Longtime Las Vegas freelance writer is found dead in a container, police say

LAS VEGAS — The remains of a longtime freelance writer in Las Vegas were found last week inside a container at a downtown business, authorities said.

Las Vegas police said in a news release that they discovered the body of Matthew Kelemen, 56, on May 20 while responding to a report “of a foul-smelling odor” coming from the container.

Kelemen's cause and manner of death were still under investigation, the coroner's office in Las Vegas said Tuesday.

Police said they identified Kelemen's 63-year-old roommate as the suspect in his death. But the suspect died last week after crashing during a high-speed car chase involving the Utah Highway Patrol, police said.

The car chase was unrelated to the investigation into Kelemen's death, police said, but the department didn't further elaborate in its news release. It also hasn't identified the type of business where Kelemen's body was found or a possible motive.

Kelemen's sister, Mikki Zaferatos, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that her brother had been planning to move out of the room he was renting in a house also occupied by the suspect.

Zaferatos said her brother “was really uneasy living there” and that he had described his roommate as “strange.”

For two decades, Kelemen contributed film reviews, profiles, feature stories and more to local publications, including Las Vegas Weekly. A short story he wrote about Donny Osmond's Strip residency published over the weekend in Las Vegas Magazine.

Kelemen moved to Las Vegas in 2003 and had been a staff writer for several years at the now-defunct 944 and City Life magazines, the Review-Journal reported.