The death of MP Stephen Milligan could have been ‘foul play’, John Simpson said
The death of MP Stephen Milligan in a solo sex game had all the hallmarks of a Russian state assassination, veteran BBC journalist John Simpson said last night.
The Conservative politician’s death in 1995 by erotic asphyxiation helped spark the sleaze scandal which spelt the beginning of the end for John Major’s government.
But now Simpson has said the death of his close friend, who had worked as a journalist in Moscow, could have been foul play.
Mr Milligan’s body was found naked in his West London flat in a pair of stockings and suspenders with an electrical flex tied around his neck and a black bin liner over his head.
A coroner found he had ‘suffocated himself accidentally’, recording a verdict of misadventure. But Simpson, 74, said that this did not reflect the man he knew and raised his suspicions that the KGB secret police may have been involved.
He suggested that Russia had a motive as Mr Milligan had successfully reported on the new Yeltsin government in Moscow for The Sunday Times and the BBC. Simpson also pointed to the deaths of two other opponents of the regime in similar ways.
He was speaking at Henley Literary Festival to promote his new thriller Moscow, Midnight which opens with the death of a government minister who is discovered bound in a similar manner to the MP.
‘Stephen Milligan was a real good friend of mine,’ said Simpson.
‘When I read in the newspaper that he had died in this macabre fashion in this awful sex experiment with a bag over his head, I just couldn’t believe it, there was nothing in that seemed to do with Stephen.’
Mr Milligan’s body was found naked in his West London flat in a pair of stockings and suspenders with an electrical flex tied around his neck and a black bin liner over his head
A coroner found he had ‘suffocated himself accidentally’, recording a verdict of misadventure
He said he thought little about it until much later when he spoke to another close friend of Mr Milligan’s.
Simpson added: ‘He said “I’m thinking of writing a book about it because it was so obvious that he was murdered by the KGB. What better way to kill somebody without there being any form of investigation than this?”
‘Many people just thought it was funny or savage or were too embarrassed to have anything to do with it. Then he came up with the fact that at least two people, critics of the Yeltsin government, had died in the same way in Russia.’
But now John Simpson said the MP’s death had all the hallmarks of a Russian state assassination
The Major government had sought to re-invent itself in 1993 with a socially conservative campaign to go ‘back to basics’. But it soon became the subject of ridicule as a series of scandals nicknamed ‘Tory sleaze’ erupted.
Mr Milligan’s death was one of the most explosive stories in a long list of affairs, sexual scandals and corruption allegations.
They also included Neil Hamilton’s ‘cash for questions’ scandal and the jailing of former cabinet minister Jonathan Aitken for perjury and perverting the course of justice.
Mr Milligan had been a rising star in the Conservative party with a junior defence position.
Simpson added: ‘I engineered it with him so he got a job with the BBC, he had been Sunday Times correspondent and had uncovered a lot of dodgy things.
‘It was a bad time in Russia after the fall of Marxism and Leninism. And he got all sorts of stuff. He joined the BBC and worked for a couple of years before he became an MP.
‘He was a really lovely man, very straight and straight-dealing.’ Simpson said of his book: ‘In a way, it was kind of homage to Stephen who was a lovely intelligent and sensitive man, who died in such terrible circumstances that it marred the whole of his life.’