‘POWER’ GRAB: Renato Seabra arrives in a Manhattan court yesterday to stand trial for the gruesome murder of fashion writer Carlos Castro. (
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That’s nuts!
A Manhattan jury yesterday heard gruesome details about how a handsome young model allegedly killed and castrated his older lover, then slit his own wrists and applied the severed testicles to his bleeding arms so he could “harness their power.”
“He took the testicles and put one on each wrist,” said Rubin Sinins, the lawyer for Portuguese underwear model Renato Seabra, 22, in opening statements for the most lurid and graphic murder trial in recent Manhattan history.
“He explained that this was for his protection, and he could also harness the power — harness the power! — of Carlos Castro’s testicles,” Sinins said, his voice rising as he described the never-before-revealed details of the victim’s demise.
Prosecutors have said that Castro, 65, a Portuguese fashion writer, was alive but likely unconscious as Seabra attacked his genitals with a corkscrew.
“Ladies and gentlemen, this is insanity,” said Sinins — who is indeed seeking a verdict of not responsible by reason of mental illness.
The lawyer described for jurors a scene of gore and horror as the boy toy and his sugar daddy fought to the death in a single-bed room at the luxurious InterContinental hotel in Midtown two years ago.
Seabra had snapped, suffering a psychotic break, the defense explains.
Prosecutors counter that he turned violent in a clear-eyed burst of rage — furious that three months into the relationship, the older man wanted to leave.
Either way, Seabra’s sneaker print wound up clearly imprinted on Castro’s bloodied face, autopsy evidence will show.
And as Castro lay bleeding, things got really crazy, Sinins told jurors.
“The evidence will show that during the incident, Renato Seabra took a corkscrew and hacked at Carlos Castro, at his testicles — that he dug them out, that he pulled them out, with a corkscrew,” Sinins said, hooking his hand.
“The evidence will further show that, as he explained to the police the very next day, he believed Mr. Castro’s testicles were demons, and that by pulling them out, everything would be right with the world.”
Afterward, Seabra slit his own wrists, then “he took the testicles and put one on each wrist,” the lawyer said. “This is what the evidence will show, and you didn’t hear about this from the people’s opening.”
Don’t buy it, prosecutor Maxine Rosenthal warned the eight-woman, four-man jury in her own opening, as Castro’s sister sat sobbing in the audience, which included a dozen reporters from Portugal and New York.
Seabra attacked in anger, not madness, she said, and all because he was getting kicked off the gravy train.
Castro had lavished money on Seabra, escorting him to dinners, shows and modeling agencies in London, Madrid and now New York, and was now casting him aside, possibly because Seabra had begun cruelly flaunting a new interest in the opposite sex.
“Tension was in the air,” Rosenthal said, describing Castro’s complaint to his friend Wanda Perez in the hotel lobby the night before the murder.
“Where’s Renato?” Perez had asked Castro.
“I don’t know. He left,” he replied. “I saw him talking to two girls, and he gave them his number. I think he went to meet them.”
“This defendant had no mental illness prior to committing this crime,” the prosecutor told jurors. “Not a single sign of mental illness in the years, months or days leading up to this crime.”