Life for Danish entrepreneur in ‘sub murder’
COPENHAGEN (Reuters) – A Danish court sentenced inventor Peter Madsen to life in prison on Wednesday for murdering and dismembering a Swedish journalist aboard his homebuilt submarine in Copenhagen harbor in August 2017.
Madsen, dressed in black, sat completely still as his sentence was handed down in the Copenhagen City Court.
Police detained him on August 11 last year when he emerged from his submarine without Wall, a 30-year-old Swedish journalist who was researching a story on the man who was already well known in Denmark for his submarines and his plan to send a human into space in a home-made rocket.
Later that month, police identified a torso washed ashore as Wall’s. Arms, legs and a head determined to be that of the victim were also later retrieved by the authorities.
“After a total assessment, the court finds that the defendant murdered Kim Wall,” Judge Anette Burkoe said.
The court decided that Madsen had “dismembered the body to conceal the evidence from the crime he had committed,” she said.
Wall was a freelance journalist whose work had appeared in Harper’s Magazine, The Guardian, The New York Times, Foreign Policy, the South China Morning Post, The Atlantic and TIME.
The prosecutors had said that Wall died either by strangulation or having her throat cut. Forensics cannot confirm either allegation.
Madsen, 47, admitted to dismembering the body and throwing it overboard his 17m. submarine but he denied murdering Wall.
He was also accused of “sexual assault without intercourse, of a particularly dangerous nature” in relation to the 14 interior and exterior stab wounds investigators found to Wall’s genitals.
He claimed Wall died from breathing exhaust gases that had leaked in due to a technical error while he was on deck. Forensics has also not been able to back up his claim.
“The explanation is not credible and is not consistent with the following decision to dismember the body,” the judge said, noting that the jury found the murder had been planned.
A life sentence in Denmark is typically around 15 years without parole. The longest serving convict in modern Danish history is set to begin his 34th year behind bars after the murder of two young adults in 1985.
Wall’s mother, who was not in court on Wednesday, has said: “She gave a voice to the weak, the vulnerable and marginalized people. That voice would have been needed for a long, long time. Now it won’t be so.”
Madsen will appeal against the sentence, his defense attorney told the court. The defendant had sought a minimum sentence of six months in prison for dismembering the corpse.