The Associated Press
NEW YORK - A man wanted for questioning in the Halloween night sexual attack on a woman in her Manhattan apartment by a man posing as a city firefighter was captured Friday on a college campus in Tennessee, police said.
Police said fashion writer Peter Braunstein, 42, was spotted on the University of Memphis campus by a woman who recognized him from news reports about his fugitive status. She called campus police, who caught up with Braunstein, according to New York Police Department spokesman Paul Browne.
“He said, ‘I’m the person you’re looking for,’ and he stabbed himself three times in the neck,” Browne said.
Braunstein was hospitalized in critical condition.
New York police had been hunting since early November for the freelance journalist, once a writer for Women’s Wear Daily. Police want to question Braunstein about the attack on a woman by a man who bluffed his way into her apartment after setting two small fires and pounding on her door while dressed in full fire gear.
He bound the woman and molested her for more than 13 hours, police said.
He has not been charged in the attack.
Investigators said they believe Braunstein was obsessed with the victim.
The 34-year-old woman’s ordeal began Halloween night when a man set two tiny blazes - later extinguished by real firefighters - inside the apartment building in Manhattan’s Chelsea section. With smoke filling the hallway, he pounded on the victim’s door and announced he was from the “FDNY.”
The woman told detectives that when she opened her door, the fake firefighter pulled a gun on her, then covered her face with a rag soaked in some type of chemical.
As she faded in and out of consciousness, the man put on a ski mask, tied her up and gagged her with duct tape, and molested her, she said. She also recalled him videotaping the attack.
The man left the next morning, leaving the victim naked and bound to her bed. She managed to free herself and call police.