Daily Star : DEAD SPY GARETH WILLIAMS LINKED TO RED ANNA

DEAD SPY GARETH WILLIAMS LINKED TO RED ANNA

By Scott Hesketh and Jonathan Corke | August 29, 2010

MURDERED spook Gareth Williams could have helped to nail Russian spy beauty Anna Chapman.

Detectives are looking into claims the MI6 code breaker was in the US when ­Chapman was uncovered in June.

And any evidence that he was ­involved in infiltrating ­Chapman’s spy ring will ­become part of the murder ­inquiry.

The bust prompted revenge calls from Russia.

However, investigators are meeting “resistance” from US and UK intelligence agencies.

Chapman, who once lived in the UK, was accused of trying to infiltrate America’s political elite and sending secrets to a handler via wi-fi on a laptop.

She was sent back to Russia last month after being arrested in the US.

Last night a high-level source told the Daily Star ­Sunday: “Mr Williams’ work in America is forming part of the inquiry.

“We need to know what he was working on during his ­visits there. MI6 and CIA code crackers played a vital part in outing Chapman and the ­Russian spy ring.

“Any evidence he did play a part will be treated as a ­possible motive for his killing.”

The insider also revealed how the discovery of Welshman ­Gareth’s mobile phone and a dozen SIM cards on his bed may have been a message from his killer.

“The way the SIM cards were found carefully placed next to the phone is of particular ­interest to detectives,” he said.

“Early indications are that it is some sort of message, ­someone saying, ‘I know who your contacts are and I’m ­coming for them’.”

Keen cyclist Gareth, 31, was found dead in his top-floor flat in ­Pimlico, west London.

His body had been stuffed into a bag and left in the bath. It was revealed last night that police referred to the crime as a “neat job”, a phrase which officers use to describe the work of a professional.

According to a source Mr ­Williams’ body was found ­during a “welfare check” by ­police following a call from one of his colleagues at GCHQ in Cheltenham.

Officers discovered a suitcase “seeping a red liquid” in his bath. Police say there was no evidence of a “sex game gone wrong”, bondage gear or gay porn in the flat, as has been claimed.

His distraught family slammed the whispers as a ­government “dirty tricks” ­campaign to blacken his name.

But we can reveal police ­visited a gay bar in London’s trendy Soho area in the wake of the grim discovery.

A source in the Admiral ­Duncan pub said: “I had a visit from a plain-clothed copper asking if we’d seen this man – and he showed me a picture of the lad on his bike.

“I asked him what it was about but he didn’t say much, just that he’d been found dead and they were investigating.”