A Danish inventor has been jailed for murdering and dismembering a Swedish journalist aboard his home-built submarine.
Peter Madsen, 47, was arrested last year over the death of 30-year-old Kim Wall, whose torso washed ashore in Copenhagen. Arms, legs and a head were later discovered by police.
Madsen admitted dismembering the body, but denied murder - claiming she died from breathing exhaust gases.
Madsen, dressed entirely in black, sat motionless as the Copenhagen City Court handed down its verdict in a grisly case straight from the pages of a dark Scandinavian psycho-thriller.
Already well known in Denmark for his submarines and his plan to send a human into space in a home-made rocket, Madsen was detained last August when he emerged from his submarine without Ms Wall, a 30-year-old who was researching a piece on him.
Forensic tests found that she had either been strangled or had her throat cut - and that around the time of her death, Madsen had stabbed her in her breasts and genitals with a knife or screwdriver.
Judge Anette Burkoe said the panel of judges had been unanimous in finding him guilty of a murder that had been planned.
During the trial, a police prosecutor said images of women being strangled and decapitated, "which we presumed to be real", had been found on Madsen’s computer in a laboratory he ran.
Ms Wall was a freelance journalist whose work had appeared in Harper's Magazine, Time, the New York Times, the Atlantic Magazine, the Guardian, Foreign Policy and the South China Morning Post.
She held degrees from New York's Columbia University and the London School of Economics and had written about topics ranging from gender and social justice to pop culture and foreign policy, according to her LinkedIn profile.
Reuters / Newshub.
