May 24, 2007 8:32 am US/Eastern
'Fake Firefighter' Braunstein Convicted
Convicted Of 15 Charges In Bizarre Sex Assault Case
NEW YORK (CBS) ―
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Peter Braunstein was convicted Wednesday of sexually assaulting a woman in New York City.
CBS
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Peter Braunstein had been on trial for a multitude of charges stemming from an attack on Oct. 31, 2005. (File photo)
CBS
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A jury on Wednesday found "fake firefighter" Peter Braunstein guilty on all but one charge in his high-profile sexual assault case.
The former fashion writer Peter Braunstein was convicted 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.
Defense attorney Robert C. Gottlieb agreed.
"Peter Braunstein is mentally ill, and the fact that he was convicted doesn't change that fact."
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 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.
Braunstein became the city's most-wanted man after the attack, and he soon ended 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 daily 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 unsuccessfully to kill himself by stabbing himself in the neck as a campus policeman approached while pointing a gun at him.
(© 2007 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
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