A re-creation of what didn't happen to Justin Bieber. (Getty)

During a recent gig at Madison Square Garden, Justin Bieber was not, we repeat, was NOT, strangled to death with a paisley tie and then castrated in a plan hatched by a convicted child rapist and murderer serving time in a New Mexico prison. Once again: this did not happen.

But it almost did.

The strange story begins with Dana Martin, a 45-year-old with a Justin Bieber tattoo on his calf, who is serving out a life sentence in Las Cruces for the rape and murder of a 15-year-old Vermont girl in 2000. Mr. Martin met parolee-to-be Mark Staake in prison, and hatched a plan to have Mr. Staake and his nephew Tanner Ruane prune Mr. Bieber of his plums during his November 28 concert at Madison Square Garden. Each testis was worth $2,500, according to The New York Post, which, most tween fans well tell you, is quite a low-ball number (woof) for such pricey family jewels.

The other element of this totally fail-proof plan was Mr. Staake and Mr. Ruane strangling Mr. Bieber to death with a paisley tie. Yes, it had to be paisley. No, the color didn't matter. It just had to be paisley.

Luckily, when the bumbling duo were picked up separately by the authorities, their plan was easily traced back to Mr. Martin, as he had strangled his last victim with a paisley tie.

For now, Mr. Bieber's balls remain safe. And probably insured for much more than $2,500, though lord knows some people *cough*ScooterBraun*cough* would probably be happy to have Mr. Bieber remain a prepubescent castrato for the rest of his life.

A woman waiting there recognized Renato Seabra. Wanda Pires, a friend of Mr. Seabra's travel companion, Carlos Castro, stopped him to ask when Castro would be coming down. She and her daughter, Monica, had arranged to meet Castro at 6.

"He won't be coming down anytime soon," Mr. Seabra told the women in his native Portuguese. Then he walked out the hotel doors to the corner of 44th Street and Eighth Avenue, a block west of Times Square.

Mr. Seabra's comment was as chilling in the moment as it now seems in retrospect. Immediately suspicious, Ms. Pires asked hotel staff to check Room 3416, where Castro and Mr. Seabra were staying. There they found Castro—one of the leading gossip columnists in Portugal—lying face-up naked on the floor in an expanding pool of his own blood. His face was bludgeoned. It had been slammed repeatedly against the television.

According to a confession by Mr. Seabra, a 21-year-old model and reality-show contestant, he placed Castro in a chokehold, stabbed him in the eye with a corkscrew and kicked him over and over. The medical examiner noted shoe impressions on the victim's face, where Mr. Seabra had stomped on his cheek and chin. There were also signs of strangulation. Castro's neck bone was fractured. According to a court report, the cause of death was blunt-force trauma and internal hemorrhaging.

Some of the blood on the floor came from the head trauma. But most of it flowed from a wound in the groin of the 65-year-old victim. His testes were found severed from his body. Using the small knife of a hotel corkscrew, Mr. Seabra had castrated Castro.

In Disneyfied New York, a case of gothic-style torture in a luxury hotel seems more suited to an episode of Law & Order than real life. Indeed, the city's tabloids and bleed-leading local news channels initially couldn't figure out how to play the story. Was it a return to Times Square's bad old days? Or a sex romp gone bad? And how did an unrelated homicide at Soho House, only weeks earlier, play into the narrative?

By the time police and stunned hotel staff discovered Castro's corpse, Mr. Seabra had hailed a taxi and directed the driver to go to the nearest hospital. At Roosevelt Hospital on 10th Avenue and 58th Street, he arrived at the emergency room with two slit wrists, the result of a presumed but unconfirmed suicide attempt. The taxi driver called the police after recognizing news photos of his passenger. Describing Mr. Seabra as "frantic," the cabbie told the police, "I think I just dropped your guy off at the hospital." Upon apprehension, Mr. Seabra was transferred to the Prison Ward of Bellevue Hospital, where he will remain under medical observation until his Feb. 1 Supreme Court arraignment.

Much of what happened that night remains a mystery. Some suggest that jealousy between Castro and the young model had poisoned their relationship. Castro, known for his gay activism and flamboyant public escapades—one journalist called him Portugal's Michael Musto—was in the end murdered by a man whose closest family and friends insist he was straight.

The issue is further confused by Mr. Seabra's confession to the police that he mutilated Castro "to rid him of his homosexual demons."

Last Friday on the fifth floor of Manhattan Criminal Court at 100 Centre Street, Mr. Seabra was arraigned via video conference from the Bellevue Prison Ward—in a Skype-like version of the traditional bedside arraignment. On a television screen before a packed courtroom, the defendant sat in pajamas next to his lawyer.

A crowd of Portuguese journalists gathered outside the courtroom. According to the writers, it would be difficult to live in Portugal and consume popular culture and not know who Castro was. He had enjoyed a long career, published several books and made constant appearances on television morning shows.

Still, the Portuguese contingent, among them more than half a dozen journalists who had flown in from Lisbon to cover the story, agreed that in their culture, a gossip journalist was not a real journalist.

"He was well known, but it's not like he was respected or renowned; there's a difference," explained a reporter who preferred not to be named.

"He was like Perez Hilton," said another. "Even in the feminine way."

"Everyone wanted to be friends with him," said a writer from Caras, the Portuguese equivalent of People, for which Castro wrote, "because he could help people going up. He could put someone really down or put them up, so he was kind of influential. He was in a lot of newspapers and magazines."

Sara Oliveira, a TV reporter who flew to New York for the arraignment and Castro's funeral, was more charitable. "He was very sensitive; he was always very nice to me, always. He was very funny but he was difficult to handle because his job was to criticize things."

Eventually, the press secretary for the district attorney's office, Joan Vollero, addressed the group. She dispelled a rumor that the arraignment room had been moved. Another official rejected out of hand a last-minute effort by Portuguese TV to televise the proceedings.

Once the arraignment began, Mr. Seabra sat silently on his plastic seat staring downward, his hands in his lap. His defense attorney, David Touger, a pasty man with deep-set eyes, spoke for his client.

A translator could be heard off-camera as the young man in Bellevue nodded meekly after each proceeding was explained to him.

In front of the bar were two court officers, Assistant District Attorney Maxine Rosenthal and another woman from the district attorney's office.

Ms. Rosenthal—tall, with shoulder-length ash blond hair and wearing a pantsuit—ignored the fake wood table and blue nylon upholstered chairs set up for her use and instead stood directly in front of Judge Anthony Ferrara. "It's a very serious and violent crime," she said, arguing that Mr. Seabra be remanded without bail. Mr. Touger lifted his hand onscreen to note that, actually, the defendant was not seeking bail. The judge swiftly brought down his gavel. "One charge, murder in the second degree." The case will be arraigned in Manhattan Supreme Court on Feb. 1.

After the hearing, Mr. Touger told the Associated Press that while Mr. Seabra did confess to police, "all the facts are not out there, by any stretch of the imagination. ... What's great about our system of justice is that he's presumed innocent at this point."

Mr. Seabra and Castro arrived in New York on Wednesday, Dec. 29, with plans to watch the ball drop in Times Square and see a Broadway show. The pair scored tickets to Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark and ate at the trendy Keith McNally pizzeria Pulino's on the Bowery.

They had so much fun that they stayed to pose for photos with a restaurant manager. "We're not going to talk about that night," a Pulino's manager told The Observer about a week after the incident. It was getting late, and the crowd consisted largely of Alan Rickman and his fellow cast mates from the Ibsen play John Gabriel Borkman, playing at BAM.

"I know what night you're talking about," the manager said. "If you want to have a drink, you're more than welcome. Or you can leave."

After dining at Pulino's, the couple then went to see the gruesome and sexually tortured movie Black Swan.

Friend and journalist Luis Pires said the pair also ventured to Atlantic City one evening and had dinner at the Taj Mahal Hotel.

This was the New York Mr. Seabra had always dreamed of. He grew up in the small town of Cantanhede, not far from the Atlantic and south of Porto. He was a college basketball star. But his real break came when he appeared as a contestant on the reality show A Procura do Sonho (In Pursuit of a Dream)—the Portuguese equivalent of America's Next Top Model. Mr. Seabra, though one of three finalists, did not win. His Facebook fan page, however, garnered more than 2,000 followers, and one of the show's developers and judges, fashion designer Fatima Lopes, offered Mr. Seabra a modeling contract.

His figure is trim, and the ripples of a muscular upper body accent his silhouette. His skin is olive, and his smile gleams under tousled hair. Mr. Seabra has attributed the success of his modeling career to his mother. "My mom told me to keep trying," he told a Portuguese newspaper, "because I wasn't taking modeling seriously enough. ... I'm shy in front of the camera, especially when everyone is watching me."

Friends of Castro say the two had been in a relationship for several months before their Big Apple tour, and flirtatious Facebook messages such as Mr. Seabra's closing salutation, "big kiss," suggest they were romantically involved.

"This kid was probably looking for fame and money," Mr. Pires has said. "He took a chance to be very close to a man who could promote him. It was a risky relationship."

Their romance does not seem far-fetched. An ambitious young show-business wannabe had met the established celebrity journalist who could make his career. But Mr. Seabra's mother, Odilia Pereirinha, a resolute Catholic, insists her son was never ambiguous about his sexuality. "My son never hid his sexuality," she told the Portuguese network TVIndependente. "He is heterosexual. ... He was not Carlos Castro's lover."

Ms. Pereirinha's denial has created what one attendee of Castro's funeral described as "a war" between the two families. In fact, according to Portuguese news sources, Ms. Pereirinha and Castro's two sisters, who attended their brother's funeral two days earlier, boarded the same flight from Newark to Lisbon on Monday morning.

Down an alley that splinters off Congress Street in downtown Newark—in the heart of the city's Portuguese community—two women in black fur coats and black stilettos walked under a wrought-iron sign that read, "Igreja de Nossa Senhora de Fatima." It is, like many churches, named for the apparition of the Virgin Mary in Fatima, Portugal. During the hectic hours of Saturday afternoon, the parish was surrounded by news crews, onlookers and vans saddled with oversize satellite dishes.

The local Portuguese community was joined by more than 50 mourners who had flown in from Portugal for Castro's funeral. Among them were a number of beauty-pageant contestants, who knew Castro from his involvement in the Miss Portugal America pageant at the Taj Mahal.

The wide nave of the white-washed Catholic church was crowded with visitors. Photographers and journalists lined the outer aisles, hovering under the stained-glass stations of the cross.

Two of Castro's four sisters, Fernanda and Maria Castro, were present for the mass. They were escorted down the aisle with Ms. Pires, the close friend whose fateful encounter with Mr. Seabra in the InterContinental lobby led to the discovery of the deceased. The three women embraced. As they descended the aisle, their arms linked, all three softly cried.

The alter was decorated with bouquets of yellow and white roses, and pots of yellow poinsettia were set around the apse. Monsignor Joao Antao assumed the pulpit cloaked in a bright purple robe.

One sister warily stepped forward. She bowed her head to regain composure, and replaced her sunglasses with wire-rim reading glasses. During her eulogy, her voice crackled under the strain of tears.

Photographers and videographers flanked the alter snapping frantically throughout the mass. "You have all the major networks in Portugal broadcasting live at this time," Clarise Frias, a friend of Castro's, whispered to The Observer in the back of the crowded church.

During communion, the priest had to ask one squatting photographer to move off the altar so that he could take his chair to read the rites.

Mr. Pires, the newspaper editor and the ex-husband of Ms. Pires, had not seen Castro for five years before his death. He stood at the end of the first pew with his camera, acting as both mourner and journalist.

At the front of the aisle, a small table was draped with a crocheted white doily and displayed a framed photograph of Castro. Next to it was a small urn containing his ashes. As his sisters and Ms. Pires took the urn and turned to walk down the aisle, a burst of applause erupted and followed them out of the church.

"We lost a great man," said Ms. Pires on the sidewalk in front of the church. "He was a great heart, a man from the community. He touched tons of people's hearts. We lost a good friend."

Ms. Pires' daughter, Monica, told The Observer that she was unable to discuss anything about the day of the crime, on orders of the district attorney's office.

"No one knows why he did what he did," said Mr. Pires of Mr. Seabra. "That's the reason why everyone is here, because everyone thinks it was so tragic a crime."

"I knew him very well," said Francisco Saldana, a manager at Cablevision and a Newark native who had worked with Castro for almost 20 years on the Miss Portugal America pageants. "Sometimes you're working up to 18 hours a day. He was a very hard worker, very passionate about what he did. I was the director, and he was the producer, choreographer, creator; it was a pageant, so he had to work with the young ladies to teach them what to do, and he was very knowledgeable about that.

"When I read about it in the paper, I was shocked, I was really going crazy. I was calling all my friends to find out if they knew anything more about it. It's very sad what happened. It's a great loss to the community. He was a gem. I just hope justice gets served."

Outside, after the mass ended, two stubbled fashionistos, male-model types in Dolce & Gabbana sunglasses, immediately lit up cigarettes. They didn't exchange a word between themselves, or with anyone else.

Luis Nascimento, who stood near the sisters' black limousine, explained that his wife and mother-in-law, Monica and Wanda Pires, had been friends with Castro for 35 years. "I don't think nobody deserves to go out that way," he spat in a Portuguese accent that betrayed a stint in Jersey.

Mena and Jose Leandro, a Portuguese couple who live in Newark, also knew Castro from the pageants he produced. "I think he was jealous." Mr. Leandro speculated of Mr. Seabra. "Something strange happened because apparently he was a nice guy, the boy, and Carlos was a nice man. I don't know what happened. He tried to be famous with Castro, he thought Castro could make him a model."

Mrs. Leandro shook her head. "It's very, very, very sad the way things happen," she said. "I listen to the things on TV about Seabra, and everyone says the guy is very nice-he goes to church, he exercises nice, he models nice-everything nice. Nothing like this had happened before. But in five minutes, you change your life, my friend."

After just a few minutes of dodging some of the swooping cameras, the Castro sisters ducked into a black limousine. They were on their way to spread their brother's ashes in Times Square.

"That's a place that he loved," Mr. Nascimento told The Observer just before the limo sped toward Manhattan. "What he said is, if he ever passed away, he would want his ashes in Times Square."

Castro got his wish. Castro's sisters and friend Claudio Montez arrived around dusk at 43rd Street and Broadway, where they unwrapp
ed the urn, and the three took turns pouring Castro's remains through a grate into the New York City sewer system, the lights of the Hard Rock Cafe marquee glowing behind them.

Just a block away were the 36 black-marble stories of the InterContinental Hotel, where in Room 3416, Castro's life was lost in a murderous frenzy.

"It makes things worse than how they are," Mr. Nascimento said. "But that's the place he liked to stay."

cmalle@observer.com, nfreeman@observer.com