's where things may forever stand in the case

(22:10):
of the spine in the Bag.