May 14, 2025 • 36 mins
In August 2017, award-winning journalist Kim Wall boarded a homemade submarine in Copenhagen to interview eccentric inventor Peter Madsen. She was never seen alive again. What began as a promising story turned into one of the most chilling and bizarre true crime cases in recent memory. In this episode, we take you through Kim’s life, the investigation into her murder, the trial that shocked Denmark, and how her legacy continues to impact journalism around the world. This is not just a story about a horrific crime — it’s a story about the power of storytelling, the dangers journalists face, and the fight to remember Kim Wall for how she lived, not how she died. 📌 Learn more about the Kim Wall Memorial Fund: kimwallmemorialfund.org 📢 Follow & Subscribe: Subscribe on Patreon: www.patreon.com/weirdtruecrime Website: www.weirdtruecrime.com Instagram: www.instagram.com/weirdtruecrime TikTok: www.tiktok.com/weirdtruecrime YouTube: www.youtube.com/@weirdtruecrime Email: weirdtruecrime@gmail.com Edited by - djaudio22@gmail.com
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Fire Eyes Media.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Kim Wall was one of those journalists who went after
the kinds of stories most people wouldn't touch.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
Yeah, she was smart, curious, and seriously fearless, and she
was committed to telling stories that often go completely unheard.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
In August of twenty seventeen, Kim set out to do
what she'd always done, chase a story. She got on
board a homemade submarine with a Danish inventor she'd been
trying to interview for months.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Right before they submerged, she texted her boyfriend, I'm still
alive btw, but going down now. I love you.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
She never came back.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
What followed over the next few weeks became one of
the most disturbing and bizarre criminal cases Denmark, where honestly
the world has ever seen.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
But before we dive into it, take a second to
leave us a five star rating and review wherever you're listening.
It helps more than you know.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
And if you want to see photos, case updates, or
just hang out with us online, follow us on Instagram
and TikTok at weird true Crime. I'm Gina and I'm
Amber and this is.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
The Weird True Crime of Kim Wall.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
On August tenth, twenty seventeen, Kim Wall and her boyfriend
Ol were getting ready to host a going away party
at their apartment in Copenhagen.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Yeah, they were about to move to China together. It
was supposed to be this fun, celebrate night with her
friends before starting their next chapter.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
But while they were setting up, Kim gets a text
and it completely changes the night.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
It's from Peter Madsen. If you're not familiar, he was
kind of a local celebrity in Denmark, an eccentric inventor
who had built this massive homemade submarine called the Nautilus.
Kim had been trying to interview him for months, right.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
And this wasn't just a cool boat guy story to her.
Kim was fascinated by fringe communities and under the radar people,
folks building rockets and abandoned warehouses, you know that kind
of thing.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
Yeah, it was totally her beat. She had actually discovered
Madsen's workshop while out walking with Ol earlier in the
year and had been digging into the Copenhagen rocket building
scene ever since, pitching the story, doing interviews and laying
the groundwork.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
So Adson finally says yes, she jumps on it. This
was the moment she'd been waiting for.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
She heads over to his workshop. It's not far and
about thirty minutes later she comes back home. She's so excited.
Madson's not just giving her the interview, He's invited her
to go out on the submarine.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
And honestly, that's a dream opportunity for a journalist like Kem.
She decides to skip the party and go. She even
asks Ol if he wants to come along, but he
stays back to host their guests.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
They kiss goodbye and expect that she'll be back in
just a few hours.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
That was it. A little while later, Kem sends Ol
a couple of photos, one of the sub and another
of some windmills out on the water. Then at eight
sixteen pm, she sends that last.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
Text message, and that was the last time anyone ever
heard from her.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
Here's the thing, this trip on the submarine probably didn't
feel dangerous to Kim.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
No, not at all. I mean, this is someone who
had reported from postwar Sri Lanka, written about underground internet
networks in Cuba, and even managed to slip into North Korea.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
Exactly. She wasn't new to uncomfortable or high risk situations.
Kim was smart, she was experienced.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
And this wasn't some shady off the grid meet up.
The summary launched in broad daylight from a public doc
with people literally standing around watching. There were even photos
taken as they set off.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
But we hear this all the time in cases like this,
especially when the victim is a woman, That question why
would she go alone?
Speaker 2 (04:53):
Right? And Kim's colleagues and friends shut that kind of
thinking down immediately. She did what any serious journalist would
have done. She got a long awaited yes on a
story she'd been working hard to land. Of course, she went,
that's her job.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
What no one, not Ol, not her friends, not even
Kim could have imagined was just how dark this story
was going to become.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
When Kim didn't come home that night, Ol knew something
was wrong. She told him she'd be back in a
few hours, and now it was well past midnight.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
He started texting her, calling her nothing just silence.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
So at around one in the morning he contacted the
police and the Danish armed forces that kicked off a
full scale search and rescue operation, helicopters ships everything.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
They learned A merchant ship had spotted the submarine earlier
that night, northwest of the Orsoon Bridge. After that nothing,
the Nautilus didn't have satellite tracking and authorities couldn't get
in touch with Peter Madsen.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Then the next morning, on August eleventh, a lighthouse crew
spotted the sub in Coe Bay, about thirty miles south
of Copenhagen. A helicopter made contact, but no one answered.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
And then the submarine just started sinking. It went under
in less than thirty seconds.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
Yeah, and then Peter Madsen surfaces, swims to a nearby
boat and is rescued and brought to shore.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
Reporters were already there when he arrived, and when they
asked what happened, he claimed there'd been a problem with
the ballast tank, said he was trying to fix it,
and then the sub just started to go down.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
One of the reporters asked if he was okay, and
just gave this casual thumbs up like all good and
said he was sad his submarine had sunk.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
But everything was very much not.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
Okay because kim Wall was nowhere to be found and
Peter he was immediately taken into custody.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
When police finally got Peter Madison alone and started asking questions.
They wanted to know the obvious, where is Kim Wall.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
And he tells them she got off the sub around
ten thirty pm the night before near a restaurant on
ref Saloon. Said he dropped her off safely and hadn't
seen her since.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
Total lie.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
YEP investigators pulled surveillance footage from the area and guess what,
there was no sign of Kim not even close.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
So now they're dealing with a missing person and a
story that's already unraveling. And this wasn't just some guy
who built a boat. Peter Madsen was kind of a
big deal in Denmark.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
Yeah, for years he had this mad genius reputation. He
built the UC three Nautilus, which at the time was
the largest privately constructed submarine in the world forty tons
and all of it made from donated parts in scrap metal.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
After the submarine, he shifted gears and got into space exploration.
He co founded Copenhagen Suborbitals with a former NASA contractor
and they were actually building rockets.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
For a while. People really believed in him. He came
off like this eccentric, passionate inventor who was pushing boundaries.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
But behind the scenes things were not great.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
He had a reputation for being controlling and having unpredictable
mood swings. Volunteers who worked with him described him as
someone who could go from friendly to furious in seconds.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
There were also some seriously disturbing behaviors that people brushed
off his quirks. One volunteer said Peter had this ongoing
joke where he'd pretend to be a Nazi and say
things like, what if I inject battery acid into your veins?
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Another said if something didn't go Peter's way, he'd completely
melt down like a child, throwing a tantrum. He'd throw
tools across the room if he got frustrated.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
So, yeah, this wasn't just a quirky rocket guy. There
were red flags, a lot of them.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
Yeah, And sure enough, the day after his rescue, Peter
changed just his story.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
Now he says Kim died in an accident. According to him,
she was climbing back up through the hatch of the
sub and he lost his grip. The one hundred and
fifty pound hatch slammed down on her head and killed her.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Yeah, and then in a panic, he says he buried
her at sea, just dumped her overboard.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
He also claimed he didn't sink the submarine to cover
anything up. He said he just didn't think anyone would
want to use it again after what happened.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
Which sounds insane, And of course the investigators aren't buying it.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
And as they start looking deeper, it becomes clear that
Peter's accident story it's just the beginning.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
Because on August twenty first, eleven days after Kim disappeared,
a cyclist walking along the shore in Copenhagen made a horrifying.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
Discovery a torso, no head, no arms, no legs, just
a torso washed up on the waterline.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
It was later confirmed to be Kim Wall.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
When the medical examiner looked at Kim's remains, what they
found was just horrifying.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
Yeah, there were fifteen stab wounds on her torso. Fourteen
of them were in her genital area and one in
her rib cage.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
And these weren't post mortem. The pathologists determined they were
made while she was still alive or very shortly after
her death.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
It's just unimaginable. Whoever did this, and we know it
was Peter wasn't just trying to hide a body. He
wanted to dehumanize her, to violate her even in death.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
And he tried to make sure she wouldn't be found.
Her torso had metal piping attached to it, meant to
weigh it down keep it submerged.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
After the torso was recovered, Peter was officially charged with
indecent handling of a corpse and negligent manslaughter under aggravated circumstances.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
But even then he stuck to his story, still claiming
Kim died in an accident, that he panicked and dumped
her body.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
But his story kept shifting depending on what evidence police found,
like the minute they disproved of one version, he'd come
up with a new one, just repainting the same lie
over and over instead of fixing the truth exactly.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
Once investigators confirmed that Kim's skull showed no signs of injury,
no trauma whatsoever, Peter suddenly had a new version of events.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
Now he claims she died from carbon monoxide poisoning. He
said he'd been up on deck when the air pressure
suddenly dropped in the engine room, where Kim just happened
to be hanging.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
Out right, and then Peter claimed that the hatch got
sucked closed from the drop in air pressure, so he
yelled at Kim to turn off the engine. By the
time it turned off around fifteen minutes later and he
finally opened the hatch, Kim was dead.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
But that didn't make sense either. There were no signs
of carbon monoxide in her lungs, no burns, and no
heat damage to her body.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
A scientist even testified that Peter's carbon monoxide story was
technically possible, but only if the temperature in the submarine
had gotten extremely high.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
And when they tested the submarine there weren't any traces
of exhaust build up or CO two, nothing to back
up that story.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
It was just lie after lie, each one carefully shaped
to cover whatever new facts the police uncovered.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
And while all of these gruesome details were coming out,
it's so important to pause and come back to who
Kim was, because she.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
Wasn't just a victim. She was a journalist, a daughter,
a partner, a storyteller.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
Kim graduated top of her class from Columbia's journalism program,
one of the hardest in the world to get into.
Her work was published in The Guardian, The New York Times, Time,
and even Vice.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
But what made her stories so special was how deeply
human they were. She didn't chase spectacle. She told nuanced,
empathetic stories about people on the margins.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
She wrote about voodoo in Haiti, undergrad on media networks
in Cuba where people shared band shows on USB sticks,
tourism cropping up on former battlefields in Sri Lanka.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
And she had this rare gift she could zero in
on something quirky or offbeat and use it to tell
a much bigger story.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
Her friends described her as warm, fearless, and curious, someone
who could walk into a room and immediately skip the
small talk. She'd start telling you about what she was
working on and you'd be hooked.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
She didn't sensationalize. She listened, and she cared about the
people she reported on.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
And what makes this case so cruel, aside from the
horrific details, is that Kim wasn't being reckless.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
Not at all. She was doing what good journalists do
pursuing a story. She was experienced, thoughtful, and cautious. This
should have been a routine assignment.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
Yeah, she had every reason to believe that she would
be safe, but she wasn't.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
Over the next several weeks, investigators began recovering more of
Kim's remains. Each one had been carefully weighed down, designed
to sink, to disappear.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
And by then the picture was becoming painfully clear. This
wasn't panic or an accident. This was calculated and methodical.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
And it was about to get even darker.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
Investigators brought the submarine to shore and started searching every
inch of it.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
What they found only confirmed what people were already starting
to suspect.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
Blood in the submarine. Kim's blood her DNA was also
found on Peter's boiler suit, along with her hair, muscle tissue,
and even bone fragments.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
And it didn't stop there. DNA from Kim was found
under Peter's fingernails, on his nostrils, hands, and neck.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
He even had scratch marks on his underarms, which were
more than likely from Kim fighting back.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
Yep, the idea of this being some freak accident is ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
Yeah, absolutely, But all of the DNA evidence isn't the
most disturbing part. It's what they found on Peter's computer.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
Thousands of videos, thousands women being tortured, beheaded, burned, impaled.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
Somewhere, execution videos. Others were extreme fetish material. And the
Google searches. They were terrifying.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
Things like how to impale women to death husband STAB's
ex wife with machete.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
And here's the part that chills me. The night before
Kim boarded the Nautilus, Peter searched for beheading videos involving
women and watched one where a woman had her throat slit.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
If that doesn't screen premeditated, I don't know what does.
But even with this evidence, Peter continued to deny it all.
He claimed the videos weren't his and said that other
people used his computer.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
I'm sure they did. He also tried to say he
couldn't tell the difference between horror movies, cartoons and execution videos,
which is totally ridiculous. And prosecutors weren't buying.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
It, not at all. They saw what was really good
going on. This was a planned attack, no spontaneity about.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
It, and when they started putting together as psychological profile,
that theory only got stronger.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
Yeah, that's the wild part. Peter Madson had no criminal record,
well nothing on paper.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
Anyway, but that doesn't mean his behavior wasn't concerning.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
He was into sado masochism, attended fetish parties. Regularly and
talked openly about pain and control, not just a kinks
but almost like obsessions.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
Yeah, no kink shaming here, but there was a former
porn actress who met him and later said he had
two sides. She described him as funny and charming one minute,
the serious, manipulative, even scary the next.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
Eventually, Peter underwent a full forensic psychological evaluation, and while
the results didn't label him as psychotic or legally insane,
they were deeply unsettling.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
He was described as emotionally handicapped, with a severe lack
of empathy, randiose, and obsessed with his own image.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
They called him manipulative, self centered, and noted that he
showed no remorse, no guilt.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
One expert even used the term perverse polymorph, which basically
means someone with a wide range of deviant sexual interests.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
And maybe the most terrifying part, they said the risk
of him doing something like this again was high.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
Which brings us back to Kim because by this point
in the investigation it was clear to everyone involved this
wasn't just a murder.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
It was a fantasy, a sexual, sadistic fantasy that Peter
Madsen had been building toward for years.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
And Kim she just happened to accept his invitation to
see the submarine.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
Every other woman Peter contacted in the days before had
declined his offer to come aboard the sub Kim didn't,
and Peter saw his chance to twist the moment into
something unimaginably violent and unbelievably.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
It was still going to get darker because then came
the trial.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
Peter Madsen's trial started on March eighth, twenty eighteen, in
Copenhagen City.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
Court, and from the start it was clear this wasn't
going to be a simple or straightforward case.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
Even before the trial started, people were lining up outside
the courthouse overnight just to get a seat.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
There were only four public seats available, and the media
presence was massive. This case had captivated not just Denmark
but the entire world.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
Inside the courtroom, it wasn't a jury that would decide
Peter Madsen's fate. Denmark doesn't always use juries, especially in
serious cases like this. Instead, they had a panel of
three professional judges.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
Yeah, Peter took the stand and gave his version of events,
or I guess we should say the latest version, right.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
He was sticking to his claim that Kim had died
of carbon monoxide poisoning.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
Then he claimed he tried to move her body but couldn't,
and that's when he made what he called the terrible
decision to cut her up and dispose of her at sea.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
He kept insisting it wasn't murder, just a tragic accident
followed by a moment of panic.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
But prosecutors weren't having it. Their argument was clear this
was premeditated murder fueled by dark sexual fantasies Peter had
been cultivating for a long time.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
They showed the court more than one hundred and forty
videos from his hard drive, execution clips, torture, porn, violent fetishes.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
And they pointed out that the night before Kim boarded
the Nautilus, Peter watched that video of a woman being beheaded.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
They also walked the court through his Internet search history,
his online activity, and the multiple women he had tried
to convince to join him on the sub that same week.
As we said, all of them said no except Kim.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
Yeah, who wouldn't have said yes, but she had been
chasing that story for months.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
One of Peter's former partners even testified. She said they
talked about sex and death, not in a fantasy role
play kind of way, but more like he was genuinely
fascinated by the idea.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
Yeah. She told the court that near the end of
their relationship, his sexual fantasies were getting darker and more erratic,
so scary.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
At one point, he described what he thought would be
the most uncomfortable way to die.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
And honestly, it's chilling. He said. It would be being
locked in a soft plush tube that constantly rolled, so
you could never sleep until you eventually died from sheer exhaustion.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
Who even thinks of that?
Speaker 2 (24:48):
Exactly? That kind of obsession with suffering and control. It
was a clear sign of where his mind had been heading.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
By the time closing arguments rolled around, the prosecution stance
was crystal clear. This was a man who had been
consumed by violent fantasies for a long time, and Kim
became the outlet for it.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
On the stand, Peter tried to keep it together, but
there were cracks in that performance.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
When they asked why he felt it was necessary to
cut off Kim's head and limbs to get her body
out of the submarine, he just said, I don't understand
it either.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
And when they questioned him about the metal pipes he
attached to her remains, the ones meant to keep her
body from surfacing, He said he thought it would be
better for Kim's family if she was never found. Better
for them, right, because never knowing where your loved one
(25:56):
is is better than having answers. Then came the question,
probably one of the most emotionally charged moments of the trial,
did you do anything sexual to her?
Speaker 1 (26:11):
And Peter snapped He shot back with how can you
even ask that?
Speaker 2 (26:17):
Yeah, but the evidence didn't lie. Kim's underwear had traces
of Peter seamen and a strap from the submarine matched
the marks found on her wrists.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
Kind of hard to deny that proof. They also asked why,
if Kim had died and he was so devastated he
didn't call for help, why didn't he tell anyone instead?
Speaker 2 (26:44):
That night he sent a cheerful, emoji filled text to
his wife after Kim was dead, like nothing had happened.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
And his answer, you have to understand my situation.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
Yeah, No one did, though not really.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
In their closing statement, the prosecution asked for the harshest
sentence available under Danish law, life in prison.
Speaker 2 (27:13):
They admitted that kind of sentence is rare in Denmark,
especially for a single murder, and especially when the defendant
has no prior convictions.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
But they said, quote, this case is devoid of mitigating
circumstances end quote. No explanation, no remorse, nothing that could
justify leniency.
Speaker 2 (27:40):
Peter Madsen was given the chance to speak one last
time before the verdict. He looked at Kim's parents and said, quote,
I'm really really sorry about what happened. End quote.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
But that wasn't enough. On April twenty fifth, twenty eighteen,
Peter MADD's was found guilty of murder, sexual assault, and
indecent handling of a corpse.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
The court called the killing cynical and plant. He was
sentenced to life in prison. Like we said, the harshest
sentence Denmark can hand down, and it wasn't given very often.
Speaker 1 (28:19):
And still even after the trial, even after the sentencing,
Peter never gave a real explanation.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
It wasn't until two years later that he finally admitted,
during a secretly recorded phone call, that yes, he killed
Kim Wall.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
His exact words quote, it's my fault, she died. I
committed the crime. It's all my fault end quote.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
But that was it. No why, no detail, and no accountability.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
After the verdict, Peter Madsen tried to appeal not the convict,
but the sentence.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
Yeah, he wanted his life sentence reduced.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
But the court didn't budge. The High Court actually reaffirmed
the original ruling. They said the crime was of unusual
seriousness and that Peter had shown special ruthlessness.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
Yeah. They also made a point that really stuck with me.
They said Peter quote exploited the defenseless position of the
injured party end quote.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
In playing terms. Kim was vulnerable and he knew it.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
But Peter's story didn't stop there. In twenty twenty, while
serving his life sentence, he escaped from prison.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
Yeah, it sounds unreal, but it happened. He threatened a
guard with what looked like a gun and actually made
it a few hundred meters down the road before police
cornered him.
Speaker 2 (30:02):
He dropped the fake weapon and stood there wearing what
looked like a bomb belt. Bomb squads robots were called in.
The standoff lasted about ninety minutes before he was taken
back into custody.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
And later that same year, a Danish journalist released a
documentary that included over twenty hours of phone calls with Peter.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
Yeah. He also admits to the murder in those phone calls,
but again never explains why. But Peter's not the important
person in a story, though Kim.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
Is absolutely in fact. Shortly after Kim's torso was found,
her mother, Ingrid, woke up in the middle of the
night with two clear thoughts.
Speaker 2 (30:49):
One, Kim's work had to live on through other young women,
and two a book needed to be written, not about
the crow, but about Kim, about who she was in
the impact she had.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
And Ingrid followed through on both.
Speaker 2 (31:10):
Today, the Kim Wall Memorial Fund awards grants to young
female journalists, women who are curious, empathetic, and committed to
telling stories that matter.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
So far, at least eighteen grants have been awarded, and
several other organizations have launched awards in Kim's name as well.
Speaker 2 (31:30):
In twenty eighteen, Kim's parents published the book of Kim
Wall When Words End.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
It's not a true crime story. It's a love story
from her parents, her friends, her colleagues. It's about Kim
as a daughter, a friend, and a journalist who believed
deeply in seeing people for who they really were.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
Everyone who knew Kim wants her to be remembered for
how she lived, not how she died.
Speaker 1 (32:01):
Kim Wall was smart, brave, and deeply kind. She wasn't
chasing clicks. She was chasing meaning, Even in the strange
corners of the world where most people wouldn't think to look,
and in a world that can feel so indifferent, sometimes
Kim gave a damn.
Speaker 2 (32:19):
And that's the legacy she leaves behind, and that's what
we should remember. It's so heartbreaking because I was a
journalism major and this is the kind of stuff I
wanted to do with my life.
Speaker 1 (32:37):
I was going to ask you, because this was more
your wheelhouse, how it affected you, Because like she she
I mean, as we had said earlier, she did everything right.
She wasn't being careless or reckless. She was doing what
anybody in her position would have done. And she just
happened into the wrong person.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
And it wasn't even like it was on a way.
She had been trying to talk to him for months.
This was a story that she had been interested in covering,
and so she finally gets this opportunity. She can't pass
it off. She can't just be like, oh, well, you know,
never mind, And she gave up saying goodbye to her
friends to do this.
Speaker 1 (33:17):
Yep too.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
And she had asked all if he wanted to come
with her, and even said she was a little nervous,
not about going, not about being alone with Peter, but
about being in a fricking subsubmarine, because yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:32):
The ocean is terrifying.
Speaker 2 (33:34):
It is terrifying. And Ole said that he really wanted
to go, he thought about it, that he didn't feel
like he could ditch their friends last minute, and that's
why he stayed behind. Because of course you're not going
to think that she's going to be in any real danger.
She's just going to interview this dude and see a
home made submarine and then come back in a few hours.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
Most of the time, the last time you see a
person is not what you think to be the last
time you'll ever see them.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
No, And it's just it's really scary because a lot
of people did know what he was really like and
saw those signs. But that doesn't mean even saying that,
that doesn't mean that you would think that somebody would
actually be capable of doing something like this.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
No, and as you said earlier, no kink shaming. People
can like what they like. There's nothing wrong with that.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
But like, and he had obviously been thinking about this
and planning this and had the tools on the submarine.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
To do it, yep, and building up.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
Yeah, and he had been asking multiple women to come
on the sub she just happened to say yes. If
it hadn't been for that story.
Speaker 1 (34:45):
Yep, if it had, if it wasn't Kim, it would
have been somebody else. So in a kind of twisted way,
her sacrifice saved another young woman from meeting the same fate.
Speaker 2 (34:59):
Yeah case, if it had happened to somebody else who
maybe was less known or didn't have the same support system,
he could still be out there doing it to other people.
As sad as it is, but this one's this one's rough.
She was so young and had such a huge life
(35:20):
in front of her and was just trying to do
good things and make a difference and tell people's stories.
Speaker 1 (35:27):
But you know, at least her legacy is still living
on with the Foundation.
Speaker 2 (35:30):
And I think when this information first came out, I
think there had been like four four women that had
been given the grants, and then looking at updated information.
It's up to eighteen now is into twenty twenty five,
which is huge. So once again, you're taking something horrible
(35:54):
and you're turning it around and you're trying to do
something positive that.
Speaker 1 (35:59):
Helps us people see the light in the darkness.
Speaker 2 (36:02):
Yeah, we want to give a big thank you to
Hailey Gray for her research on this case.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
She's amazing at this. Yeah, be sure to give her
a follow at Hailey Gray Research on Instagram. Haley is
doing all kinds of amazing things in the advocacy space,
so really be sure to check it out.
Speaker 2 (36:25):
Yeah, and until next time, stay safe and make good choices.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
Bye bye.
Fire Eyes Media.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Kim Wall was one of those journalists who went after
the kinds of stories most people wouldn't touch.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
Yeah, she was smart, curious, and seriously fearless, and she
was committed to telling stories that often go completely unheard.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
In August of twenty seventeen, Kim set out to do
what she'd always done, chase a story. She got on
board a homemade submarine with a Danish inventor she'd been
trying to interview for months.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Right before they submerged, she texted her boyfriend, I'm still
alive btw, but going down now. I love you.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
She never came back.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
What followed over the next few weeks became one of
the most disturbing and bizarre criminal cases Denmark, where honestly
the world has ever seen.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
But before we dive into it, take a second to
leave us a five star rating and review wherever you're listening.
It helps more than you know.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
And if you want to see photos, case updates, or
just hang out with us online, follow us on Instagram
and TikTok at weird true Crime. I'm Gina and I'm
Amber and this is.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
The Weird True Crime of Kim Wall.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
On August tenth, twenty seventeen, Kim Wall and her boyfriend
Ol were getting ready to host a going away party
at their apartment in Copenhagen.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Yeah, they were about to move to China together. It
was supposed to be this fun, celebrate night with her
friends before starting their next chapter.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
But while they were setting up, Kim gets a text
and it completely changes the night.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
It's from Peter Madsen. If you're not familiar, he was
kind of a local celebrity in Denmark, an eccentric inventor
who had built this massive homemade submarine called the Nautilus.
Kim had been trying to interview him for months, right.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
And this wasn't just a cool boat guy story to her.
Kim was fascinated by fringe communities and under the radar people,
folks building rockets and abandoned warehouses, you know that kind
of thing.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
Yeah, it was totally her beat. She had actually discovered
Madsen's workshop while out walking with Ol earlier in the
year and had been digging into the Copenhagen rocket building
scene ever since, pitching the story, doing interviews and laying
the groundwork.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
So Adson finally says yes, she jumps on it. This
was the moment she'd been waiting for.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
She heads over to his workshop. It's not far and
about thirty minutes later she comes back home. She's so excited.
Madson's not just giving her the interview, He's invited her
to go out on the submarine.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
And honestly, that's a dream opportunity for a journalist like Kem.
She decides to skip the party and go. She even
asks Ol if he wants to come along, but he
stays back to host their guests.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
They kiss goodbye and expect that she'll be back in
just a few hours.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
That was it. A little while later, Kem sends Ol
a couple of photos, one of the sub and another
of some windmills out on the water. Then at eight
sixteen pm, she sends that last.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
Text message, and that was the last time anyone ever
heard from her.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
Here's the thing, this trip on the submarine probably didn't
feel dangerous to Kim.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
No, not at all. I mean, this is someone who
had reported from postwar Sri Lanka, written about underground internet
networks in Cuba, and even managed to slip into North Korea.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
Exactly. She wasn't new to uncomfortable or high risk situations.
Kim was smart, she was experienced.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
And this wasn't some shady off the grid meet up.
The summary launched in broad daylight from a public doc
with people literally standing around watching. There were even photos
taken as they set off.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
But we hear this all the time in cases like this,
especially when the victim is a woman, That question why
would she go alone?
Speaker 2 (04:53):
Right? And Kim's colleagues and friends shut that kind of
thinking down immediately. She did what any serious journalist would
have done. She got a long awaited yes on a
story she'd been working hard to land. Of course, she went,
that's her job.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
What no one, not Ol, not her friends, not even
Kim could have imagined was just how dark this story
was going to become.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
When Kim didn't come home that night, Ol knew something
was wrong. She told him she'd be back in a
few hours, and now it was well past midnight.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
He started texting her, calling her nothing just silence.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
So at around one in the morning he contacted the
police and the Danish armed forces that kicked off a
full scale search and rescue operation, helicopters ships everything.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
They learned A merchant ship had spotted the submarine earlier
that night, northwest of the Orsoon Bridge. After that nothing,
the Nautilus didn't have satellite tracking and authorities couldn't get
in touch with Peter Madsen.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Then the next morning, on August eleventh, a lighthouse crew
spotted the sub in Coe Bay, about thirty miles south
of Copenhagen. A helicopter made contact, but no one answered.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
And then the submarine just started sinking. It went under
in less than thirty seconds.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
Yeah, and then Peter Madsen surfaces, swims to a nearby
boat and is rescued and brought to shore.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
Reporters were already there when he arrived, and when they
asked what happened, he claimed there'd been a problem with
the ballast tank, said he was trying to fix it,
and then the sub just started to go down.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
One of the reporters asked if he was okay, and
just gave this casual thumbs up like all good and
said he was sad his submarine had sunk.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
But everything was very much not.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
Okay because kim Wall was nowhere to be found and
Peter he was immediately taken into custody.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
When police finally got Peter Madison alone and started asking questions.
They wanted to know the obvious, where is Kim Wall.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
And he tells them she got off the sub around
ten thirty pm the night before near a restaurant on
ref Saloon. Said he dropped her off safely and hadn't
seen her since.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
Total lie.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
YEP investigators pulled surveillance footage from the area and guess what,
there was no sign of Kim not even close.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
So now they're dealing with a missing person and a
story that's already unraveling. And this wasn't just some guy
who built a boat. Peter Madsen was kind of a
big deal in Denmark.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
Yeah, for years he had this mad genius reputation. He
built the UC three Nautilus, which at the time was
the largest privately constructed submarine in the world forty tons
and all of it made from donated parts in scrap metal.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
After the submarine, he shifted gears and got into space exploration.
He co founded Copenhagen Suborbitals with a former NASA contractor
and they were actually building rockets.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
For a while. People really believed in him. He came
off like this eccentric, passionate inventor who was pushing boundaries.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
But behind the scenes things were not great.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
He had a reputation for being controlling and having unpredictable
mood swings. Volunteers who worked with him described him as
someone who could go from friendly to furious in seconds.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
There were also some seriously disturbing behaviors that people brushed
off his quirks. One volunteer said Peter had this ongoing
joke where he'd pretend to be a Nazi and say
things like, what if I inject battery acid into your veins?
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Another said if something didn't go Peter's way, he'd completely
melt down like a child, throwing a tantrum. He'd throw
tools across the room if he got frustrated.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
So, yeah, this wasn't just a quirky rocket guy. There
were red flags, a lot of them.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
Yeah, And sure enough, the day after his rescue, Peter
changed just his story.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
Now he says Kim died in an accident. According to him,
she was climbing back up through the hatch of the
sub and he lost his grip. The one hundred and
fifty pound hatch slammed down on her head and killed her.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Yeah, and then in a panic, he says he buried
her at sea, just dumped her overboard.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
He also claimed he didn't sink the submarine to cover
anything up. He said he just didn't think anyone would
want to use it again after what happened.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
Which sounds insane, And of course the investigators aren't buying it.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
And as they start looking deeper, it becomes clear that
Peter's accident story it's just the beginning.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
Because on August twenty first, eleven days after Kim disappeared,
a cyclist walking along the shore in Copenhagen made a horrifying.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
Discovery a torso, no head, no arms, no legs, just
a torso washed up on the waterline.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
It was later confirmed to be Kim Wall.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
When the medical examiner looked at Kim's remains, what they
found was just horrifying.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
Yeah, there were fifteen stab wounds on her torso. Fourteen
of them were in her genital area and one in
her rib cage.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
And these weren't post mortem. The pathologists determined they were
made while she was still alive or very shortly after
her death.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
It's just unimaginable. Whoever did this, and we know it
was Peter wasn't just trying to hide a body. He
wanted to dehumanize her, to violate her even in death.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
And he tried to make sure she wouldn't be found.
Her torso had metal piping attached to it, meant to
weigh it down keep it submerged.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
After the torso was recovered, Peter was officially charged with
indecent handling of a corpse and negligent manslaughter under aggravated circumstances.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
But even then he stuck to his story, still claiming
Kim died in an accident, that he panicked and dumped
her body.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
But his story kept shifting depending on what evidence police found,
like the minute they disproved of one version, he'd come
up with a new one, just repainting the same lie
over and over instead of fixing the truth exactly.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
Once investigators confirmed that Kim's skull showed no signs of injury,
no trauma whatsoever, Peter suddenly had a new version of events.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
Now he claims she died from carbon monoxide poisoning. He
said he'd been up on deck when the air pressure
suddenly dropped in the engine room, where Kim just happened
to be hanging.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
Out right, and then Peter claimed that the hatch got
sucked closed from the drop in air pressure, so he
yelled at Kim to turn off the engine. By the
time it turned off around fifteen minutes later and he
finally opened the hatch, Kim was dead.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
But that didn't make sense either. There were no signs
of carbon monoxide in her lungs, no burns, and no
heat damage to her body.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
A scientist even testified that Peter's carbon monoxide story was
technically possible, but only if the temperature in the submarine
had gotten extremely high.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
And when they tested the submarine there weren't any traces
of exhaust build up or CO two, nothing to back
up that story.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
It was just lie after lie, each one carefully shaped
to cover whatever new facts the police uncovered.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
And while all of these gruesome details were coming out,
it's so important to pause and come back to who
Kim was, because she.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
Wasn't just a victim. She was a journalist, a daughter,
a partner, a storyteller.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
Kim graduated top of her class from Columbia's journalism program,
one of the hardest in the world to get into.
Her work was published in The Guardian, The New York Times, Time,
and even Vice.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
But what made her stories so special was how deeply
human they were. She didn't chase spectacle. She told nuanced,
empathetic stories about people on the margins.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
She wrote about voodoo in Haiti, undergrad on media networks
in Cuba where people shared band shows on USB sticks,
tourism cropping up on former battlefields in Sri Lanka.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
And she had this rare gift she could zero in
on something quirky or offbeat and use it to tell
a much bigger story.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
Her friends described her as warm, fearless, and curious, someone
who could walk into a room and immediately skip the
small talk. She'd start telling you about what she was
working on and you'd be hooked.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
She didn't sensationalize. She listened, and she cared about the
people she reported on.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
And what makes this case so cruel, aside from the
horrific details, is that Kim wasn't being reckless.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
Not at all. She was doing what good journalists do
pursuing a story. She was experienced, thoughtful, and cautious. This
should have been a routine assignment.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
Yeah, she had every reason to believe that she would
be safe, but she wasn't.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
Over the next several weeks, investigators began recovering more of
Kim's remains. Each one had been carefully weighed down, designed
to sink, to disappear.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
And by then the picture was becoming painfully clear. This
wasn't panic or an accident. This was calculated and methodical.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
And it was about to get even darker.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
Investigators brought the submarine to shore and started searching every
inch of it.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
What they found only confirmed what people were already starting
to suspect.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
Blood in the submarine. Kim's blood her DNA was also
found on Peter's boiler suit, along with her hair, muscle tissue,
and even bone fragments.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
And it didn't stop there. DNA from Kim was found
under Peter's fingernails, on his nostrils, hands, and neck.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
He even had scratch marks on his underarms, which were
more than likely from Kim fighting back.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
Yep, the idea of this being some freak accident is ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
Yeah, absolutely, But all of the DNA evidence isn't the
most disturbing part. It's what they found on Peter's computer.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
Thousands of videos, thousands women being tortured, beheaded, burned, impaled.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
Somewhere, execution videos. Others were extreme fetish material. And the
Google searches. They were terrifying.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
Things like how to impale women to death husband STAB's
ex wife with machete.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
And here's the part that chills me. The night before
Kim boarded the Nautilus, Peter searched for beheading videos involving
women and watched one where a woman had her throat slit.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
If that doesn't screen premeditated, I don't know what does.
But even with this evidence, Peter continued to deny it all.
He claimed the videos weren't his and said that other
people used his computer.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
I'm sure they did. He also tried to say he
couldn't tell the difference between horror movies, cartoons and execution videos,
which is totally ridiculous. And prosecutors weren't buying.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
It, not at all. They saw what was really good
going on. This was a planned attack, no spontaneity about.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
It, and when they started putting together as psychological profile,
that theory only got stronger.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
Yeah, that's the wild part. Peter Madson had no criminal record,
well nothing on paper.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
Anyway, but that doesn't mean his behavior wasn't concerning.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
He was into sado masochism, attended fetish parties. Regularly and
talked openly about pain and control, not just a kinks
but almost like obsessions.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
Yeah, no kink shaming here, but there was a former
porn actress who met him and later said he had
two sides. She described him as funny and charming one minute,
the serious, manipulative, even scary the next.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
Eventually, Peter underwent a full forensic psychological evaluation, and while
the results didn't label him as psychotic or legally insane,
they were deeply unsettling.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
He was described as emotionally handicapped, with a severe lack
of empathy, randiose, and obsessed with his own image.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
They called him manipulative, self centered, and noted that he
showed no remorse, no guilt.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
One expert even used the term perverse polymorph, which basically
means someone with a wide range of deviant sexual interests.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
And maybe the most terrifying part, they said the risk
of him doing something like this again was high.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
Which brings us back to Kim because by this point
in the investigation it was clear to everyone involved this
wasn't just a murder.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
It was a fantasy, a sexual, sadistic fantasy that Peter
Madsen had been building toward for years.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
And Kim she just happened to accept his invitation to
see the submarine.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
Every other woman Peter contacted in the days before had
declined his offer to come aboard the sub Kim didn't,
and Peter saw his chance to twist the moment into
something unimaginably violent and unbelievably.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
It was still going to get darker because then came
the trial.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
Peter Madsen's trial started on March eighth, twenty eighteen, in
Copenhagen City.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
Court, and from the start it was clear this wasn't
going to be a simple or straightforward case.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
Even before the trial started, people were lining up outside
the courthouse overnight just to get a seat.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
There were only four public seats available, and the media
presence was massive. This case had captivated not just Denmark
but the entire world.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
Inside the courtroom, it wasn't a jury that would decide
Peter Madsen's fate. Denmark doesn't always use juries, especially in
serious cases like this. Instead, they had a panel of
three professional judges.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
Yeah, Peter took the stand and gave his version of events,
or I guess we should say the latest version, right.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
He was sticking to his claim that Kim had died
of carbon monoxide poisoning.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
Then he claimed he tried to move her body but couldn't,
and that's when he made what he called the terrible
decision to cut her up and dispose of her at sea.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
He kept insisting it wasn't murder, just a tragic accident
followed by a moment of panic.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
But prosecutors weren't having it. Their argument was clear this
was premeditated murder fueled by dark sexual fantasies Peter had
been cultivating for a long time.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
They showed the court more than one hundred and forty
videos from his hard drive, execution clips, torture, porn, violent fetishes.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
And they pointed out that the night before Kim boarded
the Nautilus, Peter watched that video of a woman being beheaded.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
They also walked the court through his Internet search history,
his online activity, and the multiple women he had tried
to convince to join him on the sub that same week.
As we said, all of them said no except Kim.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
Yeah, who wouldn't have said yes, but she had been
chasing that story for months.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
One of Peter's former partners even testified. She said they
talked about sex and death, not in a fantasy role
play kind of way, but more like he was genuinely
fascinated by the idea.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
Yeah. She told the court that near the end of
their relationship, his sexual fantasies were getting darker and more erratic,
so scary.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
At one point, he described what he thought would be
the most uncomfortable way to die.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
And honestly, it's chilling. He said. It would be being
locked in a soft plush tube that constantly rolled, so
you could never sleep until you eventually died from sheer exhaustion.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
Who even thinks of that?
Speaker 2 (24:48):
Exactly? That kind of obsession with suffering and control. It
was a clear sign of where his mind had been heading.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
By the time closing arguments rolled around, the prosecution stance
was crystal clear. This was a man who had been
consumed by violent fantasies for a long time, and Kim
became the outlet for it.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
On the stand, Peter tried to keep it together, but
there were cracks in that performance.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
When they asked why he felt it was necessary to
cut off Kim's head and limbs to get her body
out of the submarine, he just said, I don't understand
it either.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
And when they questioned him about the metal pipes he
attached to her remains, the ones meant to keep her
body from surfacing, He said he thought it would be
better for Kim's family if she was never found. Better
for them, right, because never knowing where your loved one
(25:56):
is is better than having answers. Then came the question,
probably one of the most emotionally charged moments of the trial,
did you do anything sexual to her?
Speaker 1 (26:11):
And Peter snapped He shot back with how can you
even ask that?
Speaker 2 (26:17):
Yeah, but the evidence didn't lie. Kim's underwear had traces
of Peter seamen and a strap from the submarine matched
the marks found on her wrists.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
Kind of hard to deny that proof. They also asked why,
if Kim had died and he was so devastated he
didn't call for help, why didn't he tell anyone instead?
Speaker 2 (26:44):
That night he sent a cheerful, emoji filled text to
his wife after Kim was dead, like nothing had happened.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
And his answer, you have to understand my situation.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
Yeah, No one did, though not really.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
In their closing statement, the prosecution asked for the harshest
sentence available under Danish law, life in prison.
Speaker 2 (27:13):
They admitted that kind of sentence is rare in Denmark,
especially for a single murder, and especially when the defendant
has no prior convictions.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
But they said, quote, this case is devoid of mitigating
circumstances end quote. No explanation, no remorse, nothing that could
justify leniency.
Speaker 2 (27:40):
Peter Madsen was given the chance to speak one last
time before the verdict. He looked at Kim's parents and said, quote,
I'm really really sorry about what happened. End quote.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
But that wasn't enough. On April twenty fifth, twenty eighteen,
Peter MADD's was found guilty of murder, sexual assault, and
indecent handling of a corpse.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
The court called the killing cynical and plant. He was
sentenced to life in prison. Like we said, the harshest
sentence Denmark can hand down, and it wasn't given very often.
Speaker 1 (28:19):
And still even after the trial, even after the sentencing,
Peter never gave a real explanation.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
It wasn't until two years later that he finally admitted,
during a secretly recorded phone call, that yes, he killed
Kim Wall.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
His exact words quote, it's my fault, she died. I
committed the crime. It's all my fault end quote.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
But that was it. No why, no detail, and no accountability.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
After the verdict, Peter Madsen tried to appeal not the convict,
but the sentence.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
Yeah, he wanted his life sentence reduced.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
But the court didn't budge. The High Court actually reaffirmed
the original ruling. They said the crime was of unusual
seriousness and that Peter had shown special ruthlessness.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
Yeah. They also made a point that really stuck with me.
They said Peter quote exploited the defenseless position of the
injured party end quote.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
In playing terms. Kim was vulnerable and he knew it.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
But Peter's story didn't stop there. In twenty twenty, while
serving his life sentence, he escaped from prison.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
Yeah, it sounds unreal, but it happened. He threatened a
guard with what looked like a gun and actually made
it a few hundred meters down the road before police
cornered him.
Speaker 2 (30:02):
He dropped the fake weapon and stood there wearing what
looked like a bomb belt. Bomb squads robots were called in.
The standoff lasted about ninety minutes before he was taken
back into custody.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
And later that same year, a Danish journalist released a
documentary that included over twenty hours of phone calls with Peter.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
Yeah. He also admits to the murder in those phone calls,
but again never explains why. But Peter's not the important
person in a story, though Kim.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
Is absolutely in fact. Shortly after Kim's torso was found,
her mother, Ingrid, woke up in the middle of the
night with two clear thoughts.
Speaker 2 (30:49):
One, Kim's work had to live on through other young women,
and two a book needed to be written, not about
the crow, but about Kim, about who she was in
the impact she had.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
And Ingrid followed through on both.
Speaker 2 (31:10):
Today, the Kim Wall Memorial Fund awards grants to young
female journalists, women who are curious, empathetic, and committed to
telling stories that matter.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
So far, at least eighteen grants have been awarded, and
several other organizations have launched awards in Kim's name as well.
Speaker 2 (31:30):
In twenty eighteen, Kim's parents published the book of Kim
Wall When Words End.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
It's not a true crime story. It's a love story
from her parents, her friends, her colleagues. It's about Kim
as a daughter, a friend, and a journalist who believed
deeply in seeing people for who they really were.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
Everyone who knew Kim wants her to be remembered for
how she lived, not how she died.
Speaker 1 (32:01):
Kim Wall was smart, brave, and deeply kind. She wasn't
chasing clicks. She was chasing meaning, Even in the strange
corners of the world where most people wouldn't think to look,
and in a world that can feel so indifferent, sometimes
Kim gave a damn.
Speaker 2 (32:19):
And that's the legacy she leaves behind, and that's what
we should remember. It's so heartbreaking because I was a
journalism major and this is the kind of stuff I
wanted to do with my life.
Speaker 1 (32:37):
I was going to ask you, because this was more
your wheelhouse, how it affected you, Because like she she
I mean, as we had said earlier, she did everything right.
She wasn't being careless or reckless. She was doing what
anybody in her position would have done. And she just
happened into the wrong person.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
And it wasn't even like it was on a way.
She had been trying to talk to him for months.
This was a story that she had been interested in covering,
and so she finally gets this opportunity. She can't pass
it off. She can't just be like, oh, well, you know,
never mind, And she gave up saying goodbye to her
friends to do this.
Speaker 1 (33:17):
Yep too.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
And she had asked all if he wanted to come
with her, and even said she was a little nervous,
not about going, not about being alone with Peter, but
about being in a fricking subsubmarine, because yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:32):
The ocean is terrifying.
Speaker 2 (33:34):
It is terrifying. And Ole said that he really wanted
to go, he thought about it, that he didn't feel
like he could ditch their friends last minute, and that's
why he stayed behind. Because of course you're not going
to think that she's going to be in any real danger.
She's just going to interview this dude and see a
home made submarine and then come back in a few hours.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
Most of the time, the last time you see a
person is not what you think to be the last
time you'll ever see them.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
No, And it's just it's really scary because a lot
of people did know what he was really like and
saw those signs. But that doesn't mean even saying that,
that doesn't mean that you would think that somebody would
actually be capable of doing something like this.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
No, and as you said earlier, no kink shaming. People
can like what they like. There's nothing wrong with that.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
But like, and he had obviously been thinking about this
and planning this and had the tools on the submarine.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
To do it, yep, and building up.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
Yeah, and he had been asking multiple women to come
on the sub she just happened to say yes. If
it hadn't been for that story.
Speaker 1 (34:45):
Yep, if it had, if it wasn't Kim, it would
have been somebody else. So in a kind of twisted way,
her sacrifice saved another young woman from meeting the same fate.
Speaker 2 (34:59):
Yeah case, if it had happened to somebody else who
maybe was less known or didn't have the same support system,
he could still be out there doing it to other people.
As sad as it is, but this one's this one's rough.
She was so young and had such a huge life
(35:20):
in front of her and was just trying to do
good things and make a difference and tell people's stories.
Speaker 1 (35:27):
But you know, at least her legacy is still living
on with the Foundation.
Speaker 2 (35:30):
And I think when this information first came out, I
think there had been like four four women that had
been given the grants, and then looking at updated information.
It's up to eighteen now is into twenty twenty five,
which is huge. So once again, you're taking something horrible
(35:54):
and you're turning it around and you're trying to do
something positive that.
Speaker 1 (35:59):
Helps us people see the light in the darkness.
Speaker 2 (36:02):
Yeah, we want to give a big thank you to
Hailey Gray for her research on this case.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
She's amazing at this. Yeah, be sure to give her
a follow at Hailey Gray Research on Instagram. Haley is
doing all kinds of amazing things in the advocacy space,
so really be sure to check it out.
Speaker 2 (36:25):
Yeah, and until next time, stay safe and make good choices.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
Bye bye.
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