A year after the police's searching for Peter Braunstein, the journalist who molested a woman, he's in custody and awaiting trial. Now new court documents reveal his history of threats and what he was doing when running from the law. He apparently harassed three other women "upon being rejected on personal or business matters" in 2003 and 2004. The Post reports that he "repeatedly rang the buzzer at the home of one of the victims, whom he threatened to ruin professionally." Then, when he was on the run, he called people back in New York to threaten them if they testified.
He also stole backpacks and cellphones and staged more elaborate stick-ups. From the Daily News:
Two weeks after he fled the city, Braunstein - on the run and running out of money in Cincinnati - pretended to have a mental illness in order to rob a psychiatrist, court papers say.
Appearing frantic and troubled, the failed playwright walked into the unsuspecting M.D.'s office on Nov. 17 and told the shrink that he had to leave a note for his colleague.
Braunstein wrote in his diary that he pretended "to be really neurotic verging on [sic] manic-depressive psychotic," according to the court papers.
The doctor led the fugitive fiend into his office where Braunstein allegedly pulled out a gun, slapped plastic cuffs on the doctor's wrists and stole his wallet.
Now we believe his lawyer is trying to argue that he wasn't pretending - that he was so mentally insane, he didn't realize what he was doing! Braunstein was captured in Memphis on December 16, 2005.
