NYC- Detectives are poring over Halloween sex-attack suspect Peter Braunstein’s glowing article about a French photographer – who once featured a model tied up, wrapped in plastic and holding three pairs of expensive women’s shoes.
Braunstein is suspected of binding a former co-worker in tape and photographing her in different pairs of shoes while molesting her in her Chelsea apartment Oct. 31.
Cops hope the article that the journalist once wrote for his former employer, W magazine, and other stories he penned will reveal the innermost workings of his twisted mind so they will know how to interrogate him once they capture him.
They have come close. On Friday, they came within 15 minutes of nabbing him after a tipster told them he was on a Chelsea street.
Earlier in the week, Braunstein was spotted in Queens at a Richmond Hill subway station near his mother’s home, police sources said.
The article that detectives are paying particular attention to is a portrait of photographer Guy Bourdin, whom Braunstein calls “the godfather of porno-chic.”
In the story, which appeared in W’s October 2001 issue, Braunstein calls Bourdin’s work “a meticulously executed tableau about his childhood fears,” adding that his pictures “are as much about the sublime as they are about the profane.”
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Bourdin’s photos – surreal and sadomasochistic – appeared in Paris Vogue for 30 years, starting in the mid-1950s.
Braunstein’s article mentions the photographer’s “reputedly sadistic treatment of models and subordinates, his mother fixation and misogyny, his morbid obsessions and his tortured love life.”
Bourdin “supposedly tortured, nearly killed and drove to suicide” several women, it says.
One of the photos accompanying the article shows a model tied up, wrapped in plastic from head to toe and holding three pairs of Charles Jourdan shoes. The surrealistic photo was, in fact, an ad for the company.
The picture has eerie parallels to the attack the 41-year-old Braunstein is suspected of committing.
Cops say that posing as a fireman – and wearing equipment he purchased on eBay – Braunstein tricked his way into the Chelsea apartment of a woman he once had worked just 10 feet from.
Then, cops say, Braunstein chloroformed her, tied her up, shackled her legs and molested her for the next 121/2 hours – videotaping the chilling attack as he carried it out.
Braunstein outlined a similar assault in a scenario found on his computer after he bound his ex-girlfriend to a chair and threatened her with a knife. He pleaded guilty to menacing for that in July.
The TV show “America’s Most Wanted” had a segment on Braunstein Saturday night and received “a good number of tips,” a spokesman said.