The Media Destroys ‘Gay Transvestite’ Spy Gareth Williams – News And Pictures

GARETH Williams, the MI6 worker, is dead. The media is feasting on his remains and destroying his memory. If Mr Williams was a spy, as the story goes, we might expect to learn much about him.

We know that he was born and raised on Anglesey. He went to Bodedern School. He was 31. He had a doctorate in maths. He died in a Pimlico flat, owned by a company based in the British Virgin Islands with a name that means Motherland in Russian. Such are the facts.

But, still, the media is free to speculate.

Yesterday, we told you that the one picture of Mr Williams released by the authorities showed him dressed in Lycra and riding a pushbike. Whispers of news from “sources” close to the police spoke of his “private life” being the reason his body was stuffed into a sports bag at this London flat. This speculation was given added weight on the BBC 10 o’clock news, where a face came one to say that Mr Williams’ private life might have been behind his death.

The Sun takes up the narrative with glee. On its front page we learn:

“Murders spook a cross dresser”

MURDERED MI6 worker Gareth Williams was a secret transvestite who may have been killed by a gay lover, detectives said yesterday.

He was murdered? A gay lover “may” have killed him? Or as we learn later in the article:

Police are also working on the theory that intelligence expert Mr Williams may have been killed by a foreign spy.

The Mail offers this gem:

Indeed, ‘Ceaucescu Towers’, as MI6’s brutally modernist Vauxhall Cross HQ is known, is just across the River Thames from his apartment, overshadowing a huge bus terminal, and the gay clubs and saunas of ‘VoHo’ – the area’s red light district.

Anyhow, how do we know he was a transvestite? The Lycra, right? The Sun tells us:

As the inquiry progressed it was revealed that women’s clothes that fitted Mr Williams were found at the flat.

And..? And nothing. That’s it. But it was “revealed” – although we know not by whom.

This so-called news spreads. In Australia, the local Telegraph opines:

THE private life of a murdered British spy was coming under close scrutiny Thursday, with UK detectives probing whether he was a secret transvestite who was killed by a gay lover.

Adding:

Detectives told London’s Daily Telegraph that they believe he might have had a violent row with a lover over his decision to return to GCHQ.

Yeah, he might. Or he might not. But the news is getting out there. Mr Williams’ name is being sullied.

Having been labelled a transvestite, the Mail then wonders if Mr Williams was the victim of a second crime?

Did spy’s killer steal state secrets? MI6 agents search for ‘missing’ laptop or MP3 player after body-in-bag murder case?

And:

But lurid speculation that he had been stabbed or even dismembered was discounted by police sources. They said the telephone numbers of escort agencies were found on one SIM card while pornographic material had also been discovered in the flat.

Again we get the sex angle.

And:

Officers from Scotland Yard’s Murder Squad, with assistance from their counter-terrorist and security service colleagues, are delving into the private life of Mr Williams, seeking to discover whether he had relationship or money problems.

Another possibility is that he was the victim of a dangerous sex game gone wrong.

And on it goes. In the Mirror, we get:

Dismissing suggestions of an assassination by foreign agents as fantasy yesterday, security sources said it was possible he may have been attacked by a friend or casual acquaintance.

Casual..? Because gay men love casual meetings at home, don’t they? At least the tabloids love the idea that they do. Sky News passes on the theory that Mr Williams did not die because he was a “spook”?

Sources close to the inquiry are quoted by the Press Association as saying it is not clear how he died and have played down speculation that the murder is linked to his secretive line of work.

What about another theory?

But Prof Glees, the director of the Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies at the University of Buckingham (BUCSIS), added: “It is peculiar if this flat was, as I suspect, a Secret Intelligence Service safehouse, that someone got into the house to commit the crime without being invited in. That would be very worrying.”

According to Prof Glees, if a dangerous individual had entered the Pimlico flat because Mr Williams was speaking to him in a professional capacity, then there would have been someone else from the secret services present.

A man had died. We do now know how or why. But the media is free to speculate. Yesterday, reports were that he had been stabbed. Today, we are told he wasn’t.

The truth may never out…