[Pink.]

Police say a male model confessed to strangling and castrating a prominent Portuguese television journalist in his posh Manhattan hotel room, according to a court document released Friday.

Renato Seabra, 20, who is also Portuguese, was arraigned Friday on a second-degree murder charge in the January 7 killing of 65-year-old Carlos Antonio De Castro at the InterContinental Hotel in New York, it said.

Seabra did not enter a plea during Friday's hearing.

His attorney, David Touger, could not be immediately reached for comment.

Police say Seabra was taken into custody Saturday after he was spotted leaving a New York hospital where he received treatment for lacerations to his wrists

Police arrested him and transported him to Bellevue Hospital in New York, according to Detective Nell, a police spokesman who refused to give his first name.

Castro's body was found shortly after an acquaintance appeared at the hotel asking to see him, saying she had been in contact with him earlier in the day but was unable to reach him for some time, officials said.

Hotel employees made the grisly discovery a short time later.

Seabra and Castro were staying together at the hotel, Nell said.

Castro was most recently a gossip columnist for the Portuguese newspaper Correio da Manha. Seabra was a recent finalist on a Portuguese model-search television show called "A Procura de um Sonho."

It was unclear why the two men were in New York.

[Pink.]