Model gets maximum sentence for bludgeoning, castrating lover

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 to at least 25 years 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 holidaying.

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.