The Awareness Center, Inc. (International Jewish Coaltion Against Sexual Assault): October 2005

Case of Peter Braunstein
(AKA: The Halloween Rapist)

(Kew Gardens) Queens, NY
Studied Art, Sorbonne - Paris, France
PhD Candidate in History, New York University - New York, NY

Freelance Journalist, W Magazine - New York, NY
Playwrite - New York, NY

Brooklyn
Captured on the campus of the University of Memphis - Memphis, Tennessee

Peter Braunstein was born on January 26, 1964.

Back in 1983, at the age of 19, Peter Braunstein and a friend were accused of sexual assault and arrested for raping a stranger in a Midtown hotel. At the time Peter got a suspended sentence for trespassing — and the lawyer told his father that the case would be sealed and his son would have not have a criminal record.

In October, 2005, at the age of 41, Braunstein was accused of drugging and molesting another woman for 13 hours. The woman, once worked with Braunstein at a fashion magazine. Allegedly Braunstein donned a firefighter's gear and set small hallway blazes to trick his way into her Chelsea apartment.

Forty-one-year-old Peter Braunstein, a PhD candidate at New York University, an aspiring playwright and a freelance journalist, who at one time was working as media reporter for America's most esteemed fashion trade rag, Women's Wear Daily (WWD).

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Table of Contents

2005

Brazen Braunstein's Got A Latte Nerve (11/18/2005)
Alleged Sex Attacker Purchased Voice-Altering Device (11/21/2005)
Braunstein Search Turned Over To NYPD Fugitive Enforcement (11/22/2005)
Halloween Sex Suspect Had Dark History Of Threats And Harassment, So . . . Why was Creep Still On The Street? (11/23/2005)
His Darker Past (11/27/2005)
FIRE: Blaze breaks out in New York building (11/27/2005)
Halloween sex victim spooked (11/28/2005)
Sex and the City: The Horror Movie (11/29/2005)
Peter Braunstein: The making of a tabloid monster (12/03/2005)
New Details In Search For Peter Braunstein (12/09/2005)
Peter Braunstein Spotted In Memphis (12/15/2005)
Breaking: Braunstein tours the Midwest (12/15/2005)
America's Most Wanted: Peter Braunstein (12/15/2005)
Suspected Sex Attacker Braunstein Caught (12/17/2005)
Son savored 'cat & mouse' (12/17/2005)
Charges Are Filed in Fake Firefighter Case (12/18/2005)
Halloween sex attack suspect apprehended (12/18/2005)
Elder Braunstein: My Son Is A Sick Genius (12/18/2005)
Sex Attack Suspect Braunstein Released From Memphis Hospital (12/18/2005)
Suspect's estranged dad rushes to provide support (12/18/2005)
He was stalking in Memphis (12/18/2005)
Smug 'Fire' Creep Snubs His Own Dad - But Revels In Sick Fame (12/19/2005)
Braunstein moved to the Shelby County Criminal Justice Center (12/19/2005)
Caged 'Scissorhands' spews bizarre banter (12/19/2005)
Strange bedfellow at the Y (12/19/2005)
Alleged Fake Fireman Accused Of Rape, Kidnapping Arrested (12/19/2005)

2007

Braunstein found guilty (05/23/2007)

2009

EXCLUSIVE: Interview with Peter Braunstein

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Brazen Braunstein's Got a Latte Nerv
By ANDREA PEYSER

New York Post - November 18, 2004

Peter Braunstein (2005)

NOW, he's taunting us. Peter Braunstein chose 7:30 on a sunny weekday morning to stroll audaciously into a cafe in Cobble Hill, a neighborhood that's home to more than its fair share of journalists. Like the one he once was.

Walking up Court Street, he passed countless moms pushing strollers. Cops on the beat. Commuters en route to work in "the city."

But New York's most wanted man made no effort to hide his face. He did nothing to change his appearance.

He didn't have to.

As he walked through a neighborhood where his former colleagues live, no one recognized Peter Braunstein. That's because no one was looking. John Arena was one of the few who dared look up.

He was working the register at his his cafe when a man came in and ordered a large coffee. He wore a trench coat. He paid with two singles.

Only then did the two men lock eyes, and Braunstein knew he was recognized.

In another neighborhood, the counterman might have screamed for help, picked up a baseball bat, or at least blocked the door. Instead, Arena went to a back room to grab his New York Post — just to make sure. Braunstein walked out.

He did not run. Didn't have to. He was barely inches ahead of the four cops, who haplessly lurked just down the street.

And he disappeared.

The Braunstein sighting, confirmed by police, brought panic to elegant, gentrified Cobble Hill, where brownstones routinely sell for more than $2 million and neighbors mind their own business.

Police arrived by the vanload, along with bloodhounds. The dogs quickly detected Braunstein's scent, which they smelled off a pillow taken from his mother's house. They led cops to a vacant brownstone on nearby Henry Street.

And then, terror set in.

Police cleared a tiny park of all children and nannies. They swept people off stoops for two blocks. Still, gawkers took up positions on rooftops, as did I. We watched as some eight cops in riot gear nervously stormed the house. Cries of "Police!" could be heard amid the din of helicopters and the whimper of dogs. Then, something worse. Nothing. Ten minutes later, cops emerged on the roof, guns drawn, nervously pointing toward skylights.

But he was not there.

At the cafe, Kimberly Stanger greeted Arena, by now a local celebrity.

"Did they get this guy yet?" she demanded.

Cops handed out wanted posters on Smith Street. They also planted signs in Red Hook's Brooklyn Motor Inn, where rooms rent for $120 overnight.

"I've been nervous all day," said clerk Naomi Rosado, hunkering down behind bullet-proof glass.

He's out there. And he's laughing at us.

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Alleged Sex Attacker Purchased Voice-Altering Device
WABC Eyewitness News - November 21, 2005

There are startling new developments tonight in the police search for suspected sexual attacker Peter Braunstein.

Eyewitness News has learned that Braunstein has purchased a device that allows him to disguise his voice.

He also has reportedly bought explosive chemicals. N.J. Burkett has the story.

"The Carver" is a sexual predator who stalks beautiful people and drugs them, rapes them, then disfugures them with a knife. The villian in the TV series "Nip-Tuck" on the Fox cable network.

And Eyewitness News has learned that in the final days before the Chelsea Halloween attack, Peter Braunstein purchased a voice-altering device that would allow Braunstein to sound exactly like "the carver."

It was purchased on Ebay under Braunstein's screen name five days before the attack -- along with the show's entire first season on DVD.

The revelations are all the more disturbing because Braunstein apparently purchased chloroform on Ebay in four separate transactions, as well as enough potassium nitrate to destroy a small building and a used police officer's shield.

Eywitness News reported two weeks ago that in the months before the attack, Braunstein told his former co-workers at Fairchild Publications, "I'm going to Columbine that place."

Overnight, police swat teams searched a vacant building in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn after someone reporterd seeing Braunstein at 1 a.m. It was the same neighborhood where a similar sighting was reported last week with similar results: there was no sign of Peter Braunstein.

Tonight, Braunstein's father insisted that his son is not a threat to the general public.

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Suspected Sex Attacker Getting Help Out of State?
Braunstein Search Turned Over to NYPD Fugitive Enforcement
WABC (New York) - November 2005

Police believe Peter Braunstein, the prime suspect in that Halloween sex assault, may be getting help from an out of state friend.

Published reports say the search for Braunstein has been turned over to the NYPD Fugitive Enforcement division.

Eyewitness News has also learned that Braunstein has purchased a device that allows him to disguise his voice.

He also has reportedly bought explosive chemicals. N.J. Burkett has the story.

"The Carver" is a sexual predator who stalks beautiful people and drugs them, rapes them, then disfugures them with a knife. The villain in the TV series "Nip-Tuck" on the Fox cable network.

It was purchased on Ebay under Braunstein's screen name five days before the attack -- along with the show's entire first season on DVD.

Eywitness News reported two weeks ago that in the months before the attack, Braunstein told his former co-workers at Fairchild Publications, "I'm going to Columbine that place."

Tonight, Braunstein's father insisted that his son is not a threat to the general public.

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Halloween Sex Suspect Had Dark History of Threats and Harassment, So . . . Why was Creep Still on the Street?
BY Michael Daly

Daily News (New York) - November 23, 2005

AS A SMALL ARMY of cops hunts for the prime suspect in the Halloween sex attack, the big question is why this decidedly dangerous nut was at liberty in the first place.

Not three months ago, Peter Braunstein was sentenced for waging a prolonged campaign of terror against his one-time girlfriend, at one point taping her to a chair and menacing her with a large kitchen knife.

He subsequently bombarded the woman with threatening and harassing phone messages at home, each five minutes long. He called her at work over 200 times, playing a recording of a woman having an orgasm.

He also sent a threatening letter to her father, saying, "As long as I'm around, don't expect to have another night's sleep ever again." He E-mailed her sister, saying, "I will punish you." He posted nude pictures of the girlfriend on porno Web sites, indicating she was seeking sexual encounters and giving her name, phone number, E-mail address and workplace.

But, as shocking as this conduct was in total, no individual deed amounted to more than a misdemeanor under the New York State penal code. The result was that even by pleading to the top count of stalking in the fourth degree Braunstein faced a penalty only marginally harsher than a first offender might receive for hopping a turnstile or riding a bicycle on the sidewalk.

The fault in this case lay not in the cops or the prosecutor or the judge, but in the law itself. Had Braunstein used his computers to hack into another system or copy data without authorization, he would have been committing an E felony and risked a year or more in jail. He would have faced the same penalty had he altered a motor vehicle identification number or broken into a van with commercial plates or stripped two or more cars.

But, his ex-girlfriend not being a Buick, all that Braunstein did to her for month after month - listed in court papers as Harassment, Aggravated Harassment (30 counts), Unlawful Imprisonment, Menacing (four counts) and Stalking (three counts) - constituted not a single felony.

Thus, Braunstein arrived for sentencing in Part C of Manhattan Criminal Court on Sept. 7 facing only five days' community service and three years' probation. He was addressed from the bench by Judge Melissa Jackson.

"Do you wish to say anything before I sentence you, sir?" Jackson asked.

"No," Braunstein said.

Jackson thereupon imposed what was hardly a sentence at all. She did issue a permanent order of protection barring him from any contact with the victim. She further instructed him to relinquish ownership of the computers prosecutors believed he had used to post the nude pictures. He was also to pay a $160 court surcharge.

"Do you want to pay that today or do you need time to pay?" the judge asked.

Braunstein had at this point already purchased a firefighter's turnout coat and 125 milliliters of chloroform on eBay. He spoke the second and third of the three syllables he uttered to the court that day.

"Need time," Braunstein said.

The judge gave him until Nov. 10 and Braunstein strode away a free man. The office where he was supposed to register for community service was just five steps from the courtroom, but he turned the other way, not ready to submit himself even to that paltry penalty.

Braunstein ambled from Manhattan Criminal Court back amongst us, in his mind too grand a figure to sweep a subway station or pick up litter in a park. He never paid the $160, but he did buy another container of chloroform, as well as bunker pants to match the turnout coat on eBay.

On Halloween, a man dressed as a firefighter set two small fires to con his way into the Chelsea apartment of a woman who worked where Braunstein's ex-girlfriend had been employed. The intruder sexually attacked the woman, repeatedly incapacitating her with chloroform.

This was most definitely a felony and police began hunting Braunstein as the prime suspect. A Brooklyn coffee shop owner decided he had seen the fiend last week and the neighborhood flooded with helmeted cops in body armor as a police helicopter hovered overhead. A bloodhound tried to track the scent of a man who would have already been in jail if the law had protected his ex-girlfriend the way it protects motor vehicles and computer data.

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His Darker Past

By Brad Hamilton and Brigitte Stelzer

New York Post - November 27, 2005

November 27, 2005 -- Long before he allegedly put on a firefighter's outfit and attacked a Chelsea woman on Halloween, accused sex-assault scribe Peter Braunstein and a pal were arrested for going after a stranger in a Midtown hotel in 1983, The Post has learned.

The friend came armed with a pen knife, tape and rope and was busted after hotel security spotted him following the woman into an elevator.

The pal then told security officers that Braunstein was in on it, too, and they found the 19-year-old Braunstein in another part of the hotel, his father said.

The two were arrested and charged, though the record was supposed to be sealed, according to Braunstein's father, Alberto. But details of the case are now emerging as Braunstein, 41, continues to elude cops. He allegedly tied up and molested an ex-colleague in her Chelsea apartment for 121/2 hours Halloween night.

Braunstein's father called the hotel incident — which cops confirmed — a "prank."

He said the pal's parents implored him to convince Peter not to cooperate with cops, because police wanted Peter to implicate his friend.

But Alberto Braunstein insisted that his son take responsibility for his actions — and not rat out the pal to save himself.

"I wasn't going to let him do that," Alberto said.

His stance went against the advice of a lawyer he'd hired to represent his son — and caused a major rift between Alberto and Peter's mother, Angele, who also wanted Peter to testify.

Peter Braunstein got a suspended sentence for trespassing — and the lawyer told his father that the case would be sealed and his son would have not have a criminal record, Alberto said. The elder Braunstein was relieved when the painful episode was resolved, and said he's troubled that it has resurfaced.

The incident was an example of Peter's disturbing behavior as a youth, Alberto said, a history that includes his son and the friend — who met in junior high school in Queens — stealing doctors' IDs at Long Island Jewish Hospital so they could visit and entertain patients.

They also posed as maitre d's at the Waldorf, Alberto said.

Those early episodes were basically harmless, he said, but his son "has a long, long history of insanity."

On Friday night Alberto called Angele — and she told him she feared Peter would commit suicide.

"She said he talked about doing it," Alberto said. "I don't think so. Nobody who is that selfish wants to kill themselves."

Meanwhile, after a month of frustration in their hunt for Peter, cops admit they've hit a brick wall — and are replotting how to get their man.

"I'd call it a 'review and reorganization,' " said a police source involved in the manhunt.

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Fire: Blaze breaks out in New York Building

The Electric Newspaper - November 27, 2005

HOPE: 'Fireman' comes to woman's door to check if she is okay

DESPAIR: He rapes, torments her and videotapes it all

WHEN a fire broke out at a 34-year-old woman's building in New York's Chelsea neighbourhood on Halloween night, she was relieved when a fireman came knocking on her door to check if she was okay.

But the relief turned into terror the second she opened her door.

Because for the next 13 hours, the 'fireman' raped and tormented the woman as he videotaped the entire encounter.

MANHUNT

Now, a massive manhunt is in progress for the fake fireman, whom New York police have identified as fashion writer Peter Braunstein.

According to New York newspapers, Braunstein dressed up in a New York firefighter's uniform and set two blazes inside his victim's Chelsea apartment building.

He then pounded on her door saying that he was from the 'FDNY' (New York City Fire Department) and he wanted to check her apartment for possible damage.

When she opened her door, Braunstein forced his way in, pulled out a gun and covered her face with a rag soaked in chloroform, knocking her out.

For the next 13 hours, she drifted in and out of consciousness as Braunstein tied her up, gagged her, and sexually assaulted her.

He also took pictures of her as he forced her to try on different pairs of shoes.

And when he left her gagged and bound to the bed, he took a pair of her high heels with him as a trophy.

The police said that his victim had previously worked with him in the same magazine, where his ex-girlfriend was the editor.

While the victim said she hardly knew Braunstein, he seemed to have been stalking her as he taunted her during the attack with intimate details of her life such as the friends she knew and how she was laid off from her job.

Well-known in the New York media scene, Braunstein, 41, worked as a writer for Women's Wear Daily and The Village Voice.

In July, he had pleaded guilty in court to charges of menacing his ex-girlfriend.

The ex-girlfriend told the court that he had waged an 18-month campaign of intimidation against her, bombarding her with hundreds of e-mail and phone messages and sending her friends and family threatening letters.

He also allegedly posted nude pictures of her on the Internet.

And on one occasion, she alleged, he tied her to a chair and threatened to 'destroy' her 'professionally and otherwise' while he toyed with a kitchen knife.

He was still on probation for the menacing charge when he allegedly committed the Halloween attack.

Investigations show that he bought most of the tools he used in his attack - the fireman's uniform, FDNY stickers, and chloroform - on online auction site eBay.

But other things he bought on eBay could make Braunstein a much bigger threat than the police had originally thought.

The New York Post revealed that about five weeks before the Halloween attack, Braunstein bought 4kg of potassium nitrate online - enough to blow up a small building.

He also bought an expired Detroit police badge online, and was also looking to obtain badges for the Georgia State Police and California Highway Patrol.

The combination of the explosives and the badges has the police worried that Braunstein may be up to something a lot more sinister.

Braunstein also seems to be boldly hanging around public places despite the massive manhunt.

Hours after the attack, he audaciously checked into a hotel in the vicinity and stayed overnight while the police scoured the area for leads.

And last week, witnesses reported seeing him brazenly buying coffee in a Brooklyn cafe.

But the police have few leads despite his face being plastered on newspapers and TV broadcasts, as well as a US $12,000 ($20,300) reward for information leading to his capture.

Braunstein's estranged father, art gallery owner Alberto Braunstein, is convinced that his fugitive son is guilty of the attack and is pleading with him to give himself up.

'If it were not him, why (hasn't) he turned himself in?' he told the New York Daily News.

He added that Braunstein could be hanging around to revel in all the media attention he's getting.

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Halloween sex victim spooked –– Stil too scared to go home

By Bill Hutchinson

New York DAILY NEWS - November 28, 2005

A month after the crime that sickened the city, the victim of alleged Halloween sex fiend Peter Braunstein is still too petrified to return home.

The 34-year-old woman has been sleeping on friends' couches and visiting trauma counselors while her tormentor eludes police, according to a published report.

"All her friends are gathering around her to lend their support, to help her through this trying ordeal," a close friend of the victim told New York magazine.

"The wish we all have for her is peace of mind and that she will be able to retain her privacy and go on with life."

The woman, who once worked with Braunstein at a fashion magazine, was drugged and molested for 13 hours by an intruder who donned a firefighter's gear and set small hallway blazes to trick his way into her Chelsea apartment.

During the attack, the assailant forced the woman to try on shoes - and he even swiped a pair as a trophy when he finally fled.

Though they had barely ever spoken, the woman's impressive collection of stiletto heels had caught Braunstein's eye when they worked across from each other at the magazine, the article said.

The victim, who was blindfolded and drifted in and out of consciousness during the ordeal, could not identify her attacker, but police have named Braunstein as the prime suspect.

The magazine cover story, "The Fire Fiend and the Fashion Girls," chronicles Braunstein's descent from well-regarded Ph.D. candidate in history at New York University to one of New York's most-wanted men.

Before his career imploded, Braunstein, 41, sold a book on the role straight white males played in the disco era that had been scheduled to be published next year by Routledge.

"Straight men were welcome to join the party, but only if they learned the lingo," Braunstein wrote. "Some did, but for many, this new demand aroused a kind of castration anxiety."

As cops search the city and as far away as Ohio for the one-time Village Voice and Women's Wear Daily scribe, more new details about his disturbed psyche have come to light.

For instance, Braunstein reportedly became obsessed with Jane Fonda after interviewing her.

He even publicly fantasized about the Oscar-winning actress, telling guests at a party, "If she had slept with me, I would've done it."

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Sex and the City: The Horror Movie

By Vanessa Grigoriadis

The New Yorker - November 29, 2005

Illustrations by Jeff Darrow

Peter Braunstein had a full pantheon of female style icons (Edie Sedgwick, Jane Fonda, Kate Moss) and a passion for Manolos as intense as Carrie Bradshaw's. Then, fired from his job at Fairchild, jilted by a girlfriend, he descended into a world of dark fantasies—into which he allegedly brought a former colleague in a bizarre assault. The making of a tabloid monster.

Sometimes in the afternoons, they would come to the filing cabinet across from his small beige-paneled cubicle, these fashion girls. This was the sliver of newsroom designated for them to lay out some accessories for upcoming shoots, the python-embossed leather belts and Dalmatian-print fingerless gloves, the diamond-flecked lavender jade earrings and quilted pastel Provençal scarves. They paid no regard to that guy with a weird hairdo and the wrong clothes, finally a straight guy in the office and of course he had to be totally undatable. They stood in front of him, swaying. The refreshing smell of citrus hung in the air.

A journeyman in the world of fashion, Peter Braunstein, 41, had found himself employed at Fairchild Publications, home of W magazine, the most culturally elitist and wealth-driven fashion magazine in the country and, consequently, the stomping ground of some of Manhattan's most rarefied females. Once a well-regarded Ph.D. candidate in the history department at New York University, Braunstein had thrown over his thesis for the lesser rigors of journalism at W's sister publication, the fashion-business trade paper Women's Wear Daily. Braunstein was a media reporter. He was part of a team that reported on the time Gisele was carried into a Balenciaga show because she may have had food poisoning; provided a sneak peek of an all-fur issue of French Vogue, a shock because editor Carine Roitfeld's only furs were a short Cerruti jacket and a Helmut Lang shearling; and chronicled André Leon Talley's visit to a Persian nutritionist, who encouraged Talley to eat egg whites and strawberries for breakfast. In longer articles, he wrote sometimes of sexual politics, and these had some nice grace notes. A dispatch on men's magazines began with a line from H. G. Wells's The Island of Dr. Moreau—"Are we not men?" He was referring to manhood's indeterminacy as displayed in titles like Maxim and GQ. He could have asked the same of himself.

The girls who used the filing cabinet in front of Braunstein were market-department girls. At a fashion magazine, the market department is not about creativity—it's about shopping, and shopping is these girls' lives. They are mental for clothes. On weekends, they go to Balenciaga to check out the new bags; they save up their meager salaries for what they are not gifted, like a new Louis Vuitton, and daydream about which style they're going to get. Market is about satisfying the fashion department's needs. When a stylist asks for topaz-colored slim-fit leather pants, these girls have to know who has the best ones, and these pants must arrive immediately, so that in a few days, a neat rack of 30 topaz pants stands in the closet for the stylist to peruse—and if Vogue or Harper's Bazaar wants the same pants on the same day, a good market editor can muscle the publicist for first dibs. At Vogue, they say that Anna doesn't care what you look like unless you're in the fashion-market department, in which case you'd better look good.

So some days the market girls were working on bangles, and 30 glittering objects would appear on the cabinet; other days there were scarves, or bags, or shoes, and these were the happiest days—the lacy leather matador heels, ostrich-and-crocodile-trimmed snakeskin heels, leather kitten-heel pumps, velvet peep-toe slingbacks, all these size-9 beauties. The only time Braunstein saw better shoes was on one Woman in Market, a striking, brusque thirtysomething with bronzed skin, Dolce & Gabbana blouses, and a thick mane of hair that swung back and forth while she arranged the delicate soles on the countertop by height and color. This woman was dating a man who was a real man, a man who wore pressed oxford shirts and a Rolex on his hairy wrist. This woman only wore stilettos. It seemed like every day she had a new pair. A python with marabou feathers, the laces extending up her slender ankles to muscular thighs that disappeared under a Miu Miu wool miniskirt; patent-leather T-strap stilettos, red-painted toes poking out the front; velvet Christian Louboutin boots, the steely gray heels hitting the carpet with a dull thump as she approached.

It was the shoes that always got him.

Shoes have become the prevailing synecdoche for the powerful New York woman—sexually liberated, sharp, expensive, able to do all a man can do and in those shoes. In his dreams and now reality, Braunstein was surrounded by such women. He had no interest in the weak. Long before he became known as the "fire fiend," his icons were Faye Dunaway in Bonnie and Clyde, Jackie Onassis, Jane Fonda, any woman of the postwar era who struck a pose of stylish defiance of societal rank and file. Braunstein's desire to subvert normative ideals and his taste for mainstream success were deeply in conflict. He had a crippling insecurity and an enormous sense of his own intellect, and was possessed of a desire to court the most powerful New York women and an equal, and then overwhelming, need to destroy them.

From his desk in the Fairchild office, Braunstein had a view of the women in the market department as they laid out clothes, accessories, and shoes they'd called in from different fashion houses.

How else to explain the acts of Halloween night, when Braunstein allegedly set two chemical fires in Dixie cups on the landings of the Woman in Market's Chelsea apartment building wearing a firefighter's uniform he had bought on eBay under the I.D. "gulagmeister"? He had changed it from "dr-groovy" a month prior, explaining to one seller, "Same loyal customer. I just don't feel like Dr. Groovy anymore." All Braunstein had to do was say "fire" and knock on the victim's door. While neighbors made their way downstairs to the wail of fire trucks, he allegedly drugged her with chloroform, bound her to her bed with duct tape and leg shackles, and assaulted her for eleven hours. He gave her a sleeping pill and took one himself. In her closet, he selected choice pairs of shoes from her abundant store of stilettos, outfitting her in them as a video camera ran.

In the month since the attack, the New York Post and Daily News have devoted more than a dozen front pages to the case, encouraging the notion of Braunstein's crime as Jacobean revenge drama, and perhaps only Act I. With security posted on the floor of the W newsroom and segments about the fire fiend running on Fox's America's Most Wanted, reports surfaced that Braunstein's other eBay purchases included an expired Detroit police badge and 8.8 pounds of potassium nitrate—TIME BOMB! screamed the New York Post. (Actually, saltpeter was the main ingredient in the chemical fires Braunstein is alleged to have started on Halloween.) Meanwhile, not only the victim but many of the women who knew Braunstein more casually went into hiding themselves, afraid of where Braunstein's obsessions might take him next. As a public allegory, it gave frightening life to a common daydream: that no matter how successful any woman becomes, her physiognomy renders her vulnerable to the coercions of the stronger sex, who may wish her well in public but secretly harbor resentments too deep to fathom.

Today, the victim, currently staying on friends' couches and visiting trauma counselors, has friends make periodic trips to her apartment to pick up clothes. "All of her friends are gathering around her to lend their support, to help her through this trying ordeal," says a close friend. "The wish we all have for her is peace of mind, and that she will be able to retain her privacy and go on with her life." Also on the stage is Braunstein's angry, proud Iraqi-born mother, holed up in her gracious Kew Gardens complex, and Braunstein's father, Alberto, estranged from his son since a blowup over the relative success of the younger Braunstein at a dinner at Pastis two years ago. It is he who has become the public face of the case, making multiple TV appearances to plead with his son to surrender. One day last week at his gallery on First Avenue, a line of reporters wait for an audience. A mysterious man in a trench coat takes a surreptitious photo with his camera phone. Kew Gallery is more a high-end gilt-wood-framing store than a gallery, though there are some Monet-type florals and many nudes. The fine-line drawings on watercolor feature plump backs with heads turned to one side, and a woman with a breast out looking at herself in the mirror with a faint smile.

"I am devastated," says Alberto Braunstein, a small man, 82, in a black-and-white-check suit and a silk tie. "For heaven's sake, my son is no monster! He is a sick man who needs help—if he is found, he must plead insanity, and if there is a chemical balance it can be cured. All I want is to avoid further tragedy, and to avoid the day when I am called to identify his remains." His face is crumbling with age, and his sea-green eyes are unfocused. He taps a small canvas of a Lhasa Apso, pink tongue and brushed white mane leaping out from a background of baby-blue sky. "Tiko died yesterday, at eight years old," he says. "I returned from the south of France, and the dog was there, paralyzed in the apartment. I don't know what to do. In life, there is nothing but tragedy."

When Peter Braunstein began at Fairchild in 2000, he was well liked on the journalism side of things, if not the fashion one, a kind of office curio—"Peter Brahhn-stein is hil-arious!" the women editors would tell each other. He might have grown up the son of immigrants, but he went to the best private school in Kew Gardens, and afterward studied political science at the University of Washington and the Sorbonne. Braunstein was a flirt. He knew how to compliment without seeming lascivious, to use smiles sparingly, and to speak softly to women so they had to lean in to hear him. "In truth, Peter was really ugly, but he transcended his ugliness," says one female editor (many women with professional and personal relationships with Braunstein asked that their names be withheld, for fear of retribution while he remains at large). He knew about esoteric fashion historians, Faye Dunaway's sweaters, and the international nightclub Regine's, and he always had some sort of comeback, like "She's about 30 minutes into her Behind the Music special." "W is full of Ivy League graduates who give up semiotics seminars to talk about Ralph Lauren's way with gauchos, and here was this skinny little guy who was unrepentant about pop culture," says a former co-worker. "It made everybody feel better about working in a frivolous industry."

Casting his play, Andy and Edie, Braunstein met a procession of notable New York women, including Natalia McLennan, the prostitute who was on the cover of this magazine in July, and a well-known dominatrix.

In this environment it was normal for people to be working a persona, but no one quite got Braunstein's—the Jheri-curl mullet, Huckapoo shirts, velvet blazers, an unironic briefcase (for shame!), and the daily parade of leather pants. "Studio 54 by way of the electronics shop," says one co-worker; "as if he discovered mousse ten years too late"; "a hair trope like Robert Townsend in The Hollywood Shuffle"; "could've been the drummer from Boston circa 1971."

To Braunstein, though, this was a carefully crafted exterior born of a deep engagement with sexual politics. Taken in graduate school with the concept of theatrical alter egos and "role play" as the defining social experience of the mod era—the wigs, the charadelike dances, the ever-changing looks of Twiggy and Brigitte Bardot—he saw his look as early disco era, and even sold a book to Routledge on the topic to publish in 2007. He was particularly interested in the unstable role of the straight white male in disco, which, he theorized, began as an interaction between black female divas and gay men. "Straight men were welcome to join the party, but only if they learned the lingo," Braunstein wrote. "Some did, but for many, this new demand aroused a kind of castration anxiety. Disco symbolized a world where straight men were not only expected to engender the female orgasm, but to incorporate it . . . It wasn't homosexuality that disco ushered in but a sustained exploration of the sexual self, including the femme side of the male persona."

Braunstein got in touch with the femme side of his persona through Debra Michals, a woman he met in graduate school and dated for eight years. Michals, who moonlighted as a reporter at WWD, worked on early radical feminism. She wrote on groups such as the New York Radical Women, who famously protested the Miss America pageant in 1968 by crowning a sheep Miss America and demanding to speak only to female journalists. Michals also wrote articles on feminism for Ms. and other publications, writing a treatise on Internet chat rooms where users acted out virtual gangbangs. "Clearly, `virtual rape' is not the same as the rape a woman experiences in the physical world," she wrote. "But something as yet unnameable is going on in chat rooms where an erotic scenario can shift to a gangbang with a few keystrokes from an observing male who jumps in with, `Let's skull-fuck the bitch.' "

Michals is stunning—"the most beautiful graduate student at NYU," says a friend—with wavy raven hair, filmy sweaters, and slim trousers paired with chunky boots, an extreme faded beauty with the look of a present-day Carol Alt. In fact, Braunstein's pet name for her was Beauty. The two lived in a shag-carpeted one-bedroom on Thompson Street, often with the television playing a sixties art film in the background. "They were a cool, cool couple," says a friend.

"How could you not be there for me?" he ranted to a friend after he was sent to Bellevue. "You used to be so real. Now you're just another one of those fashion bitches."

Michals spent her savings throwing Braunstein a party at a Greenwich Village Italian restaurant for his first book, a compilation of countercultural essays whose cover lining was made from the same paper used for sheets of LSD; friends expecting meager hors d'oeuvre were surprised to find dinner waiting. Braunstein had interviewed Jane Fonda days before, and he rhapsodized about the interview—she represented a half-century of culture, a "libertine in the mid-sixties, radical by the decade's end, progressive in the seventies, entrepreneurial in the eighties, and a corporate grande dame in the nineties," he explained in an essay, concluding "Jane Fonda is America." She was his celebrity fantasy hookup. "If she had slept with me, I would've done it," he said and shot a look at Michals. "If I got her, could I have her?" Michals laughed and said that she was willing to make that bet.

A few weeks later, the couple broke it off. Of course, since this is Manhattan, they continued living in the same apartment. Fearful that Braunstein was spying, Michals used pay phones at the library to call friends to ask them to set her up on dates.

By enlisting at Fairchild, Braunstein had joined a world of women. There were the sallow, plump girls who wore designer samples that were a little too tight, and the no-nonsense women with motorcycle boots and thin pale shoulders who worked in production, and gaunt beauties from ruined aristocratic families, all of them dripping with trinkets like chandelier earrings or elaborate handbags, hair plaited with textured rose-colored barrettes and faces shining with daubs of $500 moisturizer. Braunstein would never comment on their bodies the way gay men in the office would—cooing to the market girls, "Girl, your rack looks so good in that dress!" Interviews were alluring too, like one with the teenage Frieda twins, the girls from the Sheer Blonde ad. The twins told Braunstein that they were cutting a demo and looking for a band name. "What do you think of Stiletto?" one asked.

On Halloween, in a fireman's outfit he'd purchased on eBay using the screen name "gulagmeister," he allegedly carried out his plan, setting fires in the victim's hallway in the early evening, fifteen minutes after she'd returned from work.

Although they saw each other nearly every day in the sprawling newsroom, the Woman in Market almost never spoke to Braunstein, as far as anyone can remember. But Braunstein made inroads with other women, notably a beauty editor. She had a softer, more welcoming mien than the hard-edged, quasi-European market girls. The Woman in Beauty's look is Babe Paley, with her fur tippets, perfect fifties heels, and flamboyant flip hairdo. A childhood friend of Dina Lohan's from Long Island and a bridesmaid in her wedding, she was famous for her vintage finds, sleeveless white shift dresses that were mod but not extremely mod—at the opening of the Mary Quant boutique, she wore a Quant dress she bought on eBay for the occasion. She is the Platonic ideal of a refined New York woman, a trained singer, a volunteer at a breast-cancer charity, an avid chef who clips from Gourmet for dinner parties at her mod midtown apartment.

"Such a beautifully maintained façade usually conceals ugly machinery behind it, but with her there was none of that," says a friend. "She wasn't an intellectual snob, a social snob, a fashion snob, or a gossip—not a fashion person in any of those Vogue-etty ways. She looks good because she is good."

Braunstein fell hard for this mod-era emblem come to life, the perfect hostess setting down martini glasses in front of an Eero Saarinen chair. The relationship began in secret. She had recently broken an engagement with a handsome editor of Fairchild's men's-fashion trade paper. Braunstein held the Woman in Beauty in high esteem. He moved into the Forest Hills Inn, an Arts and Crafts masterpiece in the cobblestone square next to the LIRR stop, and told confidants that he and the Woman in Beauty would go to midtown hotels during the day but did not have sex. "Peter said she was so much more worldly and sophisticated than Deb Michals," says a friend. "He made a big deal about how their relationship was so pure and above everything else." She called him "My Dark Prince."

Braunstein and the Woman in Beauty's official coming-out party as a couple was at a 35th-birthday party in an East Village railroad apartment. The two sat close together on the end of a couch, the beauty editor in vintage Missoni. The editors of fashion-gossip outlet hintmag.com, notorious practical jokers, sat kitty-corner. Now, you're the media columnist, and you're the beauty editor, so how does that work? asked one, setting off a round of questioning designed to make the couple uncomfortable. "As soon as I started asking about sex, they got up and left the party," says the other.

The relationship had the odd characteristic of both feeling that they were each other's saviors, their insecurities in precise balance. To Braunstein, the beauty editor took solace in her career because it made her feel better than him; to her, Braunstein was a fragile man who hid behind an image of himself as swinging cultural hero. A big advertiser would pull out, and the beauty editor would blame herself and worry that she was going to lose her job; Braunstein's pitches to magazines would go unanswered, and he would unleash a stream of vitriol and then collapse in a ball. Still, "he was into the concept of marriage," says a friend.

Braunstein wasn't one of the chosen at W, though he steadily contributed articles, like on seventies sex kitten Helen Mirren, and Guy Bourdin, whom he called the "godfather of porno chic—his work was a meticulously executed tableau of his childhood fears." Nevertheless, editorial director Patrick McCarthy was wary of him, says a former W editor: "It was the snobbery of W, and something about his hairstyle. People saw that as a symbol of his ambivalence about their world, and questioned how badly he wanted to make it." Braunstein was aware of this, and he readily shared his views on the "fashion bitches."

He enjoyed his job, and the power accrued. A favorite game was grading the editors' letters of women's magazines, then soliciting responses. Some editrixes sent packages of cookies and framed photos of themselves in response; Lesley Jane Seymour of Marie Claire sent him a handwritten letter: "Dear Professor Braunstein, Sorry my first try at my editor's letter was so poor: my cat ate the best version, the second got caught in the rain, the third got slipped under the door of the wrong teacher!"

At the same time, Braunstein was unfulfilled. He was an artist, and yet people whom he regarded as not as talented were being richly rewarded. His envy reached its zenith in October 2002, when Vogue star writer Plum Sykes received a $625,000 advance for her first novel, Bergdorf Blondes. A week later, Braunstein called Vogue public relations to request an extra ticket to the VH1/Vogue Fashion Awards. Though he received the ticket, there was some initial resistance, and Braunstein became incensed. The next day, he received an e-mail from his editor, James Fallon: "It was kind of the publicist simply to invite you, and then he gets harassed for another ticket for you and yelled at by [another reporter] for giving him a `bad' seat. I have told both of you that aggressiveness in pursuing a story is fine, but I will not tolerate bullying, sarcasm or prima donna behavior . . . The behavior will end, and it will end now."

On November 17, in Cobble Hill, a café owner served a cup of coffee to a man who he was "99.9 percent certain" was Peter Braunstein. No fingerprints were found at the scene.

Braunstein leapt up out of his seat in anger. He strode over to Fallon's desk and threw a "You're out of order, sir" scene—Do you know what people get away with here? he asked. And you're harassing me for this? He strode out the building, leaving behind his Rolodex, which he never claimed. He immediately telephoned the gossip columns to push a story about his firing as a symbol of the "subservience of W to Vogue," and demanded that the beauty editor quit her job in solidarity. She declined.

The beauty editor celebrated her 40th birthday weeks later, hosting a bunch of fashion people at the Lower East Side media hangout the Slipper Room. To a crowd of about 40, the beauty editor ascended a small stage to sing Carpenters songs. Braunstein was nowhere to be found—they'd had a fight, she said apologetically. Around 11 p.m., he showed up. He grabbed her arm and led her out the door. "It was the first time that any of us had an inkling that something was very, very wrong," says a friend.

In Braunstein's pantheon of women, Edie Sedgwick occupied the center. Among Manhattan "It" girls, she was Eve—all woman, all surface, the perfect mannequin, a kind of blank slate for the male erotic imagination, forever pursued, never quite captured. In Sedgwick, Braunstein's fascination with sixties counterculture and the hard-edged market girls he'd known at W came together perfectly.

After he left Fairchild, Braunstein began work on a play titled Andy and Edie, a fantastically puerile piece of work including such insights from the Warhol character: "Dying for one's art is one thing . . . but dying because some crazy butch dyke claims you never returned a screenplay called Up Your Ass is another." He dreamed of whom he could cast in the Edie role and approached heiresses Casey Johnson and Elisabeth Kieselstein-Cord. Ads in Backstage and on Craigslist.com attracted some 500 women, all these wannabe Edies in their pseudo-Gernreich dresses. Auditions were an elaborate game of dress-up. The best day was the last one. Late in the afternoon, Natalia McLennan, the prostitute who was on the cover of New York this July, auditioned for Ingrid Superstar. "She was very strange," says a crew member. "I thought she was a Method actor, acting drugged-out like people used to be in the Factory." Next up was Misha Sedgwick, Edie's striking niece, whom Braunstein instantly wanted as Edie. And then there was a dominatrix, her hair styled in Edie's blonde bob. This was quite a crowd. Braunstein took them all out for drinks after the auditions, and they taxicabbed up to a Madison Avenue bistro for a rendezvous with Peter Beard.

But the play was only part of Braunstein's Edie fantasy. He also persuaded the Woman in Beauty to dress up as Edie—leopard-print coat, dangling earrings, heavy makeup—at an art-gallery party for a Vogue writer's book. Sometimes, he took his real-live Sedgwick and the actor playing Andy out to parties, in shimmering short white wigs. Braunstein even wrote a journal in Edie's voice: "Does anyone know where I can find those fishnets with the seams down the back? All my old places have closed and Betsey J and I are still in a tiff." At the beauty editor's, he watched Ciao! Manhattan repeatedly. One night, when they hosted a dinner party for eight, he put it on the VCR and sat down at the table with his bong.

Braunstein would call his actresses at 4 a.m. "Let's get down," he'd say. "Tell me your secrets, your tragedies, your dark past."

As the fall of 2003 wore on, Braunstein's relationship with the beauty editor became increasingly strained; she was supporting him financially—she even had to hop down from the Fairchild offices to pay for his drinks at a bar on occasion—and her friends had started to introduce the term "freeloader." On a November night, she told Braunstein he had to move out. He threatened suicide. He said he would frame her for his murder because he was a successful playwright and she was an unsuccessful singer. She called the police, who arrived to find Braunstein reportedly wielding a knife he had cut himself with, though he insisted the marks came from the Woman in Beauty. They took him to Bellevue. "He went for a very short time, and the doctors said he was fine," says his father, who says that Braunstein had been previously treated with Prozac. After his release, he called a friend to rant about the indignity of being caged with patients he characterized as rage monkeys. "How could you not be there for me?" he asked. "You used to be so real, and now you're another one of those fashion bitches."

It was around this time that Braunstein heard the Woman in Market had resigned from W. She had been accused of taking dozens of shoes from the fashion closet, all the beautiful stilettos that she had set out on the filing cabinet. It was too perfect—he thought that she had no culture and no class, this haughty woman who thought she was better than he was, and the fact that she felt it was necessary to steal the mantle of modern femininity confirmed how weak she truly was. Braunstein passed along the gossip, a friend remembers. Afterward, many noted the proximity of the market department's filing cabinet to his former desk, and recalled his rapt attention.

As a graduate student, Braunstein was lauded for introducing the now-established term "possessive memory" to describe the psychology of aging sixties activists and academics. This memory, he wrote, "leaves the person and his memories in a lover's embrace: The person is in possession of his memories, and no one else can touch them; at the same time, his memories are in possession of him." Now on the receiving end of unrequited love, the theoretical construct meant more to him than he expected. He began a campaign against the Woman in Beauty—hundreds of harassing phone calls, some a running loop of a woman orgasming; threatening e-mails to her father; posting her nude photos on the Web. He started a blog on his play's Website: "Before I could write a play about Edie Sedgwick, I had to become Edie Sedgwick, and that channeling was ignited by my two-year hellride with someone who, for the sake of both propriety and nomenclature, I'll simply call `BioHazard': because she's the most toxic woman I ever attempted to love."

Braunstein embarked on a series of 4 a.m. calls to the actresses in the play, as well. "I don't understand why you don't want to get real with me," he would say. "You know, babe, I've seen it all. Let's get down—tell me your secrets, your tragedies, your dark past." When they resisted, he'd say, "Man, are you a boring person or what?" One actress became so frightened she played his rambling voice-mail messages for a lady cop at a police precinct; the policewoman said that she could hold Braunstein for 24 hours, and he'd be able to learn who had filed the complaint; she couldn't bring herself to do it.

At the play's close, Braunstein said he was moving to Europe to work on a new project: Valley of the Dolls, the musical. In truth, he hung around Queens searching for a job in journalism, heading out to Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, for an interview at Life & Style magazine—"He wanted to write about David Bowie," says the interviewer. "I was like, `You know this is a job about Cameron Diaz's belts, right?' " He took to writing his own letters to the editor, chastising Jane Pratt for running an article by Jayson Blair, threatening Atoosa Rubenstein for putting Paris Hilton on the cover of CosmoGIRL! magazine. A piece on stalking Kate Moss was one of the only ones he published in these years, in Black Book magazine. He wrote, "There will never be a `next Kate' for one simple reason: Kate is always the `next Kate.' She is her own successor . . . That makes her every woman, real or fake, I've ever fallen hopelessly in love with."

With such obsessions, Braunstein was increasingly inhabiting his own Guy Bourdin porn world. Girls in magazines, real girls, long-dead "It" girls like Edie flashed like a slide show in his mind. Some he worshipped, some he reviled, but all were objects, emptied of whatever they possessed, given his own meanings. His hatred for some—the Woman in Beauty, especially—was building dangerously.

Forensic psychologists call a case like Braunstein's an obsessional disorder with a disturbance in interpersonal attachments. Louis Schlesinger, professor of forensic psychology at John Jay College, says there are three key factors in escalating this kind of obsession: crossing the line from being a fan to obsession, unrealistic obsessions of being a part of a celebrity's life, and observing the victim doing something that the assailant finds morally offensive.

In September, the Woman in Beauty, so humiliated by Braunstein's acts that she kept the extent of his harassment from friends, took him to court. She got a permanent order of protection barring Braunstein from contacting her, and Braunstein was sentenced to three years' probation and five days' community service. The offense was great, and the frustration greater.

A common feature of violent sexual obsession is its fluidity—the object can shift, even as the impulse is constant. On Braunstein's computer the police found notes he'd made for an assault—to dress up as a firefighter, break into a woman's apartment, and tie her up. He had someone in mind—the plan was meant for the beauty editor.

He allegedly took his revenge on the other woman, the Woman in Market, who never gave him the time of day, who was cold and impeccable, armored with the best clothes and best shoes any woman could have, and she didn't deserve them. A woman who was always just out of reach. A woman who offended him by her taking of the shoes. A woman who was just as bad and as shameful as he was, a Dark Princess for a Dark Prince. The attack was about fetishized humiliation—with shoes, the symbol of her glamour and power—more than sexual release. There was no DNA evidence left at the scene.

The Woman in Market never recognized Braunstein in the attack. It's unclear whether she'd have even known who he was if she had. It was the beauty editor, the woman who knew Braunstein best, who called police with her suspicions.

"She has been able to rebuild her life, and it's not easy," says a friend, Anna Moine. "If anything, I hope this brings more attention to crimes against women."

On the run for more than a month, Braunstein has become an urban bogeyman, a face women see on the subway. A cop chase in the garment district turned up a Braunstein look-alike Italian tourist. And in Cobble Hill one morning, a man who looked like Braunstein walked into a café on Court Street at 7:30 a.m.—"I looked at him, he looked at me, we vibed each other, and he walked out quick," said the proprietor, a jovial guy who thrummed with anxiety after the incident ("It's the definition of a freak-out experience," he said).

That morning, reporters amassed across the street from the shop. Near their cameras were those of an NYU student making a short film about a young man who falls in love with a young woman who is a man. An elegant student in a black overcoat stared mournfully at a Lucian Freud book before helicopters began to whir overhead and a SWAT team in hazmat suits gathered, extending Braunstein's pillowcase to the nose of Chase the bloodhound. Chase led to the door of an empty brownstone on a picturesque stretch of Henry Street, a yoga flyer on the doorknob and decaying Yellow Books on the stairs. Chase went no farther.

Dejected cops distributed $12,000 reward flyers at all the nice new boutiques. They left one with the manager of the American Apparel store, a barrel-chested guy in a T-shirt with purple palm trees. He stared at it with mild curiosity. "I wish I saw him," he said, tracing the reward amount with a finger. "I could use the money."

His stubbly co-worker looked him up and down. "By the way, where did you get that shirt?" he asked.

"Nom de Guerre," said the manager. "And it was $50."

"I'm so sorry to hear that," said the clerk, nose in the air.

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Peter Braunstein: The making of a tabloid monster
The Independent - December 3, 2005

It was just another crime in a city of unsolved cases. But the unfolding story of a fashion journalist turned sex attacker has gripped New York. David Usborne reports on the strange tale of jilted love, a bogus fireman - and designer shoes

A few New Yorkers still remember the Summer of Sam, a fetid season of fear and loathing as a fugitive madman murdered his female victims in the Italian neighbourhoods of the South Bronx. Fast forward nearly 30 years and you arrive at today and a new obsession gripping the city: the Fall of the Fiend.

It started as fall - or autumn - reached its zenith on Hallowe'en night. As revelling Manhattanites watched the annual parade of ghosts and ghouls down Sixth Avenue on an unusually warm evening for the end of October, a single woman had stayed home alone in her cosy Chelsea apartment. She heard a man's voice on her landing yelling "Fire!" and quickly afterwards an urgent knocking at her door.

Just as in 1977, the crime that followed had the effect of an atom bomb exploding in the imaginations of the city's tabloids. In the past five weeks, the competing Daily News and New York Post have dedicated more than a dozen screaming front pages to the intruder of that night - a man they have alternately dubbed "THE FIEND!" or "THE PERV!" Never mind earthquakes and wars far away.

But Chelsea Woman - she has not been named - while she suffered an ordeal, is not dead. Indeed, in a city where many serious crimes pass without comment, no attempt, so far as we know, was made to take her life. But in the new post-Giuliani, post-Sex and the City New York, it is a different kind of crime that gets editors' minds racing. The victim and the aggressor are not from the Bronx. But it's not just that they are from the classier climes of Manhattan. The protagonists are sophisticates. Better, they come from the fashion monde. Exactly the monde Carrie Bradshaw occupied.

The script became a best-seller on the way to the newsstands as soon as the cops - as they do - began to leak details of their investigation. Their suspect was 41-year-old Peter Braunstein, an erstwhile PhD candidate at New York University, an aspiring playwright and a freelance journalist, who three years ago was working as media reporter for America's most esteemed fashion trade rag, Women's Wear Daily (WWD).

In quick time, the police would discover more about Braunstein and his demons - about his odd obsessions with female celebrities ranging from Jane Fonda to Kate Moss and Edie Sedgwick, and with designer shoes, about his firing from the magazine in 2002 and about a recent romantic flame-out with a girlfriend - and the nasty campaign of humiliation he subsequently unleashed on her. They also learnt that the ex-girlfriend had also been employed by WWD, as had his victim, before she was similarly sacked in disgrace.

The first task of detectives, however, was to piece together the details of the crime itself - and the victim, once over the initial shock of her ordeal, was able to give them most of what they needed. Her ordeal began at about 8pm and wasn't over until the next morning.

Braunstein's costume for Hallowe'en this year was extremely convincing. He left his home that night as a fireman, complete with the uniform and badges of your regular New York Fire Department (NYFD) ladder man. His special props were two paper coffee cups filled with a chemical cocktail he knew would burn easily, but safely, and emit thick clouds of smoke. With the cups successfully ignited and fumes billowing everywhere, he sounded the alarm at the top of his voice. Other residents in the building obediently fled until the real fire brigade came and discovered no actual fire and allowed them back in.

Braunstein, by then, was already busy. In his firefighter garb, he had knocked on the victim's door. Though he knew her from the magazine, they had never worked together and there was no reason she should recognise him. Instead, she thought he was a genuine fireman there to help. Why wouldn't she? There was no warning when he put a cloth to her face doused on chloroform to make her drowsy.

For the next 11 hours, the woman drifted in and out of consciousness as Braunstein allegedly molested her. She said he tormented her verbally by making it clear that he knew every detail of her life, including her departure from WWD magazine, where she had worked in the market department, rustling up New York's hottest new fashion wear items for the editorial photo shoots. She had been accused of stealing a pair of shoes. Whether actual rape, as legally defined, took place depends on what version you listen to. There are also reports that he videotaped all or parts of the molestation and that when he left he took a trophy - one pair of her designer shoes stored in a cupboard. He left her nearly naked and bound to her bed.

It was partly the nerve of Braunstein in masquerading as a fireman that tweaked the tabloid nerves in a town where members of the NYFD are revered after so many died as heroes on 11 September 2001. But it was also the cat-and-mouse antics that have followed. Rather than vanishing, preferably to another city or even abroad like any sensible person on the run, Braunstein brazenly checked in at Motel 6 just off Times Square - only a few blocks from the scene of the crime - aware or otherwise that his image was being caught on the hotel's surveillance cameras. The perception began to take hold in the public imagination that he was baiting the police and revelling in the media attention he knew he would get.

Filling out the drama has been Braunstein's 82-year-old father, who, in spite of advanced years, still runs a modest art gallery and framing shop on Manhattan's First Avenue. As images of his son appeared daily on the newspaper front pages, Alberto Braunstein begged him, through reporters, to surrender. "For heaven's sake," he told this week's New York magazine, "my son's no monster! He is a sick man, who needs help - if he is found, he must plead insanity, and if there is a chemical imbalance, it can be cured."

Reportedly, it was the ex-girlfriend who first suggested to police that he might be their man - a suspicion that became instantly credible when they tried to locate him and discovered he had vanished without a trace. By the time the two of them broke up about a year ago, Braunstein had already been fired by his magazine after losing his temper with the organisers of a fashion awards show in New York after they refused to furnish him with tickets.

His response to the relationship's demise was to torment his former lover, sending her hundreds of threatening messages and posting nude pictures of her on the internet. Eventually, she went to the police and filed charges against him. Braunstein pleaded guilty this September to unlawful harassment and was serving probation when he slipped on his fireman's uniform a month ago.

It transpires - suggesting another cliché of our times - that the firefighter garb was purchased by Braunstein on eBay, the ubiquitous internet auction site. He identified himself online as "Gulagmeister". Detectives have since found out that his cyber-purchases extended not just to the uniform and NYFD badges but also to an expired Detroit police badge and 8.8lb of potassium nitrate, plenty to blow up a modest railway station. The New York Post's front page the next day reflected the genuine alarm that is still felt by the police department. It read, simply: "TIME BOMB!"

Whatever sickness occupies Braunstein's mind, it may have been fermenting for some time. Combing through his personal computer, detectives found notes detailing plans for an assault, although the target was apparently the former girlfriend. What did he have in mind, exactly? He imagined dressing up as a fireman, breaking into her apartment and tying her up.

Other writings and musings of Braunstein reveal a man seemingly apparently consumed with the opposite sex and perhaps his own. One piece for the Village Voice explores the notion that the 1970s disco movement was driven by black women and gay men - and that straight men who participated felt castration anxiety. He recently landed a book contract to expand on the topic for publication in 2007.

After interviewing Jane Fonda he fantasised out loud to friends about sleeping with her. And at different times he wrote about his urges regarding the supermodel Kate Moss. (This discovery led police to warn Moss on a recent visit to New York that Braunstein was on the loose and might be a threat.) "There will never be a 'next Kate'," he wrote in a piece for Black Book magazine, "for one simple reason - Kate is always the 'next Kate'. She is her own successor ... That makes her every woman, real or fake, I've ever fallen hopelessly in love with". Suggestions that Braunstein is having fun at the expense of the police may be a fiction of the headline writers. "To say he may be toying with police is nothing but pure speculation," insisted Professor Louis Schlesinger of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. "That's big hype. Usually, these people simply don't want to be caught."

No doubt, however, the police, who for a while traced the fiend's movements around the city by monitoring each time he swiped his subway card, are getting frustrated. While they have offered a $12,000 (£6,900) reward for information leading to his capture, they have had to deal with nearly daily so-called sightings of Braunstein, including one reported from Ohio. When a man in a Brooklyn café called police to say he had just served their suspect coffee, the NYPD sent in Swatteams, sniffer dogs and helicopters to retrieve him. It provided new grist for the newspaper writers but uncovered not a trace of the town's most celebrated fugitive.

Even today, we learn, the victim of the Hallowe'en assault is still unable to return to her Chelsea home, preferring to stay on the sofa-beds of friends, who go periodically to her apartment to fetch clothes and water the plants for her. There are countless other Manhattan women, especially those in the fashion world or who at some point crossed paths with Braunstein, who will themselves not sleep well at night until he is caught. Meanwhile armed guards remain posted at WWD magazine and its sister W magazine.

What Braunstein stands accused of is, of course, far from trivial. But it says something about our new zeitgeist of vastly reduced murder rates and Manolo Blahnik fascinations that the New York media can create a new Summer of Sam out of a fake-fireman not-quite-rape on Hallowe'en. The madman in 1977, David Berkowitz, whose rampage left seven women dead, was captured as that torrid summer turned into autumn. As winter arrives in the city today, perhaps Peter Braunstein's number will similarly soon be up.

It started as fall - or autumn - reached its zenith on Halloween night. As revelling Manhattanites watched the annual parade of ghosts and ghouls down Sixth Avenue on an unusually warm evening for the end of October, a single woman had stayed home alone in her cosy Chelsea apartment. She heard a man's voice on her landing yelling "Fire!" and quickly afterwards an urgent knocking at her door.

Even today, we learn, the victim of the Halloween assault is still unable to return to her Chelsea home, preferring to stay on the sofa-beds of friends, who go periodically to her apartment to fetch clothes and water the plants for her. There are countless other Manhattan women, especially those in the fashion world or who at some point crossed paths with Braunstein, who will themselves not sleep well at night until he is caught. Meanwhile armed guards remain posted at WWD magazine and its sister W magazine.

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New Details IN Search For Peter Braunstin
We Find Out His Likes, Dislikes

WABC Eyewitness News - December 9, 2005

We are learning more about the personal habits and tastes of Peter Braunstein -- the man wanted for allegedly sexually assaulting a woman in Chelsea on Halloween night.

Police are releasing personal details about Braunstein in an effort to track him down.

The wanted poster has a new picture of Braunstein and detailed information about his likes and preferences.

Braunstein is known for drinking Guinness Beer and vodka.

He likes beef curry with extra mustard.

Police say Braunstein talks fast and also rolls his own cigarettes.

The last credible sighting of Braunstein was three weeks ago.

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Peter Braunstein Spotted in Memphis Seen Donating Blood Last Month
WABC Eyewitness News - December 15, 2005

(New York - WABC, December 15, 2005) - Police could be one step closer to tracking down one of New York City's most wanted fugitives: Peter Braunstein.

According to the television program, "America's Most Wanted," Braunstein was spotted donating blood at a blood bank in Memphis, Tennessee last month.

He allegedly told workers there he needed money to continue his travels, saying Kansas could be his next stop.

Braunstein is the prime suspect in the sexual assault of a woman in Chelsea on Halloween night.

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Breaking News: Braunstein tours the Midwest
Jossip - December 15, 2005

First Ohio, now Tennessee. Everyone's favorite Halloween rapist suspect Peter Braunstein has been spotted in that retangularish state (Memphis area, to be exact) looking "well groomed," "clean shaven," "neatly dressed" and wearing a "quarter length black wool coat" and carrying a "grey (with green top) backpack which he would not let out of his possession," reports MSNBC's Dan Abrams.

What's in the backpack? Our first guess: Some of that "8.8lbs Potassium Nitrate (saltpeter) HighGrade" he bought on eBay. Or the $20 he scored by donating blood. Well, at least it wasn't semen.

Meanwhile, this information was actually circulated among law enforcement weeks ago and is only reaching the public today. Officials think he's now en route to Kansas.

Either way, we're glad Dan Abrams is up on his fashion — officials might actually catch him. Had we thought it was a three-quarter length coat, we might have glossed over him.

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America's Most Wanted: Peter Braunstein

AMW - December 16, 2005

AMW CAPTURE DATA FILE FOR Peter Braunstein

Capture #871, Dec 16, 2005

AMW Capture #871

Courageous AMW Viewer Brings Braunstein Down

It's final exam time at the University of Memphis. Thousands of dazed and nervous students are cramming for tests so they can go home for the holiday break. But one student passed a real-life test in bravery.

It happened the afternoon of December 16, 2005. A university sophomore and school employee was walking across campus chatting with her sister on her cell phone. Then, it hit her. She recognized the man standing 20 feet in front of her as Peter Braunstein, the man she had seen profiled the past two weeks on America's Most Wanted. She watched the show every week, but never imagined she would come face to face with a fugitive.

"I felt a chill go down my spine," she told us. She flagged down a passing campus police car and told the officers Braunstein was just ahead. The officer called for back-up and then closed in on Peter Braunstein.

Braunstein Takes Himself Down

Cops say as they approached Braunstein he yelled out "I'm the guy they're looking for from New York." At that point, police say Braunstein pulled out a knife and began stabbing himself in the neck. The former fugitive was rushed to a nearby emergency room where he was listed in critical condition.

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Suspected Sex Attacker Braunstein Caught
Reportedly Stabbed Himself in the Neck and is in Stable Condition

By Carolina Tarazona

WABC (New York) - December 17, 2005

This morning, the hunt for Peter Braunstein has come to a bloody conclusion.

Police in Tennessee captured the fugitive New York fashion writer, wanted for a Halloween sex attack.

And this morning, Peter Braunstein is in stable condition.

As police at the University of Memphis tried to arrest him, he stabbed himself in the neck, several times.

Carolina Tarazona is live in Chelsea with the latest.

That vicious Halloween attack took place right here in Chelsea. And this morning, Peter Braunstein is in stable condition.

Police say he tried to blend in at the University of Memphis, but it obviously didn't work.

Alberto Braunstein, suspect's father: "He had his moment and his 15 minutes of fame."

Alberto Braunstein expressed his frustration with his son, who became one of America's most wanted.

Alberto Braunstein: "I'm just sorry it had to stoop to that to prove his genious."

Peter Braunstein was finally captured on the campus of the University of Memphis, after a woman recognized him from media reports.

She called police, and when officers arrived, he threatened them with a BB gun and then...

Bruce Harber, University of Memphis Police Department: "The individual pulled out a knife and started stabbing himself in the neck."

Braunstein was rushed to the hospital ending the nearly seven week search.

At the scene, police examined his only possessions: a duffel bag and a sleeping bag evidence of his life on the run.

For weeks, Braunstein was the cover boy in the tabloids. Investigators believe he dressed up as a firefighter, bluffed his way into his victim's Chelsea apartment, and attacked her for 13 straight hours.

Alberto Braunstein: "He chose to end the story the way he did, and I firmly believe he wrote the play."

Officers from the NYPD Special Victims Squad flew to Memphis last night to question Braunstein and bring him back to New York if he waives extradition.

A Manhattan prosecutor also flew to Memphis to take his statement.

Initially, Braunstein will be held for violating the terms of his probation.

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Son savored 'cat & mouse' - Dad says fame was fuel that fed drama

BY AUSTIN FENNER and TRACY CONNOR

New York Daily News - December 17, 2005

Alberto Braunstein, 72-year-old father of Halloween sex-attack suspect Peter Braunstein, at office of his art gallery yesterday.

Peter Braunstein's father believes the bloody finale to his son's flight from justice was Act III of a warped drama he scripted from the very beginning.

"I've always suspected he wrote this play and he was the protagonist of the play," Alberto Braunstein, 72, said last night, puffing on a cigarette outside his Manhattan home.

"For two months he drove the police crazy," he said. "He chose to end the story the way he did."

The father, who had a stormy relationship with the fugitive, noted his son had written a play once before, "Andy and Edie."

It was the story of pop artist Andy Warhol and his muse, Edie Sedgwick - and it was an unqualified Off-Off-Broadway flop.

The degrading Halloween sex attack on a Chelsea woman and his odyssey across several states with the cops in pursuit was Braunstein's version of a sequel he could control, his father said.

"Essentially, limelight is important to him," the elder Braunstein said. "He had more than 15 minutes of fame."

He said the former Village Voice and Women's Wear Daily writer didn't always hide his identity while on the run.

The younger Braunstein allegedly bought the firefighter gear used in the attack on eBay using his regular account, and showed his passport to a Memphis blood bank late last month.

"He was playing cat and mouse, and I think he got a thrill out of it," the dad said

Since his son was identified by police as the pervert behind the Halloween assault, Alberto Braunstein has spoken openly about him - defending and demeaning him by turns.

"My son has problems. He needs some psychiatric help. Instead he's on 'America's Most Wanted,'" he said angrily.

"You'd think he'd killed 10 people. He did not rape the victim. He did not kill the victim. I am not minimizing what he has done to her. I have apologized if he did it."

As he has done in almost every interview, he once again pointed to his son's high IQ, blaming his intelligence for his inhumanity.

"He is extremely clever," the elder Braunstein said, sounding like a proud papa talking about his straight-A student.

"If you read some of his books and articles you would realize the guy is a genius and there is a fine line between being a genius and cracking up.

"I'm just sorry he just had to stoop to that to prove his genius."

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Charges Are Filed in Fake Firefighter Case

New York Times - December 18, 2005

A former journalist wanted in connection with a sex attack in Chelsea on Oct. 31 was charged with kidnapping, burglary, robbery and sexual abuse in an arrest warrant filed by New York City prosecutors last night.

Peter Braunstein, 41, was expected to be arraigned in court on Monday in Memphis, where he was arrested after a six-week manhunt that drew national attention.

Although he is now in the hospital with self-inflicted stab wounds, prosecutors expect him to be well enough for the court appearance. Afterward, he can voluntarily return to New York City or face extradition, the prosecutors said.

Authorities say that Mr. Braunstein, dressed as a firefighter, forced his way into a woman's apartment, where he molested her for more than 13 hours.

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Halloween sex attack suspect apprehended

BY HERBERT LOWE

NewsDay - December 18, 2005

As Peter Braunstein recovered in a hospital prison ward in Memphis from stabbing himself in the neck, he was charged with two felonies related to his confrontation with a university police officer, Memphis police said.

The New York fashion writer also will face charges in Manhattan related to a Halloween sexual assault when he is extradited, authorities said.

Braunstein, suspected of impersonating a firefighter to sexually assault a woman in Chelsea, was being held at the Regional Medical Center in Memphis, where he underwent surgery.

Braunstein, 42, was charged with two felonies -- aggravated assault and carrying a weapon on university property -- for allegedly drawing a pellet gun and knife from his clothing when confronted Friday by a University of Memphis police officer, a university spokesman said.

Two detectives from the New York Police Department's special victims unit and a Manhattan assistant district attorney were in Tennessee waiting to speak with Braunstein and begin the extradition process, police said.

Braunstein, a freelance journalist and former Women's Wear Daily staff writer, will be charged with kidnapping, burglary, robbery and sexual abuse when returned to New York, Manhattan prosecutors said.

Members of the university police department also want to talk with him in hopes of retracing his movements prior to his bloody confrontation with their officer, university spokesman Curt Guenther said.

Also on his way to Memphis yesterday was Braunstein's estranged father, Alberto Braunstein, who said he was relieved the manhunt was over.

"But on the other hand, he needs psychiatric help very badly," said the father, who owns an art gallery in Manhattan. "Once the psychiatrist can find that he's got mental problems, I don't think they're going to throw him in jail. You don't throw sick people in jail."

Peter Braunstein's arrest ended a six-week manhunt that mesmerized New Yorkers as sightings of the brazen journalist flooded police departments from Ohio to Tennessee.

About 2 p.m., a female university employee spotted a haggard-looking Braunstein wearing sunglasses and carrying a sleeping bag and knapsack while walking outside. She recognized the suspect from a recent episode of "America's Most Wanted," authorities said.

After the guard approached him, the fugitive drew a gun and dagger, twice declaring "I'm Peter Braunstein of New York," then plunged the knife into his neck several times, Memphis police said.

Guenther would not provide any information about the employee, other than to say she is not a member of the faculty and is taking six hours of coursework as a part-time student.

On Halloween night, Braunstein allegedly set two blazes in a West 24th Street apartment building, then donned a New York Fire Department uniform to force his way into the apartment of a 34-year-old magazine writer. Once inside, police believe, Braunstein knocked the woman out by covering her mouth with a chloroform-soaked rag, sexually molested her over the next 12 hours, and videotaped the attack.

Staff writer Samuel Bruchey and The Associated Press contributed to this article.

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Elder Braunstein: My Son Is A Sick Genius
'Fake Firefighter' Recovering in Tennessee Hosptial Image

By Tanya Rivero

WCBS-TV - December 18, 2005

(CBS) CHELSEA People are breathing a sigh of relief in Chelsea now that fugitive Peter Braunstein is in police custody.

Wanted for questioning in connection with a Halloween sexual assault in which he allegedly masqueraded as a firefighter to gain access to a woman's apartment, Braunstein was apprehended Saturday afternoon in Tennessee following a seven-week odyssey in which he repeatedly eluded police.

"I grew up on this block my whole life, so it's good to feel safe again," Chelsea resident Ricki Grater said.

Added resident Steven Dupler: "People were worried. I mean, there was always the chance that he might come back."

That chance is a lot slimmer now that Braunstein is in police custody. An employee at the University of Memphis spotted the fugitive on campus Saturday afternoon, and called police.

Rather than surrender, police say the 42-year-old stabbed himself repeatedly in the neck, despite being doused with pepper spray. He now is recovering in a Tennessee hospital.

CBS 2 caught up with Braunstein's father outside his mid-town art gallery, as he prepared to leave for Memphis.

"He's got mental problems," Alberto Braunstein said. "They have vilified him in the press. I mean America's most wanted? You'd think that he killed half a dozen people. He did not rape the woman. I'm not minimizing what he has committed, but they blew it totally out of proportion."

The elder Braunstein has this explanation for the media's fascination with his son:

"You've got a genius on your hands," Alberto Braunstein said. "He just snapped. He couldn't take the rejection. He's very sick mentally, and he needs help."

In the Halloween incident, Peter Braunstein allegedly bound and molested the woman for more than 13 hours. Investigators say he knew his victim, a former co-worker.

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Sex Attack Suspect Braunstein Released From Memphis Hospital

NY1 - December 18, 2005

Peter Braunstein, the man accused of a Halloween sex attack in Chelsea, was released from a Memphis hospital Sunday where he has been since he stabbed himself in the neck before his capture on Friday.

Members of the NYPD's fugitive task force are now in Memphis to question him.

Braunstein is the prime suspect in a Halloween sex attack on a woman in Chelsea. Police say the 41-year-old freelance writer posed as a firefighter and set a number of fires to get into her apartment. The man then sexually assaulted the woman over the course of 13 hours.

According to published reports, Braunstein used to work in the same office as the victim.

Braunstein's father is also in Memphis to help his son.

"I'm his father, and he's in trouble," said Alberto Braunstein. "If he's got mental problems, then you can not treat him as a rational person."

Braunstein was caught Friday after authorities there say a student at the University of Memphis recognized him from news reports. A man believed to be Braunstein had been spotted at a Memphis blood bank just days before.

Investigators say that he told a campus police officer, "I'm the guy everyone is looking for."

While he hasn't been charged with the Halloween attack, Memphis Police say he will be charged with assault for allegedly pulling a knife and a pellet gun during his capture.

New York prosecutors say they will ask that he be held and returned to New York for violating the terms of his probation in an unrelated case involving stalking and menacing a different woman.

Braunstein has managed to elude authorities for a month and a half, despite being featured in news reports and even on America's Most Wanted.

The process of extraditing Braunstein back to the city is expected to begin once he's released from the hospital.

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Suspect's estranged dad rushes to provide support

BY RICH SCHAPIRO in Memphis, JESS WISLOSKI and ALISON GENDAR in New York

New York Daily News - December 18, 2005

Even a flamboyant suicide attempt can't kill a parent's love, Peter Braunstein's father said as he flew to the bedside of his estranged son.

"I'm his father and he's in big trouble, and I want to be with him," Alberto Braunstein, 72, told reporters camped outside his Manhattan art gallery yesterday.

Father and son have not been on speaking terms since the dad allegedly dissed Braunstein's off-off-Broadway flop "Andy and Edie."

After landing in Memphis, the elder Braunstein went directly to Memphis' Regional Medical Center but emerged less than an hour later and said he was not allowed to see his son.

"I did not get to see him. I'm quite disappointed. I hope to see him before his arraignment. But I don't know when that will be," Alberto Braunstein said. "I will be back tomorrow. I didn't speak to police. I'm expecting to speak to them tomorrow."

The father had begged his son to turn himself in once the NYPD named the former journalist as the prime suspect in a twisted Chelsea sex attack.

"I'm not minimizing what he did ... but he's got mental problems," the father said again yesterday.

"I don't think that going to jail is going to be the solution," he said, adding he planned to hire his son a lawyer. "I'm hoping that he's going to be admitted to a psychiatric center."

With Adam Nichols

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He was stalking in Memphis

By ADAM NICHOLS

New York Daily News - December 18, 2005

MEMPHIS - Just a week before his capture, sex-fiend suspect Peter Braunstein may have tried to drag off a University of Memphis student after she rebuffed his offer to take sexy pictures of her.

Ericka Porter, 19, said yesterday that a man she believes was Braunstein approached her on campus Dec. 9 - just feet from where he was eventually arrested Friday.

"I saw his picture on the news and didn't recognize him," she said. "But then I saw another picture of him with shorter hair and thought, 'Oh, my God, that's him.' "

The terrifying incident occurred as the marketing management major was walking alone to her dorm about 9:15 p.m. after watching a university basketball game.

"He was outside my dorm and he approached me and said he was a photographer doing modeling assignments for Victoria's Secret and Maxim magazine, and that he specialized in nude, lingerie and bathing suit pictures," she said.

"He said I was a beautiful girl and I should be a model. We talked for about 15 minutes and then he said, 'Come with me, we'll get my camera.'

"He was nice, really friendly and good-looking."

She refused to go with him, but he walked off, saying he was getting his camera from a truck.

He returned with a professional-looking camera. Porter said she didn't pay attention to where he got it.

"He asked if he could come to my dorm," she said.

"I said I wasn't interested, and then he grabbed my arm, flung me back and said he had to have his pictures by tomorrow. He grabbed my jacket and pulled and I started screaming."

She said other students came out of the dorm and the man fled.

She said she reported the incident to campus security. Security officers said yesterday that they would be unable to check their records until tomorrow.

Now at home for the holiday break in McMinnville, Tenn. - about 300 miles from Memphis - she said she saw Braunstein's picture in local news coverage of his arrest.

"I'm not absolutely sure it was him, but he looked similar to the picture. He looked very, very similar. . . . It's like pretty scary to think this could be the same guy."

Braunstein has been using similar cover stories while on the run.

After fleeing New York for Cleveland, Braunstein posed as a television producer and hired a driver to squire him around town, cops said.

But his activities turned creepy when he asked his unsuspecting chauffeur to tail a woman as she left Christie's Cabaret, a strip club known for its nude, $20 lap dances, a police source said.

The driver got suspicious and deliberately lost sight of the woman, he told police when questioned. The woman and her identity are still unknown.

And an Ohio bar owner said Braunstein told him he was a scene locator for the TV show "Nip/Tuck" when he met him last month.

Braunstein is accused of dressing as a firefighter to gain entrance to a Chelsea apartment, where he allegedly sexually assaulted a woman on Halloween.

Police believe he had been spending his nights outside around the University

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Smug 'Fire' Creep Snubs His Own Dad –– But Revels n Sick Fame

By LORENA MONGELLI and HEATHER GILMORE in Memphis, Tenn., and MURRAY WEISS and ANDY GELLER in New York

New York Post - December 19, 2005

Halloween sex-attack suspect Peter Braunstein went from a hospital bed straight to a jail cell yesterday, then appeared to bask in his 15 minutes of sickening infamy by entertaining reporters, greeting them flippantly with, "Hey, man."

Handcuffed and sporting navy-blue prison scrubs, the bloated, puffy-faced free-lance writer balked at seeing his elderly father at the Shelby County Jail in Memphis — but then broke into a broad smile when prison marshals asked him if he wanted to talk to reporters.

"Hey, man," the 42-year-old former Women's Wear Daily media reporter said as he turned his head toward the press.

Asked how he was doing, Braunstein — wearing a bandage on the right side of his neck from an suicide attempt Friday — said, "I'm good."

He began walking away as reporters asked if they could talk to him.

"Not right now," he replied. "To be honest, I'm a little out of it. But maybe tomorrow."

When a reporter said, "You're looking good," he shrugged again and gave a half-smile.

Braunstein stabbed himself in the neck Friday when confronted by a police officer at the University of Memphis, where he had been hiding out after seven weeks on the lam.

He was released yesterday from the Regional Medical Center at Memphis and immediately transferred to the county jail to await extradition proceedings.

Braunstein had been on the run since Halloween night, when he allegedly posed as a firefighter to con his way into the apartment of a Chelsea woman, whom he drugged, bound and sexually assaulted for 13 hours, police said.

After his arrest, detectives found an inch-thick diary in which he identified his victim, admitted the attack and chillingly detailed it, listing some of the items he used to carry it out and precisely what he used them for, police sources said.

NYPD detectives who spoke with Braunstein at the jail said he looked emaciated and appeared to have lost a lot of weight, the sources said.

But his father and reporters who spoke to him at the jail said that when they saw him, he looked good.

"He looks much better than I thought he'd look," said Alberto Braunstein, 71. "He doesn't look like he lost any weight."

"He looks cocky," the dad added. "His attitude hasn't changed. I'm quite familiar with his expression. I was hoping this ordeal would have straightened him up . . . He's acting defiant."

Father and son have not spoken for three years, since the elder Braunstein criticized an off-Broadway play that Peter had produced about Andy Warhol and the painter's muse, Edie Sedgwick.

The younger Braunstein — who once penned a poison letter to his dad saying he couldn't wait to "ceremoniously urinate" on his grave — looked disgusted when asked if he would see his dad, snipping, "I don't want to see him."

The father said he was disappointed but "that's his decision. I did what a father had to do. I was here for him."

Alberto said he thought his son rebuffed him because he had made repeated appeals for him to surrender.

He angrily said he wouldn't try to help his son find a lawyer: "That's his problem, now."

And the elder Braunstein said he wouldn't reach out to his son again — "he has to reach out for me."

Peter was arrested after Annette Brown, a University of Memphis employee, spotted him walking on campus.

After he was taken into custody, cops found the diary, a handheld video camera and videotapes in a backpack he was carrying. Cops said they had yet to view the tapes.

But "it's all in the journal," Braunstein told detectives who quizzed him about the attack.

Following up on that, NYPD detectives obtained a warrant and began poring through the diary yesterday.

In it, police sources said, they found two references in which Braunstein identified his victim, who had worked 10 feet away from him in the Women's Wear office, although it's unclear how well they knew each other.

The sources said he also admitted carrying out the attack and listed some of the things he used to carry out the crime, in which he drugged the woman with chloroform and bound her with duct tape.

Cops are now trying to determine how long Braunstein has been in Memphis and where he might have been living.

Since he had a sleeping bag attached to his backpack, they suspect he may have been staying on campus — possibly amid stacks of books at the university's library.

Shawnay Thompson, 19, a psychology major, said that at 10 a.m. Friday, a few hours before his arrest, Braunstein had used the computers at the entrance to the library.

Thompson said the writer sat behind her and appeared to be scrolling the Internet because he was using his mouse and not typing much.

"I didn't see what he was looking up," she said.

Thompson said Braunstein "looked older than everyone. No one else noticed him."

She said she realized the man was Braunstein only when she saw pictures of him after his arrest.

After Brown, the university employee, spotted Braunstein, she notified campus police.

Jay Johnson, a veteran officer with training in dealing with mental patients, spotted Braunstein walking on the west side of the campus a short time later.

When Johnson confronted him, Braunstein admitted he was the target of a nationwide manhunt and pulled a 3-inch "punch knife," whose blade is attached to the middle of the handle. The user makes a punching motion at his target.

Braunstein began waving it at the officer, who drew his gun. They weren't very far apart.

At this point, Johnson could have shot the writer in self-defense, said his boss, Bruce Harber, the university's public-safety director.

"The rule of thumb is 21 feet. A person armed with a knife that close to an officer is very dangerous," Harber said.

But Johnson didn't fire. He continued to order Braunstein to drop the knife, and when the suspect began stabbing himself in the neck, Johnson used pepper spray to immobilize him.

Braunstein then told the officer he had a pellet gun in his pocket. Johnson grabbed it and tossed it away.

As a result of the confrontation, Braunstein was charged yesterday with aggravated assault and carrying a deadly weapon. Those charges may be dropped if Braunstein agrees to waive extradition.

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Braunstein moved to the Shelby County Criminal Justice Center

WMCTV-5 (Memphis, TN) - Dec 19, 2005

The suspected rapist at the center of a nationwide manhunt is out of the hospital and behind bars at 201 Poplar tonight.

Peter Braunstein has been moved from the Regional Medical Center to the Criminal Justice Center downtown.

He had a video bond hearing Sunday and bond was set at one-million dollars.

Braunstein's new mugshot clearly shows the bandage on his neck where police say he stabbed himself Friday.

A University of Memphis student spotted Braunstein Friday and called campus police. Investigators say when the officer confronted him, Braunstein began stabbing himself in the neck.

Members of New York's fugitive task force are in Memphis to question Braunstein about an attack Halloween night. He's accused of sexually assaulting a former co-worker for 13-hours.

Braunstein's father is also in Memphis. When Braunstein's became the focus of national coverage his father pleaded with him to surrender.

Now that he's out of the hospital the extradition process will begin.

New York One News reports that Braunstein has not been charged yet for the Halloween attack, but prosecutors want him returned to the city for violating the terms of his probation in a different case.

Braunstein faces aggravated assault and weapons charges here in Memphis. He's due back in court Wednesday.

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Caged 'Scissorhands' spews bizarre banter

BY RICH SCHAPIRO and TAMER EL-GHOBASHY

DAILY NEWS - December 19, 2005

The many faces of sex-attack suspect Peter Braunstein.

MEMPHIS - A smirking Peter Braunstein showed off a swollen gash in his neck yesterday - and described the moment he plunged a knife into his throat as "like Edward Scissorhands."

In the bizarre first jailhouse interview since his blood-drenched arrest, Braunstein was strangely jovial - apparently enjoying the spotlight that has followed him across the country since he was identified as the prime suspect in a Halloween sex attack in Chelsea.

"Hey!" he exclaimed cheerfully when two Daily News reporters identified themselves at the drab lockup in Memphis where he's being held on $1 million bond.

Braunstein, 41, had just rejected a visit from his estranged father, Alberto, but his glum expression turned to a smile and his hunched-over body sprung to life when two reporters from The News addressed him.

Asked how he was doing, his reply was shocking.

"I'm good," he said blithely.

He then cocked his head to draw attention to the self-inflicted 3-inch wound, laced with silvery stitches, running down his neck from his jaw line.

Ever the pop culture aficionado, he tossed out a reference to the 1990 fantasy film starring Johnny Depp as a boy with blades for hands who couldn't help slashing his face and neck.

"It was like 'Edward Scissorhands,' " he said of his suicide bid.

Braunstein repeatedly jabbed a dagger into his neck Friday after a campus cop cornered him at the University of Memphis, ending his seven-week flight from justice.

Pressed to explain where he'd been since he left New York early last month, one of the city's most wanted men demurred. "To be honest, I'm a little bit out of it right now," he said, his nasally voice suddenly rising. "Maybe later I'll be more up to it."

Braunstein's surprising chattiness came moments after he coldly rebuffed a visit from his 72-year-old father, who had traveled from New York to offer his estranged son support.

"I don't want to see him," a .disheveled but healthy-looking Braunstein told his jailers as soon as he locked eyes with his anxious dad, who stepped back without a word.

During the manhunt for his son, the father had pleaded publicly for him to surrender, describing him as both brilliant and disturbed, and detailing their bitter falling-out.

After the arrest, the elder Braunstein packed a bag and flew to Memphis, where the Queens-reared ex-journalist was transferred from the hospital to the Shelby County Jail yesterday morning.

The frail Manhattan art gallery owner paced a long, yellow-tinted visitation room at the jail, nervously waiting for his son to be brought in.

"Can you believe I haven't seen him in nearly three years?" the father said, his hands stuffed into the pockets of a brown coat.

He stood at attention when marshals led in his son, who was handcuffed and wearing short-sleeved navy-blue prison garb. The prisoner's hair, showing specks of gray, was shorter and messier than the luxurious curls he wore in better times, and he sported a three-day growth of stubble.

The son shuffled into the room with his head down, then looked through the plexiglass window separating inmates from visitors.

As he saw who was standing there, he turned to walk away - then paused to talk with The News.

When he was done answering questions, he disappeared from sight as his father hung his head forlornly.

"I did what a father had to do. He didn't want to see me," Alberto Braunstein later said outside. "I'm disappointed, but that's his decision."

He said his son looked remarkably well considering his ordeal and didn't appear to have lost much weight or have much wear and tear from his life on the run.

Braunstein is expected to be arraigned Wednesday on charges of assaulting a police officer and weapons possession for his confrontation with Memphis police.

In New York, he faces charges of kidnapping, sexual abuse, burglary and robbery for allegedly dressing up as a firefighter and drugging and molesting a former co-worker for nearly 13 hours.

Braunstein's father had hoped to help his son retain a lawyer for Wednesday's arraignment.

But after yesterday's stinging rejection, Alberto Braunstein said he plans to leave Memphis as soon as possible and will no longer make overtures to his ungrateful child.

"It's up to him now," the dejected dad said. "He'll have to reach out to me."

With Julia Xanthos in Memphis and Alison Gendar in New York

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Strange bedfellow at the Y - Weary fugitive freaked out locals

By ADAM NICHOLS

New York Daily News - December 19, 2005

Robert Lee Harris, a YMCA resident in Memphis, says he never saw sex-attack suspect Peter Braunstein talk to anybody while fugitive was staying there.

MEMPHIS - Peter Braunstein spent some of his last days on the lam holed up at a low-rent YMCA - skulking around the neighborhood in silence, creeping out the locals.

Keeping a low profile, the fugitive kept his trademark curls covered with a gray skullcap and carried a rucksack and sleeping bag.

He rarely spoke to anyone, but his odd behavior drew attention in an area teeming with college students, fast-food joints and bars.

"I knew he wasn't from here, but he didn't look like your average homeless guy," said student Jason Suarez, 26, who lives in the area. "He was too clean.

"I saw him two or three times. He looked really tired, like he hadn't slept for ages. I wanted to know who he was, but when I got eye contact he always looked away, like he was paranoid of being noticed."

Suarez said he saw Braunstein approach YMCA residents more than two weeks ago.

"He looked like he might be trying to bribe them, like he wanted to sleep on their floor or something," he said. "I know that happens there."

It appears Braunstein found some way to bed down at the bare-bones Y, where single men can rent rooms for $306 a month.

Management ordered YMCA staff not to speak to a Daily News reporter yesterday, but resident Robert Lee Harris, 55, recalled Braunstein.

"I saw him for over two weeks," he said. "My room looks out at the back and I sit at the window. I'd see him coming in and out, always wearing a skullcap.

"But inside, I would never see him. He was never in any communal areas and never talking to anybody.

"I can't believe he was allowed to stay here. The YMCA takes identification and is supposed to run background checks."

Pauline Koplin, owner of the nearby Brother Junipers College Inn, said Braunstein ate there a few times and spooked a waitress so much she complained.

"We get hundreds of people coming through here, but I remember him," she said.

"I think he was in a few times, but last Thursday night I definitely remember. He sat on his own by the window, wearing a hat and he had something 'round his neck, a radio or a camera," Koplin said.

"I remember him because his waitress told me later that he scared her. I don't think he said much, but she said it was something about his demeanor. I didn't think anything of it at the time."

Braunstein was also seen trying to sell his blood for $30 at a plasma center, a 30-minute walk from the YMCA - a different center than the one at which he made $20 selling his blood Nov. 28.

"I give blood myself and I was in a week ago Saturday," Suarez said yesterday.

"This guy walked in who I remembered seeing around the neighborhood. I heard him being turned away because he had some kind of deficiency."

Jerry Hill, a local homeless man, saw the New Yorker the same day near the plasma center.

"I know all the guys on the street in Memphis, but I didn't know this guy," he said.

"He was standing on the street like he was waiting for a bus with a bag on his back and a sleeping bag. He did look tired, and I thought, 'That guy's been on the streets for awhile.'

"I remember him because I knew he wasn't from 'round here, then I saw him in the newspaper," Hill continued.

"I thought, 'Man, that guy ran a long way.'"

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Alleged Fake Fireman Accused Of Rape, Kidnapping Arrested
Suspect Stabbed Self n Neck Several Times

Associated Press (New York Daily News) - December 19, 2005

NEW YORK -- The man accused of sexually assaulting a woman while posing as a New York firefighter has been charged with kidnapping, sexual abuse and other offenses after being found in Tennessee.

The Manhattan, N.Y., district attorney's office said 41-year-old Peter Braunstein also is charged with burglary and robbery in the Halloween sex attack. He faces a Tennessee charge of assaulting a police officer.

Braunstein is a former fashion writer who has been on the run since early November. He was arrested on the University of Memphis campus after a campus police officer confronted him Friday afternoon. Police said he stabbed himself several times in the neck and spent two days in a Memphis hospital. Now he's in police custody.

Braunstein's only charge in Tennessee is aggravated assault against a police officer.

Memphis police said they don't have the name of Braunstein's attorney.

Braunstein will be arraigned Monday in Memphis and then face extradition to New York to face the charges.

He's accused of posing as a firefighter responding to a blaze and barging into the woman's apartment, knocking her out with a chemical-soaked rag and molesting her over many hours.

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Braunstein found guilty

Fake firefighter convicted in assault of woman on Halloween

Associated Press - May 23, 2007

Former fashion writer Peter Braunstein was convicted Wednesday of charges that he sexually abused a woman for almost 13 hours after posing as a firefighter on Halloween to bluff his way into her Manhattan apartment.

The jury needed less than four hours to convict Braunstein in a case that provided a daily window in the bizarre world of a man whose life seemed to grow ever more unstable after he lost his girlfriend and his job in the magazine business.

Braunstein, 43, was convicted of kidnapping, burglary, sex abuse and robbery charges, and was acquitted of an arson charge. After the verdict, he maintained the same blank, lethargic look he had throughout the trial.

Braunstein's lawyers did not dispute that he carried out the attack, but said he was so mentally ill that he was unable to form the intent to be held criminally responsible. He faces 25 years to life in prison.

His dad, Alberto Braunstein, said outside court after the verdict that he hoped his son would not simply be thrown in prison with common criminals and receive no psychiatric treatment. "He is a sick person," Alberto Braunstein said.

"Peter Braunstein is mentally ill, and the fact that he was convicted doesn't change that fact," defense lawyer Robert C. Gottlieb said.

The trial provided an endless amount of strange testimony about Braunstein.

The jury heard of Braunstein's musings about sending the editor of Vogue magazine to a hell guarded by rats and hoping a SWAT team would kill him to put him out of his misery. In one of his many rambling journal entries, he described wandering around Tennessee posing as a Katrina victim to get free meals and a place to crash. The jury also saw scans of Braunstein's brain, which the defense said was "broke" to the point that he couldn't possibly be convicted.

And then there was the attack on Halloween 2005. Braunstein was accused of setting off smoke bombs outside the woman's apartment while dressed as a firefighter and brandishing a BB gun. Once inside, he knocked the victim - a former co-worker - out with chloroform, tied her naked to a bed and molested her.

The trial included graphic testimony from the victim, as she recalled Braunstein stripping her naked, putting stiletto heels on her feet, groping her and videotaping the encounter.

In addition, Braunstein's ex-girlfriend, Jane Larkworthy, tearfully testified about how he tormented her after they broke up — and even posted her nude photos and contact information on the Internet. Braunstein was not on trial for doing anything to Larkworthy, but prosecutors said his relationship with Larkworthy shows his motive and his ability to devise twisted plans for revenge.

Prosecutors say the Halloween victim, who barely knew Braunstein, was a surrogate for the people the defendant disliked.

Braunstein became the city's most-wanted man after the attack, and he soon wound up in down-and-out neighborhoods in Tennessee and Ohio. He passed himself off as a hurricane victim while in Memphis, posing as a New Orleans man whose name he found on the Internet.

He expressed his fascination with the extensive media coverage of him as a fugitive, including front-page tabloid stories and his appearance on "America's Most Wanted."

He was arrested Dec. 16, 2005, on the University of Memphis campus. He tried to kill himself by stabbing himself in the neck as a campus policeman approached while pointing a gun at him.

Gottlieb said his client's mental illness crippled his brain and left him unable to form the intent or the conscious objective to commit the crimes charged.

He said Braunstein heard voices and had delusions, which are symptoms of schizophrenia, while prosecution experts said the defendant had a personality disorder and other less severe mental ailments.

Assistant District Attorney Maxine Rosenthal disputed the argument that Braunstein should be acquitted because of his mental troubles. "He meticulously planned and executed this case down to the last detail, and not only the crime but his flight afterward," Rosenthal said.

During that flight, Braunstein wrote a journal entry two weeks after the attack in which he described seeing several NYPD cars and fantasizing that they were after him.

"So I reach for my Beretta because, even though I'm so outgunned, I still have to go thru the motion of firing off a few rounds at the SWAT team so they'll return fire & incinerate me. That is, after all, the plan."

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EXCLUSIVE: Interview with Peter Braunstein
New York Daily News - September 28, 2009

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"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." -- Margaret Mead

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Monday, October 31, 2005

Case of Peter Braunstein