Abuse defendant says
girlfriend controlled affair

'Boy' Carvalho charged of
sex assault, kidnap

By Susan Kreifels
Star-Bulletin

Alexander "Boy" Carvalho Jr. cried through much of his testimony yesterday when he described hitting his former girlfriend last March.

Tears flowed again when he recalled how her black eye the next morning reminded him of the wife he brutally beat to death 11 years ago.

"I felt really sick," Carvalho said about hitting Nora Castro, whom he is accused of sexually assaulting and holding against her will. "It made me think back about things that had happened."

The Circuit Court jury must decide whom to believe about the turbulent love affair: Carvalho, 47, who was convicted in 1991 of manslaughter in the beating death of his wife Cathie, or Castro, 43, who accused him of abusing her in 1996 and then recanted. Carvalho was acquitted of those charges, and they continued their relationship.

Jurors have been told this history to establish Castro's frame of mind at the time of the alleged crimes. Castro says Carvalho threatened to kill her like he did his wife, something he denies. But Judge Michael Town has told jurors they must not let the past determine Carvalho's guilt or innocence.

Carvalho denied forcing Castro to have sex or holding her against her will. He also said he only hit her once.

Carvalho and Castro met in the 1970s, he testified, and they had a sexual relationship.

They rekindled the relationship in 1993 when Carvalho was in prison.

When he got out on furlough then parole in 1996, they lived together.

Carvalho described a stormy relationship that she dominated. Castro was an obsessively jealous woman, who slapped him once when he looked at another woman, he testified.

She even became jealous of the affection he showed his children, he said, and turned his family photos face down in the fixed-up van they called home.

Carvalho had to sneak away to get time to himself, he said.

When Castro was angry at him or he told her to move because he couldn't deal with her jealousy, she would "threaten to put me back in jail. . . . She always uses my past against me."

He said he understood how one person in a relationship could control the other, and he had been on both sides. "With my wife, I was in control." But with Castro, "it was her."

Attorneys are not allowed to ask Carvalho details about killing his wife.

However, deputy public defender David Hayakawa asked him about his feelings now regarding the crime.

"What I did, I'm still hurting. What I did hurt people for the rest of their lives."