Ex-police officer on murder charge
DANISH INVENTOR Peter Madsen has been given a life sentence after being found guilty of torturing and murdering Swedish reporter Kim Wall before dismembering her body during a private submarine trip.
Copenhagen City Court Judge Anette Burkoe said she and two jurors unanimously decided Wall’s death was a murder, finding Madsen also guilty of sexual assault and the defilement of a corpse.
“It is the court’s assessment that the defendant killed Kim Wall,” Ms Burkoe told the packed courtroom.
During the 12 days of the trial that began on March 8, the court heard evidence that Madsen, 47, lured 30-year-old Wall on to his homemade submarine with the promise of an interview.
Ms Wall, a freelance journalist who wrote for leading magazines and newspapers, was last seen on August 10 waving to her boyfriend and other friends as the submarine sailed off.
Her dismembered torso was found days later at sea off Copenhagen, and other body parts were found in plastic bags in October.
“We are talking about a cynical and planned sexual assault and brutal murder of a random woman, who in connection with her journalistic work had accepted an offer to go sailing in the defendant’s submarine,” Ms Burkoe told the court.
Immediately after the verdict, Madsen’s lawyer, Betina Hald Engmark, told the court she would appeal.
The court ordered Madsen kept behind bars during the appeals process.
Throughout the trial Madsen denied murder, saying 30-yearold Wall died accidentally inside the submarine. He changed his story several times.
Initially he told authorities that he had dropped her off on shore and did not know what had happened to her.
He then claimed she had died accidentally when hit in the head by the submarine’s hatch.
Finally, after her decapitated head was found by police divers in a weighted-down bag along with her appendages and the skull showed no signs of fracture, he said she had been asphyxiated in an equipment malfunction.
He also initially denied dismembering her, then confessed that he had done so and said he had thrown her body parts into the Baltic Sea.
Ms Burkoe noted the discrepancies, saying Madsen “failed to give trustworthy explanations”.
She added that Madsen “has shown interest for killing and maiming of people and has shown interest for impaling”.
Prosecutor Buch-Jepsen claimed Ms Wall’s murder was sexually motivated and premeditated because Madsen brought along tools he normally didn’t take when sailing, including a saw and sharpened screwdrivers.
Madsen’s defence lawyer had argued for his acquittal, saying he should only be sentenced for the lesser charge of cutting Ms Wall’s body into pieces. The cause of death has never been established but the court found that Madsen “cut the body into pieces to hide what had happened”.
A former police officer suspected of being a serial killer tied to dozens of killings and sexual assaults in the 1970s and 1980s has been charged with murder, California authorities said.
Ventura County District Attorney Greg Totten said his office charged Joseph James DeAngelo, 72, with two counts of first-degree murder in the 1980 killings of a couple.