Saturday, 20 November 2010

The Guardian: Who Killed Gareth Williams? Dunno

'When the bagged body of an MI6 agent was found in a bathtub, speculation went into overdrive. Was it suicide? Murder? A professional hit, or a sexual game gone wrong?'
And why does The Guardian's graphic show him in a sniper rifle's crosshair when he wasn't shot?
So many questions - none of which are answered in a long feature in today's Guardian.
Journalists Cathy Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy have put in a lot of work on this, but are still none the wiser.
Can they even be certain that Gareth Williams was gay?
Not really.
"Detectives had been quietly investigating whether Gareth Williams was gay. They had canvassed witnesses in the Vauxhall Cross village of gay clubs and bars, a short walk from Alderney Street. They had also studied Williams's computers and reading matter, his journals, magazines and computer cache. Despite outright denials from his family, detectives were privately certain that Gareth was gay, although they had been unable to find trace of any sexual encounters. They had also come to believe that his sexual orientation was not central to the inquiry (although his sexual preferences might be). There was no evidence of Williams paying for escorts, buying S&M equipment, using porn or drugs of any kind. "This man didn't really even drink," one frustrated detective said.
"The police felt they were being hurried along by other parties, keen for the scandal to go away. "Someone, somewhere, who has access to case material, is saying, 'He's queer and asked for it', rather than waiting for the outcome of the case," one veteran detective said..."
And no, still nobody knows how he died, never mind why.
But a new-ish lead is added to the conspiracy;
"He had been liaising again with counterparts at the NSA, who were part of an effort to create an American cyber defence policy, to prevent the siphoning off of secret or commercially sensitive data or a military style assault on defence or civil systems. Its importance was alluded to last month in a speech by home secretary Theresa May, in which she identified cyber crime as among the pre-eminent future threats facing the UK. A cyber crimes specialist who knew Williams revealed that at the time of his death he was researching British vulnerability to Russian, Turkish and Chinese gangs: "He was already on top of it."
"Rogue individuals and nation states, Islamist terror groups and radical loners, extortionists and organised criminals – these were just some of those Williams had observed, investigated, disrupted and provoked. Any one of them was capable of reciprocating, lethally."
So, erm, it could be any of these?
Or none of them.
How's about answering your own question; "Was it suicide? Murder? A professional hit, or a sexual game gone wrong?"
"Back at the Yard, Operation Finlayson detectives were looking at a vast range of potential threats, but still had few clues, no accomplices or even a plausible denouement for a man whose personal and professional inclinations were to camouflage everything he did."
Oh.

3 comments:

  1. Who do you think did it?

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  2. It must be so easy to spread misinformation in this country given the piss poor way stories like this are reported as evidenced in this particular case.
    I don't think we'll ever find out who did it or get anywhere near a list of who was likely to have done it. I don't buy that it was just a sex game that went wrong.

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  3. I am still "minded" that it was a "kinky sex game gone wrong" - and there was probably someone else involved.
    It's just a hunch.
    I have absolutely no evidence, but then neither does anyone else.
    thanks for asking.

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