A pensioner has been found dead in a garage more than two years after his disappearance.

Police, who discovered Walter Bellman's skeleton close to his home in Wellington Road, Brighton, had mistakenly searched the wrong garage when he disappeared in January 1998.

They did not discover their mistake until they returned to the scene two years later and made the gruesome find. Officers admit they originally searched a neighbouring garage by mistake. A neighbour had told them Mr Bellman's garage was the fifth in the row of 11 but they had counted from the wrong end.

Mr Bellman, 82, was thought to have hit the lottery jackpot after detectives learned he had spent £1,100 on tickets in the weeks leading up to his disappearance.

The retired Customs officer had devised a complex lottery system made up of dozens of number sequences. Camelot refused to reveal whether Mr Bellman was one of its anonymous millionaires and police submitted a written request for information.

Although food was found rotting in Mr Bellman's fridge, the rest of the flat was left spotless with dust sheets covering the furniture, indicating he had prepared for his departure.

Police returned to the scene this week after starting the investigation from scratch and broke into the correct garage. Mr Bellman's skeleton was in the car with a bag over his head attached to a hose from the exhaust pipe.

A formal identification, probably through dental records, has still to be made but police are convinced the body is that of Mr Bellman. They have ruled out crime.

Police stressed Mr Bellman would have been dead even if officers had found him during the first search. Sergeant Bryan Bell was one of the officers who made the grisly find.

Mr Bellman was last seen when police went to the flat in January 1998 to inform him his brother, Fred, had died. Nephew Alan Bellman, 53, of Sevenoaks, Kent, said: "I'm told the police were on the point of closing the case when they decided to go back and go over everything again.

"It's only then they realised they had searched the wrong garage two years ago. I never thought the lottery theory fitted in with my uncle. It just wouldn't have been his way. "The circumstances are quite tragic but at least now we know what happened to him."

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