Twisted fake firefighter Peter Braunstein says the nubile actresses of “Gossip Girl” are the only thing keeping him from killing himself in prison.
“There’s another incentive or two for staying in the game, namely, Season 3 of ‘Gossip Girl,’ ” says the suicidal, stir-crazy sex fiend in a seven-page, handwritten letter to The Post.
“But still I ask myself: Sure, it’s probably going to be great, but is ‘Gossip Girl’ in and of itself reason enough to stay alive? We’ll see.”
The fixated fashion writer donned a firefighter’s uniform on Halloween night 2005, started a smoky fire in his victim’s Chelsea building and used it as a ruse to gain entry into her apartment. He knocked her out with chloroform, forced her to strip naked, tied her to a bed in stilettos and molested her for a sickening 12 hours.
“Before I concocted the fireman idea, when I was just an extremely hurt and practically nonfunctioning person, I felt like the most unwanted person in New York,” the former media critic for Women’s Wear Daily writes. “And then overnight I became NYC’s Most Wanted, and then one of America’s Most Wanted. It was just so ironic.”
Braunstein, serving 18 years to life, watches his favorite show on a 13-inch black-and-white TV set in his windowless, 6-by-9-foot cell in Clinton Correctional Facility in upstate Dannemora.
He also keeps his sanity in check watching the quirky crime drama “The Mentalist,” the new “Melrose Place” and “The Beautiful Life,” about fledgling fashion models, a world where Braunstein once held carte-blanche.
While Braunstein most likely will never see freedom again, it hasn’t stopped scores of female admirers from writing to him. One woman has begged to visit him, but so far he’s declined, cheekily explaining, “I don’t really do relationships anymore.”
Still, he admits that he likes the attention from his “fan club.”
“One silver lining involves pen-pal sympathizers, people — well, actually, just women — who followed my case and write to me, telling me that I’ve been wronged and misunderstood.”
The only other interruption of his bleak daily routine was a trip to Ohio, where he stood trial and was convicted for robbing and abducting a psychiatrist while on the lam.
He fondly recalls, “We flew there and I got to behold, for the first time in over two years, regular, non-inmate people at the airport.” He also remembers how cops treated him to a takeout meal.
“The cops magnanimously treated me to a burger and fries at Applebee’s (!) and although I had to eat in the back of the car while handcuffed, it was still so very thrilling, so decadent, really,” he scribed.
“I started thinking ‘Hey, this isn’t half bad, what with the planes, the franchise-restaurant food, maybe I should start copping to some of the still-unsolved stuff I pulled during the manhunt and rack up some more frequent-flier miles.’ ”
But he prefers life behind bars.
“I think I’m the only guy here who sincerely never wants to get out. The mere notion of aspiring to another shot at friends, family, job, girlfriend, wife, home, of revisiting any of that, just depresses me to no end.”