The Danish inventor accused of murdering a Swedish journalist on his home-made submarine has finally revealed the harrowing details about what happened before he dumped her body into the sea last month.
Peter Madsen, 46, admitted to the court in Copenhagen today that Kim Wall, 30, died after the submarine’s hatch weighing 15 lbs hatch hit her over the head. Madsen said he attempted to give her first aid before he realized she was already dead.
Madsen appeared in court dressed in his infamous camouflage jumpsuit and narrated that he and Wall had then climbed into the submarine’s watchtower after emerging from the deep water.
He climbed first and when the journalist was just coming up to join him, he said he slipped and the hatch shut by accident, horrifically hitting her over the head. Madsen told the court: “If I hadn’t slipped, then the hatch would not have fallen- we would have Kim alive and I would not have been sat here today.”
He further shared that when he went down to see Wall, she was “bleeding profusely” from her head and that he realized first aid won’t work because she was dead already.
What was strange was instead of calling for help given the situation, Madsen said he opted to steer out on the Baltic Sea ‘to think’. Unmindful of all the blood in the submarine and Wall’s body, Madsen admitted he decided to sleep off the matter for a few hours, before coming to the decision of throwing Wall’s body into the sea.
Madsen also denied that he dismembered or undressed Wall, claiming instead that he carried her body up to the top of the submarine, and at which point, Wall’s “shoes and tights fell off.” He even took the effort to emphasize: “Let’s get the facts on the table-I threw an intact Kim overboard.”
Madsen said he tied Wall’s hands and feet with a rope and threw her off his submarine and into the sea.
Wall’s naked, headless torso was found in the water off Copenhagen more than a week after she went on a voyage with Madsen in his submarine on August 10.
When the prosecutor pressed Madsen why he earlier lied about dropping Wall off alive on the night before sinking his submarine, he responded that he just wanted some time to “say goodbye to his wife and cats before it all came out.”
The 40-ton submarine named Nautilus UC3 was deliberately sunk by Madsen on the day after Wall’s disappearance. He was arrested and charged with murder and indecent handling of a corpse.
Police earlier said that Wall’s limbs had been “deliberately cut off” her torso, which had been weighed down with metal to force it to sink to the bottom of the sea.
His testimony in court today reveals that what he said in the interview after the submarine “accident” was all false.
Wall was a freelance journalist who grew up in Sweden but mostly based in New York and Beijing. Her works had made it to major publications including The Guardian and The New York Times.
Source:
