The 21-year-old companion of a Portuguese celebrity journalist who was choked and beaten to death in his Times Square hotel room on Friday has been charged with one count of second-degree murder in his death, the police said on Monday. The body of the journalist, Carlos Castro, 65, was found on the 34th floor of the InterContinental Hotel, at 44th Street and Eighth Avenue. He had been sexually mutilated, an official said.Carlos Antonio De Castro was a Portuguese journalist, writing mostly about fashion and socialite/celebrity gossip. Over the New Year he was staying at the Intercontinental Hotel in Manhattan with 21-year-old Renato Seabra, a model from Portugal. Seabra had come to fame in “À Procura do Sonho” (roughly: Pursuit of the Dream), a reality TV show where male contestants compete to become the face of the year. The men were apparently a couple (that’s apparently: allegedly and apparently: ostensibly, as it seems that at least one of them was playing along with that outward image for other reasons). Media reports have Castro and Seabra dating since October, though this seems to be based on their Facebook messages. Seabra’s mother maintains that he is heterosexual, and that he has never hidden that. Friends of Seabra have also stated this - one acquaintance said that Seabra used Castro as a ‘trampoline to rise in the fashion and social worlds.’
Karen Zraick and Liz Robbins ‘Companion Is Charged in Killing of Journalist in a Times Square Hotel’, New York Times, 10th January 2011
Castro had paid for Seabra to join him in Manhattan over New Years. They went to the theatre and the cinema, and met friends for dinner during their stay. There had been some friction between the two, though nothing that alarmed their friends [1]. By the 7th of January Seabra had been arrested, hours after Castro’s body was discovered in their hotel room. Castro had been bludgeoned and castrated, and Seabra confessed to the killing.
The men are supposed to have quarrelled after Seabra said that he was only in the relationship for money, while Castro seems to have grown jealous of Seabra’s flirting with women in New York [2]. Seabra claims to have shouted: ‘I’m not gay anymore!’ before he attacked Castro. In this retrospective testimony, Seabra appears to have said that he cut off Castro’s testicles to rid the journalist of his homosexual demons – ‘to get rid of the virus.’ Seabra then showered, put on a suit, slit his wrists, and left the hotel, admitting himself to St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Centre to get his wounds treated some hours later [3].
Tales for an accelerated culture. You can imagine the lenses this story has been viewed through: this is the trouble with homosexuals, this is the trouble with dirty old men, this is the trouble with relationships based on money, this is the trouble with Latin people. Really it’s: ‘this is the trouble with a juicy news story.’ Of course it’s juicy. The added newsworthy-ness of these men being famous in Portugal is irrelevant; we didn’t know that, and we don’t care as we read the ghoulish news pieces. What they give us, and what we want, is a freak show news story with OMG examples of human behaviour. The story appeared (briefly) in the American, British and Australian media because its grisly facts made it stand out from many other events. On the 14th, when further details about the state of Castro’s body came out, a new flurry of articles appeared to fill us all in:
Gruesome new details of the castration murder of a Portuguese journalist were divulged yesterday, including the revelation that he had shoe prints on his face. Carlos Castro was choked and stomped and had his head slammed into a TV monitor before his testicles were cut off with a corkscrew, according to court papers.Just try Googling Carlos Castro’s name and see if you can find a single result there that predates his killing. This man was off the English-speaking world’s radar until he had his scrotum hacked off in a New York hotel room. He was prominent in Portugal as a journalist and a gay rights campaigner, and in Portugal - with the dual shock of a famous murder victim and a famous murderer – the events may well be tragic. To us, the johnny-come-latelys, all we can do is bitch in the abstract. Both men are stripped of their fame in our world. We bitch from the self-righteous response of ‘dirty old man who pushed his luck and his depravity too far – ‘urgh,’’ or that of ‘money grabbing, sick, depraved little kid - ‘urgh.’’
Melissa Grace, ‘Carlos Castro choked, stomped by murder suspect Renato Seabra before corkscrew castration: papers’ NYDailyNews.com, 14th January 2011
The use of ‘kid’ is interesting too. Comments from America and Britain, as well as Seabra’s family and supporters in Portugal, have referred to the 21-year-old man as a ‘boy.’ Obviously his mother is going to call him her ‘golden boy,’ but then a comment on an American news site dubbed Castro a ‘child molester’ for having had a relationship with Seabra, adding that he got what he deserved. Without knowing the details or the people, we resort to the types we can imagine more easily. Old men, old foreign men, gay, vain, rich; or young Latin hustlers, grasping, desperate for money, extreme networking for fame, and capricious to the extent of murdering a redundant sugar daddy.
That is the problem with the juicy news story (all gore and no character development, like a particular brand of horror movie). In the absence of knowing who the people are/were, or what they might have been doing prior to the event we’ve taken an interest in, imaginations and opinions run wild: same sex relationships are abnormal - look at the age gaps, look at the violence; gay sex is so disgusting that a confused ‘boy’ pushed into it can end up killing a homosexual. Sadly Seabra seems to be using that last line of thought in his ‘homosexual demons’ testimony. In short, everyone gets to take what they want from this news story. It’s a mirror for every opinion to see itself in.
Castro’s ashes (his funeral was on the 15th of January) were poured down a subway grate in Times Square. ‘Dumped’ as some articles sensitively worded it, by his friends and family, as Castro had requested them to do. He was dumped at the Crossroads of the World, and he and Seabra, famous and infamous in their own right and in their own nation, have been picked up, highlighted to us in our world - where they can only ever be ‘allegedly famous’ - then manhandled and vilified by commentators and readers. Now, with no more grisly depravations left to reveal, they’ve been dumped. Next! =============================================================================
[1] David B. Caruso, ‘Portuguese TV star slain, castrated at NYC hotel’, Associated Press, 9th January 2011 <http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2011/01/09/general-us-hotel-castration-slaying_8246968.html>
[2] Jen Chung, ‘Murdered Foreign Journalist's Model Companion In Custody’ gothamist.com, 9th January 2011, <http://gothamist.com/2011/01/09/murdered_foreign_journalists_model.php>
[3] Laura Italiano, ‘Gay boyfriend of journalist strangled, stomped on victim's face in NY hotel murder’, The Australian, 15th January 2011 <http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/breaking-news/gay-boyfriend-of-journalist-strangled-stomped-on-victims-face-in-ny-hotel-murder/story-fn3dxity-1225988280339>
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