Peter Madsen, Danish Inventor, Is Convicted of Killing Kim Wall

Peter Madsen, a self-taught engineer who referred to himself as “Rocket Madsen,” had admitted to dismembering the journalist Kim Wall and to discarding her body at sea. Ida Marie Odgaard/Scanpix Denmark, via Reuters

COPENHAGEN — A Danish inventor who admitted to dismembering a journalist and discarding her body from the submarine he built was convicted on Wednesday of killing her, in one of the most gruesome and closely watched cases in Scandinavian history.

A court in Copenhagen found the submarine inventor Peter Madsen, 47, guilty of premeditated killing — equivalent to murder — in the death of Kim Wall, 30, whom prosecutors said he bound, tortured, sexually assaulted and stabbed repeatedly after she went on his submarine, the UC3 Nautilus, to interview him. He was sentenced to life in prison.

The trial in Copenhagen City Court was heard by a three-person panel — the presiding judge, Anette Burko, and two lay jurors — whose votes counted equally.

The prosecutor, Jakob Buch-Jepsen, had asked the court to impose the maximum possible sentence, life in prison, which is rare in Denmark, even in murder cases.

It was “a case so heinous and repulsive that as a prosecutor, it renders you speechless,” Mr. Buch-Jepsen said in his closing argument on Monday. “Peter Madsen is not normal. He is a danger to society.”

A picture of Ms. Wall was displayed at an auction of her photographs in New York last month. A scholarship has been created in her honor. Angela Weiss/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

A court-ordered psychiatric evaluation of Mr. Madsen described him as a narcissistic sociopath, lacking in empathy but not psychotic or delusional.

His lawyer, Betina Hald Engmark, noted during the trial that investigators had been unable to establish the cause of Ms. Wall’s death. She admitted that Mr. Madsen had mutilated the body and thrown pieces into the sea, and that he had lied to the police. But she argued that there was no clear evidence that Ms. Wall had been murdered.

Ms. Wall, who was Swedish and lived in Copenhagen, was last seen alive on Aug. 10, when she met Mr. Madsen for what was supposed to be a two-hour trip aboard the submarine. The submarine sank the next day, and while Mr. Madsen was rescued, Ms. Wall was nowhere to be found.

He claimed at first that he had put her safely ashore hours earlier — the first of several conflicting stories he gave, according to the police — but her mutilated remains were found in the waters near Copenhagen over the next several days. He then claimed that she had died in an accident aboard the submarine, and said that he had cut up the body and discarded the pieces.

But Mr. Buch-Jepsen presented evidence that Mr. Madsen had planned to assault and kill her, bringing the tools to bind, cut and stab his victim, and heavy objects like pipes to weigh down her remains. The prosecutor showed text messages that Mr. Madsen had deleted, but that investigators were able to recover, telling another woman that she should be tied up and tortured aboard the sub, and telling a friend that he had planned the perfect murder, one that would be a “great pleasure.”

Mr. Buch-Jepsen presented Mr. Madsen, who had founded a company to build spacecraft, as desperate to commit the murder after the cancellation of a rocket launch on Aug. 8. That day, he texted three other women to invite them onto the submarine. All three declined.

Ms. Wall was last seen alive on Aug. 10, when she met Mr. Madsen for what was supposed to be a two-hour trip on his submarine. Jens Dresling/Ritzau Foto, via Associated Press

“It was random chance that it turned out to be Kim Wall,” Mr. Buch-Jepsen said.

Ms. Engmark argued that the mutilation of Ms. Wall’s body occurred entirely after her death, and that Mr. Madsen was guilty of nothing more serious than improper handling of a body, a crime that carries a six-month prison sentence.

Ms. Wall, a freelance journalist who had written for many publications, had traveled the world — she had reported from Cuba, North Korea and Uganda, among other places — focusing on what she called “undercurrents of rebellion.” She and her boyfriend, Ole Stobbe, were a few days from moving to Beijing when she died.

She had tried for months to get an interview with Mr. Madsen, a self-taught engineer who referred to himself as “Rocket Madsen.” So when he texted her on Aug. 10, asking to meet her that evening, she skipped a going-away party for her and Mr. Stobbe and accepted Mr. Madsen’s invitation.

Ms. Wall’s parents sat through the often gruesome trial as silent spectators, and have largely declined to discuss the case with the news media.

“Everybody can make out for themselves how we think and feel,” her mother, Ingrid Wall, said at one point. “We have no reason to express anything about that.”

The case received intensive international news coverage, and each night people lined up outside the courthouse, hoping to claim the limited number of seats in the courtroom the next morning. In Denmark and Sweden, the news media has been criticized for its graphic reporting of the killing.

“It’s an extremely difficult case, in one of the world’s most wealthy and safe societies, where violence, sexual violence and rape are declining,” said Morten Frich, a journalist who covered the trial for Information, a Danish newspaper.

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