Spy in the bag Gareth Williams WAS murdered, claims author of new book

IT’S the real-life espionage mystery that spawned a string of theories from a sex game gone wrong to a Russian assassination – just how did ‘spy in the bag’ Gareth Williams meet his untimely end?

Now a new book by an investigator who’s an expert in unusual deaths claims to have the answer.

In an exclusive extract on The Mail+ today, Peter Faulding says he is convinced that the agent was murdered.

His book, What Lies Beneath: My Life as a Forensic Search and Rescue Expert, delves into the case that became a worldwide sensation in 2010. In an attempt to get to the bottom of the mystery, he tried more than 300 times to lock himself inside a holdall in the way Mr Williams would have to have done – and failed on every occasion. ‘Not even Houdini would have been able to pull it off,’ he writes.

Gareth Williams was 31 when he was found dead. He was on secondment from GCHQ to MI6

Forensic teams remove Gareth Williams’s body from his south London flat in 2010

Peter Faulding attempts to lock himself inside a holdall. He failed to do this 300 times

Mr Williams worked for GCHQ and was on secondment to MI6 when he was found dead in a holdall with the zips padlocked together in the bath of his London flat. There were no fingerprints or signs of struggle, and the front door had been locked from the outside.

Women’s clothing was found in the flat, and over the following months further evidence suggested a kinky sex game had gone tragically wrong. But Mr Faulding writes: ‘To be honest, it seemed implausible to me. I know people are into auto-asphyxiation and bondage, but the technicalities of what was being suggested seemed impossible.

‘I presented my thoughts to the investigation team. In my opinion Gareth was already dead when he was put in the bag.’

He adds: ‘It looked to me like someone was trying to smear him.’

An inquest found that Mr Williams’s death was ‘unnatural and likely to have been criminally mediated’. But a subsequent Metropolitan Police re-investigation concluded that Williams’s death was ‘probably an accident’.

Mr Faulding is convinced that Mr Williams was viciously smeared as a sexual deviant – and that the truth about his death is very different. Now read why in an exclusive extract from his book, only on The Mail+.

What Lies Beneath: My Life As A Forensic Search And Rescue Expert by Peter Faulding will be published by Macmillan on February 2, £18.99. Copyright 2023 Peter Faulding. To order a copy go to www.mailshop.co.uk or call 020 3176 2937.