The boyfriend of Francisco R. Gonzalez Fuentes, whose butchered body parts were found stuffed in garbage bags in two locations in Cliffside Park, and another man were charged with his murder late Tuesday, authorities said.

Bergen County Prosecutor John L. Molinelli said Gonzalez’s live-in boyfriend, Pedro Garcia, 33, stabbed and then dismembered him with a “household knife” after a party at their apartment on Saturday night.

“It was a domestic argument that took place between Pedro and Francisco,” Molinelli said. He declined to detail the nature of the dispute.

The third man, Wilfredo Sanchez, 34, also of Cliffside Park, witnessed the attack and then helped Garcia dismember Gonzalez’s body, Molinelli said. Between about 1 and 5 a.m. on Sunday, the men stuffed the head and torso into one garbage bag and the remaining body parts into two other bags, leaving the bags at three locations near the couple’s Palisade Avenue apartment.

Molinelli said authorities were still seeking to recover a bag containing Gonzalez’s hands and other remains that apparently was picked up by sanitation workers.

Even before the arrest on Tuesday, Gonzalez’s brothers and sisters had pegged Garcia as the prime suspect and recoiled at the cruelty of the Salvadoran immigrant’s killing

“In El Salvador, where there is so much violence, I’ve never heard of a death like this one,’’ said Gonzalez’s older brother, Fermin Gonzalez. “This is a horror. This has no name.”

The arrests capped a manhunt that began soon after police dogs found human remains on Monday afternoon. Gonzalez, who was 46, had been reported missing by his family after he failed to show up for work as a chef at the Club House Café on Sunday.

Molinelli said Garcia was arrested without incident in North Bergen on Tuesday afternoon. Sanchez was taken into custody and interviewed on Monday evening.

Garcia and Sanchez each were charged with murder, possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose, unlawful possession of a weapon, desecration of human remains and hindering apprehension.

State Superior Court Judge Liliana S. DeAvila-Silebi set bail for Garcia and Sanchez at $2 million each with no 10 percent option. Both men were sent to the Bergen County Jail in Hackensack and are scheduled to appear in court on Thursday at 1:30 p.m.

Family and neighbors said Garcia and Gonzalez had a volatile relationship, routinely engaging in arguments that could be easily overheard through the windows. The couple lived on the first floor of a yellow painted brick building on Palisade Avenue.

“When Francisco didn’t give him money, he would get mad,” said Esperanza Serrano, a neighbor.

Serrano said Gonzalez told her he met Garcia when he was working as a deliveryman for a local pizzeria several years ago.

The two men were an odd couple: Gonzalez was very upfront about his sexuality while Garcia did not seem as comfortable identifying himself as gay, friends and relatives of both men said.

Gonzalez’s family said he immigrated to the United States 20 years ago carrying only 300 colons, the currency in El Salvador at the time, and a phone number and address for one of his older brothers who lived in New Jersey.

His sister, Dora said he and Garcia first lived together in an apartment on Anderson Avenue, before moving to Palisade Avenue more than a year and a half ago.

Dora Gonzalez said she would visit her brother often, and witnessed several arguments between Gonzalez and Garcia. She said Garcia depended on her brother to pay for rent and food.

“I even told him several times that if you don’t love my brother, leave him,’’ she recalled. “He didn’t love him. He just stayed with him so he could have a place to live and money.”

His family questioned authorities’ decision to release Garcia after questioning him about Gonzalez’s disappearance on Monday, before his body was found.

Gonzalez’s sister, Dora, said she was at her brother’s apartment when police questioned Garcia. Dora Gonzalez and her husband Pedro Osario said there was blood in the apartment and that knives, pillows and blankets were missing.

“The moment Francisco went missing and there was blood in the apartment, they should have looked at him as the prime suspect,” Osario said. “How could they let him go?”

Garcia seemed to lead a rootless life in recent years, friends and family said.

“He lived in his own world,’” said his sister, Norma Garcia, in a phone interview.

He came to America in the mid-90s and worked at various restaurant jobs, but never for very long, according to Maria Castro, the mother of his 6-year-old child.

Garcia’s outlook seemed to darken after his older brother, Wilfredo Garcia, was gunned down in front of his Nutley home in 2005, Castro said.

“He always [would] drink,” she said of her then-boyfriend’s behavior before the shooting. “After that it got worse and worse and worse.”

Castro said she never knew Garcia to be violent.

“He never touched me,” she said. “He never even screamed at me.”

Garcia has other brothers and sisters in the area, including a brother who lives in Fairview, with whom he had periodic disputes.

Garcia and Castro stopped living together when she was six months pregnant, and after that he had no fixed address that she knew of. She believed he had been in jail in Hudson and Bergen counties and at an immigration facility in Elizabeth within the last six months after getting picked up on a warrant in Jersey City.

Castro said police came to two bars that her father owned, in Fairview and Union City, asking about Garcia on Monday. She said had not seen him since her son’s birthday in September.

Castro said Garcia never told her that he was in a relationship with a man, though she knew he was.

Molinelli said the incident was not being investigated as a hate crime.

Fermin Gonzalez said that he would like to take his brother’s remains to El Salvador.

“Before we take my brother and bury him, we want the person who did this to be caught and for justice to be served,’’ he said.

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Molinelli said the K-9 units with the Bergen County Sheriff’s Department found the body parts at 1:57 p.m. Monday. Authorities are classifying the incident as a homicide, and it is currently under investigation by the Major Crimes Unit of the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office, Molinelli said in a news release.

A law enforcement source said the victim is believed to be Francisco Gonzalez, 46, who was reported missing a few days ago. The police dog started at Gonzalez’s Palisade Avenue apartment and walked down Cliff Street and found the torso and the head in a bag behind a church on Cliff Street, the source said. The victim’s arm and some knives were found up the street near a house under construction, the source said.

The body parts have been transported to the medical examiner’s office, which will conduct a forensic exam to identify the victim and the cause of death, Molinelli said.

Marc Snyder, owner of The Club House Café on Palisade Avenue, said he called Gonzalez’s sister on Sunday when he didn’t show up for work around 4 p.m. The sister contacted the authorities, Snyder said.

Snyder said police told him the Bergen County Sheriff’s Office got involved when they found blood outside Gonzalez’s apartment. He said police called him Monday at 10:30 a.m., and at noon he went to the scene where the body parts were found, although he did not view them.

Gonzalez, who worked at the café for 15 years as a prep cook, had just returned from El Salvador on Dec. 20 where he had surgery to remove a cyst in his eye, Snyder said. He said Gonzalez seemed different after this latest trip; he traveled to the country frequently and sent money home to his mother. Snyder even helped Gonzalez obtain his green card, although he was unsure if he was a citizen yet.

Snyder described him as a nice guy, and employees at the café called him “Frisco.”

“He was a folk hero, believe it or not, everyone in town knows him,” he said.

Robert Issa, a Cliff Street resident, said police arrived in the neighborhood at 10 a.m. Monday. Issa, who has three closed circuit cameras mounted on the wall outside of his multi-family home, said police asked him for the footage. He said he did not ask them what they were looking for.