José Castelo Branco

Introduction

José Castelo Branco is a Portuguese socialite, art dealer and reality-television personality — for decades the flamboyant, gender-fluid other half of American diamond heiress Betty Grafstein — who has been on criminal trial in Portugal since June 2026, accused of aggravated domestic violence against his 97-year-old estranged wife. Prosecutors in Cascais allege years of punching, pushing and strangulation culminating in an April 2024 hotel incident that left Grafstein hospitalized for 45 days with a fractured pelvis; Branco was arrested, spent a night in jail and was barred from seeing her. He denies the allegations and has exercised his right to remain silent in court. The trial is ongoing and no verdict has been reached.

Background Information

Castelo Branco, born in Mozambique, built his public life on Portugal’s fashion and gossip circuits — a 2008 pop album (“Oui, C’est Moi”), stints on Big Brother-style shows, the reality series “Lost in the Tribe,” filmed in the Namibian bush, and a fixture’s seat at galas alongside figures like Amanda Lepore and Susanne Bartsch. He wears women’s clothes and makeup, and identifies as “he,” though he told Page Six it could call him “she” if it preferred.

He met Grafstein — a jewellery-trade widow whose first husband, Albert Grafstein, ran Grafstein Diamond Corp. — in New York after Albert’s death, and they married in November 1996, her third marriage. The 34-year age gap, the shared wardrobe and the parties, Chanel and Birkins made the couple tabloid fixtures on both sides of the Atlantic.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Allegations on trial. The claims in this section come from the indictment and from witness testimony in an ongoing criminal trial before Cascais court. Branco has not admitted any of them — he has exercised his right to remain silent in court and has denied the allegations outside it — and no verdict has been reached. Everything below is unadjudicated.

The case the prosecution centers on is an incident at a hotel in Estoril between April 18 and 19, 2024, in which Castelo Branco is accused of pushing Grafstein — then 95 and in a wheelchair — causing her to fall. She was admitted to CUF Cascais Hospital the next day and stayed 45 days, until June 4, 2024; the indictment lists injuries to her forearm, bruising to her hip and leg, and a fractured pelvis. Prosecutors allege the conduct went far beyond that night: punching, pushing and strangulation that left her struggling to breathe, assaults in both the United States and Portugal over a period of years, and at least two years in which he kept her from speaking to her only son. The Public Prosecution Service says he acted “with the purpose of mistreating Betty Grafstein.” A Portuguese hospital filed the domestic-violence complaint that led to his arrest on May 7, 2024; he spent a night in jail and was barred from visiting his wife.

The trial opened at the court in Cascais on June 25, 2026, recessed for the summer and reconvened on September 22. On September 29, Grafstein testified by videolink from the New York clinic where she lives — bedridden and, according to Correio da Manhã as reported by Público, practically blind, supported by a clinic employee as she spoke. Asked by the judge about the alleged assaults, she said: “Oh my God, he assaulted me so many times. I was punched everywhere. It happened so many times and for so many years that I don’t know any more.” She described the marriage as “very complicated and troubled” since the 1996 wedding, said she “never knew where he was going to hit me,” and told the court he forced her into shoes that hurt her feet, controlled her diet “because he wanted me to stay thin,” and punished her when she complained. Her son Roger Basile testified in the same session that his mother was always “very careful” beside her husband, that her doctor once told him her lesions “were suspicious,” and that when he found her hospitalized in Portugal in May 2024 he barely recognized her: “She looked like a woman who was dying.” A long Vanity Fair profile on the couple reports Basile claiming he first learned of domestic abuse in the late 1990s — his mother “black-and-blue, from her buttocks to her neck,” he alleged, after being knocked down and kicked.

Castelo Branco, who now lives in New York, followed that hearing by video and kept his camera switched off so his ex-wife would not see him. He has denied the allegations, has not admitted anything in court, and declined to comment to Page Six on the ongoing case — offering only: “My silence is bold.” Grafstein’s lawyer, Alexandre Guerreiro, said her life was at risk in 2024, “as confirmed by the doctor who treated her in Portugal,” and that the assurance he would never see her again “gave her the strength to put an end to the abuse.”

Public Reaction and Consequences

If the trial refocused attention on the marriage, Castelo Branco has done his best to keep the old spotlight on himself. The week Grafstein testified, he turned up at Maxime’s 1930s-themed costume party in New York — a room that included Stacey Bendet, Jill Kargman and Candace Bushnell — greeting guests while leading a leashed “human dog” in a full mascot costume, kneeling on a dog bed beside a bejeweled doghouse; one guest called the sight “weird as f*ck.” He told Page Six he is not hiding from the party scene (“I am not hiding”) and has kept posting, including an old video of himself dancing with Grafstein captioned “missing my love so much” — published, Público noted, on the very day she testified against him. Portuguese outlets have covered the courtroom sessions daily, and the couple’s strange saga has its own Vanity Fair treatment, “The Twisted True Love Story of Lady Betty Grafstein and José Castelo Branco.”

Current Status

The criminal trial remains pending before the Cascais court, with the domestic-violence charges unadjudicated and Branco presumed innocent unless convicted. The couple’s divorce, according to Público, has been concluded; Grafstein’s lawyer said the parties would be in court on October 7, 2026, for divorce proceedings. Branco, 63, continues to live in New York, where he moved after the 2024 case broke, still barred — by the terms set in 2024 — from visiting his ex-wife, who remains in medical care in the United States.

Impact on Their Career/Life

The trial has inverted the celebrity formula that sustained Castelo Branco for three decades: the couple once famous for shared wardrobes and gala appearances now generates coverage through indictment details, testimony and divorce filings. Since May 2024 he has gone from a night in a Portuguese jail to exile in New York, barred from the wife whose name anchored his public identity, while his social-media presence — parties, dentists, archived romance — carries on over the top of an unresolved criminal case. Whether the court accepts the prosecution’s version of events or his denials, the “odd couple” brand is over: she testified that she “never knew where he was going to hit me,” and he answered, in full, “My silence is bold.”

Sources

• *Page Six, “On-trial socialite José Castelo Branco attends upscale bash with ‘human dog’ as domestic violence trial with diamond heiress continues,” 6 October 2026 — source
• *Público, “Betty Grafstein testemunha em julgamento contra José Castelo Branco: ‘Fui esmurrada’,” 30 September 2026 — source
• *Algarve Daily News, “British national Betty Grafstein, 97, takes socialite husband to Cascais court over physical and psychological abuse,” 2026 — source
• *Page Six, “Colorful socialite Jose Castelo Branco, 61, accused of assaulting 95-year-old wife, the diamond heiress Betty Grafstein, in Portugal,” 21 May 2024 — source
• *New York Post (X post announcing the Page Six story), 6 October 2026 — source