Underwear model gets 25 years prison for castration slay

A young male model who castrated and bludgeoned to death his older male lover, a well known Portuguese fashion journalist, was sentenced in New York on Friday to at least 25 years in prison.

Renato Seabra got the maximum sentence — 25 years to life — for the grisly murder involving a corkscrew, wine bottle, computer and other implements in the Times Square hotel where the couple, both from Portugal, were on a holiday.

Seabra, a slim and chisel-faced 23-year-old, who was 21 at the time of the 2011 murder, told the court he was sorry and asked for forgiveness from the family of his victim, Carlos Castro.

“Something took power over me. We used to fight each other, but always playfully,” he said in a statement translated from Portuguese by an interpreter.

However, Castro’s family said in its own statement to the court that Seabra could easily have stopped his attack after the first punch.

“But no, his head was bashed with a computer, the beating continued and ended with a horrific mutilation that has rarely been seen, if ever,” the family said in the statement read out by the prosecutor.

“Carlos Castro died a very slow, excruciating death while his killer put himself first, bathing and prettying himself to perfection before abandoning the mutilated body of his mentor, his friend, his ‘father figure.'”

Seabra claimed insanity during his trial, saying that he ripped out his benefactor’s testicles and applied them to a self-inflicted wound on his wrists because “the power of the monster was in the balls.”

He was found guilty on November 30 of killing Castro, who was 65 at the time and a popular writer and television personality on fashion and gay rights.

With his neat dark hair, high cheek bones and model’s body, Seabra cut an unusual figure in Manhattan criminal court. He would be eligible for parole after 25 years, but could spend his entire life behind bars.

Although he argued through his lawyers that his frenzied attack and chillingly calm behavior afterwards signaled madness, prosecutors underlined at his sentencing that was never “in some sort of delusional haze.”

At the trial, the jury was told that Seabra was using his relationship with the older man to gain entry into the fashion world and enjoy a luxury lifestyle. When Castro told him the affair was over, the young man got out of control.

“There is no doubt, and the jury found, that the defendant killed Carlos Castro out of rage. It was not random act in the midst of psychosis. Carlos Castro was not a random victim,” Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Maxine Rosenthal said at the sentencing.