Plot to kill the queen
The Herald Sun is reporting that an accused rapist planned to murder Anna Wintour. First Karl and now Anna. Man, it sure is tough at the top.
(I'm having trouble getting that link below to work, so just click on the headline of the post, and it will take you to the full article.)
Anna Wintour, the legendarily frosty and demanding editor-in-chief of style guide American Vogue, was allegedly intended as a victim of accused kidnapper Peter Braunstein.
The New York Post revealed that Braunstein ranted in a personal manifesto, read to a court, about killing Wintour.
He wrote: "So I'll tell you why I'm going to kill Anna Wintour -- because I just feel like it."
Braunstein, a former fashion writer, has admitted dressing as a New York firefighter and setting off two homemade smoke bombs to trick his way into a co-worker's apartment on Halloween, October 31, 2005.
He has confessed to holding a gun to the victim's head, drugging her with chloroform, and then stripping her and binding her to her bed.
Wearing a black ski mask, he then raped her over a 13-hour period in her Chelsea apartment in New York.
His defence team argues the acts were committed unintentionally because of his severe mental illness.
Braunstein was earlier sacked as a fashion media critic for Women's Wear Daily after causing a fuss when he found he'd received only one ticket to the Vogue Fashion Awards.
Braunstein penned his manifesto in the months leading up to the attack on his co-worker at Fairchild Publications.
The New York Post reported that no details of Braunstein's were disclosed in court, apart from his saying that Wintour's death was to be up close and personal.
Wintour is widely believed to have been the inspiration for the fashion editor in The Devil Wears Prada, a character played in the hit film by Meryl Streep.
The Post said that according to parts of the manifesto, read aloud in the jury's absence in Manhattan Supreme Court, Braunstein wrote that just shooting Wintour would be "too impersonal".
Braunstein also reportedly celebrated late '70s serial killer Son of Sam (David Berkowitz) and the Columbine High School shooters Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold.
The New York Post said that Braunstein had also admired Andrew Cunanan for his 1997 Miami Beach murder of fashion designer Gianni Versace.
And he even applauded fictional killer Hannibal Lecter as an important criminal literary figure "because of his intellect".
Last week, jurors also heard about Braunstein's loathing for Wintour, the Post reported.
He wrote that she "just never talked to peons like us . . . It was beneath her. And all the while I'm thinking 'Who is this skank?' "
He said she played up a "let them eat cake" Marie Antoinette-style regal attitude, but "all she does is edit a magazine -- that's it. So what's with the royalty routine?"
Braunstein also wrote: "Wintour will be escorted by eunuchs to a place in Hell run entirely by large rats. Even Satan can't get in there, because he and the rats had a falling-out a couple of millennia ago.
"The rats, apparently, are unionised and Satan tried to break the union; there's been a lot of bad blood ever since."
The trial continues.
WTF?! That shit is crazy. At least the people who wanted to kidnap Karl Lagerfeld had a purpose. This guy is just nuts. But I'm sure Anna has dealt with enough nut jobs in her time... she does work in the fashion industry.
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