Portuguese model pleads ‘not guilty’ in brutal slaying of companion

NEW YORK — Renato Seabra, the 21-year-old Portuguese model who admitted to the brutal murder of celebrity journalist Carlos Castro in a New York hotel last month, pleaded “not guilty” in a Manhattan courtroom on Tuesday.

Seabra admitted to stabbing Castro, 65, with a corkscrew and also cutting off his testicles with the corkscrew, according to a confession contained in court documents.

The two men were reportedly romantically involved. But Seabra has insisted that he was not gay, and told police that he attacked his older companion to rid the gay activist of his “homosexual demons,” according to The New York Daily News.

The ultra-violence dragged on for a full hour, according to court papers. An argument turned physically violent and Seabra grabbed Castro from behind, by the neck, and dragged him to the floor, choking him, the papers revealed.

“He stabbed Carlos with a corkscrew in the groin area and the face,” according to the papers. “(He) cut off Carlos’s testicles with the corkscrew.”

The beating continued as Seabra hit Castro on the head with a computer monitor.

And then with his shoes, he stomped on his victim’s face.

Castro, a gay rights activist, events organizer and journalist whose work has appeared in Portuguese media, was found dead Jan. 7, bludgeoned to death and castrated in the hotel room the couple was sharing.

Prosecutors have charged Seabra with one count of murder in the second degree.

Seabra has been held at Bellevue Hospital Center, and local media outlets have reported that Sebra had slashed his wrists.

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The Bombast and the Body Count

Seabra

By Wayne Besen

While the world focused on the tragic Arizona shootings, another horrific crime took place in New York City. The New York Post has reported that a Portuguese male model tortured and murdered his “sugar daddy” in a Manhattan hotel. For more than an hour, Renato Seabra, 20, beat Carlos Castro, 65, before he castrated the older fashion journalist with a wine corkscrew.

Seabra (pictured) said he murdered the journalist “to get rid of Castro’s homosexual demons”. The suspect then declared, “I’m not gay anymore!”

Like the Arizona assassin, Jared Loughner, there is no doubt that Renato Seabra is profoundly disturbed.

However, that does not absolve those who placed the dangerous idea that homosexuality is attributable to demons in Seabra’s head. Where might he have gotten such a notion?

We can start with the “ex-gay” organization Exodus International, where its President, Alan Chambers, once wrote, “One of the many evils this world has to offer is the sin of homosexuality. Satan, the enemy, is using people to further his agenda to destroy the Kingdom of God and as many souls as he can.”

Chambers also told a crowd of social conservatives, “We have to stand up against an evil agenda. It is an evil agenda and it will take anyone captive that is willing, or that is standing idly by.”

Given this harsh rhetoric, it is understandable that an unbalanced individual distressed about his sexual orientation might resort to violence. After all, Chambers clearly states that homosexuality is evil and then offers a remedy, which is to “stand up” against the perceived evil spirits and not stand “idly by”.

In Jeff Sharlet’s latest book, “C Street: The Fundamentalist Threat to American Democracy”, a Ugandan man justifies supporting the death penalty for gay people because, “They” – the gays – “are trying to end the human race.”

His comments sound strikingly similar to Focus on the Family’s founder James Dobson, who once told The Daily Oklahoman newspaper that same-sex marriage will “destroy the earth.”

This week, Pentecostal preacher Cindy Jacobs warned that the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” has caused God’s wrath, including the “potential that there is something that actually happened in the land where a hundred thousand drum fish died and also where these birds just fell out of the air.”

It is irrelevant whether Sebra or Loughner were directly influenced by the “spiritual warfare” of these preachers or the Tea Party’s vitriol. What matters is that the constant demonizing of certain groups of people – whether minorities, liberals, or employees of the federal government – sets the stage for bloody reprisals.

Social conservatives would likely counter that sanguinary acts come from the hands of deranged individuals. Technically, this is true – however public figures generally understand that a small percentage of their audience is unhinged from reality. So, providing fiery rhetoric that can incite mentally ill people to take criminal actions is grossly irresponsible and an abdication of moral leadership.

A perfect example of this disconnect is Rush Limbaugh. Even as he defended right wing extremists today from accusations that their rhetoric led to the Arizona massacre, blogger Jim Burroway provided a photograph of a Limbaugh promotional billboard in Tucson painted with bullet holes and the headline, “Straight Shooter”.

Such violent imagery was in line with Sarah Palin’s infamous graphic targeting vulnerable Democratic legislative districts with crosshairs. As we now know, critically wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) was one of the legislators in Palin’s gun sights.

Unfortunately, the media tries to draw a moral equivalence between the rhetoric of the left and right, which is inaccurate and unhelpful. This bogus media attempt at “balance” obfuscates the reality that the vast majority of alarming rhetoric comes from Republicans and Tea Party adherents.

The root of the problem is people like Sarah Palin who say, “Don’t retreat – instead reload.”

It is people like Gov. Rick Perry (R-Texas) that inflame old passions by hinting at secession.

It is the Republican Party that wins power by attacking immigrants, bashing Muslims, and using anti-gay marriage amendments to drive voters to the polls.

It is House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell who allowed the healthcare bill to be portrayed as a step toward communism.

It is former House Majority Leader Dick Armey who helped organize the bitter Town Hall health care meetings designed to intimidate legislators.

It is the GOP that disrespects the office of the President by acting as though Bill Clinton and Barack Obama lack legitimacy.

My intent is not to say that most Republicans are bigots, nor are I implying that the names I’ve mentioned are directly responsible for causing deaths. However, they have soured the political climate in America by consistently catering to bigots, pandering to religious extremists, serving as apologists for militia kooks, and entertaining the wild fantasies of sick conspiracy theorists. Instead of restoring sanity, they have treated these crackpots as if they were legitimate, even respected, constituencies.

It is time America stops living in denial and considers the possibility that over-the-top bombast may lead to a body count.

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Model confesses to castrating, murdering gay Portugese TV journalist

Renato Seabra, 20

From wire reports

NEW YORK — A male model has confessed to torturing, castrating and bludgeoning to death his “sugar daddy” — a celebrity Portugese TV journalist — at a Times Square hotel on Friday, Jan. 7

Renato Seabra, 20, told police he killed 65-year-old Carlos Castro “to get rid of demons, to get rid of the virus,” The New York Post reports.

“I’m not gay anymore!” Seabra reportedly told Castro before the attack, in which he castrated him with a wine corkscrew. Seabra was taken into custody a few hours after the attack and is now charged with second-degree murder.

Castro had arrived in the U.S. in late December in the company of Seabra to see some Broadway shows and spend New Year’s Eve in Times Square, according to a family friend.

There had been some friction between the two men toward the end of the trip, but nothing to suggest that anything horrible was about to happen, said the friend, Luis Pires, the editor of the Portuguese language newspaper Luso-Americano.

“I think that they were a little bit upset with each other, for jealousy reasons,” Pires told The Associated Press.

The couple saw the musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark and took in the movie The Black Swan. But when it was time to meet Pires’ daughter for dinner Friday night, Jan. 7, Seabra suddenly emerged in the lobby of the InterContinental New York Times Square hotel acting strangely, Pires said.

“He told my daughter, ‘Carlos will never leave the hotel again,’” Pires said.

He said his daughter, distraught, fetched a hotel manager. Security guards opened the door to the room and found the body at about 7 p.m.

By then, Seabra had left the hotel but was detained by police hours later after he sought care at St. Luke’s Roosevelt Hospital, not far from the hotel. He was being evaluated Saturday at Bellevue Hospital Center, across town.

Police said the victim suffered serious head trauma. The medical examiner’s office will determine the cause of death.

Seabra was a contestant last year on a Portuguese TV show called A Procura Do Sonho, or Pursuit of a Dream, which hunts for modeling talent.

He didn’t win the show but did get a modeling contract with an agency founded by fashion designer Fatima Lopes, who developed the show and was a judge on it.

Lopes expressed her shock to Portugal’s Correio da Manha’s newspaper on Sunday.

“He never talked about his private life, he was a quiet boy and perhaps the shyest of all contestants in In Search of the Dream. He was very calm and polite, she said. “This whole thing seems surreal to me.”

Seabra had always been interested in fashion, he told the Independente de Cantanhede newspaper in September.

“I have entered this world, and I don’t want to leave it because I see I can be successful,” he said.

Castro, who also was a columnist in Portugal, was admired there for his bravery in coming out as a gay man and “revealing the feminine side of his personality,” said Rui Pedro Tendinha, a film critic who knew Castro.

He was a high-profile public figure as a TV personality, Tendinha said.

“The way he died is causing a big commotion in Portugal,” he said.

The organizer of Lisbon Fashion Week, Eduarda Abbondanza, said she knew Castro from his coverage of Fashion Week. Abbondanza said that when she fell seriously ill, Castro “was always there for me, calling me every time, checking up on me.”

On a trip to Rome, Castro even bought Abbondanza a rosary that the pope had blessed. Abbondanza said that when she heard about Castro’s death, she took the rosary to a church to pray.

“I only wish I could have helped him the way he helped me,” Abbondanza said. “He had a huge heart. Only a human being with a heart like that could have done what he did for me.”

Designer Ana Salazar, considered a fashion pioneer in Portugal, recalled Castro’s role as one of the country’s first social columnists.

“I was both in his best- and worst-dressed lists in the ’80s,” she said.

She said she was shocked by his death.

“It’s like something out of a horror movie,” she added.

A guest at the InterContinental, Suzanne Divilly, 40, told the Daily News she heard the two men arguing in their room during the day Friday.

“There was a lot of noise, talking,” she said. “You could hear them arguing in the corridor and even in our room.”

Pires described Castro as having “kind of a Liberace style. Eccentric, but very well-known.” He said he had been on Portuguese TV since he was a teenager, had written several books and was friends with the former president of Portugal, Mario Soares.

The young model and older journalist had been dating each other for a few months, he said.

“My wife and my daughter were with him for the past three or four days,” Pires said. “My wife told me that he was a very nice kid. Very polite. I think this must have been a crime of the heart.”

“This was a 21-year-old kid, looking for fame. He (Carlos) probably saw him watching girls, or something.”

News of the murder rattled the town of Cantanhede, population 38,000, in the central Portuguese district of Coimbra, where Seabra was born and where his family lives.

His sister, Joana Seabra, is a doctor and chairwoman of the local political committee of the Social Democratic Youth of Cantanhede. Calls to her home and surgery went unanswered Sunday, and no one was picking up the phone at the number listed as belonging to the family where the suspect’s mother, Odilia Seabra is believed to live.

Seabra’s childhood friend Lurdes Silva told the local Diario de Coimbra newspaper in Sunday’s editions that she was stunned by the allegations.

“He entered the fashion world in the hope of changing his life. Dreams are easy at our age,” she said. “He was looking for a dream and found a nightmare” She said the two shared an interest in racing pigeons.

“The news has hit Cantanhede like a bomb,” Casas de Melo, an organizer of the Cantanhede racing pigeon association. He told Diario de Coimbra Seabra was “a spectacular young man.

The death is the second recent slaying in an upscale New York City hotel room.

Swimsuit designer Sylvie Cachay, 33, was found strangled and drowned in a bathtub at the trendy Soho House hotel on Dec. 9. Her boyfriend Nicholas Brooks has pleaded not guilty in her death.

Brooks, the 24-year-old son of You Light Up My Life writer and Oscar winner Joseph Brooks, has been held without bail since his arrest.

And in February last year, prosecutors say multimillionaire Gigi Jordan killed her 8-year-old autistic boy at the the posh Peninsula Hotel. Jordan pleaded not guilty to murder. She wrote a letter saying she planned to kill herself and her son, but prosecutors have said she may have faked the suicide attempt. Her lawyer says the claim is baseless.

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