Police in the United States and Canada hunted yesterday for a TV reality show contestant charged with the murder of a model whose mutilated body was found inside a suitcase in a dumpster.

Ryan Alexander Jenkins, 32, was charged with the murder Thursday after days of being a "person of interest" in the gruesome case of 28-year-old Jasmine Fiore's killing. Mr Jenkins, a Canadian who recently vied with 16 other contestants on the TV show "Megan Wants a Millionaire," is now "the subject of an international manhunt," said Tom Monson, police chief in Buena Park, a suburb of Los Angeles.

Police believe he may have already crossed the Canadian border from a remote area in northwestern Washington state.

Officials said it was Mr Jenkins himself who reported Ms Fiore missing last Saturday, the day the suitcase was found by a man searching the garbage dumpster for recyclable bottles. He has not been seen since.

Police said Ms Fiore appeared to have been strangled and revealed at a press conference Thursday that her teeth and nails had been yanked out, presumably in a hurried attempt to conceal her identity.

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