'It's Like Something Out of a Horror Movie'

I wonder if the kook left will blame this horrific crime on Sarah Palin. Seems to be the popular thing today.

New York was a home away from home for Carlos Castro.

The popular Portuguese gossip columnist and gay activist would fly in for the city's star-studded Fashion Weeks and had instructed his family and friends that when he died, he wanted his ashes scattered in Manhattan.

In late December, the 65-year-old writer flew in for what was supposed to be a romantic getaway with his new lover, a chiseled male model nearly 25 years his junior.

The couple dined, took in a show and rang in the New Year at the Crossroads of the World.

But only a few days later, the idyllic trip turned tragic when police found Castro's mutilated body in his room at the InterContinental Hotel and later took his lover, Renato Seabra, into custody as a person of interest.

"He loved New York City," said Vicky Fernandes, Castro's close friend. "He always said the city of his life was New York."

She and other friends described Castro on Saturday as a courageous champion of gay rights and an eccentric scribe who first chronicled Lisbon's high society.

He counted among his friends the former president of Portugal Mario Soares and designer Ana Salazar, a fashion pioneer in his homeland.

"I was both in his best- and worst-dressed lists in the '80s," Salazar told the Associated Press.

She said she was shocked by his death.

"It's like something out of a horror movie," she added.

How gruesome was this?

After days of tension, veteran newspaper reporter Carlos Castro, 65, wound up nude and dead — his testicles hacked off — on the floor of his ransacked room on the 34th floor of the InterContinental Hotel on Friday night.

There's an error in the first linked item. The alleged killer is actually 45 years younger than the victim.