Headless body has journo’s DNA
DANISH police said yesterday that DNA tests from a headless torso found in the Baltic Sea match with missing Swedish journalist Kim Wall, who is believed to have died on an amateur-built submarine that sank earlier this month.
Wall, 30, was last seen alive on August 10 on Danish inventor Peter Madsen’s submarine, which sank off Denmark’s eastern coast the day after.
Madsen, who was arrested on preliminary manslaughter charges, denies having anything to do with Wall’s disappearance.
The headless torso was found by a member of the public who was cycling near where she was believed to have died.
Copenhagen police said the arms and legs had been “deliberately been cut off” the body.
Investigator Jens Moeller Jensen told reporters yesterday that the body was attached to a piece of metal, “likely with the purpose to make it sink.”
The body “washed ashore after having been at sea for a while,” he said. He added police found marks on the torso indicating someone tried to press air out of the body so that it would fall to the bottom.
Dried blood was found inside the submarine that also matched with Wall, he said.
“On August 12, we secured a hair brush and a toothbrush to ensure her DNA,” Moeller Jensen said.
The cause of the journalist’s death is not yet known, police said. Madsen, who remains detained in police custody, initially told police that she disembarked from the submarine to a Copenhagen island several hours into their trip and that he did not know what happened to her afterwards, but later told authorities “an accident occurred on-board that led to her death” and he “buried” her at sea.