An out-take from Breaking Bad meets James Bond:
Gareth Williams, 31, a Welsh-born mathematician involved in code-breaking work, was found dead on Aug. 23, 2010, by police officers who entered his London apartment. His naked body was curled in a fetal position inside a sports bag in an otherwise empty bathtub. In a twist worthy of a spy movie, the bag was padlocked, but the keys to the lock were inside the bag, beneath the decomposing body.
The first explanation was the bleeding obvious:
Last year, a coroner concluded that Williams was probably unlawfully killed and his death the result of a criminal act. Following an eight-day inquest, the Westminster coroner, Dr Fiona Wilcox, said he was probably either suffocated or poisoned, before a third party locked and placed the bag in the bath.
But Scotland Yard, which took three years to investigate the death, just argued that he did it himself! They are not a teensy bit suspicious that a spy service was the primary source of witnesses about the man, and that the cops had not been able to access Williams’ personnel and vetting files until after the first coroner’s inquest. As for the feasibility of locking oneself into a bag in a bath tub:
At the coroner’s inquest, two experts tried 400 times to lock themselves into the 32in by 19in holdall without success, with one remarking that even Harry Houdini “would have struggled” to squeeze himself inside. But days after the inquest, footage emerged of a retired army sergeant climbing into the bag and locking it from the inside.
So maybe he could have. One woman seems to prove it’s possible here:
But: wait a minute!
Scotland Yard’s inquiry also found no evidence of Williams’s fingerprints on the padlock of the bag or the rim of the bath, which the coroner last year said supported her assertion of “third-party involvement” in the death. Hewitt said it was theoretically possible for Williams to lower himself into the holdall without touching the rim of the bath.
Aw, come on. The dude was in an MI6 safe house. No solid evidence of suicidal tendencies. Another kinky auto-erotic asphixiation? Well, the Brits love their gags almost as much as Richard Cohen. And there is some evidence of Williams looking at claustrophilia porn online. (Look it up). But if you’re the kind of person who does not take anything spy services say very seriously, this is paranoia crack.
So when’s the movie?
The Dish 