6 July 23-29, 2026 miaminewtimes.com | browardpalmbeach.com NEW TIMES | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | NEWS | LETTERS | CONTENTS | Month XX–Month XX, 2008 miaminewtimes.com MIAMI NEW TIMES | MUSIC | CAFE | FILM | ART | STAGE | NIGHT+DAY | METRO | RIPTIDE | LETTERS | CONTENTS | name. Flanked by his mother and father, the 14-year-old sits stiffly in a light gray polo shirt, his braces flashing behind an embarrassed grin. His father lifts a diploma into the air and, for a moment, the two hold opposite ends of it for the camera. Then his father leans in, ap- pearing to go for a noogie. Peters subtly motions for him to stop. Sec- onds later, the livestream cuts to the next graduate. It was June 20, 2020, just months into the COVID-19 pandemic, and Peters was gradu- ating via Zoom from eighth grade at All Saints Episcopal Day School, the small Catholic school he had attended in Hoboken, New Jer- sey, since kindergarten. By most accounts, Peters appeared to be a normal teenager. The son of a businessman and a former bodybuilder, he grew up with a younger sister and a family dog. His family went on ski vacations and spent summers in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. But early in the pandemic, he says he be- gan spending upwards of 14 hours a day on- line — playing Grand Theft Auto V, watching bodybuilder Rich Piana, and sinking deeper into the hyper-masculine corners of the inter- net where young men traded advice about steroids, jawlines, and facial symmetry. One forum in particular became a fixation: Looksmax.org. At the ripe age of 14, he began secretly or- dering testosterone online. He would later say he shipped the vials through General Delivery (a postal service allowing those without a per- manent address to receive mail at a designated post office) so his parents wouldn’t intercept them before he could inject himself. When they discovered the vials, he said, his parents would throw them away. Eventu- ally, they stopped trying. “They realized that there was kind of nothing that they could do to stop my ascen- sion,” Peters later told the New York Times. During long, pseudo-scientific discussions about facial harmony and sexual marketplace value, under anonymous usernames, Peters documented his physical transformation in obsessive detail. He spent hours Photoshop- ping images of himself to simulate future sur- geries and idealized versions of his face. Offline, Peters maintained the profile of a high-achieving student. He made the honor roll at Seton Hall Preparatory School, a pres- tigious Catholic all-boys school in New Jer- sey, where tuition costs roughly $24,000 a year. According to his LinkedIn profile, he graduated in spring 2024 with a 3.9 GPA and scored a near-perfect 1570 on the SAT. One former classmate described Peters as “pretty reserved” throughout high school. The person he later watched gain fame and notoriety online, he said, seemed far removed from the teenager he remembered, particu- larly in how outgoing and “attention-seeking” he became. “Once I saw him go viral, the change in his personality was literally night and day,” the student, who graduated alongside Peters in 2024, told New Times. Every summer, Peters’ family stayed in Cape Cod and spent time at the beach, he pre- viously told GQ. In summer 2024, Peters took a job working security at the Chatham Squire, a famously chaotic Cape Cod bar packed with tourists and hard-partying summer crowds. Just months into the gig, he was facing criminal charges after allegedly joining a massive brawl at the bar. Late one night in mid-August, while he worked security there, members of a large engagement party began tugging on bras hanging from the rafters. Staff — including a then 18-year-old Peters — asked them to stop, according to police records obtained by New Times. Records of the incident describe a fight breaking out between members of the party and staff as security tried to force people out of the bar. Surveillance footage reviewed by police allegedly showed the father of the soon-to-be groom grabbing Peters by the neck. Peters threw punches in return. A photo attached to the report shows Peters with several red scratches on his neck. In a 911 call obtained by New Times, a woman screams and cries to a dispatcher be- fore explaining that she had just watched a man — whom she didn’t know, and who ap- peared to be in his 60s — get “punched in the head” and hit his head on the floor. She de- scribes to the dispatcher how fellow bar pa- trons performed CPR on the man. “Please! Oh my god! He’s an old man,” she cries, weeping loudly into the phone. “Please, I’m so scared.” Three weeks later, police charged Peters with misdemeanor assault and battery and felony assault and battery on a person over 60 — his alleged victims being a 56-year-old woman and a 63-year-old man, who was also arrested for assault and battery on Peters. In a statement provided to police, the woman’s son said she spent the night in the hospital and received stitches in her face. “As a note, I have a clear memory of the in- dividual who hit my mom,” his statement reads. “After the fact, our group was able to identify the specific individual as Braden Pe- ters through social media.” Michael Anderson, chief at the Chatham Police Department, tells New Times that both charges against Peters were dismissed in January 2025 at the victims’ request. In fall 2024, Peters enrolled at Sacred Heart University, a small Catholic college in Con- necticut. One night in early September, Sa- mantha* — then a sophomore at the university — was out with friends at Rumaj, a since-shut- tered nightclub in nearby New Haven that was popular with Sacred Heart students. (New Times is using a pseudonym because she spoke on the condition of anonymity.) Sometime during the evening, Samantha recalls, Peters approached her and attempted to strike up a romantic connection. “I didn’t even get to say my name, and then he picked me up and tried to make out with me,” she says. “I was like, okay, that’s a little much.” She recalls Peters as a “wanderer” who didn’t appear to have a set group of friends. “It kind of seemed like he was trying to fill some part of his life by jumping around to dif- ferent groups,” she says. Samantha says she got Peters’ Snapchat that night and they corresponded for some time afterward. Eventually, she rejected him after hearing rumors on campus that he was taking steroids. Samantha recalls people posting the rumors on the social-networking Looksmaxxing from p5 Bacara is the new “streamer-first” nightclub in Miami Beach. TheCameraClicks.com
