Fugitive Writer Waives Extradition to N.Y.

Romance writer Barbara Joslyn, whose two years as a fugitive ended last week when she stabbed herself as officers pounded on her motel room door, waived extradition Thursday to New York, where she will be sentenced for stealing a Picasso sketch from a friend’s apartment.

Joslyn, 48, whose sutured chest wounds were clearly visible during her brief appearance in Los Angeles Superior Court, said as she left the courtroom Thursday that she was only sorry that her doctors “did too good a job” in saving her life after the apparent suicide attempt.

Investigators say she stabbed herself with a kitchen knife as police officers and FBI agents burst into her $40-a-night motel room in Century City. After treatment at County-USC Medical Center, she was placed in the infirmary at Sibyl Brand Institute, where she will remain until she is returned to New York.

Joslyn, author of the novels “Strange Sins” and “Private Dancers,” was accused in 1994 of joining Australian film producer Ian Pringle in the burglary of a friend’s apartment in New York. Pringle, producer of a documentary on neo-Nazi skinheads, pleaded guilty to the theft and served a nine-month sentence. Joslyn, who fought the charges, was convicted of burglary but fled before she could be sentenced.