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May 3, 2007 7:46 pm US/Eastern
eBay Official Details 'Fake Firefighter' Purchases
Testifies Braunstein Bought All Kinds Of Bizarre Items
NEW YORK (CBS/AP) ―
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Peter Braunstein is accused of sexually assaulting a woman in New York City.
CBS
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Peter Braunstein is scheduled to go to trial on a multitude of charges stemming from an attack on Oct. 31, 2005. (File photo)
CBS
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Months before he sexually assaulted a former co-worker in her apartment, Peter Braunstein was buying items online for the attack, including firefighter's gear, handcuffs, and chemicals used to make smoke bombs, prosecutors said Thursday.
Jeremy Roybal, an eBay official from San Jose, Calif., testified at Braunstein's sex assault trial that company records showed the journalist ordered a total of 750 milliliters of chloroform and four kilograms of potassium nitrate months before the 2005 Halloween attack.
Braunstein also bought firefighting gear, a gas mask, an obsolete Detroit police badge, a Fire Department of New York windshield sticker and a camcorder on eBay, said Roybal, a fraud investigator at the Internet sales and auction company.
Other items, including a pellet gun, handcuffs, leg irons and a knife, were ordered by Braunstein from a sporting and hunting goods site called Cheaper Than Dirt, John T. Turner, the site's chief financial officer, testified.
Braunstein, 43, is accused of using the potassium nitrate to create fire and smoke bombs in the hallway outside the apartment of a 34-year-old former co-worker at Fairchild Publications, publishers of Women's Wear Daily and W magazine.
Prosecutors say Braunstein, dressed in firefighter's clothing, banged on the woman's door, yelled there was fire outside and demanded to come in. Inside, he put the pellet gun to her head and ordered her to lie on the floor.
Braunstein knocked her unconscious with a chloroform soaked rage before cutting off her clothes and tying her naked to her bed. While she was out, he videotaped her with the camcorder that he bought on eBay, prosecutors claim.
Though Braunstein has pleaded not guilty to kidnapping, burglary, sex abuse and robbery, his lawyers concede he attacked the woman, but they say he is mentally ill and therefore should not be held criminally responsible.
When he was captured on the University of Memphis campus on Dec. 16, 2005, after six weeks on the run, Braunstein stabbed himself in the neck with a dagger. He was subdued by police with pepper spray and arrested.
The officer who arrested Braunstein in Memphis was expected to testify when his trial continues Friday in Manhattan's state Supreme Court.
Meanwhile, Justice Thomas Farber decided after legal argument that evidence from Braunstein's computer showing his searches for things like "rape" and "chloroform" and "bondage" could be presented to the jury.
The judge said he would not permit prosecutors to show the jury all of the pornographic materials that police computer experts retrieved from the defendant's hard drive.
(© 2007 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
