TRAGIC TRYST: Detectives scoured the upscale InterContinental Hotel in Times Square last night. Portugese model Renato Seabra was in police custody early this morning a person of interest in the slaying. (Kendall Rodriguez)
(Kendall Rodriguez)
Renato Seabra (
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Portugese model Renato Seabra was in police custody early this morning a person of interest in the slaying. (Facebook)
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The nude, sexually mutilated body of a Portuguese journalist was found in a pool of blood on the floor of a posh Times Square hotel room last night — and hours later a male model suspected in the grisly slay stumbled into a nearby hospital with a pair of slit wrists.
The castrated corpse of Carlos Castro, a 65-year-old gay activist and gossip columnist, was discovered shortly after 7 p.m. in a 34th-floor room at the InterContinental New York Times Square hotel on West 44th Street, near Eighth Avenue.
His head had been bashed in and, in a gruesome act of depravity, his testicles had been sliced off — possibly with a broken wine glass — police sources said.
Around midnight, Castro’s boyfriend, Renato Seabra — a chiseled-chested fashion plate who recently appeared on a model-search reality show in his native Portugal — showed up at Roosevelt Hospital with both wrists slashed, the sources said.
Cops were called and took him to Bellevue Hospital, where he is expected to be held for several days before he can even be questioned.
Detectives described Seabra as a person of interest in the slaying.
“This is a nice place; you wouldn’t expect it,” said Fernando Lopez, 50, a tourist from San Diego who was one of the many stunned hotel patrons who watched the investigation unfold last night.
Police said a female friend of Castro’s was aware that there was some kind of dispute between the men, who checked in on Dec. 29, cops said.
The woman, Wanda Pires, had dinner the night before the killing with Castro and Seabra at Paulinos resturant on Bowery and Houston Street, sources told The Post.
The two men were obviouly furious at each other, Pires told cops. The next day Wanda Pires found out why, when she called Castro and he told her he had a falling out with his young boy toy.
The mom, who knew Castro because her husband is also a Portugese journalist, later called on the 65-year-old at the InterContinental hotel with her daughter Monica.
“We got to the hotel at 6:20 on Friday and we called up to Carlos’s room, but he did not respond. We called his cell phone, and he did not respond,” she told the Portugese Lusa news service.
Fifteen minutes later, Monica and her mother saw Renato Seabra get out of the elevator at the hotel, and confronted him.
“We asked him about Carlos and he seemed in shock. He wasn’t expecting to see us,” she said.Seabra, who was wearing a black suit and purple tie, chillingly told her: “He’s not coming out,” before leaving the hotel, police sources said.
The woman and hotel workers then went to the room and found Castro.
Police sources said a bloody laptop computer was found in the room — and detectives are trying to determine if it was the murder weapon used to bludgeon the victim.
They also are examining a wine glass that may have been used to cut his privates and were poring over hotel security video for clues in the gruesome crime.
Cops later grilled the Pires women.
“They asked me if I knew Renato, but I don’t know him. My mother is the one who had gone out with him and Carlos in the last few days. I only met him at the door of the hotel,” she told Portuguese press.
Monica said her mom recalled the Thursday dinner to cops, saying: “Carlos was very quiet, they [Castro and Seabra, had had an argument.”
Seabra’s appearance last fall on the model-search show — called “Search for a Dream” — made him a minor celebrity in his homeland. A fan page dedicated to him on Facebook had 2,290 followers.
“I am a very happy person who likes to live with the fine things in life and to enjoy it to the maximum,” Seabra, who hails from a small town north of Lisbon, was quoted as saying on the site
Castro had a daily column at Portugal’s Correio de Manha newspaper, where he covered the country’s wealthy jet set.
The adjunct director of the Correio de Manha newspaper, Armando Esteves Pereira, said that the newspaper lost “an exemplary columnist.”
“He was a man of great humility and great professionalism,” he told the Expresso newspaper. “The Correio da Manha has lost a very good and exemplary employee.
“There are people he discovered and today owe him a great deal,” said Pereira, adding that Castro’s family, in accordance with his own wishes, wants him cremated and the ashes to stay in New York ‘His favorite city in the world.’”
Word of the slaying had patrons of the hotel on edge last night.”I’m frightened, I’m going to be crawling in my sleep,” said Susan Divilly, a tourist from Ireland.
With Doug Auer