DNA tests from a headless torso found in the Baltic Sea matches with missing Swedish journalist Kim Wall, Danish police say.
Wall, 30, was last seen alive on August 10 on Danish inventor Peter Madsen's submarine, which sank off Denmark's eastern coast the day after.
Madsen, who was arrested on preliminary manslaughter charges, denies having anything to do with Wall's disappearance.
The headless torso was found by a member of the public who was cycling on Copenhagen's southern Amager island on Monday, near where she was believed to have died.
Copenhagen police said the arms and legs had been "deliberately been cut off" the body.
Copenhagen police investigator Jens Moeller Jensen told reporters on Wednesday that the body was attached to a piece of metal, "likely with the purpose to make it sink."
The body "washed ashore after having been at sea for a while," he said.
Moeller Jensen added police found marks on the torso indicating someone tried to press air out of the body so that it would fall to the bottom and doesn't float.
Dried blood was found inside the submarine that also matched with Wall, he said.
"On August 12, we secured a hair brush and a toothbrush to ensure her DNA. We also found blood in the submarine and there is a match," Moeller Jensen said.
The cause of the journalist's death is not yet known, police said.
Madsen, who remains detained in police custody, initially told police that she disembarked from the submarine to a Copenhagen island several hours into their trip and that he did not know what happened to her afterward.
He later told authorities that "an accident occurred onboard that led to her death" and he "buried" her at sea.
Wall was a freelance journalist who had written for The Guardian, New York Times and South China Morning Post.
Wall's family expressed "boundless grief" after receiving the news of her death.
"We can't fathom the scope of the disaster, and many questions remain to be answered," Wall's mother Ingrid Wall, wrote on Facebook.
Ingrid said that the family had received numerous messages of support during the days that passed her daughter disappeared, showing "how loved and appreciated she was, as a person and a professional reporter."
Reuters
