Man captured in Tennessee to be charged with sex attack in New York

NEW YORK -- A former fashion writer wanted in connection with a vicious Halloween sex attack will be charged with kidnapping and other offenses once he can be brought back from Tennessee, where he was spotted on a college campus, prosecutors said Saturday.

Peter Braunstein, 42, was hospitalized in fair condition Saturday, recovering from self-inflicted knife wounds. Police said he stabbed himself several times in the neck after a campus police officer confronted him Friday afternoon at the University of Memphis.

Braunstein is expected to be arraigned in Tennessee on Monday, authorities said.

Prosecutors plan to seek an arrest warrant charging Braunstein with attacking a female acquaintance in Manhattan in October, said Barbara Thompson, a spokeswoman for Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau.

New York police had been hunting for Braunstein, once a writer for Women's Wear Daily, since early November.

Investigators wanted to question him about a Halloween attack in which a man dressed as a firefighter bluffed his way into a woman's apartment after setting two small fires. The man knocked her out with a chemical-soaked rag, bound her and molested her for more than 13 hours, police said.

In addition to kidnapping, New York prosecutors said they plan to charge him with burglary, robbery and sexual abuse.

Memphis police said Braunstein would be charged with assault for pulling a knife and a pellet gun when confronted by the officer Friday.

Braunstein is also accused of violating the terms of his probation in an unrelated case, in which he had stalked and menaced a different woman.