The submarine UC3 Nautilus of Danish inventor Peter Madsen sits in Copenhagen, Denmark. A court has sentenced Madsen to life in prison over the murder of journalist Kim Wall inside the craft.
Dorothee Thiesing/AP
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Dorothee Thiesing/AP
The submarine UC3 Nautilus of Danish inventor Peter Madsen sits in Copenhagen, Denmark. A court has sentenced Madsen to life in prison over the murder of journalist Kim Wall inside the craft.
Dorothee Thiesing/AP
A Copenhagen court has sentenced eccentric inventor Peter Madsen to life in prison over the murder of Kim Wall, a journalist who was killed after joining Madsen on his submarine last August. Parts of Wall’s body were recovered after Madsen claimed he “buried her at sea.”
The case has captivated Denmark and drawn international headlines, with its shocking and gruesome details.
Danish authorities were skeptical of Madsen’s account of a horrible accident that killed Wall. As NPR’s Colin Dwyer has relayed the accused’s version of events:
“Madsen told the court that Swedish journalist Kim Wall, who had accompanied him on the UC3 Nautilus for a planned profile, died when a heavy hatch escaped his grip and fell shut on her head. He said he had climbed through the 155-pound hatch himself and was holding it open for her to follow — then, according to his account related by The Guardian, he lost his footing and heard a sickening thud after it fell.”
The submarine had left a dock in Copenhagen’s harbor on Aug. 10, 2017. But one day later, the sub sank. Madsen was rescued; he initially told police he had let her off the sub after just a few hours. But it was also noted that he had fresh scratches on both arms. No sign of Wall was found until some of her remains washed ashore. After the submarine was recovered and brought on land, blood in the craft was matched to Wall’s DNA.
Madsen later admitted to dismembering Wall’s body, reportedly after investigators found videos of grisly torture on his computer.
In January, prosecutors in Copenhagen announced that in addition to a homicide charge, Madsen would face accusations that included “indecent handling of a corpse, and other sexual relations than intercourse with the female Swedish journalist, Kim Wall.”
Wall’s death brought an outpouring of tributes and mourning for the 30-year-old journalist, who had published work in outlets such as The New York Times, The Guardian, Harper’s Magazine and The Atlantic.