Murder and Castration Described in Courtroom

By YVONNE JURIS & MELANIE GOLDBERG

He just wanted to make the world a better place, by first killing his homosexual partner and then admitting to it.

That was how accused murderer Renato Seabra defended himself in a confession to Detective Richard Torrelli that was read from the witness stand in a Manhattan courtroom Tuesday.

The confession was made the day after the defendant allegedly killed and castrated his boyfriend and Lisbon gossip reporter Carlos Castro in a local hotel room in January 2011.

The confession in Portuguese at Bellevue Hospital contained these details and admissions:

Seabra met the victim on Facebook in October 2010. In late December and they decided to vacation together to New York City; by January 7^th their relationship had soured. Seabra had begun to doubt his own homosexuality, causing Castro to threaten to break off the relationship. Seabra grabbed Castro from behind, put pressure on his windpipe, broke his arm, hit him with a bottle and a TV and stabbed his groin with a corkscrew.

Seabra then removed his partner’s testicles, court records showed.

“This would make everything in the world right,” Seabra was quoted saying. “I wanted to free the demons by cutting the testicles off.”

The police records after the incident said that Seabra then slit his wrists, mingling his blood with that of Castro’s. He then showered, got dressed in his best suit, hopped in a cab, and roamed lower Manhattan telling people the world “wasn’t a good place.” He later got into a second cab, adidas neo whose driver noticed the blood and drove him to a hospital.

The next day, however, when Seabra met with the detective, Torrelli said he “seemed sane.”

“He was cooperative, fully communicating and involved,” Torrelli testified on the witness stand. “At the conclusion of our meeting he looked relieved.”

Defense attorney David Touger attempted to undermine the confession saying that Torrelli didn’t use a tape during the meeting and didn’t meet with the DA to compare notes. Torrelli also admitted that he never signed off on the confession’s translation.

“You were concerned with finding out what he [Seabra] did, not why he did it,” the defense attorney said.

“I already felt like he was a sick man,” replied Torrelli, a detective for 29 years.

Seabra’s advocates were expected to mount an insanity defense.