The secret double identity of murdered spy: Friend insists Gareth Williams was not gay - and was being trained by MI6 for undercover role

Daniel Boffey Daily Mail 12/26/2010 16:49

Double life: MI6 bosses had given Gareth Williams training for a new identity as part of an undercover operation a close friend revealed in an interview with the Mail on Sunday

The spy found dead in a sports bag had been given a new identity by his MI6 bosses in the months leading up to his mysterious death. Gareth Williams, a GCHQ codebreaker on secondment to MI6, had two passports and told his best friend that he was preparing for an undercover operation.

Details of the 31-year-old’s role within the secret services are disclosed today in an interview with his confidante and childhood sweetheart, Sian Lloyd-Jones.

In an interview with The Mail on Sunday, she said: ‘I find it difficult to see anything in his personal life which could lie behind this.’

She reveals:

- He was training to take on a new identity eight months before he was found dead.
- He often purchased designer women’s clothes, but she insists they were gifts for her and his sister.
- The maths genius was found dead two days before he was due to visit Paris with his sister.
- The revelations shed new light on Mr Williams’s work which, until now, had been regarded as highly technical and carrying little risk.

His body was found inside a zipped and padlocked North Face holdall in the bathroom of his MI6 flat on August 23. A post-mortem was inconclusive.

Last week police released e-fits of a couple they wish to question and provided intimate details about Mr Williams’s life, including his interest in bondage websites and his extraordinary collection of women’s designer clothes and shoes, worth about £15,000.