Telegraph : Spy in a bag: clues to 'perfect murder’

Spy in a bag: clues to 'perfect murder’

Colin Sutton, a Scotland Yard detective who examined the flat where Gareth Williams was found locked in a holdall, suggests a 'sinister' explanation lies behind MI6 spy's death

By Edward Malnick | June 21, 2014

The MI6 spy found dead in a locked holdall could have been poisoned and his home professionally cleaned to hide crucial evidence in a “perfect murder”, according to a detective who examined the scene.

Colin Sutton, the most senior officer to examine Gareth Williams’s flat on the day his body was discovered, said he was convinced that it had been “tidied up” after his death.

Mr Sutton also suggested in an interview with The Sun that a “very unusual and hard to detect” substance could have been used to poison the 31 year-old.

The intervention by the former Metropolitan Police murder detective is at odds with the force’s official investigation. Detectives had suggested Mr Williams had become trapped in a bag while seeking some sort of sexual gratification.

The naked, decomposing body of Mr Williams, who was on secondment to MI6 from GCHQ, was found in the padlocked holdall in the bath of his flat in Pimlico, central London, in August 2010.

Although the inquest into his death ruled that he was “unlawfully killed”, a later police inquiry, which reported in November, concluded that Mr Williams probably got into the bag by himself and died when he could not get out.

There was no evidence of a forced entry or struggle in the flat and suggestions that all DNA and fingerprints had been wiped in a deep clean were a “fallacy”, police said.

However, on Saturday Mr Sutton, a former detective chief inspector, said: “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.

“His phone and sim cards were neatly laid out. It was like they had been put there deliberately for us. My thoughts were some well-educated spy has sacrificed this stuff, hoping that plod would be satisfied with it and not look any further.”

Mr Sutton led the successful investigation into Levi Bellfield, the serial killer who murdered Milly Dowler. He did not work on the Williams investigation after Aug 23, when he examined the flat, but has continued to follow the case.

He said he was concerned that there was a five-hour delay between Mr Williams’s sister – having been unable to reach her brother – raising the alarm with GCHQ, and police being notified by officials.

The time lag gave MI6 “plenty of opportunity to clean up the scene”.

Mr Sutton said the heating had been on “full-blast” when he arrived at Mr Williams’s flat on Aug 23 2010, which he believed could have been deliberate, to speed up decomposition of the body.

He added that any chemical compounds from poisonous substances could have “vanished” by the time his body was tested.

“There is also the possibility that something very unusual and hard to detect could have been used to poison Gareth,” he added.

“It may seem far-fetched, but we know that Alexander Litvinenko was killed four years earlier in London with a rare radioactive isotope, and before that, Georgi Markov was killed by Bulgarian secret-service agents with the tip of a poisoned umbrella.

“If the motive for Gareth’s death was around his job, then poison becomes much more likely.”

Dept Asst Commissioner Martin Hewitt, who led the police investigation into the death, insisted last year that there was no evidence that it was connected to his work.

“I do not believe that I have had the wool pulled over my eyes. I believe that what we are dealing with is a tragic unexplained death,” he said.

Police, who originally suspected foul play, effectively ended their inquiries into the case last year but said they would keep the case under review.

A Metropolitan Police spokesman said that Mr Sutton’s observations about the crime scene would have been reported to his superiors at the time.

“This does not appear to be further evidence that we can act on,” he added.