Unsung Murder Ballads
This is a True Crime podcast that focuses on murders, solved or unsolved. We will occasionally break our own rules when that catches out fancy and cover something that may not exactly be a murder.
We would like to warn anyone listening that we do cover sensitive content and it's usually presented to the co-hosts with little to no knowledge of the case details so that their responses and reactions are genuine. And we tend to do all this with some dark humor. So, if this doesn't work for you, we understand. There are a lot of other podcasts out there for you to enjoy. However, if you think that might be your thing, please give us a listen, interact with us on our social media pages, and get to know us.
Hosts: Janus Dead & Joyous Dead, with an occasional special guest.
Unsung Murder Ballads
Episode 179: Gareth Williams
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In this episode Janus and Joyous dive into the very mysterious death of Gareth Williams, a MI6 operative for the UK government. This case opened up more questions than it provides answers to and it's a frustrating one. You've been warned. Also, apologies for the strange audio. We had so many technical issues the night we recorded that we're convinced the "powers that be" were trying to stop us. LOL
Unsung Murder Ballads is a true crime podcast, and as such, we will be discussing topics that are disturbing, graphic, and often violent in nature. So this is not for children under the age of 13.
SPEAKER_01But you know this because you did start playing this episode. So here are some things you might not know about us.
SPEAKER_00We are going to be critical of mistakes made by both criminals and law enforcement.
SPEAKER_01We're going to express our views on things that you might not always agree with.
SPEAKER_00We will occasionally go on an off-topic tangent.
SPEAKER_01And we're going to use dark humor to express ourselves now and then.
SPEAKER_00So if you're easily triggered, this might not be the podcast for you.
SPEAKER_01However, if this is your cup of tea, then raise your pinky finger while you sip and join us for this week's horrific case, you sick bastards.
SPEAKER_00Hey everybody, welcome back to Unsung Murder Ballads. This is episode 179. I am Janice Dead.
SPEAKER_03And I'm Joyce Dead.
SPEAKER_00All right. And uh just want to apologize to everyone. I know we've been inconsistent on getting episodes out there. It's the summer, we've had vacations, I've made a career change that has pulled me in the I've also made a career change. Wow, nice. So here we go. You know?
SPEAKER_03Both of us. Everything, all of our schedules thrown up in the air.
SPEAKER_00So yeah, so we've so we apologize. We will eventually get back to a regular schedule. It's just um the summer might be a little weird, weird and crazy.
SPEAKER_03It you know, shit happens.
SPEAKER_00It does.
SPEAKER_03I have to work in person now. Can you believe how oppressed I am?
SPEAKER_00That's crazy.
SPEAKER_03I know. This commuting thing, oh my god, I'm so tired.
SPEAKER_00Uh yeah, I I believe it, because that's typically what I do.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I've been so spoiled for so long. I like deserved this to happen to me, but it does it's good for me overall.
SPEAKER_00But yeah, so we just wanted you guys to know that no, we're not like ending the podcast or anything like that.
SPEAKER_03Certainly not.
SPEAKER_00Well, no, and the funny thing is I say that because some of my favorite podcasts, that that exact thing happened. They missed a couple weeks, then they'd miss a month, and they would post for a little bit, and then all of a sudden they're just they're gone.
SPEAKER_03So we're not doing that. We're just bad at our schedules for the moment.
SPEAKER_00Right. And we will recover, we promise.
SPEAKER_03Yes, we'll figure it out.
SPEAKER_00With that said, this episode tonight is a listener suggestion.
SPEAKER_02Ooh.
SPEAKER_00Yep. This one's coming from a uh listener all the way over in the UK. So thank you. I think we mentioned that we were gonna do these, and I with the time I had I did have to research, I was able to get this out now instead of later. So we're gonna be doing a listener suggestion, which should be kind of cool.
SPEAKER_03Hell yeah.
SPEAKER_00It's been a while. Actually, I don't even remember the last time we did a listener suggestion.
SPEAKER_03It has been a real solid while. Yeah, I don't remember either, but uh I don't remember shit, so that's right, you don't. Um I don't have that kind of brain. I don't know. Maybe I have early on sent dementia, who knows?
SPEAKER_00Well, it's funny because I actually was going through it, it was like someone's list of like top ten true crime documentaries, and I came upon one that I would love to cover, but I can't with you as my co-host. I would have to get Madster or somebody because you've seen the documentary, and I know you have, and I know you have, and I wonder how much you would remember because you watched it while we were driving back from a wedding.
SPEAKER_03Yes, okay. I remember watching this, and I remember it devastating me.
SPEAKER_00You I couldn't believe how badly you were crying next to me in the car.
SPEAKER_03Oh and you know what the crazy thing is? Like, couldn't tell you a detail of the story, but I remember how it made me feel.
SPEAKER_00Right. And and I that's why I was like, could I pull this off?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it would be not.
SPEAKER_00I think because you've done it before where you've heard like you when I was talking, you like you don't say it in the moment, but later you'll say, Oh yeah, I kind of recognize something from it was one of the cases in New Orleans, and you were like, Oh yeah, I kind of heard about that. The name sounded familiar. So I think as I tell it, kind of like with Casey Anthony, you'll remember little details, but that's all you'd really remember. Right.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, that sounds right.
SPEAKER_00So yeah, so I was, you know, I was tempted to do that, but again, if I ever do that case, I'll save it for Madster. But um, I just don't, yeah, I just don't want to do it with you as you already kind of know it.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, there's no fun in that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. All right, so let me start off by saying about this particular case, right? We don't actually have a lot of set-in-stone information.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_00There's a lot of misinformation here, and a lot of that has to do with the fact that this guy worked in the British Secret Service.
SPEAKER_03Knew you were gonna say that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_03It's always fucking that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so a lot of the information that I used I had to go through listening to other podcasts or what have you. So and I try not to do that, but I had no other real options.
SPEAKER_03Sometimes we just gotta like use all the sources available and put together what we can from them.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. And in fact, I listened to a podcast the other day, and the podcaster said something like, unless you're like the podcaster that's actually out there doing like the investigative journalism where you're actually knocking on doors and interviewing people, he he was like, We're all just doing the same thing, which is taking everybody else's work, shuffling it around, and regurgitating it.
SPEAKER_03We're storytelling.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's yeah, exactly. So so I don't feel bad that I had to take some of this from other podcasters, but I did still make it my own in that way, I guess. For us, we make it our own because you're listening and reacting to it.
SPEAKER_03Right, exactly.
SPEAKER_00So, with the misinformation, I am gonna do my best to get it straight. I tried to, I will obviously indicate when there's issues with the information that we're getting, and I hope that I don't confuse the fuck out of everybody.
SPEAKER_03All right. Well, fingers crossed. Hopefully you can keep me uh keep me following the story.
SPEAKER_00Oh, I'm sure you will. It's just, and believe me, it's not it's not that convoluted. It's not like that one with the guy who kidnapped a little girl and initially posed as her father and then married her and posed at her husband as her husband.
SPEAKER_03Oh, yeah, that one was very confusing.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's not that confusing. So, but I am gonna give you a little teaser which isn't part of the case, but will fit into like what the issue was with this case.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_00Okay, personal story. When I was younger, I used to work for a company that would go into unfinished bit houses that were being built, and I would install like the closet shelving, mirrors, stuff like that. Now, typically you pull up to a house and nobody's living there. It's not even finished normally, you're just walking in and doing whatever. But one day I get to the front door of this house, which I thought was not going to be occupied, and I see curtains in the window, and as I walk up, I see a table in a decorated room, and I'm like, okay, somebody lives here. So I look at the sheet I had and I call the number, and I'm talking to the project manager, like the person who's in charge of the entire thing, and he's like, he's like, Yeah, yeah, they live there, but the go around back, the back door's open, go in, do your thing, and just go. I'm like, okay, cool. So I walk down to the back of the house, and I there's a sliding glass door, and there's a curtain closed, right? So I open the door, I open the curtain, I step inside, and I'm standing in a fully furnished bedroom, and there is someone asleep in the bed.
SPEAKER_03Oh, Jesus!
SPEAKER_00So I step out, I close the curtain, I close the door, and I knock. Nobody responds. I knock louder, nobody responds. So I call the project manager back, and I'm like, hey, I'm at the back door. There's someone asleep in this room on the other side of this glass door, and they're not responding when I knock on the door. So he's like, Really? That's unusual. And I'm like, Yeah, you think? Right? Yeah, that's a little fucking weird. So he starts calling the house. I can hear the phone ringing, nobody answers. So I'm sitting here wondering if the person in the bed is okay.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_00So the project manager calls me back and he's like, I'm gonna be right there. We're gonna figure this out. He shows up, does the same thing I did, slides the door, sticks his head in there, and realizes yeah, there's somebody in that bed.
SPEAKER_03So he starts not waking up.
SPEAKER_00And they are not waking up. So he is pounding on the door. Finally, the woman that was asleep in this bed wakes up and comes over to us. Turns out she's deaf, and and like the sister of the person who owns the house or whatever. So it was just this really freaky moment where I'm like, did we just find a dead body?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that's terrifying.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So that's the teaser, the teaser I'm gonna use here to segue into this case.
SPEAKER_03Fascinating. Okay.
SPEAKER_00I know it's crazy. Luckily, everybody was fine. She uh, and rightfully, not knowing who the fuck we were, she didn't let us into the house for me to install the shelving. I had to come back later to do that. But that's neither here nor there.
SPEAKER_03You know, that's valid.
SPEAKER_00That's what I said. I was like, we're good.
SPEAKER_03Woken up from being asleep and like there's random fucking people there, like, hello, let me in your house.
SPEAKER_00It was crazy. I honestly was afraid she was not alive.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I would have been too.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it was uh yeah, crazy. All right. The case we're gonna talk about here is the very suspicious death of Gareth Williams. And I am gonna also say that there are dozens of theories about what really happened in this case.
SPEAKER_03Interesting.
SPEAKER_00So, yes, this one is technically solved, but not solved.
SPEAKER_03Okay, so it's gonna be frustrating. Good to know.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's one of those, yeah. So, with that said, Gareth Williams was born and raised in Wales with his sister. He was intelligent and graduated with a degree in math at only 17 years old.
SPEAKER_03Damn.
SPEAKER_00Very smart dude. From there, he went on to attend the University of Manchester, where he got a PhD, and he continued on to Cambridge, but he ended up dropping right, but he can he actually dropped out of there because he received a job offer. And the job offer yeah, well, the job that was offered to him was with a place called the GCHQ, which stands for the Government Communications Headquarters. This is basically an intelligence agency based out of the UK that works basically around cybersecurity, like that kind of thing. And as we've established, Gareth is brilliant. He's solid at math, and he's so good with numbers that code breaking ends up being his specialty. That's cool. Very cool. Honestly, I would love a job like that.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that's so cool.
SPEAKER_00Now, in terms of his personal life, there's not a lot of pre-event information that was out there. He was pretty private. And you'll note that I'm making that distinction very clear. Anyone who knew him before his death had no idea what he was really doing. Now, a lot of that may have a lot to do with the work he's in.
SPEAKER_03Right. You can't, you know, you're in intelligence, you kind of gotta keep that a secret, it's all classified.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you can't be out there in intelligence and still posting on fucking TikTok or Instagram or whatever, right?
SPEAKER_03Like, hey, what's with you guys? I'm a codebreaker at the G C HQ.
SPEAKER_00Exactly.
SPEAKER_03That but that but in a British accent. I'm a codebreaker, G C HQ.
SPEAKER_00There you go. Let's let's anger the one person who recommended this case.
SPEAKER_03I thought it was a pretty good British accent.
SPEAKER_00No, that was that was pretty good. Yeah, let us know.
SPEAKER_03You know, got some British friends. Let me know how terrible that was. Thank you very much.
SPEAKER_00Let us know. So he worked for the GCHQ for roughly 10 years when he suddenly decided to leave them and move to London to work for the MI6. Oh damn. Yeah, as in Her Majesty's Secret Service kind of shit. Yeah, like fucking mission impossible stuff, right?
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So by all accounts, while there, he focused on stopping terrorism and giving the UK a cyber advantage over that kind of crime. Cool. Right? So when he moved to London to work for MI6, he rented an apartment on the top floor of a building. And this is one of those areas where there's conflicting information. And it in particular about this apartment. Some re some sources claim that it was a secure, like safe house for service members, like agents of that group, and that the house was protected.
SPEAKER_02Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_00Others say that simply wasn't true, that that those agencies don't actually pay to house their people. Which, you know, regardless. But it's also out there that the GCHQ had bought that particular apartment building and would transfer people back and forth.
SPEAKER_03Even if they like don't pay for their lodging, like maybe they do have a protected place that's like, hey, if you want to, you can live here, it'd be safer.
SPEAKER_00Right. And of course they're not going to admit to that if it starts coming out publicly. They're not going to be like, oh yeah, this is a building full of our agents.
SPEAKER_03Right. Totally don't bomb it.
SPEAKER_00Right. So like it's one of those areas where maybe it's true, maybe it's not true. We don't know. Exactly. So, all in all, those discrepancies sum up, as I just said, sum up that issue with the agency secrecy, which we can't verify. But we do what we do know is that there were not any extra security measures in that building. Gotcha. Now he only worked for MI6 for about a year when he began to complain to his sister about issues that were happening within that group. He decided that because of that friction, he was actually going to leave them and go back to working for the GCHQ. In the second week of August, one week before he was set to move back to the G CHQ, Gareth was found dead. There is no exact date anywhere as to when he actually died. You know, due to the nature of how information circulates within these groups, right?
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_00What we do know is that Gareth's sister could not get in touch with him, which she found incredibly unusual. They were close, and after a stretch of time of not being able to reach him, she got to the point where she decided to call the MI6 herself. Wow. To figure out what was going on. I can't I I imagine trying to call the CIA here in the US. They're not going to tell me shit.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it's like, girl, where are you going to find the number?
unknownRight?
SPEAKER_00You're not going to find out shit. Even if you could reach somebody, they're going to be like, um, yeah, we'll get back to you.
SPEAKER_03Right. But maybe it was just like she like called the normal police and they were like, um, sorry, I can't help you.
SPEAKER_00Well, I think if she had done that, we it wouldn't have played out the way it does.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_00So all she wanted to know is if they knew where Gareth was. She wasn't asking for any specifics, which makes sense based on what he does, right? Yeah. So on August 23rd, 2010, she was shocked at what they told her. MI6 told her that Gareth had not reported in for work for an entire week and no one knew where he was.
SPEAKER_03Cool. So she had already called and they were like, whoa, I can't tell you anything when he was literally missing.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. Apparently, fuckers, MI6 didn't call the authorities or bother to check in on him in any way. In any way. That's fucked. She was shocked because this is a secret agency and their employees have a lot of sensitive information.
SPEAKER_03Right. They should probably like notice that they're going real fucking fast.
SPEAKER_00Right? I mean, I have a hard time believing that when a secret agent, whether it's someone in cybersecurity or not, pulls a no-call no show, that no one would follow up on that.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, what the fuck?
SPEAKER_00Like if if a I work at a restaurant, if one of my servers pulls a no-call no show, I still call them.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_00So, but here you have a secret agency whose I I the idea that an agent would could just not do that for an for a whole week.
SPEAKER_03Yes, that's insane.
SPEAKER_00Now, interestingly, uh he apparently had to like be there to host two different meetings about cyber safety that he didn't show up for. And yet still no one was wondering where this guy was. What the fuck? Now keep in mind, and I'm gonna say this because I feel safe on this side of the Atlantic Ocean, that's what they claim.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_00Because to me, to me, that stinks of cover up. So as a result of them not calling him in missing earlier, the Metropolitan Police were called in and sent to Gareth's home to do a welfare check.
SPEAKER_03A full week after he went missing.
SPEAKER_00At least.
SPEAKER_03Fucking hell.
SPEAKER_00So when they arrived, nobody answered the door. They eventually had to force their way into the apartment and they began to look around. Now that first initial, like, little spin around his apartment didn't really bring up anything too strange. It was there was no sign of forced entry. The door was locked, and the apartment didn't appear to be in any way out of sorts. The only thing they noticed right away was that the heat of the apartment was set all the way up. Oh, that's kind of odd, but it's blazing hot in that apartment, and it was August.
SPEAKER_03Oh, that's very odd, but I can't think of any other like nefarious reason for that either.
SPEAKER_00Well, we'll get there.
SPEAKER_03Oh, sure you know.
SPEAKER_00They did at that point, they did another quick sweep of the place. And Gareth was definitely not there. And as they dug a little deeper, started moving things around, they determined that there wasn't anything really missing, at least nothing obvious. But his personal items, they were there, but they were laid out on the floor as if in display. Like his laptop, his phone, the phone charger, and a notebook were all just laid out on the floor by his couch.
SPEAKER_03That is odd.
SPEAKER_00Everything else, however, seemed to be completely fine and in its proper place. Until until they went into the bathroom. In the bathroom, they found a red north face zip-up bag. The bag was fully zipped up with a padlock on it that was secured. Yeah, with a padlock, exactly. And it was secure and the lock was closed, and there was something very obviously large inside that bag. Oh well, of course, it's Gareth inside that bag.
SPEAKER_02Oh God.
SPEAKER_00Once they got it open, they found Gareth and he was completely naked. Oh. And the key to the lock was actually found underneath his body inside the bag. Because of the heat. What the fuck? Because the heat was turned up so high in the apartment and it had been an entire week, his decomposition had been accelerated.
SPEAKER_03Oh, I'm sure. Oh, gross.
SPEAKER_00Thus the whole that's why they did it. Turned up the heat.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Trying to like bury their evidence.
SPEAKER_00Which is strange considering some of the things I'm about to tell you. Interesting. So looking at him, they couldn't really determine, like establish what had happened. Like how he got into the bag and how he died. So Gareth was taken to the coroner's office, and the apartment was guarded by armed police as this investigation began. The state of that bathroom was found to be odd as they continued to investigate. They found no DNA, no fingerprints, no footprints, no palm prints, no blood, there weren't any scuff marks. Nothing in that bathroom suggested that anything had happened there.
SPEAKER_03Not even like Gareth's own fingerprints?
SPEAKER_00Correct. There's not a single fingerprint.
SPEAKER_03Oh, so it was incredibly well scrubbed.
SPEAKER_00Right. There wasn't even a fingerprint on the padlock from the bag. There was no DNA or anything on the zipper of the bag.
SPEAKER_03That's crazy.
SPEAKER_00So this leads to two possibilities. The first, whoever was there cleaned that place like a pro. Or the entire thing is a cover up from the entire.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_00So there are reports, however, that claim there was a few samples of DNA that were taken from that bathroom and had sent been sent off for testing. And according to those reports, when they came back, that DNA supposedly belonged to one of the forensic investigators, which basically implied that they managed to contaminate the crime scene. Right. Or, right, exactly. It just doesn't make sense. And again, because of the nature of the organizations we're talking about, we don't really know.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_00And in keeping with everything else so far, Gareth's body didn't give any clues either. Once he was examined, there's there were no scratches on his body. There were no defensive wounds. There was no obvious discoveries like finding something underneath his fingernails or anything like that. Literally, there's zero evidence that he attempted to get himself out of that bag at all.
SPEAKER_03Right, so assuming assuming he was dead before he was put in there.
SPEAKER_00Most likely. There was no evidence that he had been stabbed, no evidence that he had been shot or strangled, and he had not been tied up.
SPEAKER_03Right, and like no clear cause of death.
SPEAKER_00Right. Again, keep in mind, advanced decomposition. There's a little bit of that.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that doesn't help.
SPEAKER_00So there are some stores sources that state there were bruises on his elbows, but other sources don't mention those at all. So there was nothing to point to what actually happened to him. And keep in mind, there's not even any sh signs of a struggle in that bathroom or otherwise.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that's wild.
SPEAKER_00So there was the possibility, as some people thought, that he might have been poisoned, but his toxicology screen came back and there were no drugs or poison in his system. There wasn't even any alcohol. Weird. But other people argued that because of the accelerated decomposition in a heated apartment, it's possible that those had just left his system over the week that he sat there decomposing.
SPEAKER_03Right, right.
SPEAKER_00Fucking nuts.
SPEAKER_03And like, you know, only a like forensic expert would really know that.
SPEAKER_00Right. And this is like an X-Files episode.
SPEAKER_03Yes.
SPEAKER_00So due to Gareth's position in the government, the Metropolitan Police and the SIS had to have a meeting to decide who was exactly in charge of what and how they were going to approach this investigation. And if that doesn't sound difficult enough to add more shit to this pile, it turns out Gareth was actually working with two separate U.S. agencies, the NSA and the FBI, and the U.S. contacted the UK and made it incredibly clear that any information he was working on with them could not be made public. So that explains even further the lack of concrete information on this case.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, they were just kind of like all hiding it.
SPEAKER_00So investigators, they, you know, they're sitting there and they got to go back in and they have to work a murder case with their hands tied. Yeah. So in typical investigative fashion, the first thing they do is they look into the background of the victim, their family members, they start talking to the people closest to them. They were looking for anything that could be considered a conflict of interest or anything interesting at all, really. So basically, the Metropolitan Police could not touch any information that had anything to do with SIS and MI6 and all that stuff. And of course.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, which is like that's his whole life, and he's a private person.
SPEAKER_00Right. So like they're the two groups aren't communicating well, obviously.
SPEAKER_03Yep.
SPEAKER_00As a prime example of how these two groups decided to work with not quote unquote work with each other, when the SIS went in to investigate Gareth's apartment, they wanted to invet they wanted to like study the door to see if maybe there was any signs of forced entry. When they got there, they found out that the Metropolitan Police had removed the door entirely. Right. But the issues, of course, went the other way because when Gareth's office was searched, there was a black North Face bag under his desk that was filled with his personal items. And the SIS had taken it and wouldn't let the Metropolitan Police take the bag or even know what its contents were because they claimed it was sensitive information.
SPEAKER_03Ugh Yeah, okay, because this investigation's going nowhere.
SPEAKER_00It's it's fucked, yes. So of course, this is frustrating for everyone because the Metropolitan Police and Garrett's family could not understand how an organ organization like this could simply ignore the fact that one of their employees didn't show up for a week and weren't cooperating to actually investigate the situation.
SPEAKER_03Yep, it's incredibly suspicious.
SPEAKER_00So at this point, a third-party investigative inquest began. And we and we've talked about this stuff in the past. These type of inquests I don't really think do any good. I just I just think it's asking another authoritative group to cover the ass of the first authoritative group. But here we are. Yeah, real. It was not long before Gareth's private and very personal life was unveiled for everyone in the UK to see. That's awful. Apparently, Gareth had a lot of women's clothing in his in his apartment, along with female wigs. And when investigators went onto his computer and cell phone, they found that he made various searches about bondage activity and visited bondage websites.
SPEAKER_03And they're publishing this stuff?
SPEAKER_00They're making it very public.
SPEAKER_03That sucks, dude.
SPEAKER_00They also released to the public that he had been seen at gay bars, and authorities had gone so far to check security footage to see if maybe he had been in an ongoing relationship, although they never found any evidence of that. And of course, when the information's given to the media, they turn it into a fucking shit show.
SPEAKER_03Oh, of course they do.
SPEAKER_00So the media focused all their attention on their speculations about why he had women's clothing and why he was searching for bondage on the internet.
SPEAKER_03Oh, of course they did. God forbid a man have a hobby.
SPEAKER_00Right? I mean, they completely lost the plot and all the bullshit they were putting out there.
SPEAKER_03Right. They were like, oh my god, LGBT, we can't allow it.
SPEAKER_00Well, then his previous landlords came forward and they said that one night, in the middle of the night, or at some point in the night, he apparently, Gareth, apparently started screaming for help, and it woke them up.
SPEAKER_02Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_00So, you know, they're terrified and they run in to check on him, and they found him, depending upon which source you're reading, either handcuffed or tied to his headboard.
SPEAKER_03Jesus.
SPEAKER_00So they asked him what had happened. You know, who did this to you? Are you all right? Like that kind of thing, right? And he said, he told them that he had done it to himself because he wanted to see how long it would take him to get out.
SPEAKER_03And then he couldn't.
SPEAKER_00Correct.
SPEAKER_03Now the landlord, that's probably not true. He probably did it it could have been someone else, and he just didn't want to admit it, that he had like let it, you know, it that it had been consensual, it was embarrassing for him.
SPEAKER_00Right. And and the landlords did state that they didn't believe him, that they thought he was in the middle of some kind of sexual act and had been left that way.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So when that came out publicly, it pushed forward the idea that Gareth might have caused his own death.
SPEAKER_03Ugh. It can't it started to be the victim blaming is insane.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. It basically so that they the narrative became that somehow he managed to put himself inside the bag and died when he couldn't get out.
SPEAKER_03How how would you close a padlock on the outside of a bag if you're inside of it?
SPEAKER_00I mean, if you're an amateur Houdini, I mean, isn't that part of the trick?
SPEAKER_03I guess. Sorry, I shouldn't joke, but Yeah, it just doesn't make any sense, but people people love to say that about, you know, people who are into freaky shit. Right. They love to be like, oh, well, it must be your fault because you were doing something weird, or it must be your fault because you're gay and dating catchy people who are into weird things.
SPEAKER_00Well, for the record, there are fetishes out there of people who enjoy being enclosed in boxes and bags and things like that.
SPEAKER_03If it exists, there's a fetish for it. Exactly.
SPEAKER_00And no judgment, just be careful, is all we're saying. Right? Right. But this possibility can't exactly be ruled out in this situation, but there should have been evidence of him trying to get out of the fucking bag once he realized he couldn't.
SPEAKER_03Yes. Correct.
SPEAKER_00And there's none of that. There would have been fibers under his fingernails, but there was absolutely nothing to support this claim.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_00And it doesn't explain why the fuck the heat in his apartment would have been so high.
SPEAKER_03Exactly. It doesn't really look like a self-inflicted thing.
SPEAKER_00Right. So, as I'm sure I'm sure you and I both agree, this looked like it had been planned.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Like the heat was obviously turned on to increase decomposition. The locked bag, you know, was a way to avoid, you know, the fact that they kind of hid it in the bathroom just so that maybe it would be missed in a casual inspection. But my my biggest question is why leave the bag?
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I I don't get that.
SPEAKER_03Right. Why just leave the body on the scene exactly where someone would be looking for it?
SPEAKER_00Right. And, you know, at this point, the killer, if there is indeed a killer, right, we'll play that game. Um they didn't leave any forensic evidence behind.
SPEAKER_03Which is crazy, but suggests a much almost like they killed him somewhere else and then brought him back there.
SPEAKER_00Only to leave him there and turn the heat up?
SPEAKER_03It doesn't make sense. It's all it's all really weird.
SPEAKER_00Unless there's a deep level cover-up.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Now, Gareth might have been put in that bathtub, if this is a murder, to like contain any fluid leakage. Like, that's one thought that went through my head. But whoever did it, it did work out in their favor because there is nothing left behind.
SPEAKER_02Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_00Now that inquest that was started, that went on for a while. And it was also an absolute disaster.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, no surprises.
SPEAKER_00It finally determined that this was not something Gareth could have done to himself. That's one thing they came out with. They said literally there was no DNA or fingerprints found on the lock or the zipper. Had he put himself in that bag, he could not have wiped all that off from the inside.
SPEAKER_03Yes. Okay, some logic. We're living.
SPEAKER_00Right. But apparently, experts also came forward because they had people try to lock themselves in that exact same kind of bag. Oh my god. And one man who was smaller than Gareth was attempted it numerous times and he was not once successful at doing it.
SPEAKER_03These weirdos, I mean, like uh thank you for trying.
SPEAKER_00No, don't get me wrong. I understand that these things can be possible. There are contortionists that are very, very adept at this sort of thing.
SPEAKER_03Well, we don't have any evidence that Gareth was a contortionist, do we?
SPEAKER_00No, not at all. But these but all these reports that talk about this stuff, especially the people that say maybe it's possible, none of those reports, none of those attempts were done in a way where it was tested to see if they left DNA behind.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, also that. Good point.
SPEAKER_00So with all these theories out there, okay, the biggest one comes down to they they feel that maybe someone threatened him, stripped him naked, and put him inside that bag.
SPEAKER_02Sure.
SPEAKER_00There's also the possibility that he had been drugged andor poisoned and put inside that bag.
SPEAKER_02Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_00But what became very clear was that he either willingly got into that bag or wasn't able to put up a fight when he was put in that bag.
SPEAKER_02Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_00Now, interestingly, right before the inquest was released, about two days before it was released, it was discovered that the SIS had kept a lot of evidence to themselves.
SPEAKER_03Of course they did.
SPEAKER_00The first of these was basically a counter-terrorism department that was in charge of investigating the MI6 co-workers that Garrett worked with. Because apparently there were a lot of issues regarding how his co-workers had been questioned.
SPEAKER_03Interesting.
SPEAKER_00There was also an issue because apparently they found nine memory sticks or memory cards in his work locker. And those and those may or may not have contained sensitive information. But of course, MI6 didn't release the information, but they didn't even tell people they found them.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I hate that.
SPEAKER_00And when that did come forward, it was two days before that inquest had wrapped up. And to for the record, to this day, only SIS knows what was exactly was on those memory cards.
SPEAKER_03Ugh. And of course, anything like incriminating to a cover-up would never be released.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. So obviously this created an uproar because while SIS is protected due to the fact that they're a secret agency and all that, the public was like, fuck you, how could you not release all this information?
SPEAKER_03Right, of course.
SPEAKER_00So here they are, pretending to be above the law, during a murder investigation, or at least a suspicious death, right? And they're literally refusing to work with other agencies within their own government.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it's so suspicious.
SPEAKER_00So that coroner, her name was Fiona Wilcox, she came out during the inquest and ruled that the official cause like that his death was officially listed as an unnatural death, either by poisoning or asphyxiation. But she said a lot of the evidence was mishandled. And it by the time they found him, it was too late to get determined a lot of things, and some of that evidence she was asking for was missing altogether.
SPEAKER_03Yep.
SPEAKER_00She believed that all the information about Hip Gareth's private life had come out suddenly, but that it had been released that way on purpose to manipulate the public into looking at the circumstances and away from the evidence itself.
SPEAKER_03Yep. Yeah, that sounds right to me.
SPEAKER_00That's exactly what it sounds like to me. So after the inquest finally gets released, the Metropolitan Police decided to start yet another investigation into it, which lasted another year because they weren't happy with those findings. Which basically weren't really any findings. The only thing they released was that he couldn't have put himself in the bag.
SPEAKER_03Right. It's not a whole lot of findings.
SPEAKER_00Exactly.
SPEAKER_03People whose literal the literal fucking job is intelligent. Right?
SPEAKER_00And yet they're not very intelligent.
SPEAKER_03Right. Or they can't investigate anything. Like, aren't you the people who fucking investigate things?
SPEAKER_00Again, again, to me, it stinks of cover-up.
SPEAKER_03It really, really, really does.
SPEAKER_00So after 12 months of investigating, and I use that term loosely here, investigating quotes, you know.
SPEAKER_03Of an investigation being open.
SPEAKER_00Yes. They determined, the Metropolitan Police determined to drumroll, please, that Gareth's death was probably an accident.
SPEAKER_03Are you fucking shitting me?
SPEAKER_00They said it was probably an attempted escapism act that went wrong.
SPEAKER_03Oh, shut the fuck up. That doesn't make any fucking sense.
SPEAKER_00Doesn't make any sense.
SPEAKER_03So we're all just covering it up now. Cool, cool, cool, cool, cool.
SPEAKER_00They even claimed that it was possible that he may have been in the middle of something sexual when it had gone wrong. Kind of putting a second person there that somehow miraculously cleaned the place up better than anyone ever in history.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, this is such bullshit. Cool, so we're just all covering it up. Glad we're all on the same page, so we're just covering it up. Cool.
SPEAKER_00But again, I on, you know, completely contradicting themselves, they later state that there was no evidence that there was anyone else being there. And therefore it was safe to conclude that he had put himself in the bag and died accidentally.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So this case has been classified has never been classified as a murder, only a suspicious death. And as far as we know, it remains that way to this day because I doubt there's any more investigation going on.
SPEAKER_03Right, and whatever evidence there that could have existed has been buried.
SPEAKER_00Or outright destroyed.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, fucked.
SPEAKER_00There has been a lot of supposed information about this case that leaked from time to time, but not a lot of those sources are reputable. However, because of the fact that we, you know, we it's it's out there. We're gonna talk a little bit about it here. We're not gonna spend a lot of time on this, though. Some of these sources claim to be from former MI6 operatives, and it comes out like piecemeal, and people have put it together to kind of you know help put a story together here. So take this with a heavy dash of skepticism. All right, we'll do. But apparently, information came out that while he was at MI6, Gareth had breached his clearance to get access to a guest list for a party that Bill Clinton had hosted. Yeah, that one stuck out to me too. Now, on the surface, a secret agent trying to either get access to the gala itself or the list of people who are there of a former president makes sense.
SPEAKER_03Yep.
SPEAKER_00And obviously, with the current state of the world and accusations about Epstein and former Prince Andrew, raises other questions. And for the record, because I looked this up, at the time of Gareth's death, Epstein was actually still serving time for uh a 13-month sentence for his sex crimes in Florida. So he himself was not out and about at that point.
SPEAKER_03Right, but like did Epstein actually do any of the murders, or did he own people who did the murders?
SPEAKER_00Right. I'm just saying himself, like, this he wasn't actively holding parties on that island at that time, is what I'm saying. Right. Because there's a lot of powerful people involved in this, obviously, so I'm definitely not ruling out the possibility that there's a connection here. Now, at the same time, and again, take this with a heavy dose of skepticism, there's information out there claiming that Gareth was somehow involved with the Russian mafia and that they were involved with his death. Because members of the Russian mafia would later admit to killing Gareth because he had found some type of money trail that led the UK government to them. And allegedly, according to these informants, they tried to blackmail him into becoming a double agent, but Gareth refused, and therefore they killed him with a fast-acting poison.
SPEAKER_03So the Russian Mafia is claiming responsibility for this.
SPEAKER_00Members of the Russian Mafia that were arrested, yes.
SPEAKER_03Interesting. But they're, you know, what what is a confession, really? They're just trying to get sympathy or they're trying to get something for giving information.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. None of this can be substantiated in any way. Mm-hmm. Ridiculous. And of course. And of course, there is the theory that Gareth was investigating his own government or something along those lines, and that's why he was killed. And again, we're gonna refer back to Epstein, former Prince Andrew, and Bill Clinton.
SPEAKER_03Yep.
SPEAKER_00Which is fucking crazy.
SPEAKER_03Legit.
SPEAKER_00There have also been claims that before he left MI6 and you know, when he was gonna return to the GCHQ, that there were issues between Gareth and other MI6 members. And then, of course, he goes missing.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_00And isn't reported for a week as being missing.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_00Which again supports the idea that maybe they didn't want to find him or find anything.
SPEAKER_03Right. This is all really fucked up.
SPEAKER_00It's so fucked up. So the honest truth of it all is simple. We will never know the whole truth unless someone with access, especially someone with access to maybe those memory cards, releases them and becomes like sort of an informant.
SPEAKER_03Right, and at this point.
SPEAKER_00It's been 16 years, it's probably not gonna happen.
SPEAKER_03And the funny thing is so bad for his family. That's so awful.
SPEAKER_00It's so fucked up. But this this story, this case, is precisely why spy movies are so compelling because even in real life, we've no fucking idea what's going on.
SPEAKER_03We really don't.
SPEAKER_00And the crazy part is these people live normal lives right beside us, and we have no idea. And yeah, this sucks. This is nuts. And thank you. I I believe this listener's name is Steve. Thank you for suggesting this because we would not have looked this up. I would never have heard this.
SPEAKER_03Never would have heard of this, and this is crazy and fucked up and yeah, and what the fuck? Fuck the government. Like, but how on earth do the literal like employee of the government agencies that investigate things get all this shit covered up, and they couldn't even come up with a convincing story? Like they they couldn't even peg it on someone. They couldn't even like what what are we doing here?
SPEAKER_00You're not even think of that. But and and to me, the fact that there's a possible connection to Epstein blows my mind.
SPEAKER_03Yep. Yep, but it also like provides the most reasonable explanation of anything we've seen. I I hate that that's the most reasonable explanation, but Yeah, I agree. We've seen what we've seen.
SPEAKER_00And just as a teaser for a future episode, I am working on a on a list. We're gonna do a case that's a little different where I'm gonna talk about many of the suspicious deaths that surround the Epstein issue.
SPEAKER_03Because I'm very interested.
SPEAKER_00Because it's nuts how many. Like I I go back to the saying, you know, one it if something happens once, it's happenstance, two it's coincidence, three times it's enemy action. But when you're talking twenty deaths, that's not a coincidence. That's enemy action.
SPEAKER_03Absolutely.
SPEAKER_00So, and I've been waiting to hear what's gonna come out of the ranch out there in was it New Mexico or wherever it is. Like I've been waiting to hear more, but I haven't heard much lately, and I'm like, that makes me suspicious.
SPEAKER_03Well, yeah, they started a whole war to distract from it, didn't they?
SPEAKER_00Yes, they did. So, yeah, so that will wrap up to this week's episode. So um, I promise we got more to come, uh obviously. Uh but uh next week we're gonna be doing something that we have never done before. I won't say anything more because I don't want to spoil it for joy us here.
SPEAKER_03But um excited.
SPEAKER_00We got some fun stuff on the way, quote unquote fun stuff on the way.
SPEAKER_03So always quote unquote fun.
SPEAKER_00All right, so thank you guys for listening. Once again, I'm Janice Dead. And I'm Joyce Dead, and we'll see you next week.
SPEAKER_03Bye.