A Connecticut man who inked the name of his girlfriend on his throat has been arrested after a foul odor led police to discover the woman's body inside their bedroom closet.

Adam Plaeger, 38, was arrested on Sunday on charges that he strangled Melanie Heuberger, 40, to death inside their shared Waterbury, Conn., apartment.

In the days leading up to the grim discovery, neighbors and the couple's two roommates complained of a stomach-turning stench inside the bedroom where Plaeger was sleeping.

"We banged on the door, he opened it up and we were like 'How could you sleep in here with this awful smell?,'" one of the Plaeger's roommates told NBC Connecticut.

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The pair's roommates had left town over the weekend and wondered if Heuberger would still be alive if they had stayed in town.

"Would he have killed her? Would he have had the opportunity?" one roommate wondered aloud. "I don't know. I just, I feel bad."

Investigators said Plaeger and Hueberger had gotten into a dispute in the days leading up to the woman's choking death.

Plaeger, whose tattoo of the name "Melanie" inside a blue flower is visible in his mugshot, was normally adoring of his girlfriend, neighbors say.

"He loved her so much he has a tattoo on his neck of her name. He has another tattoo on him of her name, so that is two tattoos," a friend of Hueberger, Katherine Carr, told WFSB News.

"That is a pretty permanent thing. He is someone, who idolized her. He worshiped her. I don't know how it got twisted like this."

Plaeger is being held on $1 million bond.