Sun : Dead holdall spy 'zipped himself in'

Dead holdall spy 'zipped himself in'

By CHRIS POLLARD | September 13, 2010

A SPY found dead inside a padlocked holdall may have zipped HIMSELF in for sexual kicks, it emerged yesterday.

Police are still trying to explain how MI6 code-breaker Gareth Williams came to his end.

According to Met sources, a female officer climbed into the £150 North Face bag to re-enact possible events leading to his death. She zipped it up and padlocked it from the inside.

Cops now think the fitness fanatic, 31, may have done the same for sexual gratification and suffocated when he could not reopen it.

A padlock key was alongside his naked body inside the bag, which was found lying in his bathtub last month.

Erotic asphyxiation is the deliberate restriction of oxygen to the brain for sexual arousal.

Gareth had a small frame and fitted easily in the 32 x 19ins bag. Tests showed last week there was no trace of alcohol or drugs in his system.

His flat, in Pimlico, central London, did not appear to have been disturbed prior to his discovery.

Officers are still trying to trace a couple who visited the spy's flat weeks before he died.

A Met source said: "We remain baffled."

Mr Williams' body is being tested for radioactive poison polonium - used by Russian agents to kill ex-KGB spy Alexander Litvinenko in 2006.

But Whitehall officials insist espionage or terrorism is not yet suspected.