Reading the Sunday paper this morning, this little news clip caught my eye:
“The former fashion writer convicted of sexually tormenting a co-worker while dressed as a firefighter says he’d go on a homicidal rampage if released from an Ohio prison.
“Peter Braunstein told the New York Daily News in a jailhouse interview that he has ‘no desire’ for rehabilitation.”
Back in 2005, Peter Braunstein stalked a woman who worked for the same company as he once did (although he didn’t know her), set off a smoke bomb in the hallway of her New York City apartment, banged on her door dressed as a firefighter, and held her prisoner and molested her for 13 hours. He then fled and police launched a multi-state manhunt. He robbed a psychiatrist in the Cincinnati area, and was eventually caught in Memphis.
Columnist for WWD
The news ignited a media frenzy at the time, although not being in New York, I missed it. What added so much fuel to the fire was that Braunstein had once been a columnist for Women’s Wear Daily, a publication at the epicenter of the fashion world, passing judgment on the editors of the country’s biggest fashion magazines. He was, at one point, considered an intellectual and arbiter of pop culture.
How far he has fallen. Friday’s article in the New York Post was headlined, Fake fireman sicko Braunstein likes prison, warns of ‘rampage’ if released. The article called him a psychopath.
Braunstein was already convicted in the New York crime, and was sentenced to 18 years to life. He’s currently in Cincinnati, where, according to an article entitled N.Y. tabloid villain charged here in the Enquirer, he faces another 28 years for aggravated robbery, robbery and kidnapping.
Profile of a psychopath
Vanity Fair magazine published an in-depth article about Peter Braunstein, The Devil and W.W.D., on April 2, 2007. It described his upbringing, early career, family and self-destruction. Several former friends were quoted trying to explain what happened to Braunstein.
Reading the article, it seemed pretty clear to me that Braunstein was always a psychopath. He got involved with women who financially supported him. He sent vile e-mails to his father (who may have had his own issues). He considered himself superior to the rest of the world. When his last girlfriend left him, he launched a virulent, public smear campaign.
It seems that for many years Braunstein was able to keep a lid on his disorder, until a series of career and relationship failures left him with no more claims to grandiose superiority. At that point, the mask slipped, and he stopped pretending to be a human being.
Cover is blown
It’s something many of us who have been entangled with psychopaths have experienced. The cover is blown, and the evil is released. I suspect that some psychopaths may actually feel exhilarated—finally, they can be who they really are.
Braunstein does not want to get out of jail. “I would have no desire to try to rehabilitate myself and go back to being a guy with a job and meeting girls and having friends. I’m not interested in that whatsoever.”
Those might be the most authentic and honest words this psychopath has ever spoken.
Wow. I think this is also why many sociopaths and psychopaths spin out of control as they age. For many years they are able to “charm” people into their web of lies and deceit, but as they age they begin to lose their looks and the vitality that made them so seductive to people.
My exH seemed to become more and more blatant in his issues with people and in his affairs as he approached 60. While I suspected for years that he might be having affairs, he was incredibly good at covering AND at convincing me that it was my jealousy, not his philandering, that was the real problem and that this string of women in our life together were simply “good friends”.
Once the mask slipped and it all started coming out, he seemed to just not care any longer about his public image – at least for a time. Once I divorced him he has simply moved to another state, married another nic, sweet church woman, and has re-created himself into the Church Leadership Guru. How long this new mask will stay on is anyone’s guess. He will be 62 this year, and it is getting harder and harder for him to attract the swarm of adoring, weird, wacky, and wounded women he was able to ensnare as a church music director. I think it will be extremely interesting to see how he ends up in the end.
Honey
I remember reading about this at the time it happened but didn’t remember all the details.
It is strange to me though, that he would be so honest and not want out of prison. All of the psychopaths I know who are in prison want OUT because they keep up their own FANTASY about how they are going to con their way into a great life outside. Fast cars, status symbols, great looking girlfriends, plenty of excitement, etc.
Of course the REALITY of what their life will be like after 20 years in prison is nothing like what it was in their fantasy. ONe sociologist (have long ago forgotten the name) in a book called “The Felon” talked about this dichotomy between the fantasy they build up in prison vs the reality of not being able to get the things they want, the things they think they deserve by having been “deprived” of them (unjustly of course) while they were incarcertated. Then, it is back to a life of crime with the only friends they have left, other criminals, and then back to prison.
Someone else wrote (can’t remember where I read this) that prison is a perfect home for the psychopath with the continual situation of high risk, high stakes (his life) “games” that he can play…and a continual shot of adreneline to keep life from being “boring.”
One psychopath that I got to know a bit after he got out of prison who had been a close friend of my P-sons in prison for years was bright, articulate, talented and though he had spent 20 years of his 40 in prison, seemed to be adjusting fairly well to free world life—but it was borrrring, and I think that was what sent him over the brink and back to prison.
He had a job making adequate money, a fairly supportive family of descent people, and had married a nice enough woman. It wasn’t long though, before “real life” of going to a job, coming home, eating dinner and watching TV, going to bed and repeating the process the next day became so boring that he started to abuse the wife, then dumped her and started leading an “exciting” life of more crime, and then went back to prison, where he again started to “dream” about how his x-wife was going to take him back and everything would be wonderful on the outside.
His X-wife, on my advice, has moved to “spots unknown” in anticipation of his release late this fall. This woman is struggling to make her life P-free from not only her second husband, the convict, but also from the first X who was a psychopath that beat her, to the two psychopathic sons that she raised, and poverty so grinding that it made me cry.
I had gone to visit her last January when she called me and asked me to come get her little terrier that she could not afford to feed. On my way to see another friend of mine I stopped by her house to get the little dog. She shared with me the LAST OF THE FOOD in her house for supper, which she had gotten at the charity food pantry. It was all I could do to choke it down, I felt so guilty for eating it, but I would not have insulted her generosity by refusing.
We talked away most of the night and my heart bled for this woman. But she SEES, she “gets it” about psychopaths; my son and her X-husbands, and even her own sons. One of her sons has 6 kids already born that he does not take care of or see, and has two women pregnant now, one with twins. The due dates are only a month apart.
Sometimes we cry “because we have no shoes” but when we see a “man without any feet” we feel BLESSED. It makes me sad that there are so many women (and men) who have been totally “used up” by the psychopaths over a lifetime and have nothing. I offered the woman a temoporary home here at my farm until she could get her situation together, but she told me “no, I want to make it on my own.” I don’t know where she is right now, she has no phone to contact me, but I know she will eventually call and let me know she is okay or to check on her little dog. I pray for her and the other people in her kind of loss of everything. I feel blessed by comparison.
When the criminal justice system (boy is that an oxymoron!) keeps these psychopaths in prison for longer and longer periods of time (realizing that the psychopaths commit about 70% of the violent crime) society may be safer from the majority of the violent crime we now see.
Though the Trojan HOrse Psychopath had a lifetime of violent and sexual crime against YOUNG children, when he pled down this time to “a felon in possession of a gun”–all other charges which were valid were DROPPED, then, after receiving only 3 years, the parole board was prepared to let him OUT after less than 9 months in jail or prison ILLEGALLY moving him (a sex offender) into a half-way house which was prohibited by Arkansas rule 679 that “no sexual offender may be houses in a transitional unit.” It was ONLY because some BIG MOUTHED old witch (ME!!) threatened to bring in the media and expose their illegal release of this VIOLENT man. A man who was assessed as HIGH risk for reoffense of sexual offenses with CHILDREN. I realize that prisons are crowded, but releasing men who have been PROFESSIONALLY DIAGNOSED as Psychopaths (the TH-P has been) who have a long history of VIOLENCE, seems to me to be CRIMINAL, not JUSTICE.
Yes, there is some anger against the “system” in this post and in my heart, but “all progress is made by dissatisfied people” so maybe WE can as “dissatisfied” people with the justice system can raise enough of a voice, along with all the others who are also dissatisfied with it, that some SENSE can be brought to bear on the release of violent criminals wholesale.
Several states have a 3-strikes you are out (or in for life) law, and my state isn’t one of them, but I will work for one. Since many psychopaths that are criminals are REPEAT offenders, that would “catch” many of them. My TH-P has 15 felony convictions, including 3 for sexual molestation of children under 14, one as young as 8. Think he is going to “rehabilitate”? I don’t either.
Dear OxDrover,
How do you get all the energy to help so many people. I think it is wonderful. You are truly a voice of love and understanding. You have helped me through some of my ordeal and I know you have helped and gided this girl. I will pray for her.
I read the 9 page “The Devil and the W.W.D.” Vanity fair article. It was very disturbing to me. And because I have been through so much of my own horror….I did have emotions for the time Bronsteins father insulted him as a child….saying they gave the prize to the wrong kid. I was incredibly angry. Why don’t people know how damaging these words can be to children.
I too have a family that insult each other for fun. My own neighbors did that too. Even with their insults….and the damage it does. My soul is with “God”! It will always be incredibly disturbing to me that someone chooses to go against God….and hurt other people. And so many people do it. I hope that people realize that even the small insults matter!
I have been so upset lately….I am having a very difficult time with all of what has happened to me. my weeks are about work and work and work to pay off legal debts and come home and work on fighting this case in court and writing letters to judges and prosecutors and senators….and hopefully in the long term I will emerge from this “out of debt…with good credit again….and maybe a law or two changed for the sake of the victims. I do like the 3-strike law….although my P has already 4 strikes and only 6 months in county prison….
In two weeks we go back to court again….I though he was going to be sentenced on Fri 6-13-08….No chance….I was called on Thurs 6-12 at 3:30 pm by the assistant prosecutor Hoerner…His attorney filed for a new hearing to submit evidence that he lost $500,000. in one casino. It is most likely a Win-Loss statement. The hearing is in a couple of weeks from now.
Back in Dec of 04 when I went to the prosecutors office I explained everything I knew about Dennis. His gambling habbits included. When I first met him he came to me as a client at the spa I worked at. He was very nice and personable and a “Big” tipper. He was always comped for two hour massages and he always gave the girl/guy therapist a $100 bill as a tip. I was his therapist for maybe a month before he started to ask me to dinner. I wasn’t at all atracted to him physically in the begining. It was no love at first sight for that matter. He was just so kind and gentle and seemingly honest. When I would see that he had requested me as a client I couldn’t wait to see him and get to talk to him. He was that wonderful. I didn’t have seniority at my job so I was always last on the totem pole. Which meant I got the crumbs unless I got requested.
In the summer when it was busy….I made up to $1000/weekend. Sometimes alot more. But by Sept into Oct the Casino slowed down back in 2001…before all of the reconstruction of A.C. and I would be lucky if I made $100 on a saturday and Dennis being my only client because everyone else came before me and as I said I picked up the crumbs. People who were glad to give you their days in the summer wouldn’t dare give it up in the fall and winter.
So It took a couple of months before I went to Dinner with Dennis. He knew I had a house I was reconstructing…He knew I had money. He convinced me that he was a beautiful kind and wealthy person. He convinced me that he cared about my daughter…he even took her and her girlfriends to lavish dinners. Then he took her to the movies and asked me if it could be alone so he could bond like a father. And I fell for it. I didn’t know he was a sick person then…I didn’t know he was lying to me. Do you know that the most disturbing thing to me is that my daughter doesn’t even remember him! She was 9 years old when she met him. When she saw him in court last year…she said she couldn’t remember him at all…she spent “bonding” time with him. He came to holiday events and parades with us…he bought us to dinners….he had her even climb through my mothers window so he could get a watch shipment for him. She can’t recall any of it! I am so disturbed by this. If I ever find out that he did something to her I don’t know what I will do!!!!!
Ya know someone I recently befriend and told my story to…also explaining how Dennis went to Church every Sunday and she said….she thinks she would have to get the mob after him. My mind went through all of this, believe me….I wanted to cut off all of his fingers…she was so funny she said…..well I guess he couldn’t put the dice in the little hole or play cards anymore….and we both laughed….and than she said and your Catholic too….you could go to confession! it made me laugh so hard I almost pee-d myself! But than she realized that, just as I do, it is not the right thing to do! Because only P’s would do that and that would be lowering yourself to their level.
So I turned to the law only to find it flawed in many ways! You can imagine why! Noone will really ever know. Occassionally we get a glimpse why!
So I turn to God and I pray and I wait….and sometimes I see God’s work in all of this….and I am praying heavily right now….and staying clear and positive. But I know God’s wrath is “Great”. Dennis will receive it!
I told the prosecutors office back in 2004/05 how Dennis would play blackjack at the Tropicana. He would win 8 or 9 times before he lost once. His average win would be $2500 and he played every day when I first met him. And he would come for massages with me. I would come in on my days off to do a 2 hour massage for Dennis…and he was a big comp player. He told me he owned all this realestate and that he was a big realestate investor. That he owned two apartment buildings and 3 homes and two condos. It was all a lie…Unless he is somehow connected to this Andrew Ross Group…which I believe may be they are a holding company for Dennis assets…Dennis owns nothing! Especially now after he has refinanced and gone bankrupt!
However, getting back to the point of going to the prosecutors with his gambling habbits…if he won 8 times $2500 that equals $20,000 and he still has his original $10,000. which he would loose the next time which still left him up $10,000. He told me himself that he could not make more than $4000 per day because he would have to claim that on his taxes. That it was completely legal because the casino did not have to regester a win at the table under $4000. It was the rules. I though what a great gig! This guy is making money nobody knows about….little did I know he could now use his losses to show that he is broke and after stealing from me bring this Win-loss statement to court. And make good on his promise to me that “I will get nothing”!
I am so hurt! Because I know in my deepest of deep that he has money hidden! He was giving his x wife $3-5000/month for years and his x finace wrote that in an affadavit. For all the 11 1/2 years she knew him….if that is the case than the years after he stole my money he gave her close to if not more than$300,000. That means he is a liar!
And there is more….More casino’s he played at…..and there is what you call a rating tally that all the casino’s do with players….which would show everytime he sat down at a table and gambled it is for rating play for comps. It shows how many hours you played and your average bet….Dennis played every day for 2-3 hours. If he lost $500,000 over 5 years in $10,000 incriments that means he lost 50 times….he played every day and he won many times….I know he is a wealthy man! He shows people what he wants them to see….and if that Andrew Ross Group or his X-wife were audited you might find some money there! That is what my gut tells me!
Oxie-
I am not suprised he siad he wanted tobe in jail….it’s a front, he’sin control …this is his choice. And yeah you can see him really enjoying it.
This is a sad story, but confirmation…PSYCHOS exist.seemingly normal, productive people…are conscienceless. That’s my psycho –no conscience at all. Zippo. I finally get that I never anthing to them, I was just used all along. And surpisingly, that made me feel better-I have nothing to miss– they are shells. I see this more and more….I just saw the psycho and watched him scan the crowd for someone to acknowledge him…desparate. He’s burning bridges… and acting out.
Dear Trish,
Knowing the truth and being able to “prove it” with both hands legally tied is quite frustrating. The vandalizm that the Trojan Horse P did last summer that I have only recently discovered the cause of total engine lock up in 3 engines on equipment at my place (including an aircraft) and KNOWING he did it, and yet not even having a snow balls chance in hades to prove it is frustrating beyond belief, but you know, it is only STUFF, my sons C and D and I have our LIVES. He didn’t take away anything of any REAL VALUE.
I will not let it ruin my life, heart, mind, soul or fill me with bitterness again. There is nothing I can DO about it, it is done. It is a fact. Last night I read the book of Job, and how Job, though losing everything in his life, and even his health, and literally wanting to die, still kept his faith in God. “If we take the good, who are we to not accept also the bad” (paraphrased) As far as I am concerned the good outweighs the bad, I am blessed—especially blessed to have survived the last encounter with the P-son and the Trojan Horse P.
The gal who wanted me to take her little dog because she couldn’t afford to feed him or get him medicines or flea spray, SHE’s the one that’s got it hard. She has so little, and yet she shared the last of her food with me, I can’t keep from tearing up when I think about it, and how blessed by comparison I am. Both of her sons are Ps, both her x-husbands, and she is barely surviving, and yet she told me “No, I don’t want help, I’ll do it on my own”–that is bravery, courage, and a woman I admire. She knows I will help her if she needs it and gets to where she can’t make it on her own, but lending a helping hand to someone who IS TRYING to be responsible for themselves, not whining and blaming others, is the LEAST I could do as a human being, one who IS SO BLESSED. I’m no fool, and I won’t ENABLE someone, I won’t “take them to raise” when they won’t help themselves, but if someone is doing the best that they can and still needs a helping hand, I’ll stick mine out if I can.
It is little enough to repay the people who have stuck their hands out to me when I couldn’t get up on my own.
God bless you Trish, and I hope your P gets his justice now, but if he doesn’t get it now, I know it WILL COME. (((hugs))))
I have a pretty good idea why he might have said that (about not getting out). I didn’t read the Vanity Fair article, so I don’t know if this is in there or not, but I do recall that when he was captured, he told the cops he’d been working on his memoirs while he was on the lam, and did they think he had a movie sale here? The guy’s addicted to publicity and the daily press has turned away from him–he’s in withdrawal and needs more more more limelight. If he says off the wall stuff like this, he gets back into the news. What a creep.
Once the mask slips the psychos true nature is revealed to everyone and then at least there is the possibility that they can be incarcerated or at least exposed as a threat. What scares me is all the ones who have not reached that point and a quietly flying under the radar destroying lives as they go.
Mine is still free, lying his head off and probably conning someone else now. It sounds awaful but I wish something would really trigger him off and he would bring about his own downfall. Unfortunately, that would probably mean that someone else got seriously hurt too.
How frustrating it all is.
Swallow
Honeybear said:
My exH seemed to become more and more blatant in his issues with people and in his affairs as he approached 60. While I suspected for years that he might be having affairs, he was incredibly good at covering AND at convincing me that it was my jealousy, not his philandering, that was the real problem and that this string of women in our life together were simply “good friends”.
That was exactly what my sociopath was like. He is 53 now and his health is not the best with his diabetes, etc.
He tried to convince me that the mothers of his godchildren were just friends and nothing else. I found out that he took one of them on a family cruise a couple of years ago. He tried to convince me that I was just insecure and their was no reason for me to be jealous of these women.
These men lie so convincingly that they have no concept of what is the truth anymore. Mine used his grand-children as an excuse to spend time with other women. Anyone or anything was fair game. I wish that his mask could be removed and his evil exposed for all to see.
I actually liked my psycho before his mask came off. When the mask came off-it was total confusion and the dichotomies were too overwhelming for me. It was also a big, big, bummer for me when the mask came off. I was totally disappointed that I had hooked up and started a family with a psycho. It didn’t help my dissapointment that psychos are incurable either. The list goes on and on with my disappointment once the mask came off.
I think it is interesting that Braunstein said that he has “no desire for rehabilitation”. Do you really think that a psycho, somewhere in the depths of his soul, really has a core truth? I don’t know. When I was watching my psycho go through his dichotomies, I really couldn’t tell which one was his truth. Or if any of it was.
“Do what you say and say what you do”, just does not ring true for psychos. I wouldn’t trust what Braunstein says on anything. Even on his promises of a “homicidal rampage”. Unless, psychos really do have a core truth somewhere.
It has been stated more then once that sociopaths get worst as they age. Aging changes everyone but I believe that a group of (sociopathic) these people find that the changes accruing in this natural aging process is unbearable. As we all will experience our recourses are not as great, friends and love ones die and job promotion slow down. This is just the natural process of each person’s life. But for the sociopathic person. It bring about great changes like those and only those that they fear (they confuse fear with love) which can be a parent or some other authority figure dies. They aren’t afraid to show what they really are. No longer in fear of losing that person’s support. If they lose a job, they may find it hard because of past job history a very hard time finding another one. If they (again) go thru a divorce, this time it (because of again finding it harder and harder to find a replacement) will cause them major depression. Because they lived a lifetime of denial and lies. Many of their memory of what “really” happen will be hazy at best. Putting one’s self on a high place (a persistent pattern of grandiosity) also allow this same person to fall and when fallen hit reality hard. Many of them will experience chronic depression. So I do believe as they age, things don’t be better, which they all believe. No things will be worst then even we can envisage.
I do believe that this “mask” of their reality come to a quick end. Which leave them to understand it and live with the “true” reality of there life choices..
“Oh what a tangle web we weave when first we learn to deceive”