Jane and I Worked With a Sex Criminal Who Terrorized 2 of Our Colleagues in the Creepiest Ways

Where is Peter Braunstein now? Does he still hate fashion editors?

It’s midnight on Halloween! And what does that make you think of? If you’re a true crime freak, like me, it’s probably only one thing: Peter Braunstein, the guy who dressed up like a firefighter on Halloween 2005, forced his way into a fashion editor’s apartment and terrorized her for almost 13 hours before running from the cops for 6 weeks.

Did you know Jane and I worked on the same floor as Braunstein back in the day? Jane magazine was under the umbrella of Fairchild Publications before it was folded into Conde Nast, and our offices were at 7 West 34th Street (directly across the street from the Empire State Building). Jane shared a floor with fashiony W magazine and Women’s Wear Daily, where Peter was a writer. He stood out in the elevator: He had shiny dark curls and carried a fancy leather briefcase. That’s how I remember him — kind of put-together yet kind of eccentric-looking, in a vaguely academic kind of way. Like a beat-poet professor with a perm.

Peter’s Fairchild ID. Some of Peter’s bylined WWD stories are still online, including one about Selma Blair called “A Brunette’s Blues.” 

I didn’t think about him much at the time, until he sent me a kind note about a story I wrote about black-market Adderall use at Vassar and other college campuses. He said he appreciated the reporting I’d done and that more stories should push boundaries like that did. I don’t remember what I wrote back to him, but he seemed sharp and passionate, like he legit cared about journalism. 

Another woman who once worked with us at Jane magazine — someone intelligent and beautiful and funny and successful — dated Peter for more than a year, including after he was fired from Fairchild for being a jerk to a publicist. When our ex-coworker broke up with him, things went off the rails. (Actually, “off the rails” is a severe understatement, but this woman has been through enough, so let’s skip those details.) 

I am pretty sure Peter hit on Jane Pratt at one point through email. [He visited me in my office unannounced too many times, from what I recall, under the guise of some potential work thing? And I had forgotten all about the emails until now. -Jane]. But in 2004 he wrote an off-off-Broadway play about Edie Sedgwick, which honestly sounded kind of lit.

Here’s a more recent pic of 7 West 34th Street, where we shared the fourth floor (or was it ninth?) with Peter. Jane magazine was always weirder than the other Fairchild publications, so we stayed in our own chaotic little corner. Say hi to JP.

By October 2005, Peter apparently became fixated on another woman at Fairchild — a fashion editor who had endless access to designer shoes, luxury bags and more. To him, she represented everything wrong with the fashion industry: phony, privileged, unattainable.

Then on Halloween night 2005, Peter did something terrifyingly brilliant and so incredibly evil. He dressed up in a NY firefighter’s uniform, set off a smoke bomb inside the lobby of the fashion editor’s apartment building, and knocked on her door, saying he was the fire department. When the fashion editor let him in, he pulled a gun on her, knocked her out with chloroform, stripped her clothes off, tied her up with a parachute cord and sexually assaulted her — just not exactly in the way he’d planned.

“Sometimes rape sounds good on paper, but then when you’re actually in the situation you’re like, ‘I’m just not feeling it,’” Peter Braunstein said in the documentary I (Almost) Got Away With It. “And that’s kind of what happened. I was at war with myself.”

He went through the woman’s closet, pulled out all her pricy high heels and put them on her feet while she was unconscious. He later said he got off on the sex-slave thing, dressing her up like a doll because she had “all these Manolo Blahniks and Jimmy Choos.”

Peter said it took him more than an hour to go through all the boxes of high-end shoes in his victim’s closet.

He lay next to her, groped her and talked to her about her life. Then he chloroformed her again. And again. And again.

More than 12 hours after he knocked on her door, he left a note in lipstick on her mirror: “Bye - Hope things turn around for U soon.” Then he vanished.

***

Every so often, something happens in the news that will make me and other true crime girlies lean forward. When Brian Laundrie ran from authorities after killing Gabbie Petito. When those two guys escaped from the Dannemora prison. When that Malaysian airplane went missing. When the submarine disappeared, with only a limited amount of oxygen. 

It was that times a million in our office when the police were searching for Peter. He had already terrorized the fashion editor and threatened his ex-girlfriend. Would Peter come back for more? Our building amped up security. [There was a big blown up photo of his ID picture at the back 35th St. loading dock entrance that I and some other executives were allowed to use. -Jane] All of New York seemed to be looking for him.

A brutal month passed, and every day I’d obsessively check the news to see if he’d been caught or if any other women had been attacked. In mid-December “America’s Most Wanted” featured Peter, and a Tennessee college student called the tip line, saying she had seen him slithering around the University of Memphis. When police confronted Peter, the documentary says, he stabbed himself in the neck 13 times before falling to the ground, in a sea of blood. (Which, who knew someone could even do that? Repeatedly, to oneself? It makes me look at Elliott Smith’s death in a new light.)

Peter stabbed himself repeatedly with a 3-inch push dagger. (This is what a push dagger looks like. Imagine.)

Then there was the trial. Our former colleagues had to testify, which I’m sure was extraordinarily traumatizing. In June 2007, Peter was sentenced to 18 years to life in New York for the Halloween attack. Later he apparently got an additional 23 years in Ohio for attacking a therapist while on the run, according to New York magazine. But in I (Almost) Got Away with It he says he’s not over it.

“If you released me tomorrow … I’d get a big steak dinner and then I would continue right where I left off.”

Where are you, Peter? (And are we good?)

Ummm. That show came out in 2011. So where is Peter Braunstein now? He was in New York’s Clinton Correctional Facility when the documentary was shot, but prisoners can be moved around a lot. New York’s “Incarcerated Lookup” says he was discharged from Five Points Correctional Facility in Romulus, NY, on June 18, 2024, and released to “another agency.” Which one? It doesn’t say. Presumably somewhere in Ohio to serve time for robbing that therapist. Ohio’s inmate locator sites, however, don’t seem to list him.

Where do you think Peter disappeared to this time? Are we sure he’s still in custody?

Triple-lock your doors, people. 

It’s the season of ghouls.