Cremated Ashes of Slain, Castrated Journalist Poured Down New York Subway Grate

Jan. 17, 2010— -- Family members of a Portuguese journalist killed and castrated in a New York City hotel room, paid their final respects by dumping his cremated ashes down a Manhattan subway grate.

Following the Sunday funeral for Carlos Castro, 65, who was allegedly murdered and castrated by his 20-year-old boyfriend on Jan. 7, his family took his remains to New York's famed Times Square and dumped his ashes into the subway system at the corner of Broadway and 43rd Street, according to the New York Post.

A photographer, who followed the family from the New Jersey funeral, snapped an image of Castro's sisters Fernanda and Maria and a friend pouring the ashes from a plastic bag contained in a metallic urn.

The photographer told the paper the sisters did not say anything as they scattered the ashes and dozens of pedestrians passed them on one of New York's busiest street corners.

According to the Post, the family claims they received permission from the city to scatter the ashes, but a Mayor's Office spokesman said that was not true.

Calls to the Mayor's Office, Department of Health and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which maintains the subway system, were not immediately returned because of the Martin Luther King Holiday.

Castro's boyfriend Renato Seabra, a male model, was arraigned last week on murder charges and remains in the psychiatric ward of Bellevue Hospital.

According to the criminal complaint, Seabra admitted to choking the journalist and gay rights activist, smashing his head into a television and castrating him with a corkscrew.

In the complaint detectives said Castro's head had so severely been stomped that impressions of Seabra's footprints were visible on Castro's face.