Reporter was stabbed on sub, prosecutor says
COPENHAGEN, Denmark — A Danish inventor’s explanation of how journalist Kim Wall died on his submarine was further cast into doubt after an autopsy revealed she had been stabbed more than 14 times and police found video footage of slain women on a hard drive linked to the suspect.
Wall’s torso — minus her head, arms and legs — was found on a beach on Amager Island near Copenhagen in August, 11 days after she went to interview the inventor, Peter Madsen, on the submarine he built.
Madsen, 46, initially gave shifting explanations for the disappearance of Wall, 30. But he eventually said that she had died on board the vessel after a hatch unexpectedly collapsed and hit her on the head while she was climbing stairs in the submarine’s tower.
“I didn’t see her die by any deliberate act; I saw her die of something completely different, saw her fall down,” he told the court on Tuesday, according to Politiken, Denmark’s largest daily newspaper.
A judge in Copenhagen District Court, Anette Burko, said his account was “not reasonable.”
He was initially charged with involuntary manslaughter, and it was upgraded to manslaughter, which in Danish law is the legal equivalent of murder.
In a court review of Madsen’s pretrial detention this week, prosecutor Jakob Buch-Jepsen presented an autopsy report that said Wall’s limbs had been removed with a saw. It said she had sustained several stab wounds, including 14 to her genitals alone. Her DNA was found on Madsen’s hand, nostrils and neck, the report said.
In court, Madsen denied killing or mutilating Wall. He said he had panicked and used a rope to pull her from the floor of the submarine before he dumped her body at sea.
The autopsy has not been able to establish the cause of Wall’s death. To back up Madsen’s explanation, his lawyer, Betina Hald Engmark, pointed to a mark found on the journalist that could have resulted from a fall, according to the forensic report.