A man branded his flatmate "a disgusting slob" - and was discovered just days later

Police responding to a report "of a foul-smelling odour" coming from a storage container found Matthew Kelemen's decomposing corpse. It was wrapped in a sheet inside a locked plastic bin on a residential street in , last Tuesday.

It has since emerged the 56-year-old man, who was a freelance journalist, told his family his flatmate was a "disgusting slob" and he felt "really uneasy living there". The flatmate became prime suspect in the murder investigation in Las Vegas but he died days later in a high-speed police chase.

He topped speeds of 140mph before hitting spike strips, losing control, and being ejected from the car on a highway in Utah, a pursuit police say was unconnected to the murder probe.

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Mr Kelemen, who spent most of his career at Las Vegas Magazine, likely died as a result of blunt force trauma, it is understood. His sister, Mikki Zaferatos told local media investigators believe he was struck from behind with a hammer.

Speaking to the outlet, Ms Zaferatos said: "He’d only lived there for about six months, but he kept telling my brother what a strange guy [the flatmate] was. He said he was really uneasy living there. 'The guy was a disgusting slob,' were his words." Mr Kelemen, a keen musician, had told his sister he intended to "confront" the flatmate about his behaviour, an admission which helped identify the man as the prime murder suspect.

But the 63-year-old suspect died following the crash in Utah, police confirmed. Utah Highway Patrol did not give reporters further details about the chase, except stressing it was not linked to the murder probe in the neighbouring state.

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Ms Zaferatos described her family's heartbreak as "horror movie stuff". She added: "I'm barely holding it together... I could not process what was going through my brain." She said police told her her brother's rotting body was found in what they described as a large crate. Ms Zaferatos believes this was one of the writer's amplifier boxes as he liked to play the guitar.

Mr Keleman had worked as a reporter in the Las Vegas area since he moved there in 2003, and was a staff writer at now-defunct 944 and City Life magazines. At the time of his death, he also freelanced for Las Vegas Weekly and Vegas magazine. His last pieces published before his death were pieces about Janet Jackson and a preview of Memorial Day Weekend in Sin City, respectively.