Male model accused of partner's hotel murder

A male model has been charged with murdering a celebrity Portuguese television journalist found castrated and beaten to death in a New York hotel.

Carlos Castro, 65, was found dead on Friday in the InterContinental New York Times Square hotel that the two men had shared.

Mr Castro and Renato Seabra, 21, who is also from Portugal, were a couple.

Seabra was held by police on Saturday after he went to a hospital near the hotel. Today he was undergoing psychiatric evaluation.

Mr Castro and Seabra had gone to the US last month to see some Broadway shows and spend New Year’s Eve in Times Square.

There had been some friction between the two men toward the end of the trip, but nothing to suggest that anything horrible was about to happen, said a friend, Luis Pires.

“I think that they were a little bit upset with each other, for jealousy reasons,” he said.

Seabra was a contestant last year on a Portuguese TV show called “A Procura Do Sonho,” or “Pursuit of a Dream,” which hunts for modelling talent.

He did not win the show but did get a contract with an agency founded by fashion designer Fatima Lopes, who was a judge on it.