MURDER SUSPECT CLAIMS GAY PANIC DEFENCE

It’s been reported that the killer of a gay Puerto Rican teen has claimed that he brutally murdered the young man in a fit of ‘gay panic’.

Juan Antonio Martinez Matos, a 26 year old father of four, has been accused of murdering 19 year old Jorge Steven Lopez Mercado, decapitating and dismembering his body and then setting it on fire in Puerto Rico.

According to El Nuevodia newspaper, Matos told police that he met Mercado when he was trying to pick up prostitutes in his car. After being turned down by a number of women he came across Mercado, who he thought was also a woman.

Matos claims that Mercado, who was dressed in a blue dress, got in his car and went to his house with him. At the house, the teenager allegedly pulled a knife on him and demanded money.

Matos said that he only then realised that Mercado was a man, resulting in flashback to when he was raped in prison which led him to allegedly attack and kill the teenager.

Police reportedly found a wig, two knives, a burned mattress, a burned PVC pipe and a large blood stain on the wall at the scene of the crime.

The Gay Panic defence is used in cases where the defendant claims that he or she acted in a state of violent temporary insanity caused by unwanted homosexual advances.