Missing journalist ‘died in accident on home-made sub’

The Danish owner of a home-built submarine said a missing Swedish journalist died on board in an accident and he buried her at sea in an unspecified location, according to police.

Copenhagen police said submarine owner Peter Madsen will continue to be held on preliminary manslaughter charges. Police declined to provide more details.

Kim Wall, a 30-year-old journalist reported to be aboard Madsen’s submarine UC3 Nautilus on an assignment, disappeared more than a week ago.

He has denied any wrong doing.

Ms Wall’s family previously told the media that she had worked in many dangerous places as a journalist, but it was unimaginable that “something could happen... just a few miles from the childhood home”.

Police earlier said Madsen had reported dropping her off on a redeveloped island in Copenhagen’s harbour about three-and-a-half hours into their trip.

Madsen was arrested hours after his 40-ton, nearly 18-metre (60-foot) long submarine sank off Denmark’s eastern coast.

Before his arrest, he appeared on Danish television to discuss the submarine’s sinking and his rescue.

It was the journalist’s boyfriend who alerted authorities that the sub had not returned from a test run, police said.

Ms Wall was known to be researching a feature about Madsen, an inventor who built his submarine through crowdfunding in 2008. She has written for the New York Times, Guardian, Vice and the South China Morning Post.

They met at around 7pm on Thursday 10 August at Refshaleoen, a harbour area in Copenhagen. She boarded the Nautilus and was reported missing by her boyfriend at 2:30am on Friday.

The sub was not equipped with satellite tracking so after the alarm was raised rescue services searched for the vessel for hours. It was not until 10:30am on Friday that the first sighting was confirmed from a lighthouse.

However, a merchant ship has since reported coming within 30m of the unlit sub to the north-west of the Oresund bridge at about midnight on Thursday. Police say at that point the submarine crossed the channel from Denmark towards Sweden in the southern part of the Oresund.

Madsen, who has been described as a “hobby engineer”, claims Nautilus is the world’s biggest privatelybuilt submarine. He now runs Rocket-madsens Space Laboratory, which is funded by donations and aims to launch a rocket from a floating platform in the Baltic.