Reuters/BI
Peter Madsen, right, and Kim Wall, left.
- Danish inventor Peter Madsen has been sentenced to life in prison for killing journalist Kim Wall.
- Madsen invited Wall to board his home-made submarine last August. He was the last person to see her alive.
- Gruesome details of Wall's death have emerged over the past few months.
- Warning: Readers may find details of the case disturbing.
An eccentric Danish inventor has been sentenced to life in prison for killing Swedish journalist Kim Wall.
Peter Madsen, a 47-year-old entrepreneur and aerospace engineer, was the last person seen with Wall after he invited her on his home-made submarine last August.
The submarine sank, Madsen escaped, and Wall's dismembered body washed up on Copenhagen's shores days later, police said.
Wall was 30 and worked as a freelance journalist. The invitation onboard the UC3 Nautilus in Copenhagen was a response to Wall's request to meet him so she could write an article about him.
Several horrific details of the death have emerged over the past few months. Prosecutors have found evidence that:
- Wall died either from strangulation or having her throat cut.
- Her body was dismembered, with chunks of metal attached to her remains apparently so they would sink to the bottom of the sea.
- Her head, legs, and clothes were dumped in a plastic bag in the sea.
- Madsen used a saw, knife, and tapered screwdrivers to hit, cut, and stab Wall before she died.
- Wall was also stabbed with syringes, which resulted in needlestick wounds on parts of her body.
- The journalist was also stabbed multiple times in the genitals, according to a post-mortem exam of her remains.
- Wall was strapped to pipes inside Madsen's vessel, likely with straps Madsen had brought on board or with her own stockings.
Madsen has denied murder and sexual assault, and changed his story a number of times. He claimed immediately after Wall's body parts were found that a metal hatch slamming shut on her inside the submarine, then said she died of carbon monoxide poisoning.
In court he admitted, however, dismembering her body in order to lift it out of the vessel's hatch.
"What do you do when you have a big problem?" he said, according to Sky News. "You divide it into something smaller."