Danish Killing: severed head of journalist found by police divers
SPECIAL REPORT
THE severed head of a young Swedish journalist has been discovered two months after she was killed on board a submarine built by Danish inventor Peter Madsen.
Divers also found Kim Wall’s severed legs, her clothing and a knife in bags weighted with “heavy metal pieces”, according to Danish detectives. Her arms are yet to be found. The 30-yearold freelance journalist’s naked torso washed up 11 days after Madsen’s submarine sank in shallow waters off Copenhagen on August 11.
Prosecutors revealed multiple knife and needle-stick wounds found in the ribcage and groin were inflicted at the time of her death or shortly after.
Madsen initially claimed he dropped Wall on an island hours before the selfbuilt submarine sank but the 46-yearold later changed his story and said Wall died after being accidentally hit by a heavy hatch in the submarine.
Last night, Copenhagen police investigator Jens Moeller Jensen said there were no fractures to Wall’s skull and he declined to comment on the discovery of the knife. Moeller Jensen said: “We found a leg. An hour after, another leg. And shortly after a head also lay in a bag that was weighed down by several pieces of metal.”
He added that they also found a bag containing Kim Wall’s clothes and shoes. “In the same bag laid a knife, and there were some car pipes to weigh the bag down,” he said.
Madsen is in custody awaiting trial for manslaughter and indecent han- dling of a corpse. At an earlier court hearing Copenhagen prosecutor Jakob Buch-Jepsen revealed images of the torture, decapitation and burning of women were found on a computer at Madsen’s lab. The inventor claims other people had access to the computer.
Wall was a respected journalist who had reported from Uganda, Kenya, Cuba, North Korea and New York. She boarded Madsen’s UC3 Nautilus submarine to interview the inventor at 7pm on August 10.
Madsen insists she died after she was hit by a 155lb hatch when it slipped from his fingers. It had been a “terrible accident”, according to Madsen, and he had “buried her at sea” after attaching a metal weight around her waist.
Speaking to a court via a video link from prison, Madsen said he then felt suicidal and planned to take his own life by sinking his submarine, but he swam to safety and was rescued by the crew of a nearby boat. Police discovered traces of Kim Wall’s clothing scattered around the submarine, including underwear, and he was detained. Madsen later claimed that this clothing came off when he hauled the lifeless corpse through the submarine hatch.
Madsen found fame after financing the building of the 40-tonne, 18-metre Nautilus through crowdfunding, completing it in 2008. Before his arrest, he ran an organisation called Rocket-Madsens Space Laboratory, which is funded by donations.