In this Dec. 1, 2010 photo, Carlos Castro, right, presents an award during the "Transvestites' Night" show at the Sao Luiz theater in Lisbon, Portugal.
/ AP photo
NEW YORK (AP) — A 65-year-old Portuguese television journalist was found castrated and bludgeoned to death in a New York City hotel, and his companion, a male model who had recently been a contestant on a Portuguese reality TV show, was in police custody Saturday.
Workers at the InterContinental New York Times Square hotel discovered the mutilated body at about 7 p.m. Friday after a friend of the television journalist, Carlos Castro, became worried.
A man who had been staying at the hotel with Castro, Renato Seabra, also of Portugal, was detained by police hours later at Bellevue Hospital, where he was still being evaluated. No charges had been filed against Seabra as of Saturday morning, the New York Police Department said.
Police said the victim suffered serious head trauma. The medical examiner's office will determine the cause of death.
The two men had checked in to the 36-story hotel together, police said. The InterContinental opened in late December.
A guest at the hotel, Suzanne Divilly, 40, told the Daily News she heard the two men arguing in their room during the day Friday.
"There was a lot of noise, talking," she said. "You could hear them arguing in the corridor and even in our room."
Another guest, Anthony Hughes, 43, of New Castle, Australia, told the newspaper he saw the woman who had gone to the hotel check on De Castro "screaming hysterically" in the lobby.
Seabra was a contestant last year on a Portuguese TV show called "A Prodcura Do Sonho," or "Pursuit of a Dream," which hunts for modeling talent.
The death is the second recent slaying in an upscale New York hotel room.
Swimsuit designer Sylvie Cachay, 33, was found strangled and drowned in a bathtub at the trendy Soho House hotel on Dec. 9. Her boyfriend Nicholas Brooks has pleaded not guilty in her death.
Brooks, the 24-year-old son of "You Light Up My Life" writer and Oscar winner Joseph Brooks, has been held without bail since his arrest.
