Suspicion over sunk sub
Inventor held on murder charge after reporter disappears.
The owner of an amateurbuilt submarine was arrested on suspicion of murder yesterday after his vessel sank off Denmark’s coast and a journalist who had joined him for a short voyage was reported missing.
Copenhagen police said the man denied killing the missing woman and reported dropping her off on a redeveloped island in Copenhagen’s harbour about 31⁄2 hours into their night trip.
The statement did not identify the submarine’s owner, Peter Madsen, 46, but the Danish inventor’s financing of the project through crowdfunding and first launch of the UC3 Nautilus in 2008 made headlines.
The 40-tonne, nearly 18m long vessel has been described as the largest privately-built submarine of its kind.
Before his arrest, Madsen appeared on Danish television to discuss the submarine’s sinking and his rescue. The journalist’s boyfriend alerted authorities on Friday that the sub had not returned from a test run, police said.
“I am fine, but sad because Nautilus went down,” Madsen told Denmark’s TV2 channel.
Madsen said “a minor problem with a ballast tank turned into a major issue” that ultimately caused the submarine to sink.
“It took about 30 seconds for Nautilus to sink, and I couldn’t close any hatches or anything,” he said. “But I guess that was pretty good, because I otherwise still would have been down there.”
The woman was a journalist writing about Madsen and his submarine, Swedish and Danish media reported.
Danish Navy spokesman Anders Damgaard. said Madsen the and journalist were the only two on board.
Copenhagen’s Deputy Police Inspector Jens Moller Jensen says investigators are looking for witnesses who may have seen the woman after the time reported she disembarked.
Police said the submerged submarine was lying in just over 2m of water, but divers had not been able to enter it safely. They were hoping to tow it to port and open it then.
Madsen’s company RML Spacelab is seeking to send people into space and is developing a rocket, floating launch pad and astronaut testing machine, its website says.
Two helicopters and three ships combed the sea from Copenhagen to the Baltic Sea island of Bornholm after police received the report it had not Madsen got back to land just after 3.30am. It was spotted by a lighthouse in Koge Bay, south of the city, at 10.30am.
“A radio contact was established for the boat, which, according to the owner, was heading towards the harbour,” police said.
Half an hour later “the submarine suddenly sank and the owner was subsequently rescued on a private motorboat”.
Madsen “told us he had technical problems” when asked to explain why the submarine failed to respond to radio contact earlier in the day, Damgaard said.