Daily Post : Gareth Williams: MI6 spy from Anglesey may have been poisoned says detective

Gareth Williams: MI6 spy from Anglesey may have been poisoned says detective

Former Metropolitan Police murder squad detective Colin Sutton has shared his theory on the death of the Anglesey spy found dead in a holdall

By Rhodri Barker | June 23, 2014

A former senior murder squad detective claims an Anglesey spy whose body was found in a holdall may have been poisoned in a “perfect killing”.

The riddle of Gareth Williams’s death appeared resolved last year after a top-level police probe concluded that he probably died alone in an accident.

But former Metropolitan Police murder squad detective Colin Sutton has now challenged that view with a sensational new theory of his own.

Sutton, who was the most senior detective at the scene on the day of the gruesome discovery almost four years ago, revealed he has lingering doubts about the code-breaker’s death.

His view chimes with that of Westminster coroner Dr Fiona Wilcox, who recorded two years ago that Mr Williams was unlawfully killed. Her verdict was later overturned.

Police broke into Mr Williams’s flat in Pimlico in London in August 2010, and found his decomposing remains in a red bag padlocked from the outside.

Mr Sutton has now voiced fears that the flat may well have been "cleaned" of all incriminating traces while any poison in Mr Williams’s system may have been impossible to detect by then.

“The first thing that struck me was how hot it was. It was August yet the heating was on full blast,” he said, recalling arriving on the scene on the day of the discovery.

“It made me think immediately that the heating could have been left on to accelerate the decomposition of Gareth's body.

“If he had been poisoned then the chemical compounds might have vanished by the time toxicology tests were conducted.”

He added: "There is also the possibility that something very unusual and hard to detect was used to poison Gareth. It may seem far fetched but we know that Alexander Litvinenko was killed four years earlier in London with a rare radioactive isotope.

“I remain convinced the flat was tidied up after his death. That may have been to protect national security - or it might have been something more sinister. If that is the case, then it could have been the perfect murder."

Mr Williams, from Valley in Anglesey, was a maths PhD graduate who began working at GCHQ in Cheltenham in 2001.