Death of Gareth Williams: MI 6 Agent

Once again, I visit the death of an MI6 agent and note certain disquieting facts.

Despite all attempts by the various intelligence agencies involved to portray him as a nerdy technician rather than field agent, it is clear that he had been trained for operations and, in fact, had been conducting field operations.

As someone tasked to any field assignment it is necessary to have a cover story and as all good cover stories go, it is sensible to have depth and breadth to them so that any character appears to have a variety of interests and activities and does not appear to be one-dimensional and therefore a suspected mole. Those who look for moles or intruders are apt to be impressed by discoveries of non-mainstream interests. The famed "cover story within a cover story" is far more believable than a shallow, single-dimensional cover story that is easily blown.

To what extent the decedent's visitations to cross-dressing sites, auto-eroticism sites, bondage sites, etc. represented an actual interest versus a career-motivated affectation is unknown and to a great extent unknowable.

It is true that twenty thousand pounds is a rather substantial investment in ladies undergarments but it is also clear that a one time purchase of such items is more suggestive of a cover story than an ongoing interest persisting over the course of many years.

Exploration of a variety of extreme websites is a very sensible way to build a complex cover story for later adventures in the world of Hackers. Hackers who discover one of their number has various cross-dressing interests and auto-eroticism interests would be less likely to view him as a possible government agent sent to penetrate their network.

As in any forensic investigation, it is often impossible to exclude an option it is only possible to term it unlikely. People often have extreme skills or unusual knowledge: regurgitated keys, cat burglar climbing skills, lock picking skills, contortionist routines, etc. all come to mind as items frequently possessed by the general population and therefore unable to be rejected by a coroner.

A person who wished to advance his career by becoming accepted in the world of auto-eroticism and cross dressing may well have applied himself to some fairly interesting situations. Not only is the self entry into the holdall physically possible but there is a measure of evidence to indicate that self entry into the holdall may have been a particularly valuable career skill for him to acquire as it transcends the world of auto eroticism and extends to ordinary burglary skills.

It is impossible for a coroner to rule that self entry into the holdall did not take place. We may find comfort in the fact that we ourselves would never attempt such a thing and that if we were indeed to attempt such a dangerous contortion we would do so under conditions of greater safety, but such thoughts are of no use to the coroner. We can think the intelligence services played a role and that forensic evidence was tampered with. It is a comfort to us to think that but a coronial inquiry is not an exercise in intellectual comfort.

Would the appropriate coroner's verdict be Death by misadventure? No. Death by patriotism seems much more appropriate.

Please note that the coroner is of the opinion that the visitations to the alternative lifestyle sites were brief and sporadic and therefore should be given little weight. I accord the sites greater weight due to the assumed goal in such visitations to the alternative sites. Everything is strange about the case. Even the initially much sought after and now discounted Mediterranean Couple has ties to the Italian embassy so the intrigue seems to never stop.

However measured and far away.

Investigators who insist upon marching to the beat of a different drum:

We all celebrate when a dissident investigator proves himself to have been right. That lone voice at the end of the table who sees a case in a very different manner than the others see it is much admired when he is finally shown to be correct in his views, but what about the time that really matters: before the case is solved. The FBI steadfastly ignored the agent who kept telling them that the Unabomber was a "monk on a mountaintop in Montana" and thereby wasted countless man-years and untold millions looking solely at well-educated, wealthy engineers.

Recently a news item contained the following snippet:
>Did not want to investigate child abuse and child pornography that went outside the Ramsey family..."

Well, there was no child abuse or child pornography inside the Ramsey family and I see no reason to investigate child abuse or child pornography outside the Ramsey family and call it trying to solve a homicide. Some broad inquiry into alcoholism in Colorado does not belong as part of a homicide investigation just because some tabloid editors think the perpetrator might be an alcoholic. I'm much more interested in the unsociable man who made vitriolic threats against John Ramsey prior to the murder than in some broad inquiry into child abuse in Colorado. Its a homicide investigation, not a sociological study. The suspect to which I refer had a brain injury and episodes of deep depression, that doesn't mean you conduct a study of minimal brain damage or a study of depression. Its a homicide investigation, not a socio-medical inquiry into US society. A broad study of pornography is meaningless when the only nude photographs ever taken of the victim were taken by the medical examiner.

The rejoinder was:
Whoa--if there are legitimate reasons Singular is privy to that you might not be that give him reason to explore the world of CP and its consumers, then don't you think that should be ruled out? Its not like the decedent wasn't molested and sexually-sadistically tortured - chronic pedophile or situational molester might be a debatable question.

And my response focused on not so much as it being a logically incorrect association but more that it was incorrect as an investigative goal since it was more an unnecessary detour than anything else. Oh sure, any door may be the right one. We all hope that surely the BPD has by now learned to do such things as open doors.

Well, of course on that night a great many things took place, none of which we really want to dwell on beyond what is necessary for the investigation. A stun gun was used, it appears to have been experimental in nature rather than dedicated torture. Does that mean we should take a detour into a general investigation of sadism? Even if we attempt to limit our study to sadism in Colorado it seems to me to be a waste of investigative resources. Those who have perused the faux ransom note have often used the term "James Bondish" to indicate its style, does that mean we should assign Boulder detectives to read all the works of Ian Fleming? And watch all those silly movies?

In a Hit and Run investigation, do you focus on readers of Car and Driver magazine and elevate chronic possession of a driver's license to the status of a profound clue? It is, of course, entirely possible that the person who left the scene of an accident without rendering aid to the dying will indeed turn out to be a subscriber to Car and Driver and will be in general an aficionado of motor-cars. It is not however an excuse to go off on a tangent and devote resources to a field of inquiry that is more a general survey of sociology rather than a finely focused homicide investigation.

There are a great many allegations of investigators protecting powerful pedophiles. Probably some of these allegations are quite well founded. Chances are that by sheer percentage some of the allegations of Pedophile Rings in High Governmental Circles will turn out to be true, but so far I've seen no evidence that either pornography or child-pornography had the least bit to do with the murder of JonBenet Ramsey. So why are there persistent calls for investigative resources to be dedicated to such tangents which consist of low-grade ore? Oh, its not that we should be unwilling to mine low-grade ore, its simply that higher grade ore should be mined first.

I do not think the entire detective division of Boulder should hie away to foreign shores in search of that "small foreign faction". Its a false trail. One that was provided for a reason. Provided for an unknown reason and provided by a demented mind perhaps, but provided as an artificial construct. No time should be wasted and no funds should be expended sending detectives off on junkets to a variety of foreign shores in search of small foreign factions.

We all have information available to us about which we are uncertain. Uncertain as to its exact nature and uncertain as to its weight and uncertain as to the veracity of our informants. Life is uncertain. Death is certain, but a homicide investigation is a part of life, not death. One of my particularly uncertain sources has provided me with information which does not negate the possibility of a pedophile being involved but which does provide an aspect to the crime which casts serious doubt on the pedophilia aspects of the crime and also casts serious doubt on the torture aspects to the crime. This makes me hesitant to wander off on what I perceive to be a tangent. It is, however, a factor that is clouded by uncertainty. The trouble with the Boulder investigators has always been that they heard the music loud and clear, it is the bolder investigators who hear a different and more distant measure. Yet that does not mean that the famed distant drummer is playing the correct beat.

The stun gun use seems not only experimental but very perfunctory. Its as if it were almost two quick jolts and that's it for the stun gun. Did he stop because he discovered he did not enjoy it? Or perhaps is it that he stopped because he had left the sufficiently misleading clue? Its possible to view the molestation as consisting of largely perfunctory acts performed quickly rather than unspeakable acts performed with care and savored by a demented mind. We do not know for certain what was experienced or how long things took or how much they were enjoyed, but there is at least some body of evidence which supports a conclusion that irrespective of time of entry into the home, time of departure was quite prompt. Therefore if a reasonably intelligent intruder already lying in wait in the JBR/Guest room were to have waited until he felt the parents would be asleep and if the intruder did in fact depart prior to the 1:00am time constraint we have a very narrow time frame for taking his victim to the basement, applying a stun gun, applying a garrote, hiding the body and leaving. With a very narrow time frame comes the obvious question: if he did not linger and savor the events as they unfolded, then perhaps he was not really there for the purpose of enjoying them. Oh, he was clearly there to kill JonBenet Ramsey. Right from the start this was a murder and it was never any sort of kidnapping plot or some faux-kidnapping ploy to obtain a ransom payment. Its just that if the application of a stun gun to a six year old girl was performed so briefly then it is possible that the lack of a prolonged usage means that there was no great enjoyment. Perhaps it is equally true of the perversion: no great enjoyment and therefore not a pedophile and not likely to re-offend.

Normally one would expect any criminal to have a measure of goal directed action. We also expect a short order cook to have a measure of goal directed action. Some places serve fast food, not culinary masterpieces that take great time to prepare. Some people simply do not linger over a meal or linger over its preparation. If there was a failure to linger over a meal that does not mean that a person is necessarily not a gourmand. He may simply have been pressed for time and not been able to dally. So if the intruder who killed JonBenet Ramsey failed to extend the activities it does not necessarily mean that he was not a pedophile. He may have been desirous of limiting his exposure to danger, he may have become slightly concerned by the scream, any number of things may have happened but one thing is still possible: he simply had no interest in prolonging the events because he was no more interested in perversion than he was in foreign factions or ransom payments.

A weekly search of the CODIS database is hardly going to yield good results if the perpetrator is not likely to be a repeat offender. Now I do realize that there are a great many uncertainties in this. Was it a brief crime? Does such brevity actually indicate lack of intense sexual interest, does such lack of sexual interest mean he is not likely to be a repeat offender? These are all unknown imponderables that can be debated forever but meanwhile an investigation should be proceeding and if these musings are to be given any weight at all they should be given that weight now.

Addendum: Elsewhere these comments were posted with the following closing comments.

A police force bears the hallmarks of a paramilitary organization and there is less room for diversity of opinion amongst investigators. Recall perhaps The Caine Mutiny. The burden of command can be great but so to is the burden of subordination. Humphrey Bogart sitting there with his steel ball bearings and a demented conviction that there is a plot amongst his junior officers may make for an entertaining movie but Jose Ferrer’s character is the one who points out that the fault does indeed lie with the junior officers.

We on the internet are a bit more free to speculate about alternative case scenarios and alternative viewpoints. When a little girl is missing we tend to hope she is merely lost but we worry about some demented pervert as well as disorientation. When it is a kidnapping, we worry about a ransom demand but still also worry about a pervert even if the note and circumstances utterly convince us that the kidnappers are professional criminals whose only interest is financial. When a victim is found not only murdered, but brutally murdered and subjected to torture and unspeakable indignities we tend to focus largely on the perverted aspects of the crime. Perhaps that is the correct thing to do. It is certainly the most obvious path for an investigator to take. Yet when that path turns out to be unfruitful, perhaps it is time to reconsider the nature of our underlying assumptions about the crime. Perhaps investigators should consider a more distant drummer may indeed be playing an interesting measure.