He's a wild-eyed monster, one of the scariest criminals in America. He subjected a helpless woman to a Halloween night of terror.

"You had the rope, the knife, the gun, the chloroform. You were there to attack that woman," says INSIDE EDITION's Paul Boyd.
"Oh, yeah! Absolutely!" says Peter Braunstein.
"You snapped–" says Boyd.
"I snapped," Braunstein agrees.
"And you became a sick twisted psychopath."
"Yeaaahhhh!" he says.

Peter Braunstein once lived a glamorous lifestyle at the center of New York's fashion industry. He was a media critic for Women's Wear Daily and dated the beauty director of W magazine, Jane Larkworthy.

But after she dumped him, he wanted revenge on the whole fashion world.

"This woman seemed like the ideal victim because she represented everything I loathed," Braunstein explains.

His fiendish crime inspired an episode of CSI. On Halloween 2005, he dressed as a fireman and set off smoke bombs to trick his way into the apartment of one of his ex-girlfriend's co-workers.

"I didn't really know what I was going to do after that. Was this going to be a completely like, insane Hannibal Lecter-type evening, was it going to be your worse crime nightmare?
"You sexually abused her for 13 hours. A lot of people are going to watch this and say, there's a special place in hell for a guy who would do that," says Boyd.
Braunstein says, "Of course, I understand that."

He laughs hysterically as he recalls his victim's closet full of expensive fashionable shoes. "She had just an enormous number of shoes...it was striking! I couldn't believe someone would have this many shoes!"

It was night of unspeakable terror for the victim. She was chloroformed, forced to strip at knifepoint, bound to her bed, and constantly threatened. The ordeal lasted 13 terrifying hours, but she somehow she managed to talk Braunstein out of raping and murdering her.  
 
"She kept me cool. I was always about to lose it and because she was so even tempered it just kept me in check," Braunstein says.
"So are we supposed to thank you for not killing her?" Boyd asks.
"No, you're not supposed to thank me for not killing her although I think she's probably grateful I didn't kill her, I mean who wouldn't be."

She wasn't his only victim. He stalked his glamorous ex-girlfriend, posting nude pictures of her on the internet. 

And he even plotted to murder famed Vogue editor Anna Wintour.

"I knew her schedule. I knew the whole routine," Braunstein says.
"And you really thought about killing her?"
"Yeah, I thought about killing her."

He went on the lam, but was captured in Memphis six weeks later. He says the front page headlines made him proud.

"This is my first major crime, my first felony...it was like being a rookie in the major leagues and your first time at bat you hit a home run!" 

And Braunstein, who's serving 23 years to life, has a bizarre new obsession: Gossip Girl. "Monday nights, it's like sacred, man. Everyone in the cell block knows that. No one talks to me when Gossip Girl is on."

He is darkly fixated on Blair Waldorf, the character played by actress Leighton Meester. "Even though she's scheming and has this thing about power, she's also loyal. She's everything that I wanted in a girl."

He actually sees himself as Heath Ledger's terrifying Joker in the The Dark Knight. "Everyone sees a lot of me in the Joker character here; it's kind of like the running joke, like, that guy's lot like you."

He shows INSIDE EDITION his scar from a botched suicide attempt moments before he was arrested. He even scorns paramedics who kept him alive. "These idiots, like out of a misguided sense of professionalism, saved my life."

He says he knows he belongs behind bars.

"That doesn't bother you that the stuff coming out of your mouth is completely insane?" asks Boyd.
"Would you prefer this sort of insincere remorse that a lot of people fabricate?" Braunstein asks.

So if you are looking for remorse from Braunstein...forget it.

"What would happen if you got out of prison tomorrow?" Boyd asks him.
"I would start right where I left off," he says.

The good news is, it's unlikely that Braunstein will ever be released. In the unlikely event that Braunstein were ever paroled in New York, he would be immediately transferred to Ohio, where he faces a 23-year sentence for attacking a physician