MIDDLETOWN — The Middletown Police SWAT team smashed open the ground-floor studio apartment door of William Nott at 54 Cottage St. after 10 p.m. Tuesday, following a neighbor’s police report of a funny smell that turned out to be his deceased long-time partner.

Middletown Police Chief John Ewanciw said the SWAT team broke down the door after throwing loud flash grenades after a male resident wouldn’t open it, and they found a female’s body, but he declined to provide the individuals’ names or specify the apartment.

In a phone interview after 10 p.m., building owner Norman Klein identified Nott as the renter, and said he was living in apartment No. 5. Klein said the deceased individual was Nott’s long-time partner of up to 20 years.

Klein identified her as Helen, but he was unable to readily provide her last name because it was at his business office and he was at home. He said he’d known the couple for years.

Ewanciw said Nott was in custody and transported to Orange Regional Medical Center to be mentally and physically evaluated, and it’s unclear how long the deceased female individual had been dead.

Klein said that he received a call from another tenant at 7:15 p.m. Tuesday, at 54 Cottage St around the same time that police received their report of an apartment dweller who wouldn’t open the apartment with a funny smell.

Ewanciw confirmed that police received a call around that time and responded shortly after and that they tried to get the man to open the door for more than three hours before finally deploying flash grenades and breaking down the door.

As of 11 p.m., Middletown police had not removed the body and they considered the apartment to be an active investigative scene, Ewanciw said. The chief added that, as far as he knew, the man had not been injured and that he did not resist being taken into custody, and that no police or neighbors were injured.

The other tenants in the building were let back in after the male suspect was removed, Ewanciw said. Klein said both of the individuals were low-income senior citizens. He described Nott as a hermit, odd and slovenly.

Ewanciw said it’s not clear if the male suspect killed the woman or if she died in some other manner, and he merely stayed with the body for a prolonged period.

Klein said that the couple were long-time tenants in another building, and that they’d moved into the apartment in December.

“I’m very surprised by all of this,” Klein said. “They’re older people, and I was expecting that they wouldn’t live forever, but I never thought in my life that something like this would happen.”

daxelrod@th-record.com