Danish submarine owner Peter Madsen sentenced to life for murdering Swedish journalist 

Danish inventor Peter Madsen who killed Swedish freelance journalist Kim Wall
Danish inventor Peter Madsen who killed Swedish freelance journalist Kim Wall Credit: Youtube

Danish inventor Peter Madsen was on Wednesday sentenced to life for the premeditated murder and sexual assault of Swedish journalist Kim Wall on his homemade submarine.

Madsen, 47, had confessed to cutting up the 30-year-old’s body and throwing her remains overboard in waters off Copenhagen on the night of August 10 2017 but claimed her death was accidental.

Ms Wall, a freelance reporter, had set off with the self-titled "inventrepreneur" to interview him on his vessel.

She was planning a magazine feature on Madsen, who was hoping to build a rocket capable of sending a man into suborbital space.

Speaking after the sentence in front of Copenhagen City Council, special prosecutor Jakob Buch-Jepsen said the cold-hearted murder had affected him personally. "This case has gone more under the skin than other cases," he told reporters.

During the trial, which lasted 12 days and heard from 36 witnesses, Mr Buch-Jepsen accused Madsen of trying “to create the perfect crime”.

Swedish journalist Kim Wall who was murdered by Peter Madsen
Swedish journalist Kim Wall who was murdered by Peter Madsen Credit: Tom Wall/AFP

He argued that Madsen killed Ms Wall as part of a macabre sexual fantasy, showing the court videos found on the inventor’s computer of women being tortured, beheaded, impaled, and hanged.

"He committed a cynical, planned murder, of a particularly brutal nature," the judge said as she read out the verdict, adding that Madsen "dismembered the body in order to hide the evidence of murder."

A black-clad Madsen looked shaken by the verdict and swiftly signalled he would appeal.

A life sentence in Denmark typically lasts about 16 years and he will be only the 25th person serving one in the Nordic country.

Madsen, who is famous for his exploits in amateur space travel, confessed to stuffing the award-winning journalist's head, arms and legs into plastic bags, weighing them down with metal pipes before tossing them into the sea.

He later scuttled his his midget submarine UC3 Nautilus. After changing his story several times, he testified that she died when the air pressure suddenly dropped and toxic fumes filled his vessel as he was up on deck.

He claimed he had cut up the body to spare Ms Wall’s family the details of her painful suffocation.

The court - made up of one professional judge and two lay judges - found the incriminating circumstances were enough to find “untrustworthy” Madsen guilty, citing the fact that he brought a saw, plastic strips and a sharpened screwdriver on board just before the voyage.

The prosecution also presented as evidence the fact that on the night before Wall boarded his vessel, he googled "beheaded girl agony", which Madsen tried to claim was "pure coincidence".

On the final day of evidence, Madsen, who described himself to friends as “a psychopath but a loving one” told the court: “I'm really, really sorry for what happened."

Kim Wall’s parents told Swedish media that they would not be commenting on the case.

The Danish court had rejected their claim for £16,000 damages, saying the journalist had moved out, but granted Ms Wall’s boyfriend, who reported her missing, £10,800.

The court ordered that the scuttled submarine, which was raised by police, would be seized by the authorities.

Ms Wall was from Trelleborg in nearby southern Sweden but had recently been living in New York. 

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