Russell Lea death: Annette Kiss narrowly escaped her home when it was destroyed in an inferno, but five weeks later she was allegedly murdered in a shocking bloodbath by a housemate she had just met.

A mother-of-two, allegedly murdered by her new flatmate, moved into their shared house because her old house had burned down five weeks earlier.

Benjamin Art, 42, allegedly murdered Annette Kiss, 53, at the home they briefly shared in Russell Lea, in Sydney’s west, on Thursday morning using a sword, a meat cleaver and a claw hammer.

Police allege he ran into the house brandishing weapons, yelled at his four housemates to sit down and began showing Kiss text messages from an unknown sender on his phone.

“You’re trying to set me up, who have you hired to try to kill me? Who is the girl texting me?” he allegedly shouted.

“You’re trying to set me up or get me killed, now you’re trying to kill me.”

Art allegedly held Ms Kiss by the neck before grabbing the knife, while another housemate attempted to stop the alleged attack with a chair before fleeing and calling police.

On Friday, a neighbour told Daily Mail Australia that the surviving roommates are “too traumatised” to return to the house and collect their belongings.

She also said Kiss was a mobile dog groomer with two children who had moved into the property just five weeks earlier because her old home caught fire when a lithium battery on an electric bike exploded.

According to the local, Art lived in a shed at the front of the property, away from the main house, and Mrs. Kiss would often stay outside and burn items in a fire drum after 8 p.m.

“Our house was filling up with smoke, I asked her to stop burning and I offered her our containers and she got a bit screwed up in an ‘I can do whatever I want’ attitude,” he said.

“She was with some nasty characters, so I backed off a little bit and she continued burning things, and I’m talking big flames every night for the last three weeks.”

The neighbor said she didn’t know what Mrs. Kiss was burning.

Art was an unemployed bricklayer who had only lived on the property for two weeks before the alleged murder.

When police arrived at the house, they allegedly found him lying over Ms Kiss’s body with a sword.

Another neighbor who witnessed the arrest said Art was “dirty and wearing sweatpants.”

“His feet were black and dirty, he thrashed like a seal on a rock, he swore like a sailor,” he said.

He was represented by solicitor Javid Faiz at Parramatta Bail Court on Friday. He did not apply for bail but was formally denied.

“My client understands the seriousness of the matter,” Faiz said outside court, according to the Daily Telegraph.

“He has ordered me not to submit any application for release today.”

His matter will return to Burwood Local Court on August 22.

Superintendent Christine McDonald said Thursday that Art had no history of violence and said he was not in a romantic relationship with Ms. Kiss.