The Submarine Murderer
50:05 Share

For an ad-free listening experience, visit patreon.com slash crimehub. Sign up for a 7-day free trial and gain access to all my episodes completely ad-free. That's patreon.com slash crimehub. Now let's dive into the story.

Peter Madsen, a Danish inventor and self-taught engineer, was the embodiment of personal sovereignty. He pushed the boundaries, broke the rules, and swore allegiance to technology and himself alone. He was ungovernable and uncompromising, guided by a single-mindedness that bordered on insanity.

In 2008, his pursuit of becoming the pioneer of private aerospace and marine exploration eventually bore fruit, culminating in the birth of the UC-3 Nautilus. Weighing in at over 40 tons and measuring almost 60 feet, the midget submarine was unprecedented in the world of privately built submersible vessels, according to Peter, at least. That May, the Nautilus was launched in Copenhagen Harbor,

a moment that was captured by journalists from across the globe who descended upon Denmark in droves. Their interest lay not only in the eccentric amateur engineer who devised the homemade submarine, but in the cult-like following of accomplished specialists who volunteered to help him build it. Peter, who relished being the center of attention, made sure to put on a show.

The 37-year-old called upon his cohorts at Half Machine, an alternative dance collective, commune, and micronation of free-town Christiania. The squatters had bought the industrial barge on which Peter's workshop was later erected, turning it into a sanctuary for a subculture that glorified the idea of merging man with machine.

The barge was notorious for raves that raged on into the early morning hours. Naked ravers danced on and around floating platforms, fires, and suspended dancers controlled by buttons and levers. At the launch, Half Machine performed in all of its industrial splendor, putting on a spectacular submarine ballet.

Its dancers pranced and pirouetted across the half-submerged deck of the Nautilus, giving onlookers a taste of Peter's impending all-night party. The machine-mad inventor, who dubbed himself Peter Submarine, gave interviews to all who sought a glimpse into his unconventional mind.

Danish newspaper Ingenioren reported that Peter claimed his invention symbolized a political message about individual freedom. He lapped up the publicity that surrounded his latest and greatest creation. That said, to Peter, the Nautilus was far more than a submarine or a sensational news story.

To him, it was a crash pad, a sex dungeon, a documentary set, a feat of engineering, and, above all, an artistic masterpiece. However, the Nautilus would later morph into something far more sinister. Nine years after its maiden voyage, the acclaimed submarine became a crime scene. On August 10th, 2017, the Nautilus dove into the depths of the Baltic Sea with two people on board.

only one resurfaced. The story that followed would unearth the most diabolical murder plot in Danish history, a secret the ocean refused to keep. Part one, the Danish space race. In Denmark, Peter Madsen was a celebrity in his own right. People were fascinated with the self-proclaimed inventapreneur, a seemingly everyday man who raved on about complicated scientific principles and exploring the unexplored.

However, despite his fascinating facade, Peter was a difficult person with a dark side, one that would eventually lead to his downfall. In 1977, when Peter was just six years old, his parents underwent a nasty divorce. He was sent to live with his father, Karl Madsen, in an idyllic little village just over 62 miles west of Copenhagen. The 69-year-old innkeeper was known for being violently authoritarian.

Peter later claimed that his father inflicted unimaginable cruelty upon his half-brothers, comparing the man to the concentration camp commanders to Nazi Germany. Ironically, it was his father who nurtured his fascination for rockets, submarines, and war. Karl even went as far as building Peter his own home workshop.

With his father's blessing, the budding inventor devoted the next few decades of his life to these fascinations, sacrificing his social life and any hopes of a stable income. Peter went on to take courses in welding and engineering, but his ego and disdain for authority saw him deserting his studies. According to him, he had learned everything he needed to know about building submarines and rockets. Though arrogant, it turned out that he was right.

In 2004, Peter relocated to Refsheljun, an industrial site in Copenhagen harbor. It was there that he finished building his second submarine, Broca, and became entangled with Denmark's underground art, music, fetish, and swinger scenes. It was there that he transformed.

He was surrounded by alternative enclaves who roamed the shipyard's concrete slabs, half-dressed and seemingly half-mad, living outside of society's rules and welding strange machines out of scrap metal. During the years he resided there, Peter immersed himself in collaborative art installations, orgies, sadism, and, of course, his beloved projects.

One week after the Nautilus was launched, the self-taught engineer set his sights on his next frontier: space exploration.

Peter sought to make interstellar travel a reality for the public by building a crowdfunded, open-sourced rocket and launching himself into the cosmos as Denmark's DIY astronaut, the first of his kind. He teamed up with Christian von Banksen, a rocket builder, architect, and former NASA contractor, to bring his latest lofty ambition to life.

The pair amassed a group of amateur aerospace engineers and dubbed their cadre the Copenhagen Suborbitals. But it wasn't long before cracks began to show. Six years later, in 2014, their operation and, ultimately, their relationship crumbled. Christian could no longer work with Peter, who routinely criticized him for putting his family first. The former NASA contractor quit the project

But he wasn't alone in his resentment of the inventor's bizarre, narcissistic behavior. The remaining members of the Copenhagen sub-orbitals felt that Peter was argumentative, uncooperative, and a constant source of conflict. He was promptly ousted that summer. Peter, who then went by Rocket Madsen, established his own cosmic collective, called Rocket Madsen Space Laboratory, to spite his former comrades.

This barely disguised attempt at declaring war on the sub-orbitals gave rise to a long and vengeful feud between the competing co-ops. One that caught the attention of a certain Swedish journalist, Kim Wall.

In March of 2017, Kim reached out to Peter, the eccentric engineer who, in his words, was finding ways to travel to worlds beyond the well-known armed with nothing but determination and donations. She hoped to secure an interview with him for a story she was preparing to pitch to several news outlets about the DIY Danish space race. In the end, Kim became the story. Part two, the journalist next door.

In 1987, Kim Isabel Frederica Wall was welcomed into this world by parents Joachim and Ingrid Wall. They were besotted with their beautiful baby girl, whose auburn hair was only outshone by her bright, amber eyes. Even from a young age, Kim's coppery eyes seemed ablaze with curiosity for the world around her.

a curiosity her journalist parents proudly encouraged. Kim blossomed in the tight-knit community of Trelleborg, a tiny town nestled in the southernmost point of Sweden. Her hometown was just around the corner from Öresund, a strait that separates Sweden from Denmark, and the same strait in which her final story would be told. Fueled by her curiosity and thirst for knowledge, Kim went on to follow in her parents' footsteps and pursue a career in journalism.

In the decade that Peter Matson was swinging, partying, and building crowdfunded submarines, Kim was mastering her profession at some of the world's most prestigious institutions. She studied at Columbia University, the London School of Economics, and the Sorbonne, earning an Ivy League education that helped her establish herself as an acclaimed, accomplished international journalist.

Kim was fearless in her pursuits as she battled for front page space in a male-dominated industry. She braved stories and crossed borders that others wouldn't dare, writing for publications such as the New York Times, The Atlantic, The Guardian, Vice, and the South China Morning Post. Kim was intrigued by the undercurrents of rebellion

a fascination that saw her investigating the interplay between social justice, gender, identity, and fringe subcultures. The independent journalist traversed the globe in search of such stories, reporting on post-war Sri Lanka, feminism in China, India's oppressed party tribe, and Cuba's underground tech scene.

She later won awards for the work she did on climate change and nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands. Nothing deterred Kim, even the censorship and very real dangers that came with slipping into North Korea. Of course, she always returned from her escapades enlivened and brimming with stories that thrilled her loved ones. One friend described her as the kind of person who had fantastic stories about the things she was working on.

That said, she was more than a wealth of stories about the wonders and woes of our world. Kim was cherished for her warm, bubbly nature and revered for her adventurous intellectual spirit. By 2017, the 30-year-old was ready for a new adventure. She had recently moved in with her Danish boyfriend Ole Stobbe and the couple was set to emigrate to Beijing, China that summer.

They planned to get together with their friends on August 10th, a final farewell before they left Copenhagen to start a new life together. However, that same afternoon, Kim's cell phone buzzed. It was a text message from Peter Madsen.

She had all but lost hope that the inventor would ever grant her the interview she needed for her space race story about the Madsen suborbital clash. Yet, five months later, there he was in her inbox offering her his time and a leisurely cruise aboard the UC3 Nautilus. This was the moment Kim had been waiting for, but with emigration looming, she had little time left.

Fortunately, Peter was practically her next door neighbor. Ole's flat was in the middle of the thriving cultural hub of Rêves-Hellulnes, no longer the post-apocalyptic industrial site of the early 2000s. The district was now home to several shared creative spaces and studios, including Rocket Madsen Space Laboratory. Kim was eager to meet her eccentric subject and raced down to his lab to hash out the finer details.

The pair shared a cup of tea, after which she agreed to board the submarine later that evening, and joined Peter on a short sub-Aqueous expedition to the Orison Strait. It was meant to be a quick two-hour trip, and Kim planned to be back on land in time to see her friends. Of course, if everything went as planned, there wouldn't be a story to tell. Part 3: I'm Still Alive, By The Way

The evening of August 10th, 2017 was a warm, sunny one. Despite fall being well on its way, the sea breeze was brisk and the air was filled with anticipation as Kim Wall's loved ones gathered by the harbor's edge to watch her set sail in Denmark's largest privately built submarine.

They were excited for Kim's return, eager to be privy to another one of her once-in-a-lifetime stories. However, unbeknownst to them, she would never set foot on dry land again. Peter welcomed Kim on board the Nautilus at 7:00 PM that evening. An hour and a half later, a passing ship captured her final moments above the water's surface. The journalist seemed calm and at ease

She stood smiling from ear to ear beside Peter in the submarine's conning tower, her auburn hair ablaze as it caught the last rays of the setting sun. Kim's boyfriend and friends saw her waving at them in the distance. Seconds later, she disappeared into the belly of the Nautilus and sank beneath the waves of the Baltic. Ole Stabe stared at the sea that had swallowed his girlfriend as a sense of unease began to simmer within him.

However, his worries were quickly put to rest when he received a text message from Kim. "I'm still alive by the way, but I'm going down now. I love you," it read. He smiled. She knew him too well. When the clock struck 9 later that night, the couple's farewell party was still in full swing as their guests waited eagerly for Kim to come home. The mood swiftly grew somber as the clock struck 10

and she was nowhere to be seen. Soon, the party wound down and people began to wonder what became of Kim. Some assumed that the journalist had gotten caught up in her story. Others worried the submarine had malfunctioned. Unable to do anything but wait, the couple's friends eventually filtered out of their apartment, leaving Ole alone and on edge. He texted his other half over and over again, but his messages never went through. Was her phone dead?

or lost to the Åresund Strait, Ole wasn't prepared to wait and see. At 1:43 AM, he called the Copenhagen Police Department and reported Kim as missing. The matter was immediately handed over to sea rescue officials, who treated it with urgency. 60-foot submarines couldn't simply vanish. Something had to have gone wrong on the Nautilus, and they were running out of time to rescue those on board.

On the morning of August 11th, the skies whirred with helicopters searching the seas from above, while CPH airport rescue boats scoured the waters below. Sea Rescue radioed every vessel in the vicinity, instructing them to be on the lookout for the black submarine. A merchant ship reported back that it had sighted the Nautilus around midnight near the Orissonde Bridge.

However, with no satellite tracking technology on board, sea rescue officials were forced to continue their search blind. Members of Rocket Madsen Space Laboratory, who were just as devoted to their project as they were to Peter himself, were overcome with worry. They were being filmed by Australian director Emma Sullivan, who was in the midst of making a documentary about the inventor's homemade rocket when the news broke. The crew members, who chose to remain anonymous, were taken aback.

Unaware that Peter had even launched the Nautilus, let alone disappeared with an unknown woman on board. "There's still hope of finding them alive. There's air for 24 hours, maybe 30," said one man.

Finally, at 10:30 AM, reports came in that the submarine had been spotted floating in Co Bay near the Drodin Lighthouse, a rescue helicopter who deployed to the coordinates and located the vessel but, as it approached, the submarine began to sink. Miraculously, four fishermen were able to pull someone from the deck just seconds before the Nautilus sank beneath the surface of the Baltic Sea for the last time.

What should have been a cause for celebration quickly became a cause for concern. The fishermen immediately recognized the survivor they had rescued from the sinking submarine. It was Peter Madsen. Alarmingly, there was no sign of Kim Wall, dead or alive. Part Four: Something Fishy After his dramatic rescue, Peter was taken to the port of Draioia, where he was immediately besieged by reporters desperate to be the first to find out what happened.

Peter told one reporter. "What about your passenger?" asked another, as the inventor was ushered into a police cruiser. "There was no one else but me on board," Peter replied.

Of course, at that stage, the police were well aware that the inventor had not been alone that night. Kim Wall had been inside the Nautilus when it plunged into the Baltic Sea on the evening of August 10th, but for some reason, Peter was the only one who resurfaced. Something smelled fishy and they were determined to get to the bottom of the journalist's unexplained disappearance.

As the captain of the submarine, Peter was arrested under suspicion of negligent manslaughter and taken into custody for questioning, during which he offered a dubious explanation. He told investigators that he had dropped Kim off around 10:30 p.m. near Ref's Hayloons Waterside restaurant, Alvandet. However, after acquiring CCTV footage from the restaurant's owner, Bo Peterson, it became painfully obvious that Peter was hiding something.

The area was riddled with security cameras, yet Kim wasn't captured by a single one. Back at the rocket mats in Space Lab, the crew was watching the story unfold on live news while Emma Sullivan's cameras kept rolling. It didn't make sense to them. If Kim was dropped off on shore, why hadn't she contacted her boyfriend and family? Still, they were unable to accept that their leader might have had a hand in the journalist's disappearance.

The crew initiated a search of their own and combed through the harbor district of Refsheilun. They hoped that Kim had gotten lost in the dark after disembarking the Nautilus and fallen, injuring herself and becoming stranded. The police, on the other hand, didn't even consider that possibility. Investigators suspected that Peter had scuttled the submarine

After inspecting the vessel themselves, they released a statement confirming that, for reasons unknown, the renowned Danish inventor had deliberately sunk the Nautilus. The announcement rippled through Denmark, reaching a worldwide audience that obsessed over the story. It had the makings of a Hollywood crime drama, complete with an eccentric inventor, a missing investigative journalist, lies, secrets, and a scuttled homemade submarine.

However, for the Rocket Madsen crew, it was very real and very distressing. For the first time since Peter's arrest, they doubted his innocence. "Any idiot could see that both valves are open. I mean, you don't need to be very smart to see that it was done intentionally," said one volunteer as he stared at the nautilus from behind bright red police tape.

Something happened aboard the vessel that night, something so horrific that Peter sent his precious project to the bottom of the seabed, hoping the ocean would swallow his secrets. In the end, it was the ocean that spat them back to shore for the world to see. On August 12th, two days after Kim had vanished, Peter appeared in court for a pretrial custody hearing on preliminary charges of negligent manslaughter.

However, after hearing about the suspicious circumstances surrounding the journalist's disappearance, the court formally charged the inventor with negligent homicide instead. It ordered that he be held in pre-trial detention for 24 days while the police continued their investigation into the case. One of Peter's crew members and closest confidants anguished over the new charge.

The woman, who remains anonymous for her own safety, told the documentary crew that Peter had invited her to take a trip in the Nautilus just hours before Kim Wall boarded it. Dark thoughts swirled within her head. Had she accepted his invitation, would it have been her name in the headlines? What fate would she have met in the belly of Peter's steel beast? Just nine days later, the tides washed up the answers she sought.

Part Five: A Man with a Murder Plan On August 21st, a cyclist was out riding in the countryside. The road was narrow and deserted, separating lush grasslands from the shoreline of Kjeltsen, a section of coastline to the south of Copenhagen near Ko Bay. As they pedaled past the scenery, they noticed something unusual on the shore.

the cyclist pulled over and peered down the embankment before a disgusted gasp escaped their lips. There, amidst the rocks and lapping waves, was the dismembered torso of a woman. It was immediately recovered by the police and taken in for a post-mortem examination, the results of which were nothing short of nightmarish.

The coroner concluded that the victim had been tortured based on the 15 gaping stab wounds that peppered her torso, most of which were clustered around her groin and genitals. It was near impossible to determine the cause of death, but there were signs that the victim had either been strangled or had her throat slit, disturbingly, after dismembering her body. The attacker mutilated her torso with the cold, calculated foresight of a seasoned killer.

Metal had been fastened to it, air manually pushed from the lungs, and the abdomen slashed open as an outlet for putrefaction gases. The killer was determined to prevent the torso from bloating and floating to the surface. However, as one volunteer said, "The ocean, she wouldn't keep the secret."

On August 23rd, the Copenhagen police held a press conference where they announced that the mutilated torso belonged to 30-year-old Kim Wall, confirming everyone's fears. The vivacious, adventure-seeking journalist was dead and her death was clearly no accident. The gruesome discovery inevitably made international headlines and two days later, indecent handling of a corpse was added to Peter Madsen's preliminary charges.

His crew was devastated by the news. They looked up to the self-taught engineer as their mentor. Now, they saw him as nothing but a sadistic murderer. Worse still, many were consumed by guilt as their minds were flooded with memories of Peter's bizarre behavior, subtle signs of a dark side that they felt they should have picked up on earlier.

The same woman who had turned down his invitation to take a trip on the Nautilus thought back to a conversation they had over text messages just days before Kim's disappearance. She was falling behind in her tasks and had jokingly asked Peter to threaten her, teasing that it might help motivate her to work faster. His responses were far more detailed and disturbing than she expected, but he was joking, wasn't he? In hindsight, perhaps not.

Peter replied that he would bind her in the nautilus and pierce her with a skewer. Then the pocket knife comes forward. I'm looking at your throat. Where is the pulse? I have a murder plan ready, which is a great pleasure, he warned. Peter continued, saying that he was going to make a snuff movie with her and cut her into little pieces. The woman had brushed it off as an eccentric imagination gone wild. However, though Peter refused to admit it,

The interaction turned out to be a sinister omen of the sadism he planned to unleash. A fact that became evident as his excuses unraveled and the evidence against him mounted. Part 6: A Sadomasochistic Monster On September 5th, 46-year-old Peter Madsen stood before a judge in a second pre-trial custody hearing. It dragged on for four hours as the inventor, who was known to savor the sound of his own voice, put on a show.

However, as prosecutors laid bare the irrefutable evidence against him, his performance did little more than paint him as a remorseless, sadomasochistic monster. Peter danced around the prosecution's accusations of murder, insisting he was innocent, before shocking the court with an unexpected admission. He confessed that his original statement had been a lie. Kim had never left the Nautilus on the evening of August 10th.

Instead, she perished inside its hull in what Peter claimed to be a freak accident. According to him, after surfacing the vessel and climbing out its hatch, he stood atop the deck and held the door open for Kim as any gentleman would. Somehow, he managed to lose his footing on a flat surface and dropped the 155-pound steel door.

It apparently cracked against Kim's head, fracturing her skull and slamming her into the floor below with a sickening thud. "It was a terrible accident. A disaster. No doctor could have done anything. Kim was severely injured. There was a pool of blood where she landed. I touched her neck, but she had no pulse," Peter claimed. He then donned the facade of a broken man, sniffling that Kim's death left him feeling suicidal.

The inventor continued with his dramatic admission, declaring that he couldn't handle having a dead body in his submarine and decided to bury the journalist at sea. "In my shock, I thought it was the right thing to do," he professed. Peter claimed that he dragged Kim through the hatch by a rope, fastened a metal weight around her waist, and dumped her body in the ocean. How dignified.

Then, the apparently grief-stricken inventor sabotaged his own submarine, determined to go down with it in an act of retributive suicide. Of course, when the prosecution pointed out that Kim was discovered headless and dismembered, Peter could only insist that she was in one piece when he ditched her body. The inventor's attempt at feigning innocence was feeble at best. However, after the prosecution presented its evidence, it was downright laughable.

The court heard obscene statements from several witnesses, all of whom asserted that Peter wasn't the upstanding citizen he claimed to be. Apparently, he had a fetish for violent pornography and sadomasochistic sex. Prosecutor Jacob Book Jepson stated that, although there was no foreign DNA on Kim's torso, traces of semen were discovered inside Peter's underwear.

Book Jepson argued that whatever the defendant had done to the journalist, he had ejaculated while doing it. This, coupled with the inventor's alleged sick urges, led the prosecution to believe that the motive for Kim's murder was a sexual one. Once both sides had presented their arguments, Judge Annette Burcu handed down her verdict.

"I find there is reasonable suspicion that the detainee is guilty of murder," she said, before ordering that Peter remain in custody for another four weeks. However, his release date would never come. On October 4th, the police announced that a search of Peter's workshop computer had returned a cache of graphic gore porn and genuine snuff films.

officers found videos of women being tortured, beheaded, hanged and impaled, most of which were sexual in nature.

That's not all. It was also discovered that mere moments before Kim boarded the Nautilus, Peter had watched a woman being decapitated in a video that he stashed on a backup profile on his iPhone. If that wasn't damning enough, police divers made another gruesome discovery just two days later. Two garbage bags were dredged up from the depths of Koh Bay, containing clothes, pieces of metal, a knife, a pair of disembodied legs, and the severed head of Kim Wong.

Six days later, an orange-handled saw was found in the very same waters. A saw that had gone missing from Peter's workshop the day he took Kim on the Nautilus' final voyage. An autopsy confirmed that the body parts had been dismembered through deliberate cutting. More so, the coroner reported that the journalist's skull was perfectly intact and showed no signs of blunt force trauma or fractures.

Just like that, Peter's hatch story was obliterated and he was backed into a corner. Part 7: An Ocean of Sick Secrets The police already suspected that the inventor's ridiculous version of events was a lie. Now, they had the forensic evidence to prove it. Astonishingly, even that wasn't enough to shake him. In late October, Peter changed his story for the third time in a feeble and final attempt at escaping justice.

This time, the inventor offered an explanation that relied upon the mechanics of a submarine, thinking he could outsmart seasoned investigators. Of course, that's what autopsies are for. Peter told the police that Kim was actually killed by carbon monoxide poisoning, a freak accident far different from the first.

Apparently, while he was standing on the deck of the half-submerged submarine, the air pressure below suddenly plummeted. Exhaust fumes then filled the Nautilus, engulfing Kim in a thick, toxic fog. Peter professed that, in a tragic twist of fate, the hatch failed to open. "When I finally manage to open the hatch, a warm cloud hits my face.

"I find her lifeless on the floor, and I squat next to her and try to wake her up, slapping her cheeks," he sniffled. Then, Peter made an astonishing confession. The inventor claimed that, after spending an hour struggling to squeeze Kims' corpse out of the submarine, he was forced to dismember it, something he had previously denied. At that stage, Peter's admission and inconsistent stories mattered little to the police.

They had built an impenetrable case against him in which both circumstantial and forensic evidence continued to mount. Late that November, more grisly exhibits were added to their case when a discovery was made in Co Bay, just over half a mile from where Kim's mutilated torso was found. Her severed arms were discovered in garbage bags weighed down with car pipes, the final pieces of a grotesque puzzle.

Finally, it was time to bring Peter Madsen to justice. On January 16th, 2018, the inventor was formally charged with premeditated murder, indecent handling of a corpse, and sexual assault. Just under two months later, on March 8th, the much-anticipated submarine murder trial commenced at Copenhagen City Court. It unfolded over 10 days, spread across four weeks, and proved to be just as sensational as the case itself.

The court heard unusual testimony from 36 similarly unusual witnesses, which included amateur rocket enthusiasts, submarine specialists, dominatrixes, and members of the Black Society, a local BDSM club. As each took the stand, an ocean of secrets flooded the courtroom, exposing Peter Madsen for the man he truly was, a self-obsessed technoid with a taste for torture and fetishized snuff films.

Several young women were forced to come to terms with the fragility of their own lives as they testified that they had turned down the same invitation Kim Wall had accepted. Overall, it was emotionally disturbing for all involved, except for Peter, of course. The disgraced inventor denied all charges, aside from the mistreatment of a corpse, and appeared bored as Jacob Bouk-Jepson presented the evidence against him.

The prosecutor showed that after sharing a cup of tea with Kim on August 10th, Peter had stashed a saw, sharpened screwdrivers, straps, pipes, and a video camera inside the Nautilus. An eyewitness corroborated this, claiming to have seen him strutting through a crowd of festival goers with the saw sticking out of his backpack that very same afternoon.

From this evidence, it was clear that the journalist's gruesome death was premeditated and possibly an attempt by Peter to recreate one of his beloved snuff films. Book Jemson accused him of entrapping Kim within the submarine where no one could hear her screams before restraining, sexually assaulting, and torturing her. Then he alleged that Peter asphyxiated the journalist either by strangulation or by slitting her throat.

According to book Jepson, the motive was a simple one: Peter sought to live out his most violent sexual fantasies, something that was supported by the many BDSM mistresses who had satiated his desire for sadomasochistic sex over the years. On March 26th, several different dominatrixes took the stand and shared graphic testimony, triggering a wave of whispers and gasps from the gallery.

Allegedly, Peter often used the Nautilus as a BDSM dungeon, where he indulged in strangulation sex with his mistresses in the very same hall where he later mutilated and murdered Kim Hall. The court also heard that the inventor had starred in pornos and openly discussed shooting his own fetish snuff film. One witness testified that Peter had an unnatural fixation with women and death, saying that it had turned a little bit into a manic obsession.

The sheer volume and violence of the accusations against the inventor bordered on being unbelievable, something the prosecution had anticipated and prepared for. They presented the court with Peter's archive of snuff films and his internet history, which included a search for the terms "beheading," "girl," and "agony." The search returned a video of a woman having her throat slit, which he watched the night before the Nautilus' final journey.

Of course, Peter had an explanation for that too. Part Eight: The Harshest of All Punishments As it came time for Peter to testify in his defense, his demeanor changed. He no longer maintained an air of indifference and took the stand with newfound vigor, clearly aware of the media both inside and outside of the courthouse. As expected, his testimony was as surreal as his persona.

Peter eagerly denied the accusation that the atrocities he inflicted upon Kim Wall were inspired by his sexual fetish for snuff films. On the contrary, he claimed that watching women succumb to violent deaths helped him get in touch with his sensitive side. Peter stated that they brought out his empathy, which he found particularly cathartic. He actually likened them to Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill and David Fincher's Seven.

blatantly trivializing the torture that the women had suffered, including that of his own victim. Peter then attempted to account for the lies he had told the police amidst Kim's disappearance. He declared that his deception was selfless, claiming that he hoped to spare the journalist's parents from enduring the gruesome tale of what truly befell their beloved daughter.

That said, Peter continued to insist that her death was the result of a tragic accident involving toxic exhaust fumes, despite the coroner testifying that Kim's lungs bore no evidence of such trauma. The inventor rambled on and on in what became a repetitive, chaotic, and hard to follow testimony. He fixated on technical minutia, referred to himself in both the third and first person, and spoke in both past and present tense.

Eventually, Judge Annette Burke grew tired of interrupting Peter's non-incoherent speech. Like the police, she was unconvinced by his all too convenient story, stating that it was not credible and not consistent with the decision to dismember the body. Once the defense had rested, the court was adjourned, and a jury of two people retired to deliberate on the inventor's fate.

Two days later, they returned their verdict. On April 25th, 2018, 47-year-old Peter Madsen was convicted of premeditated murder, aggravated sexual assault, and desecrating a corpse. Judge Berke described his crimes as cynical, preplanned, and brutal before handing down her judgment. The very same day, Peter was sentenced to life imprisonment, the harshest of all punishments in Danish law.

The penalty was rare and unusual, with only 25 inmates serving life terms as of 2020. However, in Denmark, the definition of a life sentence was similarly unusual, and convicts were only expected to serve 16 years behind bars. That said, they could be kept far longer if deemed a danger to society upon their release date, a notion that Peter had likely grappled with.

His crimes were amongst the most cruel, sadistic and remorseless Denmark had ever seen, making it doubtful that he would ever be released. With this in mind, Peter submitted a desperate appeal five months after his conviction, but it was promptly denied by the High Court of Eastern Denmark. After losing his appeal and having his sentence upheld, Peter agreed to be filmed for a Danish documentary in September of 2020. Perhaps he thought it would help his case.

However, unbeknownst to him, the program maker, Christian Lineman, secretly recorded their jailhouse interviews, hoping he would slip up. Surprisingly, he did. After sitting through over 20 hours of eccentric ramblings, Christian managed to capture the moment the disgraced small-time celeb finally confessed to Kim Wall's murder. There is only one who is guilty, and that is me, Peter conceded.

At that stage, it seemed as though he had come to terms with his fate in Herzte-Waeste prison. Of course, with him, nothing was ever as it seemed. Just one month later, Peter Madsen escaped. Part nine, an explosive escape. The day of October 20th was an ordinary one, on the surface at least. Peter arrived at one of his mandatory psychiatric evaluations and the session started off as usual until he unzipped his hoodie.

There, strapped to his waist, was what appeared to be a homemade explosive device. It all happened so fast. Peter took the psychologist hostage after threatening him with a particularly quick and grim death, and used the employee as a human shield as he navigated his way out of the prison. Considering Peter's experience in engineering, none of the correctional officers took any chances. Still, they weren't going down without a fight.

The nearby police patrol was alerted and several prison guards tailed the pair, keeping their distance as they did. The moment Peter stepped foot outside of Herrster Wester, he threw the psychologist to the side and lunged for the closest means of escape he could find. A man parked in a white van in the wrong place and at the wrong time. Under the threat of death by detonation, the man was forced to act as his getaway driver

However, they didn't get very far before a police blockade brought them to a screeching halt. Peter was promptly dragged out of the van by a few brave officers and thrust face down onto the concrete. He was then propped up against a nearby fence and handcuffed to it, where he stayed surrounded by heavily armed police officers until the bomb squad arrived to inspect his DIY device. Peter sat looking disheveled but calm and sober.

Once his belt was inspected by bomb disposal specialists, it became clear why. The explosive device strapped to his waist was a fake, a hoax he used to flee from his fate, using his reputation as a mad inventor. The citizens of Denmark were outraged at the news of Peter's attempted prison break. However, Christian Linnaman, who recorded his jailhouse confession, was unsurprised.

Peter Madsen sees himself at the center of events. He loves to create stories. He has a huge ego and thinks himself to be very unique. Christian said in an interview with the press, "The documentary maker's statement was an apt one. Peter Madsen told many stories during his strange existence. Perhaps his greatest story of all was one of personal freedom, which he claimed the Nautilus represented.

However, his tales were nothing more than desperate attempts to be relevant and revered, two things he will never be. Instead, he will go down in history as a sick, sadistic murderer who turned a feat of engineering into a torture chamber, one that silenced an extraordinary woman who had extraordinary stories to tell.

That said, Kim Wall's family and friends made sure that her commitment to shedding light on stories of social injustice didn't die with her. The Walls went on to establish the Kim Wall Memorial Fund in her honor, which continues to support young women in journalism. "This will be a way for everyone to focus on the future instead of it all ending that night on the submarine. Her legacy will live on," said her mother, Ingrid Wall.

Peter's legacy, on the other hand, won't. As part of his conviction, the Nautilus was destroyed, along with his dream of winning the Danish space race. Hey guys, thanks for listening. I want to give you all a quick heads up regarding some upcoming political ads you may start hearing leading up to this year's presidential election.

These ads do not represent my own political viewpoint. So if you hear a political ad play on the podcast and it's not in my own voice, then it has absolutely nothing to do with me personally as a podcaster. Thank you again for being a dedicated listener of mine, and I can't wait to have another amazing year with you guys. I'll see you in the next episode.