MI6 agent Gareth Williams’s death ‘probably an accident,’ say police

The death of British intelligence agent Gareth Williams, whose body was found in a padlocked gym bag, was "probably an accident," police said.

A coroner said last year it was likely that the 31-year-old MI6 agent had been killed in a "criminally meditated act" in August 2010, but Metropolitan Police said Wednesday that a review of evidence in the case found "on balance, it is a more probable conclusion" that no other person was present when he died in his London apartment.

"But the reality is that for both hypotheses, there exist evidential contradictions and gaps in our understanding," said Metropolitan Police Deputy Assistant Commissioner Martin Hewitt.

Williams's family said they still think he was killed and consider the coroner's initial findings to be true.

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"We are naturally disappointed that it is still not possible to state with certainty how Gareth died and the fact that the circumstances of his death are still unknown adds to our grief," they said in a statement.

"We consider that on the basis of the facts at present known, the coroner's verdict accurately reflects the circumstances of Gareth's death."

The family also criticized MI6 after the spy agency failed to investigate when Williams didn't show up for work on Aug. 16, 2010.

His decomposing, naked body was found a week later in the padlocked gym bag in the bathtub of his MI6-owned apartment, where the central heating had been left on despite the summer heat.

"We believe that if proper steps had been taken in the same manner as any reasonable employer would have taken, further information relating to the cause of his death might have become apparent and not have been lost due to the length of time before Gareth's body was found," the family's statement said.

Williams, a cyberwarfare expert, worked for the UK's GCHQ intelligence agency and was attached to spy service MI6 when he died.

Whether Williams could have padlocked himself into a gym bag in a bathtub was the central question during a seven-day inquest into his death in May of last year.

Pathologists said he would have suffocated within three minutes if he had been alive when he entered the bag.

Williams's DNA was not found on the bag's lock and his palm prints were not found on the edge of the bathtub.