UK police probe spy death in London
A British spy found murdered in his flat lay undiscovered for up to a fortnight before his secret service colleagues raised the alarm. The decomposing remains of Gareth Williams, 31, were found by police inside a holdall in the bath of his central...
A British spy found murdered in his flat lay undiscovered for up to a fortnight before his secret service colleagues raised the alarm.
The decomposing remains of Gareth Williams, 31, were found by police inside a holdall in the bath of his central London home on Monday.
Officers broke down the door after attempts by the Foreign Office to locate him via his former landlady earlier that day failed.
Neighbour Eileen Booth, 73, said detectives told her the murder “probably happened two weeks ago”.
It emerged that Mr Williams, who was employed as a communications officer at the GCHQ “listening post” in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, was on secondment to the MI6 Secret Intelligence Service.
Mr Williams was killed as he prepared to return to Cheltenham after working in the capital for about a year. The Foreign Office contacted his former landlady Jenny Elliott on Monday after his work colleagues reported not seeing him for “some time”.
Mrs Elliott said he had lived in a flat attached to her Cheltenham property for 10 years and was preparing to return on September 3. She described him as “a lovely guy, very friendly, very well-mannered and polite and no trouble at all”.
She added: “He was often away. He went to America to work a lot and often combined it with a holiday because he hated flying.”
Mr Williams’s flat in Alderney Street, Pimlico, is about half a mile from the riverside headquarters of MI6. Residents of the prestigious street include former home secretaries Michael Howard and Lord Brittan.
It is in a freehold block whose ownership is hidden behind the private company New Rodina, registered in the British Virgin Islands. The word rodina means “motherland” in Russian and Bulgarian.
Public documents revealed several current and former residents of the building have links to London and Cheltenham. One Frenchman who lived at the flat between 2005 and 2006 is an expert in global satellite positioning, radio communications and high sensitivity antennae.
It is the first murder on British soil of someone linked to the secret services since the poisoning of former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko in 2006.
Bulgarian defector Georgi Markov was killed by an assassin who used an umbrella to fire a ricin pellet into his leg as he walked across Waterloo Bridge in 1978.
Mr Williams’s London neighbours expressed their shock following the grisly find. They described him as “extremely friendly”, athletic, a keen cyclist and as having a strong Welsh accent.
Secretary Laura Houghton, 30, said: “His windows were always shut and curtains were often closed. I could never tell if anyone was in. It was strange that we never saw him come and go. I just assumed he worked away.”
Sources close to the inquiry said it is not clear how he died.