Eccentric Danish inventor Peter Madsen loved the limelight – and that’s exactly where his latest invention put him. The 60ft UC3 Nautilus submarine was made over a three-year period by Peter, 47, and a group of volunteers as part of an art project. At the time of its impressive launch in 2008, it was the largest privately built submarine in the world.
Peter had always dreamed big and started his first company aged 15, with a mission to build rockets and submarines so he could travel ‘beyond the well-known’.
He studied engineering, and when he left uni he branched out on his own. Peter’s greatest success was the Nautilus, which now belonged to him after a row with his former colleagues. The sub was a location for a ballet, parties, and Peter even launched his experimental rockets off it. He was well known in Denmark for crowdfunding the money he needed for his work.
Many believed Peter to be a great mind – they found the popular figure kind and likeable, but former girlfriends said he was into sadomasochism, erotic asphyxiation and was promiscuous. He was known to watch violent pornography and had a habit of losing his temper. And yet people continued to be fascinated by him.
Eccentric Danish inventor Peter Madsen loved the limelight – and that’s exactly where his latest invention put him. The 60ft UC3 Nautilus submarine was made over a three-year period by Peter, 47, and a group of volunteers as part of an art project. At the time of its impressive launch in 2008, it was the largest privately built submarine in the world.
Peter had always dreamed big and started his first company aged 15, with a mission to build rockets and submarines so he could travel ‘beyond the well-known’.
He studied engineering, and when he left uni he branched out on his own. Peter’s greatest success was the Nautilus, which now belonged to him after a row with his former colleagues. The sub was a location for a ballet, parties, and Peter even launched his experimental rockets off it. He was well known in Denmark for crowdfunding the money he needed for his work.
Many believed Peter to be a great mind – they found the popular figure kind and likeable, but former girlfriends said he was into sadomasochism, erotic asphyxiation and was promiscuous. He was known to watch violent pornography and had a habit of losing his temper. And yet people continued to be fascinated by him.
Peter's call for help - and his changing story
When the messages stopped and Kim didn’t return home, Ole reported her missing. Police tried to find the sub, but it didn’t have a satellite-tracking system. But Peter was about to contact police himself… The day after Kim had gone missing, he called for help.
The 33-ton Nautilus had sunk and Peter was rescued, unharmed, from his vessel just south of Copenhagen. He said there had been a technical problem, but it looked like he’d caused the damage himself. Just what was he trying to hide? When asked about Kim, he said that he’d dropped her off on an island a few hours into the trip. But investigators found blood in the sub and on Peter’s clothes. Days later, Kim’s headless torso washed up on the shore in a plastic bag – her body had been dismembered. Divers would later find her limbs and head weighed down in the water.
Suddenly Peter changed his story.
He said that Kim had died after she was hit over the head when the hatch door slammed shut unexpectedly. He said he panicked and was trying to protect her family from the details of her death. When Peter was told no such injuries were found on Kim’s skull, he changed his story again. He said there had been a fault in the sub and that it had flooded with exhaust fumes.
She’d been inside, but it had caused a vacuum effect that had stopped him from being able to open the hatch door and she’d died. The coroner said that was unlikely, as there were no fumes in her lungs. Detectives found Peter’s cold and emotionless accounts disturbing. Even if Kim had died in an accident, why dismember her body and cast her into the sea with such disregard?
His strange Google search
Investigators discovered Peter had searched ‘beheaded girl agony’ hours before Kim had arrived to interview him, and he’d watched
a video of a girl having her throat slit. There were messages from Peter trying to invite other women aboard – they’d refused and sadly Kim had been the one to accept.
The case drew attention from around the world and was compared to the Nordic crime dramas that have grown so popular recently. But for Kim’s family, the comparison was hurtful. Kim wasn’t a fictional character and her end was brutally real.
Horrifying end and his trial
At the trial that started last year, the verdict was determined by a judge and two jurors. Peter pleaded not guilty to premeditated murder, but admitted to desecrating a corpse. He went back to the explanation that he’d lost his grip of a hatch while giving Kim a tour of the submarine. The 150lb hatch had hit her head and killed her. Peter told prosecutors he’d panicked and given Kim a ‘burial at sea’.
‘In the shock I was in, it was the right thing to do,’ he told the court. ‘What do you do when you have a large problem? You make it smaller.’ Peter did tell the court that he was ‘really, really sorry for what happened’, but his actions were too unthinkable
for it to seem genuine.
His defence focused on the fact that, due to the decomposition of the body parts in the water, it was impossible to say exactly how Kim had died. Peter didn’t deny mutilating the body, throwing it in the sea and lying to police, but there was no proof of an actual murder.
In contrast, the prosecution said that Peter had planned Kim’s murder, motivated by violent sexual fantasies. Before Kim stepped onto the submarine he’d brought a knife, a sharpened screwdriver and straps on board. He’d even brought pipes that were used to weigh down her body parts. They said he’d brutally sexually assaulted her, killed her, then dismembered her to cover his tracks.
It was difficult to hear the descriptions of Kim’s disturbing injuries. There were 24 stab wounds to her genitals and one to the chest, fuelling the claim that the kill was sexually motivated. When asked about the injuries, he said they were randomly inflicted. ‘I pierced certain parts of her body because I did not want them to be inflated by gas,’ he said. ‘There was nothing erotic
in those blows.’
Head of journalist Kim Wall found in plastic bag two months after disappearing during submarine trip with inventor
Experts couldn’t say exactly what the cause of death was but that her airway had been cut off, so she’d either been strangled, had her throat cut or she’d drowned. Some of her wounds had occurred before she’d died – a horrifying thought for her loved ones. Just what had Kim been through in her final moments?
The inventor said he’d dismembered Kim using ‘what was around’ in his submarine. He described it as an ‘insane situation’ as he chopped her up in the sub’s bathroom – ‘It’s something so horrible that I do not want to go into detail. I will just say that it was horrible.’ Despite his words, psychiatrists said he lacked empathy and remorse and called him a ‘pathological liar’. The prosecutor called the case ‘heinous and repulsive’ in his closing arguments. ‘Peter Madsen is not normal. He is a danger to society,’ he said.
In April this year Peter was found guilty of murder, sexual assault and desecrating a corpse. The judge said the decision was unanimous. ‘There is clear evidence that the accused has shown an interest in killing and dismembering people,’ the judge said, referring to Peter’s internet history. He dismissed Peter’s claims that it was an accident: ‘The explanation is not credible and is not consistent with the following decision to dismember the body.’
Peter was sentenced to life in prison without the chance of parole. He remained quiet and has since appealed his sentence, but not the verdict. While he remains in the spotlight he always craved, Kim’s loved ones continue to honour her talents. A memorial fund set up in her name will help fuel the dreams of other journalists who share the same passion Kim had. She was always looking to find a story – never knowing that one day, it would be her death that would be making the headlines.
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