Lawyers for Renato Seabra, the hunky Portuguese model who was found guilty this week of stomping his boyfriend to death two years ago, castrating him with a corkscrew, and then wearing his testicles like bracelets, offered a bevy of unuexpected defense theories during the trial, including that he was so "tortured" by his romance with much older, renown journalist and LGBT activist Carlos Antonio De Castro that he wore the victim's testicles like bracelets on his wrists to "harness" their power and extract the "virus" of homosexuality as ordered by God.
After the murder, prosecutors said, Seabra took a shower and took more than $1,500 from Castro's wallet before he left the room.
On Friday, CNN reports, a jury convicted Seabra of second-degree murder of Castro, which took place in January 2011 in a hotel room at the InterContinental Hotel room in New York City.
Cyrus R. Vance Jr., Manhattan district attorney, told reporters after the verdict that the crime was both "brutal and sadistic...But the jury's verdict now, finally, holds Seabra accountable. It is particularly tragic that Carlos Castro was not only ... betrayed by his spurned lover, but met a very painful and violent end far from his home."
The two had been in the U.S. only a couple of weeks. Castro was a TV jounalist and a gossip columnist for the Correio da Manha newspaper, both in Portugal, and Seabra (who prosecutors called a "gold digger") appeared on a Portugese reality TV series A Procura deum Sonho.
Castro allegedly flew the young man to the U.S. from Portugal to meet with modeling agents in New York but the two began to fight after Seabra was caught hooking up with women and telling Castro that he was no longer gay, according to the New York Daily News's Janon Fisher. Castro reportedly booked his lover an early flight home the night he was killed.