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Jan 5, 2006 5:30 pm US/Eastern
Accused 'Fake Firefighter Rapist' Plea: Not Guilty
NEW YORK (AP) ―
A writer accused of setting fires and posing as a firefighter so he could get into a woman's apartment pleaded not
guilty Thursday to charges that he bound and sadistically abused her for more than 13 hours.
Peter Braunstein, 41, in an ill-fitting gray prison jumpsuit, his hair freshly cut, and healing knife wounds visible on the right side of his thin, pale neck, said nothing else after entering his plea of not guilty to a 13-count indictment.
The indictment charges Braunstein, an aspiring playwright and freelance journalist who once wrote for Women's Wear Daily, with kidnapping, arson, burglary, robbery, sexual abuse and assault. Braunstein and his alleged victim reportedly once worked for the same magazine corporation at the same time.
Braunstein spent about six weeks on the lam after the Oct. 31 incident, with reported sightings of him in cheap hotels and topless bars in New York, drinking in bars in Cleveland, and selling his blood in Tennessee.
Last month, he was spotted on the University of Memphis campus by a woman who police said recognized him from media reports. Braunstein then said, "I'm the person you're looking for," and stabbed himself in the neck. He was arrested by Dec. 16 by campus police and after a brief court hearing, sent back to New York.
Braunstein's father, art gallery owner Alberto Braunstein, was in court Thursday to see his son, who arrived in handcuffs from Bellevue Hospital Center.
Braunstein's lawyer, Robert Gottlieb, told state Supreme Court Justice Brenda Soloff he would probably request a mental competency exam when his client returns to court Feb. 23. That exam would determine whether Braunstein is fit to stand trial.
Gottlieb explained outside court that the competency exam is a "bare bones" check to determine whether a defendant understands the nature of his actions, understands the charges against him, and can assist in his defense.
That exam differs from a psychiatric evaluation to determine whether a defendant "suffered from mental disease or defect at the time of the crime," Gottlieb said. Judge Ellen Coin, who presided last month at Braunstein's first Manhattan court appearance, had ordered a psychiatric evaluation.
Gottlieb said he did not know why Coin ordered the evaluation, but he said he did not want distribution of any report -- if a report was prepared -- on his client's mental state, and he especially did not want prosecutors to see it.
Soloff granted the request.
Braunstein is accused of setting two small blazes in the hallway of a Chelsea building outside the 34-year-old woman's apartment on Halloween night and pretending to be a firefighter so she would let him into her home. With smoke filling the hallway, he allegedly pounded on the victim's door and announced he was from the "FDNY."
Police said he then bound the woman and molested her for more than 13 hours. The accuser also recalled the assailant videotaping the attack.
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