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Audrey Parwani

A convicted murderer's father missed seeing his son by one day before he was found hanged in his Stanley Prison cell.

 Paulo Castro Marcal wrote an impassioned letter to his parents in Macau telling them of his decision to end his life.

 'I read the letter late at night and I was going to see him the next day,' father Pedro Manuel Marcal told an inquest yesterday. 'But in the morning, I was told he had hanged himself.'   Marcal, 25, had served just five months of a life term for the murder of a Wan Chai bar hostess. 'Forgive me for not giving you anything in my life,' he wrote in Portuguese.

 'I am forced to stay in prison until I am an old man. I will not be released until I am 50 or 51 and you will have already departed this world.

 'I have been living in this world for over 25 years and I have never offered you anything. When I was working and making money, I never bought you anything. I never bought you food and sometimes I even borrowed money from you.

 'I've had enough. I am tired. I need to rest and stop.

 'You have no idea what I go through in prison. One day feels like a week, one year feels like 10 years. I feel very sad and feel like dying.'  The letter was dated February 21, six days before Marcal's body was discovered in his cell.

 Marcal, a bartender at the Crazy Horse club, was convicted of murdering work colleague Wilma Gutgutao, 24, in August 1996.

 He revealed at his trial he had been offered $10,000 by an expatriate to 'hit' the girl for standing him up after he paid for her company.

 The pair followed Gutgutao to near her home in Wellington Street, Central, and attacked her in an alley. They took turns strangling and stabbing her.

 Marcal was caught by a policeman who stumbled across the attack. The expatriate fled and was never traced. The inquest continues today before Coroner Ian Thomas.



Murderer found hanged day after parents received suicide letter