One of the Big Apple’s most infamous sex predators could be released from prison in a matter of weeks, The Post has learned.
Former fashion magazine writer-turned-sexual torturer Peter Braunstein will have his first hearing before the state Parole Board during the week of Aug. 18, according to a corrections official who said an exact date has not been set.
The 61-year-old onetime “Women’s Wear Daily” journo sexually brutalized a co-worker he’d grown obsessed with. He set a fire outside the victim’s Chelsea apartment on Halloween night in 2005, and gained access to her home by posing as a responding fireman.
Braunstein then chloroformed the 36-year-old woman, drugged her, stripped her naked, bound her, and sexually assaulted her over more than 13 hellish hours. Her name is being withheld by The Post.
He scrawled a mocking note on her mirror, “Bye — Hope things turn around for U soon.”
Braunstein — who was on probation at the time for menacing his ex-girlfriend, the late fashion editor Jane Larkworthy — videotaped the savage sexual abuse.
Braunstein went on the run after the vicious rape, becoming the most wanted man in America. The NYPD launched a nationwide manhunt, with daily headlines tracking the creep’s movements from upstate New York to Ohio.
After two months, on Dec. 16, he was spotted strolling across the University of Memphis campus.
“I’m the guy you’re looking for,” he shouted at university cops as they closed in.
He then stabbed himself in the neck more than a dozen times with a 3-inch blade.
“[He] stated that he cannot believe that he missed [killing himself], because he did research and studied the carotid artery,” cops revealed in a statement follwing his arrest.
Weeks before the start of his sensational monthlong trial, Braunstein feebly tried hanging himself inside Rikers Island. Prosecutors argued in court Braunstein was self-harming to delay the criminal proceedings.
His lawyers contended he suffered from depression, and claimed he attempted suicide in late 2004 – when he worked for W magazine — by carving into his own chest with a knife. However, he told police Larkworthy had attacked him.
“He was incredibly charming,” Larkworthy — who died of cancer earlier this month — testified in court at his 2007 trial. “He was incredibly intelligent. And flirtatious. And very intriguing. And very funny. I loved him.”
Braunstein was convicted of kidnapping, sexual abuse, robbery and burglary on May 23, 2007.
In sentencing Braunstein to 18 years to life in prison, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Thomas Farber scolded him for displaying “true apathy for the victims in this case.”
After his conviction, his late mother said she wanted him to kill himself while he was behind bars, believing he’d be unable to adapt to prison life.
During a jailhouse interview with The Post at Clinton Correctional Facility in upstate Dannemora six months after his sentencing, Braunstein confessed, “It’s a good thing that I’m locked up, because I’ve been having violent fantasies. I don’t know what I’m capable of.”
He was unrepentant and even called Larkworthy, his first victim, “evil incarnate.”
Braunstein made headlines again in 2013 when prison guards swiped his copy of kidnap victim Jaycee Dugard’s 2011 autobiography, “A Stolen Life.” Prison administrators had had banned the book, because Dugard described being sexually assaulted in it.
Braunstein was also barred in 2013 from reading “Dark Dreams,” a 2001 book by profiler Roy Hazelwood that explores the minds of sexual predators.
In 2014, he sued officials at Dannemora prison for denying him access to “Cellar of Horror: The Story of Gary Heidnik,” a serial murderer and rapist. He was also barred access to alt-porn website Burning Angel.
After his 2007 trial, Braunstein also lost a bid seeking the return of bondage pornography investigators had seized from his home. Today, he’s being held at Wende Correctional Facility, a maximum secuirty prison in Alden, N.Y.
Braunstein’s bid for freedom comes at a time when New York’s Parole Board is under heavy scrutiny for springing 43 cop killers in the past eight years.
Critics say the panel is filled with lefty political has-beens adhering to new rules that now weigh the supposed rehabilitation of criminals in prison more heavily than the heinous nature of their crimes.
The 16-member board, largely appointed by former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, includes the wife of a convicted killer who served more than 30 years behind bars.
Victim rights advocates said Braunstein should stay locked up for good.
“This rapist’s crimes were exceptionally vicious,” said Jane Manning, director of the group Women’s Equal Justice and a former sex crimes prosecutor with the Queens district attorney’s office. “He vowed to reoffend if given a chance. He should never be released.”
Additional reporting by Tina Moore
