Like plenty of others this week, I have been following the inquest into the death of Gareth Williams, the GCHQ/SIS officer whose body was discovered in a padlocked holdall in his London flat in August 2010. Since that time, the internet has been home to a host of conspiracy theories on the matter and, since the inquest has once again sparked a wave of interest in the case, there will no doubt be plenty more to come.
Perhaps unsurprisingly given the nature of Gareth Williams work and the details of the case, the overwhelming majority of theories centre on a murder plot by an intelligence agency or criminal organisation, but I though I would put up an alternative suggestion by way of balance. This is by no means a comprehensive theory, of course, and there are several details in terms of forensic evidence (or the lack thereof) which appear to contradict it, but until the post mortem evidence is heard at the inquest on Monday, I believe it remains a possibility, if an increasingly small one.
Murder aside, there are several other theories as to why he ended up in the bag, most of which are centred on his private life. But what I am looking to consider here is not so much why he ended up there, as how. So:
Would it have been possible for Gareth Williams to get into the bag himself?
Despite the somewhat bizarre efforts of Peter Faulding, the Mackay experiments (Daily Mail - upper video) appear to show that someone of Williams' size and build could get into the bag and operate the zips from within. Of course, Mackay's assistant was unable to secure the padlock, but his suggestion remained that it might not be impossible with practice and the kind of hand strength that GW would have gained from mountaineering.
From a personal point of view though, after seeing both attempts at reconstruction, I am left with the feeling that if they wanted to do this properly, rather than military experts, the police would have done better to employ someone from the circus (no pun intended - well, maybe a bit).
Why was the bag in the bath?
One thing that struck me watching the Mackay reconstruction video is the way that his assistant in the bag had to be handed the padlock after dropping it in his efforts to close the bag. Perhaps this was a lesson that GW had learned through previous attempts - that by placing the bag in the bath he was able to ensure that if the padlock was dropped, it would slide down the bath side and back towards the bag within easy reach. On a hard floor, the padlock could bounce or slide away from the bag, meaning that GW would potentially have to get out of the bag to retrieve it.
Considering a possible suicidal motivation - it might also be that GW wanted to minimise the trauma and inconvenience to whoever discovered his body. I believe that it is by no means uncommon for suicides to tidy up extensively before taking their own lives.
Is the position of the zips significant?
Watching the Mackay reconstruction video, it can be seen that the attempt is made to join the zip sliders at a point where the zipper turns the corner of the flap, roughly in line with the position of the assistant's face. Comparing this with the Met Police photo of the actual bag, it appears that this corresponds to the position of the zips when GW's body was discovered by PC Gallagher. It appears that this would be the position best suited to attempt the closing manoeuvre from inside the bag, while perhaps being an unlikely place to join the zips for a third party closing the bag from outside.
As an aside, the bag shown in the Met photo appears to be of a slightly different design to the images of the North Face Basecamp XL Duffle currently being used by the press - there appears to be a right-angled seam to the right of the zip sliders on the police photo, suggesting a square end to the bag, rather than the cylindrical shape of the current model. I believe it has been noted that the bag used by GW was produced up to 2006. Note also that the cut in the police photo was made by the officers who discovered the body on 23rd August 2010.
Why was there blood on the padlock?
According to evidence heard at the inquest, small traces of GW's blood were found on the padlock and the outside of the bag. The pathology/post mortem evidence is due to be heard on Monday (30.4.12) but, in the meantime I would suggest that it might be the result of graze injuries to GW's knuckles in his attempts to close the upper (right hand in Met photo) zip using his fingernails from within, in combination with the use of the padlock looped through the eye of the lower (left hand) zip slider to pull it up. Roughly - that GW grazed his knuckles on the upper zip and then transferred the blood on his fingers to the padlock and the outside of the bag.
On the other hand, if this were the case, you might expect to see traces on the inside of the bag, where he would presumably have had to push the lock closed through the fabric. Either way, as it stands I believe that any post mortem evidence of grazed knuckles of fingernail damage on Monday may prove highly significant.
See also: Circus tricks - part 2
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