The Kim Wall Murder

Freelance journalist Kim Wall finally set up an interview with celebrity inventor Peter Madsen.  The best part was that he was going to take her on his self-built mini-submarine, The Nautilus, for a two-hour tour around Køge Bay.  She would never return.  Listen to how one man’s obsession led him to commit a vile, heinous murder.

Utställning Kim Wall Ystad 2019 Foto: Jonn Leffmann / CC BY

Location

This case occurs in Copenhagen, Denmark which is the capital of Denmark. Denmark’s population is 5.8 million as of 2018. Comparatively, Pennsylvania has 12.8 million people. Copenhagen has a population of 603,000 as of 2017. It is the most populated city in Denmark.

Copenhagen was originally a Viking fishing village. It’s linked to Sweden by the Øresund Bridge. Copenhagen is considered one of the most environmentally friendly cities in the world and ranks high in quality of life and happiness.

Denmark is a democracy and monarchy at the same time. The reigning queen is Queen Margrethell and is one of Europe’s oldest monarchies with a continuing line.

August 10, 2017

On August 10, 2017, freelance journalist, Kim Wall, had been working on a story she was looking to publish in Wired magazine. It was on the eccentric, Danish inventor/entrepreneur, Peter Madsen, and his split from a company he founded and was now competing against. Kim had been working on getting an interview with Madsen since March 2017.

Peter Madsen built a 60 foot (18 meters) mini-submarine through crowdfunding in 2008 at a cost of approx. $200,000 US. The sub held up to 8 people and can be operated by one person. It has the ability to submerge within 20 seconds and go to a depth of 100 meters (approx. 328 feet) below sea level.

Kim and her boyfriend, Ole Stobbe, a Danish designer were preparing to throw a party with friends as a farewell. They were planning to move to Beijing, China on August 16, 2017.

Madsen reached out by text to invite Kim aboard his midget submarine the UC3 Nautilus submarine. Kim agreed and met him for tea at his lab (Space Lab). They agreed on a plan for her to meet him at the Copenhagen harbor at Refshale Shipyard. The Nautilus was stationed there and she would join him for a two-hour trip. The sub would be leaving port just before 7 pm.

Kim was last seen wearing an orange fleece, a skirt, and white sneakers.

Kim’s Last Text

Kim’s last text message to her boyfriend was “I’m still alive btw but going down now!  I love you!!!!” After that one final message was “he brought coffee and cookies tho.” 

Kim had told her boyfriend that she was a little nervous about being submerged but excited to go nonetheless. Her boyfriend said at the time that he was a bit jealous of her being able to go and wanted to go with her. He had to stay behind to host the party they were giving and explain why Kim would be late.

Kim Wall

Kim Wall was born on March 23, 1987, in Trelleborg (located in the southernmost providence), Sweden into a family of journalists. Her mother, Ingrid was a financial journalist. Her father, Joachim was a photojournalist. She had one younger brother, Tom.

Kim studied at the London School of Economics and received a bachelor’s degree in International Relations. She also studied at the Sorbonne in Paris. In addition, Kim earned dual master’s degrees from Columbia University in New York City in Journalism and International Relations in 2013.

She also studied Mandarine Chinese.

Kim won a fellowship to travel to Uganda and then onto Sri Lanka on behalf of the International Women’s Media Foundation. Kim had published pieces in the Guardian, New York Times, Vice Magazine, Slate Magazine, Time Magazine, and The Atlantic. In March 2016, a German magazine awarded Kim the Hansel Mieth Prize for Best Digital Reporting for “Exodus.” This was a multimedia report that Kim had done on nuclear weapons testing and climatic changes in the Marshall Islands.

Kim was accomplished and career-driven for years. After years of traveling for the story, she and her boyfriend decided to settle down in Beijing, China. Kim had been traveling on and off to Beijing over the past year and a half. She stayed there for months at a time in order to see if she could make it work with her career.

Peter Madsen

Madsen was also driven and somewhat of a semi-celebrity in Denmark known as “rocket” or even the “crazy professor.” He had come to Copenhagen and was considered a central figure in the alternative art and music community fusing art with industrial technology.

Peter was born to Carl and Annie Madsen. Peter’s mother left when Peter was six taking his three half brothers with her, but leaving him with his 69-year-old innkeeper father. Their split was not a civil one and Peter was caught in the crossfire. Peter would describe his father as being “a commander of a Nazi concentration camp.”

Carl would often beat Peter’s half-brothers. Peter’s escape was to lose himself in building rockets and he basically taught himself aerospace engineering. Carl supported this endeavor even building Peter a workshop.

In 2004 Peter arrived in Refshaleoen at the age of 33 to finish his second sub, Kraka. He teamed up with Kristian von Bengtson, an architect who had previously done work with NASA and launched Copenhagen Suborbitals. They worked on building a manned rocket into space called the HEAT-1X.

They had planned on launching Madsen into space which would signal space travel by public means. This propelled him into celebrity status which seemed to go to his head. He is described by others as becoming a megalomaniac. Peter would eventually be thrown out of Copenhagen Suborbitals due to failing to follow plans and becoming too obsessed with being the center of attention.

August 10, 2017

Around 9 pm on August 10, 2017, Kim’s boyfriend waited at the harbor for her to return. When Kim failed to return by the early morning hours her boyfriend contacted the police at 1:43 am to report not only her missing but also the sub. All docks, ships, and marine centers were notified to be on the lookout for the Nautilus.

Police found a merchant ship that had spotted the Nautilus around midnight northwest of the Oresund Bridge. Someone had taken a picture of Kim and Madsen on the sub’s tower around 8:30 pm when their ship passed the sub.

August 11, 2017

The next morning the sub was sighted by a boat captain in Koge Bay by the Drogden Lighthouse. Madsen was seen by the captain, Kristian Isbak around 10:30 am. He had been notified by the Denmark Navy to be on the lookout for the sub. Isbak saw Madsen on the deck of the submarine. He then climbed down inside the sub after noticing that there was some airflow coming from below the water and the sub had started to sink.

Once the sub started to sink Madsen climbed up to the tower of the sub and waited for the tower to fill with water before he started to swim to a nearby boat and pulled himself out of the water around 11 am. Once back on land, Madsen told the police and the media that were there that he was okay, but was sad because the Nautilus had gone down.

He claimed that there had been at first a minor problem with one of the ballast tanks, but as he worked on it it turned into a bigger one causing the sub to sink. When asked about the journalist Kim Wall, Madsen told authorities that he dropped her off outside of a restaurant in the northern tip of Refshaleoen around 10:00 pm the previous night.

This would be the first of many stories that Madsen would come to tell. Police were contacted by a restaurant owner who had an establishment along the dock where Madsen said he dropped Kim off at. The restaurant owner turned over all the CCTV footage he had from that night. There were a lot of cameras and footage, but none of them showed a sub pulling up to the dock nor anyone being dropped off.

August 12, 2017

On August 12, 2017, Danish authorities charged Peter Madsen with negligent manslaughter. Negligent manslaughter is charged when there is negligence that allows another person to die.

The Investigation

Denmark police decided to bring up the Nautilus for examination after an air, land and sea search for Kim Wall failed to turn anything up. The police also suspected that Madsen had deliberately sunk the Nautilus. The Nautilus had sunk in 1 meter of water (a little less than 23 feet).

August 21, 2017 (10 days after Kim Wall boarded the Nautilus)

A cyclist traveling along the beach southwest of Amager spotted a torso washed up on the shore and notified police. There was no head, arms or legs attached. A post-mortem examination found that this torso had 15 stab wounds with 14 of them located in the genital region and 1 in the chest – all believed to have occurred prior to her death. When DNA came back on August 23rd it confirmed that the torso belonged to 30-year-old Kim Wall.

Madsen was held in jail and his charges would no longer be involuntary manslaughter, but murder. He told authorities that there had been a terrible accident aboard the Nautilus where Kim’s skull had been crushed when the heavy hatch lid had come down upon her head. Madsen panicked and threw Kim’s body overboard after attaching a metal weight around her waist

He claims that he was “suicidal” and had planned on taking his own life by purposely sinking the Nautilus and going down with the sub. Madsen still claimed that Kim died by accident and he denied cutting up her body just that he “buried her at sea.”

Due to this discovery police began to look into other unsolved murders in the area such as the 1986 disappearance of 22-year-old student Kazuko Toyonaga. His body had been found in plastic bags in separate locations around Copenhagen submerged in water. His murder remains unsolved, but police would see similar details to that of Kims murder.

September 5, 2017

At a pre-trial custody hearing his custody is extended and he is ordered to have a psychiatric evaluation.

October 3, 2017

Police searched Madsen’s computer which showed snuff films of women being murdered, videos of decapitation and showing asphyxiation during sex. Madsen claimed that others had access to his computer and denied that he viewed that material.

October 6, 2017

Police renewed their efforts to find the rest of Kim’s body and they are successful when police divers found a plastic bag off the coast of Denmark. The bag contained Kim’s head which showed no signs of fractures – like a heavy hatch lid falling on it, some of Kim’s clothing (shirt, skirt, socks, and shoes), her legs and a wood saw along with pieces of lead that had been weighing down the bag.

Dental records were able to confirm that the head belonged to Kim Wall. Madsen once again changed his story this time to say that due to the vacuum effect the hatch had locked him on deck leaving Kim inside the sub. He claims for 5 to 15 minutes he tried yelling directions to her on working the systems inside to open the hatch, but by the time he got it open carbon monoxide filled the cabin and Kim had died.

Madsen claims that he tried slapping her to get her to wake up, but she was dead. He then laid next to Kim’s body for two hours before he decided to cut up her body and weigh the parts down. He then threw her body into the sea.

November 21, 2017 (2 months later after torso)

Divers found a left arm wrapped in tubing and metal in Koge Bay about 1 km (or a little more than ½ mile) from where Kim’s head and legs were found.

November 29, 2017

Divers found Kim’s right arm south of Copenhagen

January 16, 2018

On January 16, 2018, Peter Madsen is charged with murder, dismemberment of a corpse, indecent handling of a corpse and sexual assault. A charge sheet on January 24th stated that Madsen had tied Kim up by the head, arms, and legs before beating, stabbing and cutting into her.

Prosecutors also stated at this time that Madsen had intentionally brought a wood saw, sharpened screwdrivers, a knife, and materials to tie Kim down, such as straps and materials such as metal pipes to weigh down the body afterward. Prosecutors laid out their claims that this was premeditated and planned.

At that time, no cause of death or motive had been given, but it was believed that Madsen had either strangled Kim or had cut her throat. Madsen’s DNA was also collected from Kim’s body. All of this painted a picture of a sadistic sex act that he had planned on committing.

March 8, 2018

On March 8, 2018, Madsen’s trial begins at Copenhagen Court House. Judge  Anette Burkø and two jurors presided. The prosecutor was Jakob Buch-Jepsen and the defense attorney was Betina Hald Engmark. It was a huge trial in Denmark with journalists from over 15 countries in attendance. A special room was opened which had a video link to the proceedings occurring in the main courtroom.

Madsen pleads not guilty to murder and only admitted to the dismembering of Kim’s body. The trial would last 11 days and be spread out over 7 weeks. Prosecutors presented their evidence of the pre-planned sadistic murder giving gruesome details and presenting all of Madsen’s stories as to what happened. They also presented evidence of Madsen’s sexual lifestyle from not only watching hard-core pornography but also starring in and directing some videos.

a portrait of a personality without boundaries: a fantasist, a genius inventor, a tech nerd determined to break world records for space and submarine travel, and a man sexually obsessed with snuff movies featuring the torture and murder of women.

An April 2018 article in The New Yorker, described what all the witnesses presented by the prosecution boiled down to testifying

The court would hear from a number of women who Madsen had invited to come aboard the Nautilus in the spring and summer of 2017. None of them agreed to accompany him but one, Kim Wall. Madsen’s wife did not testify due to health-related issues. She divorced him prior to his trial.

Additional Evidence

The prosecution also presented evidence that on August 17, 2017, a witness had seen Madsen walking through a crowd of people gathered for a festival with a saw sticking out of his backpack. Madsen’s internet searches were released in court and included terms such as “beheading”, “girl”, “agony.” These searches along with a search of a woman’s throat being cut and various acts of torture and violence toward women were done on August 9, 2017 (the day before the murder).

Text messages between Madsen and his wife were presented as evidence. Madsen sent this message to his wife 20 minutes after Wall died. “I am on an adventure on the Nautilus. All is well. Sailing the high seas and moonlight.  Not diving. Kisses and hugs to the cats”. Madsen would testify that this was a goodbye message to his wife as he was contemplating killing himself. Instead, he laid down beside Kim’s body for two hours before he started dismembering her.

The prosecution theorized that due to the recent cancellation of a project Madsen had been working on he had decided to produce his own snuff film using the Nautilus as the set and Kim as the victim. No video has ever surfaced showing any of this. Police have not found Kim’s cell phone and believe Madsen threw it into the ocean. A cell phone was found on the sub, but it had no memory card. This phone was believed to be Madsens.

Forensic Psychiatrist

The forensic psychiatrist report was entered into the record. This evaluation diagnosed Madsen with a polymorphous perversity with psychopathic traits with a high likelihood of re-offending.

• Ability to gain sexual gratification outside of normal sexual behaviors.
  • To find erotic pleasure with any part of the body
  • Freudian term

Madsen Takes the Stand

Madsen took the stand in his own defense. He admitted to lying to authorities and laid out now a third version of what happened on the Nautilus. This version was the one where Kim had inhaled carbon monoxide and died and he only cut up the body. He claims he made up the other stories to keep the truth of how Kim died from her family.

On the stand, he would often switch between referring to himself in the first and third person and the judge would have to redirect him to stick to the point. He also would use the word “she” to refer to not only Kim but also the Nautilus. He said that watching snuff films actually brought out his empathy towards women.

In talking about his decision to dismember Kim he said, “I don’t see how that mattered at the time as she was dead.” His defense attorney felt that there was no evidence against Madsen except for his admittance of cutting up Kim’s body.

April 25, 2018

Madsen was found guilty of all charges and sentenced to life imprisonment. The judge felt that Madsen’s version of events was not “credible and not consistent with the following decision to dismember the body” and believed the timeline of events the prosecution had laid out with Madsen planning to act out his violent sexual fantasies on Kim that night.

The sentence Madsen received was a rare one for Denmark. Life imprisonment in Denmark is an average of 16 years. Then it will be determined if his stay should be extended or if Madsen should be transferred to a secure mental health facility to serve however long a psychiatrist feels he is a danger to others.

Madsen is eligible for a pardon hearing after serving 12 years (by the year 2030). Madsen is said to have looked crushed at the verdict and plans to appeal his conviction and sentence. He did make a statement in which he said “the only thing I want to say is that I’m very, very sorry for what has happened.”

September 26, 2018

On September 26, 2018 the District Court heard Madsen’s appeal, but upheld the lower court’s verdict.

Documentary Twist

Australian filmmaker, Emma Sullivan had been filming Peter Madsen starting in 2016 for a documentary she was producing. Into the Deep, which is a Netflix documentary, shows footage of Peter’s rescue on August 11, 2017, and him giving a thumbs up to reporters when asked if he was okay.

It also shows the people Madsen had assembled around him. Initially, young amateur engineers praised and idolized him, but over time their perception of him changes as new details emerge. Especially when they find out that Madsen had been keeping secret anything to do with Kim and her wanting an interview.

Additional News:

It was reported in December 2019 that Madsen had married a Russian artist while incarcerated by the name of Jenny Curpen. She has defended their marriage and claims it is not part of an art project. She states that “my husband is one of two victims of his crime and staying alive was a punishment itself for him.”

Kim Wall Memorial Fund

There is a Facebook page where you can find more information about the Kim Wall Memorial Fund. This year, the fund will provide a $5,000 grant to a journalist whose work embodies the spirit of Kim’s reporting. It was set up to support women going into journalism and carrying on Kim’s journey of unique storytelling.

Kim’s mother wrote a book commemorating Kim’s life entitled:  A Silenced Voice:  The Life of Journalist Kim Wall.

Funds are raised in part through an annual Run for Kim in her hometown. The year Kim was murdered (2017) 45 other journalists around the world were killed while on the job.

Kim Wall embodied a sense of curiosity and adventure. She was an impressive woman who was taken all too soon but is remembered for her intelligence, desire to share stories that often went under-reported, and her love of life.

Heroes don’t always wear capes:  hats off to the Denmark police, divers, and Navy!

Resources

• The Peter Madsen Guilty Verdict Leaves Lingering Questions and Pain
• Divers found journalist Kim Wall’s head and legs
• Kim Wall murder trial: Severed arm found in waters near Copenhagen
• Timeline in case of journalist Kim Wall’s death on submarine
• Netflix’s New True-Crime ‘Into The Deep’ Examines The Disturbing Danish Submarine Murder
• Kim Wall’s gruesome death detailed in Peter Madsen murder trial: A timeline
• The Gruesome Danish Submarine Killing Case: A Timeline
• ‘Into the Deep’ Review: Chilling Peter Madsen Documentary
• Danish inventor denies killing journalist Kim Wall and mutilating body
• Danish police confirm headless torso is missing journalist Kim Wall
• Peter Madsen sentenced to life for murdering journalist Kim Wall
• The Kim Wall Murder Trial: The Case Against Peter Madsen
• Danish submariner Peter Madsen: a dark inventor turned murderer
• New wife of Danish man who murdered journalist Kim Wall defends their marriage
• Killer’s eerie text message to his wife
• Population of Denmark
• https://www.facebook.com/pg/kimwallmemorialfund/posts/
• Murder of Kim Wall
• https://www.dr.dk/live/nyheder/live/2753792
• Sundance 2020: On the Record, Into the Deep, Assassins | Sundance

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